Heart of Darkness - Chapter 2 Part 1

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:02):
Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad, Chapter two, Part one,
One evening, as I was lying flat on the deck
of my steamboat, I heard voices approaching, and there were
the nephew and the uncle strolling along the bank. I
laid my head on my arm again and had nearly
lost myself in a doze when somebody said in my ear,

(00:24):
as it were, I am as harmless as a little child.
But I don't like to be dictated to. Am I
the manager? Or am I not? I was ordered to
send him there? It's incredible. I became aware that the
two were standing on the shore alongside the forepart of
the steamboat, just below my head. I did not move.

(00:45):
It did not occur to me to move. I was sleepy.
It is unpleasant, grunted the uncle. He has asked the
administration to be sent there, said the other, with the
idea of showing what he could do. And I was
instructed accordingly. Look at the influence that man must have.
Is it not frightful? They both agreed it was frightful,

(01:09):
then made several bizarre remarks make rain and fine weather.
One man the council by the nose, bits of absurd
sentences that got the better of my drowsiness, so that
I had pretty near the whole of my wits about
me when the uncle said, the climate may do away
with this difficulty for you. Is he alone there? Yes,

(01:31):
answered the manager. He sent his assistant down the river
with a note to me in these terms, clear this
poor devil out of the country, and don't bother sending
more of that sort. I had rather be alone than
have the kind of men you can dispose of with me.
It was more than a year ago. Can you imagine
such impudence anything since? Then asked the other hoarsely. Ivory

(01:56):
jerked the nephew. Lots of it, prime sort, lots most
annoying from him, And with that questioned the heavy rumble
invoice was the reply fired out, so to speak. Then
silence they had been talking about Kurts. I was broad
awake by this time, but lying perfectly at ease, remained

(02:18):
still having no inducement to change my position. How did
that Ivory come all this way? Growled the elder man,
who seemed very vexed. The other explained that it had
come with a fleet of canoes in charge of an
English half caste clerk. Kurtz had with him. That Kurtz
had apparently intended to return himself, the station being by

(02:40):
that time bare of goods and stores, but after coming
three hundred miles, had suddenly decided to go back, which
he started to do alone in a small dugout with
four paddlers, leaving the half caste to continue down the
river with the ivory. The two fellows there seemed astounded
at anybody attempting such a thing. They were at a
loss for an adequate motive. As to me, I seemed

(03:03):
to see Kurtz for the first time. It was a
distant glimpse the dugout, four paddling savages, and the lone
white man turning his back suddenly on the headquarters on relief,
on thoughts of home, perhaps settling his face towards the
depths of the wilderness, towards his empty and desolate station.

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I did not know the motive. Perhaps he was simply
a fine fellow who stuck to his work for its
own sake. His name, you understand, had not been pronounced once.
He was that man, the half caste, who as far
as I could see, had conducted a difficult trip with
great prudence and pluck, was invariably alluded to as that scoundrel.

(03:48):
The scoundrel had reported that the man had been very ill,
had recovered imperfectly. The Tublowmy moved away then a few paces,
and strolled back and forth. At some little distance I
heard military post doctor two hundred miles quite alone. Now

(04:09):
unavoidable delays, nine months, no news, strange rumors. They approached again,
just as the manager was saying, no one, as far
as I know, unless a species of wandering trader, a
pestilential fellow snapping ivory from the natives. Who was it
they were talking about? Now? I gathered in snatches that

(04:32):
this was some man supposed to be in Kurtz's district,
and of whom the manager did not approve. We will
not be free from unfair competition till one of these
fellows is hanged. For an example, he said, certainly grunted
the other, get him hanged. Why not anything? Anything can
be done in this country, That's what I say. Nobody here,

(04:53):
you understand here can endanger your position, And why you
stand the climate, you outlast the mo All the danger
is in Europe. But there before I left, I took
care to They moved off and whispered. Then their voices
rose again. The extraordinary series of delays is not my fault.
I did my best. The fat man sighed very sad,

(05:18):
and the postiferous absurdity of his talk continued. The other
he bothered me enough when he was here. Each station
should be like a beacon on the road towards better things,
a center for trade, of course, but also for humanizing, improving, instructing.
Conceive you that ass and he wants to be manager. No,

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it's here. He got choked by excessive indignation, and I
lifted my head the least bit. I was surprised to
see how near they were right under me. I could
have spat on their hats. They were looking at the ground,
absorbed in thought. The manager was switching his leg with
a slender twig. His sagash relative lifted his head. You

(06:02):
have been well since you came out this time, he asked.
The other gave a start. Who I oh, like a charm,
Like a charm. But the rest, oh, my goodness, all sick.
They die so quick too, that I haven't the time
to send them out of the country. It's incredible hum
just so grunted the uncle. Ah, my boy, trust to this,

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I say, trust to this. I saw him extend his
short flipper of an arm for a gesture that took
in the forest, the creek, the mud, the river seemed
to beckon with a dishonoring flourish before the sunlit face
of the land, a treacherous appeal to the lurking death,
to the hidden evil, to the profound darkness of its heart.

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It was so startling that I leaped to my feet
and looked back at the edge of the forest, as
though I had expected an answer of some sort to
that black display of confidence, You know, the foolish notions
that come to one sometimes. The high stillness confronted these
two figures with its ominous patients, waiting for the passing
away of a fantastic invasion, They swir alout together out

(07:13):
of sheer fright, I believe, then, pretending not to know
anything of my existence, turned back to the station. The
sun was low, and leaning forward side by side, they
seemed to be tugging painfully up hill, their two ridiculous
shadows of unequal length that trailed behind them slowly over
the tall grass without bending a single blade. In a

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few days, the El Dorado expedition went into the patient
wilderness that closed upon it as the sea closes over
a driver. Long afterwards, the news came that all the
donkeys were dead. I know nothing as to the fate
of the less valuable animals. They, no doubt, like the
rest of us, found what they deserved. I did not inquire.

(07:56):
I was then rather excited at the prospect of meeting
Curts very soon. When I say very soon, I mean
it comparatively. It was just two months from the day
we left the creek when we came to the bank
below Kurtz's station. Going up that river was like traveling
back to the earliest beginnings of the world, when vegetation
rioted on the earth, and the big trees were kings.

(08:18):
An empty stream, a great silence, an impenetrable forest. The
air was warm, thick, heavy, sluggish. There was no joy
in the brilliance of sunshine. The long stretches of the
waterway ran on, deserted into the gloom of the overshadowed distances.

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On silvery sand banks, hippos and alligators sunned themselves side
by side. The broadening waters flowed through a mob of
wooded islands. You lost your way on that river as
you would in a desert, and budded all day long
against shoals, trying to find the channel, till you thought
yourself bewitched and cut off forever from everything you had

(09:02):
known once somewhere far away, in another existence. Perhaps there
were moments when once past came back to one, as
it will sometimes when you have not a moment to
spare for yourself. But it came in the shape of
an unrestful and noisy dream, remembered with wonder amongst the
overwhelming realities of this strange world of plants, water and silence.

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And this stillness of life did not in the least
resemble a peace. It was the stillness of an implacable force,
brooding over an inscrutable intention. It looked at you with
a vengeful aspect. I got used to it. Afterwards, I
did not see it anymore. I had no time. I

(09:50):
had to keep guessing at the channel. I had to discern,
mostly by inspiration, the signs of hidden banks. I watched
for sunken stones. I was learning to clap my teeth
smartly before my heart flew out when I shaved by
a fluke. Some infernal sly oled snag that would have
ripped the life out of the tin pot steamboat and

(10:10):
drowned all the pilgrims. I had to keep a lookout
for the signs of dead wood we could cut up
in the night for next day's steaming. When you have
to attend to things of that sort, to the mere
incidents of the surface, the reality, the reality, I tell you, fades.
The inner truth is hidden, luckily, luckily, But I felt

(10:34):
it all the same. I felt often its mysterious stillness
watching me at my money tricks, just as it watches
you fellows, performing on your respective tight ropes. For what
is it half a crown a tumble. Try to be civil,
Marlowe growled a voice, and I knew there was at
least one listener awake beside myself. I beg your pardon.

(10:56):
I forgot the heartache which makes up the rest of
the price. And indeed, what does the price matter if
the trick be well done. You do your tricks very well.
And I didn't do badly either, since I managed not
to sink that steamboat on my first trip, it's a
wonder to me. Yet, imagine a blindfolded man set to
drive a van over a bad road. I sweated and

(11:17):
shivered over that business considerably. I can tell you, after all,
for a seaman to scrape the bottom of the thing
that supposed to float all the time under his care
is the unpardonable sin. No one may know of it,
but you never forget the thumb eh a blow on
the very heart. You remember it, You dream of it,

(11:38):
You wake up at night and think of it years after,
and go hot and cold all over. I don't pretend
to say that steamboat floated all the time. More than
once she had to wait for a bit with twenty
cannibals splashing around and pushing. We had enlisted some of
these chaps on the way for a crew. Fine fellows
cannibals in their place. They were men one could work with,

(12:02):
and I am grateful to them. And after all they
did not eat each other before my face. They had
brought along a provision of hippo meat, which went rotten
and made the mystery of the wilderness stink in my hostels. Pheuch,
I can sniff it now. I had the manager on board,
and three or four pilgrims with their staves all complete.

(12:23):
Sometimes we came upon a station close by the bank,
clinging to the skirts of the unknown, and the white
men rushing out of a tumble down hovel with great
gestures of joy and surprise and welcome, seemed very strange,
had the appearance of being held there captive by a spell.
The word ivory would ring in the air for a while.

(12:43):
And on we went again into the silence, along empty reaches,
round the still bends, between the high walls of our
winding way, reverbating in hollow claps, the ponderous beat of
the stern wheel. Trees, trees, millions of trees, massive, immense,
running up high and at their foot, hugging the bank

(13:06):
against the stream, crept the little begrimed steamboat, like a
sluggish beetle crawling on the floor of a lofty portico.
It made you feel very small, very lost, And yet
it was not altogether depressing that feeling. After all, if
you were small, the grimy beetle crawled on, which was

(13:26):
just what you wanted it to do. Where the pilgrims
imagined it crawled to, I don't know, to some place
where they expected to get something. I bet for me,
it crawled towards kurts exclusively. But when the steam pipe
started leaking. We crawled very slow. The reaches opened before
us and closed behind, as if the forest had stepped

(13:49):
leisurely across the water to bar the way for our return.
We penetrated deeper and deeper into the heart of darkness.
It was very quiet there at night. Sometimes the roll
of drums behind the curtain of trees would run up
the river and remain sustained faintly, as if hovering in

(14:09):
the air, high over our heads, till the first break
of day. Whether it meant war, peace or prayer, we
could not tell. The dawns were heralded by the descent
of a chill stillness. The woodcutters slept, their fires burned low.
The snapping of a twig would make you start. We

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were wanderers on a prehistoric earth, on an earth that
wore the aspect of an unknown planet. We could have
fancied ourselves the first of men, taking possession of an
accursed inheritance, to be subdued at the cost of profound
anguish and of excessive toil. But suddenly, as we struggled
round a bend, there would be a glimpse of rush,

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walls of peaked glass roofs, a burst of yells, a
whirl of black limbs, a mass of hands, clapping of feet,
stamping of bodies, swaying of eyes, rolling under the droop
of heavy and motionless foliage. The steamer toiled along slowly
on the edge of a black and incomprehensible frenzy. The

(15:15):
prehistoric man was cursing us, praying to us, welcoming us.
Who could tell we were cut off from the comprehension
of our surroundings. We glided past like phantoms, wondering and
secretly appalled, as sane men would be before an enthusiastic
outbreak in a mad house. We could not understand because
we were too far and could not remember. Because we

(15:37):
were traveling in the night of first ages, of those
ages that are gone, leaving hardly a sign and no memories.
The earth seemed unearthly. We are accustomed to look upon
the shackled form of a conquered monster. But there there
you could look at a thing monstrous and free. It

(15:58):
was unearthly, and the men were no, they were not
in human. Well, you know that was the worst of it,
this suspicion of their not being inhuman. It would come
slowly to one They howled and leaped, and spun and
made horrid faces. But what thrilled you was just the

(16:19):
thought of their humanity like yours, the thought of your
remote kinship with this wild and passionate uproar. Ugly, yes,
it was ugly enough. But if you were mad enough,
you would admit to yourself that there was in you
just the faintest trace of a response to the terrible
frankness of that noise, a dim suspicion of there being

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a meaning in it, which you, you so remote from
the night of first Ages, could comprehend. And why not?
The mind of man is capable of anything, because everything
is in it, all the past as well as all
the future. What was there after all? Joy, fear, sorrow, devotion, valor, rage.

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Who can tell but truth, truth stripped of its cloak
of time. Let the fool gape and shudder. The man knows,
and can look on without a wink. But he must
at least be as much of a man as these
on the shore. He must meet that truth with his
own true stuff, with his own inborn strength. Principles won't

(17:25):
do acquisitions. Clothes, pretty rags, rags that would fly off
at the first good shake, no, you want a deliberate
belief and appeal to me in this fiendish row? Is
there very well, I hear, I admit, but I have
a voice too, and for good or evil, mine is
the speech that cannot be silenced. Of course, a fool,

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what with sheer, fright and fine sentiments, is always safe.
Who's that grunting? You wonder I didn't go ashore for
a howl and a dance. Well, no, I didn't. Fine sentiments,
You say, fine sentiments be hanged. I had no time.
I had to mess about with white lead and strips
of woolen blanket, helping to put bandages on those leaky

(18:09):
steam pipes. I tell you, I had to watch the
steering and circumvent those snags, and get the tin pot
along by hook or by crook. There was surface truth
enough in these things to save a wiser man. And
between whiles I had to look after the savage who
was fireman. He was an improved specimen. He could fire

(18:29):
up a vertical boiler. He was there below me, and
upon my word. To look at him was as edifying
as seeing a dog in a parody of breeches and
a feather hat walking on his hind legs. A few
months of training had done for that really fine chap.
He squinted at the steam gage and at the water
gage with an evident effort of intrepidity, and he had

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filed teeth too, the poor devil, and the wool of
his pate shaved into queer patterns, and three ornamental scars
on each of his cheeks. He ought to have been
clapping his hands and stamping his feet on the bank,
instead of which he was hard at work, a thrall
to strange witchcraft, full of improving knowledge. He was useful

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because he had been instructed. And what he knew was this,
that should the water in that transparent thing disappear, the
evil spirit inside the boiler would get angry through the
greatness of his thirst and take a terrible vengeance. So
he sweated and fired up, and watched the glass fearfully
with an impromptu charm made of rags tied to his

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arm and a piece of polished bone as big as
a watch stuck flatways through his lower lip. While the
wooded bank slipped past us slowly, the short noise was
left behind the interminable miles of silence, and we crept
on towards Kurts, but the snags were thick, the water
was treacherous and shallow. The boiler seemed indeed to have

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a sulky devil in it, and thus neither that fireman
nor I had any time to peer into our creepy thoughts.
Some fifty miles below the inner station we came upon
a hut of reeds, an inclined and melancholy pole, with
the unrecognizable tatters of what had been a flag of

(20:17):
some sort flying from it, and a neatly stacked woodpile.
This was unexpected. We came to the bank and on
the stack of firewood found a flat piece of board
with some faded pencil writing on it. When deciphered, it
said wood for you, hurry up, Approach cautiously. There was

(20:37):
a signature, but it was illegible, not kerts, a much
longer word, hurry up. Where up the river Approached cautiously?
We had not done so, But the warning could not
have been meant for the place where it could only
be found after approach. Something was wrong above, But what

(20:59):
and how much? That was the question. We commented adversely
upon the imbecility of that telegraphic style. The bush around
said nothing, and would not let us look very far either.
A torn curtain of red twill hung in the doorway
of the hut and flapped sadly in our faces. The

(21:19):
dwelling was dismantled, but we could see a white man
had lived there not very long ago. There remained a
rude table, a plank on two posts, a heap of
rubbish reposed in a dark corner, and by the door.
I picked up a book. It had lost its covers,
and the pages had been thumbed into a state of
extremely dirty softness. But the back had been lovingly stitched

(21:42):
afresh with white cotton thread, which looked clean. Yet it
was an extraordinary find. Its title was an inquiry into
some points of Seamanship by a man Towser Tousan, some
such name, master in his Magicy Navy. The matter looked

(22:02):
dreary reading enough, with illustrative diagrams and repulsive tables of figures,
and the copy was sixty years old. I handled this
amazing antiquity with the greatest possible tenderness, lest it should
dissolve in my hands. Within townshend Or Towser was inquiring
earnestly into the breaking strain of ships, chains and tackle

(22:25):
and other such matters. Not a very enthralling book, But
at the first glance you could see there a singleness
of intention, an honest concern for the right way of
going to work, which made these humble pages, thought out
so many years ago, luminous with another than a professional light.
The simple old sailor, with his talk of chains and purchases,

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made me forget the jungle and the pilgrims in a
delicious sensation of having come upon something unmistakably real. Such
a book being here was wonderful enough. Still more astounding
were the notes penciled in the margin and plainly referring
to the text. I couldn't believe my eyes. They were
in cipher. Yes, it looked like a cipher fancy, a

(23:10):
man lugging with him a book of that description into
this nowhere and studying it and making notes in cipher.
At that it was an extravagant mystery. I had been
dimly aware for some time of a worrying noise, and
when I lifted my eyes, I saw the woodpile was gone,
and the manager, aided by all the pilgrims, was shouting

(23:32):
at me from the river side. I slipped the book
into my pocket. I assure you to leave off. Reading
was like tearing myself away from the shelter of an
old and solid friendship. I started the lame engine ahead.
It must be this miserable trader, this intruder, exclaimed the manager,
looking back malevolently at the place we had left. He

(23:53):
must be English. I said. It will not save him
from getting into trouble if he is not careful, muttered
the manager darkly. I observed, with assumed innocence, that no
man was safe from trouble in this world. The current
was more rapid now. The steamer seemed at her last gasp.
The stern wheel flopped languidly, and I caught myself listening

(24:14):
on the tip toe for the next beat of the boat.
For in sober truth, I expected the wretched thing to
give up every moment. It was like watching the last
flickers of a life. But still we crawled. Sometimes I
would pick out a tree a little way ahead to
measure our progress towards kurtz By, but I lost it
invariably before we got abreast. To keep the eye so

(24:36):
long on one thing was too much for human patience.
The manager displayed a beautiful resignation. I fretted and fumed,
and took to arguing with myself whether or no I
would talk openly with Kurts. But before I could come
to any conclusion, it occurred to me that my speech,
or my silence, indeed any action of mine, would be
a mere futility. What did it matter what an any

(25:00):
one knew or ignored? What did it matter who was manager?
One gets sometimes such a flash of insight. The essentials
of this affair lay deep under the surface, beyond my
reach and beyond my power of meddling. Towards the evening
of the second day, we judged ourselves about eight miles

(25:20):
from Kurtz's station. I wanted to push on, but the
manager looked grave and told me the navigation up there
was so dangerous that it would be advisable, the sun
being very low already, to wait where we were till
next morning. Moreover, he pointed out that if the warning
to approach cautiously were to be followed, we must approach

(25:40):
in daylight, not at dusk or in the dark. This
was sensible enough. Eight miles meant nearly three hours steaming
for us, and I could also see suspicious ripples at
the upper end of the reach. Nevertheless, I was annoyed
beyond expression at the delay, and most unreasonably too, since
one night more could not matter much after so many months,

(26:05):
as we had plenty of wood, and caution was the
word I brought up in the middle of the stream.
The reach was narrow, straight, with high sides, like a
railway cutting. The dusk came gliding into it long before
the sun had set. The current ran smooth and swift,
but a dumb immobility sat on the banks. The living

(26:26):
trees lashed together by the creepers, and every living bush
of the undergrowth might have been changed into stone, even
to the slenderest twig, to the lightest leaf. It was
not sleep. It seemed unnatural, like a state of trance.
Not the faintest sound of any kind could be heard.

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You looked on amazed, and began to suspect yourself of
being deaf. Then the night came suddenly and struck you
blind as well. About three in the morning, some large
fish leaped, and the loud splash made me jump as
though a gun had been fired. When the sun rose,
there was a white fog, very warm and clammy, and

(27:09):
more blinding than the night. It did not shift or drive.
It was just there, standing all round you, like something solid.
At eight or nine, perhaps it lifted as a shutter lifts.
We had a glimpse of the towering multitude of trees,
of the immense matted jungle, with the blazing little ball

(27:29):
of the sun hanging over it, all perfectly still. And
then the white shutter came down again, smoothly, as if
sliding in greased grooves. I ordered the chain which we
had begun to heave in to be paid out again
before it stopped running with a muffled rattle. A cry,
a very loud cry as of infinite desolation, soared slowly

(27:51):
in the opaque air. It ceased. A complaining clamor modulated
in savage discords filled our ears. The sheer unexpectedness of
it made my hair stir under my cap. I don't
know how it struck the others. To me, it seemed
as though the mist itself screamed. So suddenly, and apparently
from all sides at once, did this tumultuous and mournful

(28:13):
uproar arise. It culminated in a hurried outbreak of almost
intolerably excessive shrieking, which stopped short, leaving us stiffened in
a variety of silly attitudes and obstinately listening to the
nearly as appalling and excessive silence. Good God, what is
the meaning? Stammered at my elbow. One of the pilgrims,

(28:36):
a little fat man with sandy hair and red whiskers,
who wore side spring boots and pink pig pajamas tucked
into his socks. Two others remained open mouthed a while minute,
then dashed into the little cabin to rush out incontinently
and stand, to rush out incontinently and stand darting scared

(28:56):
glances with winchesters at ready in their hands. What we
could see was just the steamer we were on, her
outlines blurred as though she had been on the point
of dissolving, and a misty strip of water perhaps two
feet broad around her. And that was all. The rest
of the world was nowhere, as far as our eyes

(29:18):
and ears were concerned, just nowhere, gone, disappeared, swept off
without leaving a whisper or a shadow behind. I went
forward and ordered the chain to be hauled in short
so as to be ready to trip the anchor and
move the steamboat at once if necessary, will they attack,

(29:40):
whispered an odd voice. We will all be butchered in
this fog, murmured another. The faces twitched with the strain,
the hands trembled slightly, the eyes forgot to wink. It
was very curious to see the contrast of expressions of
the white men and of the black fellows of our crew,
who were as much strangers to that part of the

(30:02):
river as we, though their homes were only eight hundred
miles away. The whites, of course, greatly discomposed, had besides
a curious look of being painfully shocked by such an
outrageous row. The others had an alert, naturally interested expression,
but their faces were essentially quiet, even those of the
one or two who grinned as they hauled at the chain.

(30:25):
Several exchanged short, grunting phrases, which seemed to settle the
matter to their satisfaction. Their head man, a young, broad
chested black, severely draped in a dark blue fringed cloths
with fierce nostrils, and his hair all done up artfully
in oily ringlets, stood near me. Aha, I said, just

(30:46):
for good fellowship's sake, Catchem, he snapped, with a blood
shot widening of his eyes and a flash of sharp teeth.
Catch m give em to us, to you, eh, I asked,
What would you do? Then? Edam? He said, curtly, and
leaning his elbow on the rail, looked out into the

(31:06):
fog in a dignified and profoundly punsive attitude. I would
no doubt have been properly horrified had it not occurred
to me that he and his chaps must be very hungry,
that they must have been growing increasingly hungry for at
least this month passed. They had been engaged for six months.
I don't think a single one of them had had

(31:27):
any clear idea of the time. As we at the
end of countless ages have they still belonged to the
beginnings of time, had no inherited experience to teach them
as it were. And of course, as long as there
was a piece of paper written over in accordance with
some farcical law or other made down the river, it
didn't enter anybody's head to trouble how they would live.

(31:48):
Certainly they had brought with them some rotten hippo meat,
which couldn't have lasted very long anyway, even if the
pilgrims hadn't in the midst of a shocking hullaballoo thrown
a considerable quantity of it overboard. It looked like a
high handed proceeding, but it was really a case of
legitimate self defense. You can't breathe dead hippo, walking, sleeping,

(32:09):
and eating and at the same time keep your precarious
grip on existence. Besides that, they had given them every
week three pieces of brass wire, each about nine inches long,
and the theory was they were to buy their provisions
with that currency in riverside villages. You can see how
that worked. There were either no villages, or the people

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were hostile, or the director, who liked the rest of
us fed out of tins with an occasional old he
go thrown in, didn't want to stop the steamer for
some more or less recondit reason. So unless they swallowed
the wire itself or made loops of it to snare
the fishes with, I don't see what good their extravagant
salary could be to them. I must say it was

(32:52):
paid with a regularity worthy of a large and honorable
trading company. For the rest the only thing to eat,
though it didn't look eatable. In the least I saw
in their possession was a few lumps of some stuff
like half cooked dough of a dirty lavender color. They
kept wrapped in leaves, and now and then swallowed a
piece of but so small that it seemed done more

(33:13):
for the looks of the thing than for any serious
purpose of sustenance. Why in the name of all the
gnawing devils of hunger they didn't go for us. They
were thirty to five and have a good tuck in
for once. Amazes me now when I think of it.
They were big, powerful men, with not much capacity to
weigh the consequences with courage, with strength. Even yet, though

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their skins were no longer glossy and their muscles no
longer hard, and I saw that something restraining, one of
those human secrets that bawful probability, had come into play there.
I looked at them with a swift quickening of interest,
not because it occurred to me I might be eaten
by them before very long, though I own to you

(33:55):
that just then I perceived in a new light, as
it were, how unwholesome the pilgrims looked and I hoped, Yes,
I positively hoped that my aspect was not so what
shall I say, so unappetizing, a touch of fantastic vanity,
which fitted well with the dream sensation that pervaded all
my days at that time. Perhaps I had little fever too.

(34:19):
One can't live with one's finger everlastingly on one's pulse.
I had often a little fever, or a little touch
of other things, the playful pos strokes of the wilderness,
the preliminary trifling, before the more serious onslaught, which came
in due course. Yes, I looked at them as you
would on any human being, with a curiosity of their impulses, motives, capacities, weaknesses,

(34:45):
when brought to the test of an inexorable physical necessity,
restraint What possible restraint was it? Superstition, disgust, patience, fear,
or some kind of primitive honor. No fear can stand
up to hunger, no patience can wear it out. Disgust

(35:07):
simply does not exist where hunger is. And as to superstition,
believes and what you may call principles, they are less
than chaff in a breeze. Don't you know the devilry
of lingering? Starvation, its exasperating torment, its black thoughts, its
somber and brooding ferocity. Well, I do. It takes man

(35:30):
all his inborn strength to fight hunger properly. It's really
easier to face bereavement, dishonor, and the perdition of one's
soul than this kind of prolonged hunger. Sad but true,
And these chaps too, had no earthly reason for any
kind of scruple restraint. I would just as soon have

(35:50):
expected restraint from a hyena prowling amongst the corpses of
a battlefield. But there was the fact facing me, the
fact dazzling to be seen, like the foam on the
depths of the sea, like a ripple on an unfathomable enigma,
a mystery greater when I thought of it, than the curious,
inexplicable note of desperate grief in this savage clamor that

(36:14):
had swept by us on the river bank behind the
blind whiteness of the fog. End of Chapter two, Part one,