Heart of Darkness Episode 25 to 30

Heart of Darkness

 Heart of Darkness

Heart of Darkness

25 of 162

the bush. It appears the French had one of their wars
going on thereabouts. Her ensign dropped limp like a rag;
the muzzles of the long six-inch guns stuck out all over
the low hull; the greasy, slimy swell swung her up lazily
and let her down, swaying her thin masts. In the empty
immensity of earth, sky, and water, there she was,
incomprehensible, firing into a continent. Pop, would go
one of the six-inch guns; a small flame would dart and
vanish, a little white smoke would disappear, a tiny
projectile would give a feeble screech—and nothing
happened. Nothing could happen. There was a touch of
insanity in the proceeding, a sense of lugubrious drollery
in the sight; and it was not dissipated by somebody on
board assuring me earnestly there was a camp of natives—
he called them enemies!— hidden out of sight
somewhere.
‘We gave her her letters (I heard the men in that lonely
ship were dying of fever at the rate of three a day) and
went on. We called at some more places with farcical
names, where the merry dance of death and trade goes on
in a still and earthy atmosphere as of an overheated
catacomb; all along the formless coast bordered by
dangerous surf, as if Nature herself had tried to ward off
intruders; in and out of rivers, streams of death in life,

Heart of Darkness

26 of 162

whose banks were rotting into mud, whose waters,
thickened into slime, invaded the contorted mangroves,
that seemed to writhe at us in the extremity of an
impotent despair. Nowhere did we stop long enough to
get a particularized impression, but the general sense of
vague and oppressive wonder grew upon me. It was like a
weary pilgrimage amongst hints for nightmares.
‘It was upward of thirty days before I saw the mouth of
the big river. We anchored off the seat of the government.
But my work would not begin till some two hundred
miles farther on. So as soon as I could I made a start for a
place thirty miles higher up.
‘I had my passage on a little sea-going steamer. Her
captain was a Swede, and knowing me for a seaman,
invited me on the bridge. He was a young man, lean, fair,
and morose, with lanky hair and a shuffling gait. As we left
the miserable little wharf, he tossed his head
contemptuously at the shore. ‘Been living there?’ he
asked. I said, ‘Yes.’ ‘Fine lot these government chaps—are
they not?’ he went on, speaking English with great
precision and considerable bitterness. ‘It is funny what
some people will do for a few francs a month. I wonder
what becomes of that kind when it goes upcountry?’ I said
to him I expected to see that soon. ‘So-o-o!’ he

Heart of Darkness

27 of 162

exclaimed. He shuffled athwart, keeping one eye ahead
vigilantly. ‘Don’t be too sure,’ he continued. ‘The other
day I took up a man who hanged himself on the road. He
was a Swede, too.’ ‘Hanged himself! Why, in God’s
name?’ I cried. He kept on looking out watchfully. ‘Who
knows? The sun too much for him, or the country
perhaps.’
‘At last we opened a reach. A rocky cliff appeared,
mounds of turned-up earth by the shore, houses on a hill,
others with iron roofs, amongst a waste of excavations, or
hanging to the declivity. A continuous noise of the rapids
above hovered over this scene of inhabited devastation. A
lot of people, mostly black and naked, moved about like
ants. A jetty projected into the river. A blinding sunlight
drowned all this at times in a sudden recrudescence of
glare. ‘There’s your Company’s station,’ said the Swede,
pointing to three wooden barrack-like structures on the
rocky slope. ‘I will send your things up. Four boxes did
you say? So. Farewell.’
‘I came upon a boiler wallowing in the grass, then
found a path leading up the hill. It turned aside for the
boulders, and also for an undersized railway-truck lying
there on its back with its wheels in the air. One was off.
The thing looked as dead as the carcass of some animal. I

Heart of Darkness
28 of 162

came upon more pieces of decaying machinery, a stack of
rusty rails. To the left a clump of trees made a shady spot,
where dark things seemed to stir feebly. I blinked, the path
was steep. A horn tooted to the right, and I saw the black
people run. A heavy and dull detonation shook the
ground, a puff of smoke came out of the cliff, and that was
all. No change appeared on the face of the rock. They
were building a railway. The cliff was not in the way or
anything; but this objectless blasting was all the work
going on.
‘A slight clinking behind me made me turn my head.
Six black men advanced in a file, toiling up the path. They
walked erect and slow, balancing small baskets full of earth
on their heads, and the clink kept time with their
footsteps. Black rags were wound round their loins, and
the short ends behind waggled to and fro like tails. I could
see every rib, the joints of their limbs were like knots in a
rope; each had an iron collar on his neck, and all were
connected together with a chain whose bights swung
between them, rhythmically clinking. Another report from
the cliff made me think suddenly of that ship of war I had
seen firing into a continent. It was the same kind of
ominous voice; but these men could by no stretch of
imagination be called enemies. They were called criminals,

Heart of Darkness
29 of 162

and the outraged law, like the bursting shells, had come to
them, an insoluble mystery from the sea. All their meagre
breasts panted together, the violently dilated nostrils
quivered, the eyes stared stonily uphill. They passed me
within six inches, without a glance, with that complete,
deathlike indifference of unhappy savages. Behind this raw
matter one of the reclaimed, the product of the new forces
at work, strolled despondently, carrying a rifle by its
middle. He had a uniform jacket with one button off, and
seeing a white man on the path, hoisted his weapon to his
shoulder with alacrity. This was simple prudence, white
men being so much alike at a distance that he could not
tell who I might be. He was speedily reassured, and with a
large, white, rascally grin, and a glance at his charge,
seemed to take me into partnership in his exalted trust.
After all, I also was a part of the great cause of these high
and just proceedings.
‘Instead of going up, I turned and descended to the left.
My idea was to let that chain-gang get out of sight before
I climbed the hill. You know I am not particularly tender;
I’ve had to strike and to fend off. I’ve had to resist and to
attack sometimes—that’s only one way of resisting—
without counting the exact cost, according to the demands
of such sort of life as I had blundered into. I’ve seen the

Heart of Darkness

30 of 162

devil of violence, and the devil of greed, and the devil of
hot desire; but, by all the stars! these were strong, lusty,
red-eyed devils, that swayed and drove men—men, I tell
you. But as I stood on this hillside, I foresaw that in the
blinding sunshine of that land I would become acquainted
with a flabby, pretending, weak-eyed devil of a rapacious
and pitiless folly. How insidious he could be, too, I was
only to find out several months later and a thousand miles
farther. For a moment I stood appalled, as though by a
warning. Finally I descended the hill, obliquely, towards
the trees I had seen.
‘I avoided a vast artificial hole somebody had been
digging on the slope, the purpose of which I found it
impossible to divine. It wasn’t a quarry or a sandpit,
anyhow. It was just a hole. It might have been connected
with the philanthropic desire of giving the criminals
something to do. I don’t know. Then I nearly fell into a
very narrow ravine, almost no more than a scar in the
hillside. I discovered that a lot of imported drainage-pipes
for the settlement had been tumbled in there. There
wasn’t one that was not broken. It was a wanton smashup.
At last I got under the trees. My purpose was to stroll
into the shade for a moment; but no sooner within than it
seemed to me I had stepped into the gloomy circle of