Heart of Darkness - Chapter 2 Part 2

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad, Chapter two, Part two.
Two pilgrims were quarreling in hurried whispers as to which
bank left. No, no, how can you right? Right? Of course,
it is very serious, said the manager's voice behind me.

(00:21):
I would be desolate if anything should happen to mister
Kurtz before we came up. I looked at him and
had not the slightest doubt he was sincere. He was
just the kind of man who would wish to preserve appearances.
That was his restraint. But when he muttered something about
going on at once, I did not even take the

(00:41):
trouble to answer him. I knew, and he knew, that
it was impossible. Were we to let go our hold
of the bottom, we would be absolutely in the air
in space. We wouldn't be able to tell where we
were going to, whether up or down stream or across
till we fetched against one bank or the other, and

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then we wouldn't know at first which it was. Of course,
I made no move. I had no mind for a
smash up. You couldn't imagine a more deadly place for
a shipwreck. Whether we drowned at once or not, we
were sure to perish speedily in one way or another.
I authorize you to take all the risks, he said,
after a short silence. I refused to take any, I

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said shortly, which was just the answer he expected, though
its tone might have surprised him. Well, I must defer
to your judgment. You are captain, he said, with marked civility.
I turned my shoulder to him in sign of my appreciation,
and looked into the fog. How long would it last?

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It was the most hopeless look out. The approach to
this curt grubbing for ivory in the wretched bush was
beset by as many dangers as though he had been
an enchanted princess sleeping in a fabulous castle. Will they attack,
do you think? Asked the manager in a confidential tone.
I did not think they would attack, for several obvious reasons.

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The thick fog was one. If they left the bank
in their canoes, they would get lost in it, as
we would be if we attempted to move. Still. I
had also judged the jungle of both banks quite impenetrable,
and yet eyes were in it, eyes that had seen us.
The riverside bushes were certainly very thick, but the undergrowth

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behind was evidently penetrable. However, during the short lift, I
had seen no canoes anywhere in the reach, certainly not
abreast of the steamer. But what made the idea of
attack inconceivable to me was the nature of the noise
of the cries we had heard. They had not the
fierce character boding immediate hostile intention. Unexpected wild and violent

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as they had been, they had given me an irresistible
impression of sorrow. The glimpse of the steamboat had for
some reason filled those savages with unrestrained grief. The danger,
if any, I expounded, was from our proximity to a
great human passion let loose. Even extreme grief may ultimately

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vent itself in violence, but more generally takes the form
of apathy. You should have seen the pilgrims stare. They
had no heart to grin or even to revile me.
But I believe they thought me gone mad with fright.
Maybe I delivered a regular lecture, my dear boys. It
was no good bothering keep a lookout. Well, you may

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guess I watched the fog for the signs of lifting
as a cat watches a mouse, but for anything else.
Our eyes were of no more use to us than
if we had been buried miles deep in a heap
of cotton wool. It felt like it too, choking, warm, stifling. Besides,
all I said, though is sounded extra evigant, was absolutely

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true to fat. What we afterwards alluded to as an
attack was really an attempt at repulse. The action was
very far from being aggressive. It was not even defensive
in the usual sense. It was undertaken under the stress
of desperation, and in its essence was purely protective. It
developed itself, I should say, two hours after the fog lifted,

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and its commencement was at a spot, roughly speaking, about
a mile and a half below Kurtz's station. We had
just floundered and flopped round a bend when I saw
an islet, a mere grassy hummock of bright green in
the middle of the stream. It was the only thing
of the kind. But as we opened the reach moor,
I perceived it was the head of a long sand bank,

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or rather of a chain of shallow patches stretching down
the middle of the river. They were discolored, just a wash,
and the whole lot was seen under the water exactly
as a man's backbone is seen running down the middle
of his back under the skin. Now, as far as
I did see, I could go to the right or
to the left of this. I didn't know either channel.

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Of course, the banks looked pretty well alike, the depth
appeared the same. But as I had been informed the
station was on the west side, I naturally headed for
the western passage. No sooner had we fairly entered it
than I became aware it was much narrower than I
had supposed. To the left of us there was the long,

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uninterrupted shoal, and to the right a high, steep bank,
heavily overgrown with bushes. Above the bush, the trees stood
in serried ranks. The twigs overhung the current thickly, and
from distance to distance, a large limb of some tree
projected rigidly over the stream. It was then well on

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in the afternoon. The face of the forest was gloomy,
and a broad strip of shadow had already fallen on
the water. In this shadow we steamed up very slowly.
As you ma'am imagine, I sheared her well inshore, the
water being deepest near the bank. As the sounding pole
informed me, one of my hungry and forbearing friends was

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sounding in the boughs just below me. This steamboat was
exactly like a decked scow. On the deck there were
two little teak wood houses with doors and windows. The
boiler was in the fore end, and the machinery right astern.
Over the whole there was a light roof supported on stanchions.
The funnel projected through that roof, and in front of

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the funnel a small cabin built of light planks served
for a pilot house. It contained a couch, two campstools,
a loaded Martini henry leaning in one corner, a tiny table,
and the steering wheal. It had a wide door in
front and a broad shutter at each side. All these
were always thrown open. Of course, I spent my days

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perched up there on the extreme fore end of that roof,
before the door. At night I slept or tried to
on the couch. An athletic black belonging to some coast
tribe and educated by my poor predecessor, was the helmsman.
He sported a pair of brass earrings, wore a blue
cloth wrapper from the waist to the ankles, and thought

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all the world of himself. He was the most unstable
kind of fool I had ever seen. He steered with
no end of a swagger while you were by, but
if he lost sight of you, he became instantly the
prey of an abject funk, and would let that cripple
of a steamboat get the upper hand of him. In
a minute, I was looking down at the sound pole

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and feeling much annoyed to see at each try a
little more of it stuck out of that river, when
I saw my poleman give up on the business suddenly
and stretch himself flat on the deck, without even taking
the trouble to haul his pole in. He kept hold
on it, though, and it trailed in the water. At
the same time, and the firemen, whom I could also

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see below me, sat down abruptly before his furnace and
ducked his head. I was amazed. Then I had to
look at the river mighty quick because there was a
snag in the fairway. Sticks, little sticks were flying about thick.
They were whizzing before my nose, dropping below me, striking
behind me against my pilot house. All this time, the river,

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the shore, the woods were very quiet, perfectly quiet. I
could only hear the heavy splashing thump of the stern
wheel and the patter of these things. We cleared the
snag clumsily, rospied jove, we were being shot at. I
stepped in quickly to close the shutter. On the land side.

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That fool helmsman, his hands on the spokes, was lifting
his knees high, stamping his feet, champing his mouth like
a reined in horse. Confound him, and we were staggering
within ten feet of the bank. I had to lean
right out to swing the heavy shudder, and I saw
a face amongst the leaves on the level with my own,
looking at me, very fierce and steady. And then suddenly,

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as though a veil had been removed from my eyes,
I made out deep in the tangled gloom, naked breasts, arms, legs,
glaring eyes. The bush was swarming with human limbs and movement,
glistening of Braun's color. The twig shook, swayed, and rustled,
The arrows flew out of them, and then the shutter

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came too steer her straight, I said to the helmsman.
He held his head rigid, face forward, but his eyes rolled.
He kept on lifting and setting down his feet gently.
His mouth foamed a little keep quiet, I said, in
a fury. I might just as well have ordered a
tree not to sway in the wind. I darted out

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below me. There was a great scuffle of feet on
the iron deck. Confused exclamation. A voice screamed, can you
turn back? I caught sight of a V shaped ripple
on the water ahead. What another snag? A fusilade burst
out under my feet. The pilgrims had opened with their
winchesters and were simply squirting lead into that bush. A

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deuce of a lot of smoke came up and drove
slowly forward. I swore at it. Now. I couldn't see
the ripple or the snag either. I stood in the
doorway peering, and the arrows came in swarms. They might
have been poisoned, but they looked as though they wouldn't
kill a cat. The bush began to howl. Our woodcutters

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raised a warlike whoop. The report of a rifle just
at my back deafened me. I glanced over my shoulder,
and the pilot house was yet full of noise and smoke.
When I made a dash at the wheel, the fool
nigger had dropped everything to throw the shutter open and
let off that Martini Henry. He stood before the wide opening, glaring,

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and I yelled him to come back while I straightened
the sudden twist out of that steamboat. There was no
room to turn, even if I had wanted to. The
snag was somewhere very near ahead. In that confounded smoke.
There was no time to lose, so I just crowded
her into the bank, right into the bank where I
knew the water was deep. We tore slowly along the

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overhanging bushes in a whirl of broken twigs and flying leaves.
The fuselage below stopped short, as I had foreseen it
would when the squirts got empty. I threw my head
back to a glinting whiz that traversed the pilot house
in at one shutter hole and out at the other.
Looking past that mad helmsman who was shaking the empty

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rifle and yelling at the shore, I saw vague forms
of men running, bent, double, leaping, gliding, distinct incomplete evanescent.
Something big appeared in the air before the shutter. The
rifle went overboard, and the men stepped back swiftly looked
at me over his shoulder in an extraordinary profound familiar manner,

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and fell upon my feet. The side of his head
hit the wheel twice, and the end of what appeared
a long cane clattered round and knocked over a little
camp stool. It looked as though after wrenching that thing
from somebody ashore, he had lost his balance in the effort.
The thin smoke had blown away. We were clear of

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the snag, and looking ahead, I could see that in
another hundred yards or so I would be free to
shear off away from the bank. But my feet felt
so very warm and wet that I had to look down.
The man had rolled on his back and stared straight
up at me. Both his hands clutched that cane. It

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was the shaft of a spear that either thrown or
lunged through the opening, had caught him in the side,
just below the ribs. The blade had gone in out
of sight after making a frightful gash. My shoes were full.
A pool of blood lay very still, gleaming dark red
under the wheel. His eyes shone with an amazing luster.

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The fusillade burst out again. He looked at me anxiously,
gripping the spear like something precious with an air of
being afraid I would try to take it away from him.
I had to make an effort to free my eyes
from his gaze and attend to the steering. With one hand,
I felt above my head for the line of the
steam whistle, and jerked out screech after screech hurriedly. The

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tumult of angry and warlike yells was checked instantly, and
then from the depths of the woods went out such
a tremulous and prolonged wail of mournful, fear and utter despair,
as may be imagined to follow the flight of the
last hope from the earth. There was a great commotion
in the bush. The shower of arrows stopped, a few

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dropping shots rang out sharply, then silence, in which the
languid beat of the stern wheel came plainly to my ears.
I put the helm hard a starboard. At the moment
when the pilgrim in pink pajamas, very hot and agitated,
appeared in the doorway. The manager sends me. He began

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in an official tone, and stopped short. Good God, he said,
glaring at the wounded man. We two whites stood over him,
and his lustrous and inquiring glance enveloped us both. I declare,
it looked as though he would presently put to us
some questions in an understandable language. But he died without

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uttering a sound, without moving a limb, without twitching a muscle.
Only in the very last moment, as though in response
to some sign we could not see, to some whisper
we could not hear, he frowned heavily, and that frown
gave to his black death mask, an inconceivably somber, brooding

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and menacing expression. The luster of inquiring glance faded swiftly
into vacant glassiness. Can you steer, I asked the agent eagerly.
He looked very dubious, But I made a grab at
his arm, and he understood at once. I meant him

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to steer, whether or no, To tell you the truth,
I was morbidly anxious to change my shoes and socks.
He's dead, murmured the fellow, immensely impressed. No doubt about it,
said I, tugging like mad at the shoelaces. And by
the way, I suppose mister Kurtz is dead as well.
By this time, for the moment that was the dominant thought.

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There was a sense of extreme disappointment, as though I
had found out I had been striving after something altogether
without a substance. I couldn't have He'd been more disgusted
if I had traveled all this way for the sole
purpose of talking with mister Kurtz. Talking with I flung
one shoe overboard and became aware that that was exactly

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what I had been looking forward to. A talk with Kurts.
I made the strange discovery that I had never imagined
him as doing, you know, but discoursing. I didn't say
to myself, now I will never see him, or now
I will never shake him by the hand, But now

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I will never hear him the man presented himself as
a voice, not of course, that I did not connect
him with some sort of action. Hadn't I been told,
in all the tones of jealousy and admiration, that he
had collected, bartered, swindled, or stolen more ivory than all
the other agents altogether. That was not the point. The

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point was in his being a gifted creature, and all
of his gifts, the one that stood out pre eminently,
that carried with it a sense of real presence, was
his ability to talk his words, the gift of expression,
the bewildering, the illuminating, the most exalted and the most contemptible,

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the pulsating stream of light, or the deceitful flow from
the heart of an impenetrable darkness. The other she went
flying unto the devil god of that river. I thought,
by Jove, it's all over. We are too late. He
has vanished, The gift has vanished by means of some spear,
arrow or club. I will never hear that chap speak

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after all. And my sorrow had a startling extravagance of emotion,
even such as I had noticed in the howling sorrow
of these savages in the bush. I couldn't have felt
more of lonely desolation somehow, had I been robbed of
a belief, or had missed my destiny in life? Why
do you sigh in this beastly way? Somebody absurd? Well absurd?

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Good Lord, mustn't a man ever here? Give me some tobacco.
There was a pause of profound stillness. Then a match flared,
and Marlow's lean face appeared worn, hollow, with downward folds
and dropped eyelids with an aspect of concentrated attention, and

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as he took vigorous draws at his pipe, it seemed
to retreat and advance out of the night. In the
regular flicker of tiny flame, the match went out. Absurd,
he cried, This is the worst of trying to tell here.
You all are each moored with two good addresses, like

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a hulk with two anchors. A butcher round one corner,
a policeman round another. Excellent appetites and temperature normal. You
hear normal from year's end to year's end, and you
say absurd, absurd, be exploded. Absurd, My dear boys, what

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can you expect from a man who, out of sheer nervousness,
had just flung overboard a pair of new shoes. Now
I think of it, it is amazing. I did not
shed tears. I am upon the whole proud of my fortitude.
I was cut to the quick at the idea of
having lost the inestimable privilege of listening to the gifted Kerts.

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Of course I was wrong. The privilege was waiting for me.
Oh yes, I heard more than enough, and I was
right too. A voice, he was very little more than
a voice, and I heard him. It this voice, other voices.

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All of them were so little more than voices, And
the memory of that time itself lingers around me, impalpable,
like a dying vibration of one immense jabber, silly, atrocious, sordid, savage,
or simply mean, without any kind of sense. Voices, voices,

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even the girl herself. Now he was silent for a
long time. I laid the ghost of his gifts at
last with a lie. He began, suddenly, Girl, What did
I mention a girl? Oh? She is out of it completely.

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They the women, I mean, are out of it. Should
be out of it. We must help them to stay
in that beautiful world of their own lest ours gets worse. Oh,
she had to be out of it. You should have
heard the disinterred body of mister Kurt's saying my intended.
You would have perceived directly then how completely she was

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out of it, And the lofty frontal bone of mister Kurtz.
They say the hair goes on growing sometimes, but this
ah specimen was impressively bald. The wilderness had patted him
on the head, and behold it was like a ball,
an ivory ball. It had caressed him, and lo he

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had withered it had taken him, loved him, embraced him,
got into his veins, consumed his flesh, and sealed his
soul to its own by the inconceivable ceremonies of some
devilish initiation. He was its spoiled and pampered favorite ivory.

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I should think so. Heaps of it, stacks of it.
The old mud shanty was bursting with it. You would
think there was not a single tusk left either above
or below the ground in the whole country. Mostly fossil.
The manager had remarked disparagingly. It was no more fossil
than I am. But they call it fossil when it
is dug up. It appears these niggers do bury the

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tusks sometimes, But evidently they couldn't bury this parcel deep enough.
To save the gifted mister Kurtz from his fate, we
filled the steamboat with it and had to pile a
lot on the deck. Thus he could see and enjoy
as long as he could see. Because the appreciation of
this favor had remained with him to the last. You

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should have heard him say, my ivory. Oh yes, I
heard him, My intended, my ivory, my station, my river,
my everything, belonged to him. It made me hold my
breath in expectation of hearing the wilderness burst into a
prodigious peal of laughter that would shake the fixed stars

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in their places. Everything belonged to him. But that was
a trifle. The thing was to know what he belonged to.
How many powers of darkness claimed him for their own.
That was a reflection that made you creepy all over.
It was impossible. It was not good for one either,

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trying to imagine he had taken a high seat amongst
the devils of the land. I mean literally, you can't understand.
How could you, with solid pavement under your feet, surrounded
by kind neighbors ready to cheer you or to fall
on you, stepping delicately between the butcher and the policemen,
in the holy terror of scandal and gallows and lunatic asylums.

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How can you imagine what particular region of the first
ages a man's untrammeled feet may take him into. By
the way of solitude, utter solitude without a policeman, by
the way of silence, utter silence, where no warning voice
of a kind neighbor can be heard, whispering of public opinion.

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These little things make all the great difference. When they
are gone, you must fall back on your own innate strength,
upon your own capacity for faithfulness. Of course, you may
be too much of a fool to go wrong, too
dull even to know you are being assaulted by the
powers of darkness. I take it no fool ever made

(24:24):
a bargain for his soul with the devil. The fool
is too much of a fool, or the devil too
much of a devil, I don't know which. Or you
may be such a thunderingly exalted creature as to be
altogether deaf and blind to anything but heavenly sights and sounds.
Then the earth for you is only a standing place.

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And whether to be like this is your loss or
your gain, I won't pretend to say. But most of
us are neither one nor the other. The earth for
us is a place to live in where we must
put up with sights, with sounds, with smells too by
Joe breathed dead hippo, so to speak, and not be contaminated.

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And there, don't you see, Your strength comes in that faith,
in your ability for the digging of unostentatious holes to
bury the stuff in your power of devotion not to
yourself but to an obscure, back breaking business. And that's
difficult enough. Mind. I am not trying to excuse or

(25:26):
even explain. I am trying to account myself for for
mister Kurtz, for the shade of mister Kurtz. This initiated
wrath from the back of nowhere honored me with its
amazing confidence before it vanished altogether. This was because it
could speak English to me. The original Kurts had been

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educated partly in England, and as he was good enough
to say himself, his sympathies were in the right place.
His mother was half English, his father was half French.
All Europe contributed to the making of Kurts, and by
and by I learned that, most appropriately, the International Society
for the Suppression of Savage Customs had entrusted him with

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the making of a report for its future guidance, and
he had written it too. I've seen it, I've read it.
It was eloquent, vibrating with eloquence, but too high strung.
I think seventeen pages of close writing he had found
time for. But this must have been before his let

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us say, nerves went wrong and caused him to preside
at certain midnight dances ending with unspeakable rights, which, as
far as I reluctantly gathered from what I heard at
various times, were offered up to him. Do you understand,
to mister Kurtz himself. But it was a beautiful piece

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of writing. The opening paragraph, however, in the light of
later information, strikes me now as ominous. He began with
the argument that we whites, from the point of development
we had arrived at, must necessarily appear to them savages
in the nature of supernatural beings. We approached them with

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the might of a deity, and so on and so on.
By this simple exercise of our will, we can exert
a power for good, practically unbounded, etc. Etc. From that
point he soared and took me with him. The peroration
was magnificent, though difficult to remember. You know, it gave

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me the notion of an exotic immensity ruled by an
august benevolence. It made me tingle with enthusiasm. This was
the unbounded power of eloquence, of words, of burning noble words.
There were no practical hints to interrupt the magical current
of phrases, unless a kind note at the foot of

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the last page, scrawled evidently much later in an unsteady hand,
may be regarded as the exposition of a method. It
was very simple, and at the end of that moving
appeal to every altruistic sentiment, it blazed at you, luminous
and terrifying, like a flash of lightning in a serene sky.

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Exterminate all the brutes. The curious part was that he
had apparently forgotten all about that valuable postscriptum, because later on,
when he, in a sense came to himself, he repeatedly
entreated me to take good care of my pamphlet. He

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called it, as it was sure to have in the
future a good influence upon his career. I had full
information about all these things. And besides, as it turned out,
I was to have the care of his memory. I've
done enough for it to give me the undisputable right
to lay it if I choose for an everlasting rest

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in the dust bin of progress, amongst all the sweepings
and figuratively speaking, all the dead cats of civilization. But
then you see, I can't choose. He won't be forgotten.
Whatever he was, he was not common. He had the

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power to charm or frighten rudimentary souls into an aggravated
witch dance in his honor. He could also fill the
small souls of the pilgrims with bitter misgivings. He had
one devoted friend at least, and he had conquered one
soul in the world that was neither rudimentary nor tainted

(29:42):
with self seeking. No, I can't forget him, though I
am not prepared to affirm the fellow is exactly worth
the life we lost in getting to him. I missed
my late helmsman awfully. I missed him even while his
body was still lying in the pilot house. Perhaps you
will think it passing strange, this regret for a savage

(30:05):
who was no more account than a grain of sand
in a black sahara. Well, you don't see. He had
something he had steered for months. I had him at
my back, a help, an instrument. It was a kind
of partnership he steered for me. I had to look
after him. I worried about his deficiencies, and thus a

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subtle bond had been created of which I only became
aware when it was suddenly broken. And the intimate profundity
of that look he gave me when he received his
hurt remains to this day in my memory like a
claim of distant kinship affirmed in a supreme moment. Poor fool,

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if he had only left that shutter alone. He had
no restraint, no restraint, just like kerts a tree swayed
by the wind. As soon as I had put on
a dry pair of slippers, I dragged him out, after
first jerking the spear out of his side, which operation
I confess I performed with my eyes shut tight. His

(31:11):
heels leaped together over the little doorstep. His shoulders were
pressed to my breast. I hugged him from behind desperately.
Oh he was heavy, heavy, heavier than any man on earth,
I should imagine. Then, without more ado, I tipped him overboard.
The current snatched him as though he had been a

(31:32):
wisp of grass, and I saw the body roll over
twice before I lost sight of it forever. All the
pilgrims and the manager were then congregated on the awning
deck about the pilot house, chattering at each other like
a flock of excited magpies. And there was a scandalized
murmur at my heartless promptitude. What they wanted to keep

(31:54):
that body hanging about, for I can't guess embalm it maybe,
But I had also heard another, and a very ominous
murmur on the deck below. My friends the woodcutters were
likewise scandalized, and with better show of reason, though I
admit that the reason itself was quite inadmissible, Oh quite.

(32:16):
I had made up my mind that if my late
helmsman was to be eaten, the fishes alone should have him.
He had been a very second rate helmsman while alive,
but now he was dead he might have become a
first class temptation and possibly caused some startling trouble. Besides,
I was anxious to take the wheel the man in

(32:37):
pick pajamas, showing himself a hopeless duffer at the business.
This I did directly. The simple funeral was over. We
were going half speed, keeping right in the middle of
the stream, and I listened to the talk about me.
They had given up Kurtz, they had given up the station.
Kurtz was dead, and the station had been burnt, and

(32:59):
so on and so on. The red haired pilgrim was
beside himself with a thought that at least this poor
Kurts had been properly avenged say, we must have made
a glorious slaughter of them in the bush. Eh, what
do you think? Say? He positively danced the bloodthirsty little
gingery beggar, and he had nearly fainted when he saw

(33:23):
the wounded man. I could not help saying, you made
a glorious lot of smoke. Anyhow, I had seen from
the way the tops of the bushes rustled and flew
that almost all the shots had gone too high. You
can't hit anything unless you take aim and fire from
the shoulder. But these chaps fired from the hip with
their eyes shut. The retreat, I maintained, and I was right,

(33:48):
was caused by the screeching of the steam whistle. Upon
this they forgot kurts and began to howl at me
with indignant protests. The manager stood by the wheel, murmuring
confidentially about the necessity of getting well away down the
river before dark at all events. When I saw in
the distance a clearing on the river side, and the

(34:09):
outlines of some sort of building. What's this, I asked,
He clapped his hands in wonder. The station, he cried.
I edged in at once, still going half speed through
my glasses, I saw the slope of a hill, interspersed
with rare trees and perfectly free from undergrowth. A long,

(34:32):
decaying building on the summit was half buried in the
high grass. The large holes in the peaked roof gaped
black from afar. The jungle and the woods made a background.
There was no enclosure or fence of any kind, but
there had been one, apparently for near the house. Half
a dozen slim posts remained in a row, roughly trimmed

(34:53):
and with their upper ends ornamented with round carved balls.
The rails or whatever there had been between had disappeared,
of course. The forest surrounded all that. The river bank
was clear, and on the water side I saw a
white man under a hat like a cartwheel, beckoning persistently
with his whole arm examining the edge of the forest

(35:16):
above and below. I was almost certain I could see movements,
human forms gliding here and there. I steamed past prudently,
then stopped the engines and let her drift down. The
man on the shore began to shout, urging us to land.
We have been attacked, screamed the manager. I know, I
know it's all right, yelled back the other, and as

(35:38):
cheerful as you please come along. It's all right, I
am glad. His aspect reminded me of something I had seen,
something funny I had seen somewhere. As I maneuvered to
get alongside, I was asking myself, what does this fellow
look like? Suddenly I got it. He looked like a arlequin.

(36:01):
His clothes had been made of some stuff that was brown,
Holland probably, but it was covered with patches all over,
with bright patches, blue, red and yellow patches on the back,
patches on the front, patches on elbows, on knees, colored
binding around his jacket, scarlet edging at the bottom of
his trousers. And the sunshine made him look extremely gay

(36:25):
and wonderfully neat withal because you could see how beautifully
all this patching had been done. A beardless, boyish face,
very fair, no features to speak of, nose, pealing, little
blue eyes, smiles and frowns chasing each other over that
open countenance, like sunshine and shadow on a windswept plain.

(36:49):
Look Out, Captain, he cried, there's a snag lodged in
here last night. What another snag? I confess, I swore, shamefully.
I had nearly hold my cripple to finish off that
charming trip. The harlequin on the bank turned his little
pug nose up to me. You English, he asked, all smiles,
are you? I shouted from the wheel. The smiles vanished,

(37:13):
and he shook his head as if sorry for my disappointment.
Then he brightened up. Never mind, he cried encouragingly. Are
we in time? I asked? He is up there, he replied,
with a toss of the head up the hill and
becoming gloomy. All of a sudden, his face was like
the autumn sky, overcast one moment and bright the next.

(37:36):
When the manager, escorted by the pilgrims, all of them
armed to the teeth, had gone to the house, this
chap came on board. I say, I don't like this.
These natives are in the bush, I said, He assured
me earnestly it was all right. They are simple people.
He added. Well, I am glad you came. It took

(37:58):
me all my time to keep them off, but you
said it was all right. I cried, Oh they meant
no harm, he said, And as I stared, he corrected himself,
not exactly. Then, vivaciously, my faith, your pilot house wants
a clean up. In the next breath, he advised me
to keep enough steam on the boiler to blow the

(38:19):
whistle in case of any trouble. One good screech will
do more for you than all your rifles. They are
simple people, he repeated. He rattled away at such a
rate he quite overwhelmed me. He seemed to be trying
to make up for lots of silence, and actually hinted,
laughing that such was the case. Don't you talk with

(38:41):
mister Kurtz. I have said you don't talk with that man.
You listen to him, he exclaimed, with severe exultation. But
now he waved his arm, and in the twinkling of
an eye, was in the uttermost depths of despondency. In
a moment, he came up again with a jump, possessed
himself of both my hands, shook them continuously while he gabbled, Brother, sailor, honor, pleasure, delight,

(39:07):
introduce myself, Russian son of an arch priest, government of Tamboy.
What tobacco, English tobacco, The excellent English tobacco. Now that's
brotherly smoke. Where's a sailor that does not smoke the
pipe soothed him, and gradually I made out he had
run away from school, had gone to sea in a
Russian ship, ran away again, served some time in English ships,

(39:31):
was now reconciled with the arch priest. He made a
point of that, but when one is young, one must
see things, gather experience ideas, enlarge the mind. Here, I interrupted,
you can never tell here I met mister Kurtz, he said, youthfully,
solemn and reproachful. I held my tongue. After that, it

(39:55):
appears he had persuaded a Dutch trading house on the
coast to fit him out with stores and goods, and
had started for the interior with a light heart and
no more idea of what would happen to him than
a baby. He had been wandering about that river for
nearly two years alone, cut off from everybody and everything.

(40:15):
I am not so young as I look. I am
twenty five, he said. At first, Old van Shueten would
tell me to go to the devil. He narrated with
keen enjoyment. But I stuck to him and talked and
talked till at last he got afraid I would talk
the hind leg off his favorite dog, so He gave
me some cheap things and a few guns, and told

(40:36):
me he hoped he would never see my face again,
good old Dutchman van Shueten. I've sent him one small
lot of ivory a year ago so that he can't
call me a little thief when I get back. I
hope he got it, And for the rest, I don't care.
I had some wood stacked for you. That was my
old house, did you see. I gave him Towson's book.

(40:57):
He made as though he would kiss me, but restrained himself.
The only book I had left, and I thought I
had lost it, he said, looking at it ecstatically. So
many accidents happened to a man going about alone. You know,
canoes get upset sometimes, and sometimes you got to clear
out so quick when the people get angry. He thumbed
the pages. He made notes in Russian. I asked. He nodded.

(41:22):
I thought they were written in Cipher, I said. He laughed,
then became serious. I had lots of trouble to keep
these people off, he said. Did they want to kill you?
I asked, Oh no, He cried and checked himself. Why
did they attack us? I pursued. He hesitated, then said shamefacedly.

(41:43):
They don't want him to go, don't they, I said curiously.
He nodded, a nod full of mystery and wisdom, I
tell you, He cried, This man has enlarged my mind.
He opened his arms wide, staring at me with his
little blue eyes that were perfectly round. End of Chapter two,

(42:10):
Part two,