Heart of Darkness 2 Episode 79 to 88

Heart of Darkness

Heart of Darkness

Heart of Darkness

79 of 162

we must approach 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. 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 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. 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 more blinding than the night. It
did not shift or drive; it was just there, standing all round

Heart of Darkness

80 of 162

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 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
in the opaque air. It ceased. A complaining clamour,
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 had screamed, so suddenly, and
apparently from all sides at once, did this tumultuous and
mournful 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— a little fat
man, with sandy hair and red whiskers, who wore
sidespring boots, and pink pyjamas tucked into his socks.
Two others remained open-mouthed a while minute, then

Heart of Darkness

81 of 162

dashed into the little cabin, to rush out incontinently and
stand darting scared 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 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?’
whispered an awed voice. ‘We will be all 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 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

Heart of Darkness

82 of 162

at the chain. Several exchanged short, grunting phrases,
which seemed to settle the matter to their satisfaction.
Their headman, a young, broad-chested black, severely
draped in dark-blue fringed cloths, with fierce nostrils and
his hair all done up artfully in oily ringlets, stood near me.
‘Aha!’ I said, just for good fellowship’s sake. ‘Catch ‘im,’
he snapped, with a bloodshot widening of his eyes and a
flash of sharp teeth—’catch ‘im. Give ‘im to us.’ ‘To you,
eh?’ I asked; ‘what would you do with them?’ ‘Eat ‘im!’
he said curtly, and, leaning his elbow on the rail, looked
out into the fog in a dignified and profoundly pensive
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 past. They had
been engaged for six months (I don’t think a single one of
them had any clear idea of 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. Certainly they had brought
with them some rotten hippo-meat, which couldn’t have

Heart of Darkness

83 of 162

lasted very long, anyway, even if the pilgrims hadn’t, in
the midst of a shocking hullabaloo, thrown a considerable
quantity of it overboard. It looked like a high-handed
proceeding; but it was really a case of legitimate selfdefence.
You can’t breathe dead hippo waking, sleeping,
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 were hostile, or the director, who like the rest of us
fed out of tins, with an occasional old he-goat thrown in,
didn’t want to stop the steamer for some more or less
recondite 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 paid with a regularity worthy of a large and
honourable 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 halfcooked
dough, of a dirty lavender colour, they kept
wrapped in leaves, and now and then swallowed a piece
of, but so small that it seemed done more for the looks of

Heart of Darkness

84 of 162

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 their skins were no longer glossy and their muscles
no longer hard. And I saw that something restraining, one
of those human secrets that baffle 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 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 a little fever, too. 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 paw-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,

Heart of Darkness

85 of 162

capacities, weaknesses, 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 honour? No fear can stand up to
hunger, no patience can wear it out, disgust simply does
not exist where hunger is; and as to superstition, beliefs,
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
sombre and brooding ferocity? Well, I do. It takes a man
all his inborn strength to fight hunger properly. It’s really
easier to face bereavement, dishonour, 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
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 clamour
that had swept by us on the river-bank, behind the blind
whiteness of the fog.

Heart of Darkness

86 of 162

‘Two pilgrims were quarrelling 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; ‘I would be desolated if anything should
happen to Mr. 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 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
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 refuse to
take any,’ I 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

Heart of Darkness

87 of 162

sign of my appreciation, and looked into the fog. How
long would it last? It was the most hopeless lookout. The
approach to this Kurtz 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. 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 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 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

Heart of Darkness

88 of 162

from our proximity to a great human passion let loose.
Even extreme grief may ultimately 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 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 it sounded extravagant, was absolutely true to
fact. 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, 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 ony thing of the kind;