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of the grove of death.

Heart of Darkness

 Heart of Darkness

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‘Next day I left that station at last, with a caravan of
sixty men, for a two-hundred-mile tramp.
‘No use telling you much about that. Paths, paths,
everywhere; a stamped-in network of paths spreading over
the empty land, through the long grass, through burnt
grass, through thickets, down and up chilly ravines, up and
down stony hills ablaze with heat; and a solitude, a
solitude, nobody, not a hut. The population had cleared
out a long time ago. Well, if a lot of mysterious niggers
armed with all kinds of fearful weapons suddenly took to
travelling on the road between Deal and Gravesend,
catching the yokels right and left to carry heavy loads for
them, I fancy every farm and cottage thereabouts would
get empty very soon. Only here the dwellings were gone,
too. Still I passed through several abandoned villages.
There’s something pathetically childish in the ruins of grass
walls. Day after day, with the stamp and shuffle of sixty
pair of bare feet behind me, each pair under a 60-lb. load.
Camp, cook, sleep, strike camp, march. Now and then a
carrier dead in harness, at rest in the long grass near the
path, with an empty water-gourd and his long staff lying
by his side. A great silence around and above. Perhaps on
some quiet night the tremor of far-off drums, sinking,
swelling, a tremor vast, faint; a sound weird, appealing,

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suggestive, and wild—and perhaps with as profound a
meaning as the sound of bells in a Christian country. Once
a white man in an unbuttoned uniform, camping on the
path with an armed escort of lank Zanzibaris, very
hospitable and festive— not to say drunk. Was looking
after the upkeep of the road, he declared. Can’t say I saw
any road or any upkeep, unless the body of a middle-aged
negro, with a bullet-hole in the forehead, upon which I
absolutely stumbled three miles farther on, may be
considered as a permanent improvement. I had a white
companion, too, not a bad chap, but rather too fleshy and
with the exasperating habit of fainting on the hot hillsides,
miles away from the least bit of shade and water.
Annoying, you know, to hold your own coat like a
parasol over a man’s head while he is coming to. I
couldn’t help asking him once what he meant by coming
there at all. ‘To make money, of course. What do you
think?’ he said, scornfully. Then he got fever, and had to
be carried in a hammock slung under a pole. As he
weighed sixteen stone I had no end of rows with the
carriers. They jibbed, ran away, sneaked off with their
loads in the night—quite a mutiny. So, one evening, I
made a speech in English with gestures, not one of which
was lost to the sixty pairs of eyes before me, and the

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morning I started the hammock off in front all right. An
hour afterwards I came upon the whole concern wrecked
in a bush—man, hammock, groans, blankets, horrors. The
heavy pole had skinned his poor nose. He was very
anxious for me to kill somebody, but there wasn’t the
shadow of a carrier near. I remembered the old doctor—
’It would be interesting for science to watch the mental
changes of individuals, on the spot.’ I felt I was becoming
scientifically interesting. However, all that is to no
purpose. On the fifteenth day I came in sight of the big
river again, and hobbled into the Central Station. It was
on a back water surrounded by scrub and forest, with a
pretty border of smelly mud on one side, and on the three
others enclosed by a crazy fence of rushes. A neglected gap
was all the gate it had, and the first glance at the place was
enough to let you see the flabby devil was running that
show. White men with long staves in their hands appeared
languidly from amongst the buildings, strolling up to take
a look at me, and then retired out of sight somewhere.
One of them, a stout, excitable chap with black
moustaches, informed me with great volubility and many
digressions, as soon as I told him who I was, that my
steamer was at the bottom of the river. I was
thunderstruck. What, how, why? Oh, it was ‘all right.’

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The ‘manager himself’ was there. All quite correct.
‘Everybody had behaved splendidly! splendidly!’—’you
must,’ he said in agitation, ‘go and see the general manager
at once. He is waiting!’
‘I did not see the real significance of that wreck at
once. I fancy I see it now, but I am not sure—not at all.
Certainly the affair was too stupid—when I think of it—
to be altogether natural. Still … But at the moment it
presented itself simply as a confounded nuisance. The
steamer was sunk. They had started two days before in a
sudden hurry up the river with the manager on board, in
charge of some volunteer skipper, and before they had
been out three hours they tore the bottom out of her on
stones, and she sank near the south bank. I asked myself
what I was to do there, now my boat was lost. As a matter
of fact, I had plenty to do in fishing my command out of
the river. I had to set about it the very next day. That, and
the repairs when I brought the pieces to the station, took
some months.
‘My first interview with the manager was curious. He
did not ask me to sit down after my twenty-mile walk that
morning. He was commonplace in complexion, in
features, in manners, and in voice. He was of middle size
and of ordinary build. His eyes, of the usual blue, were

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perhaps remarkably cold, and he certainly could make his
glance fall on one as trenchant and heavy as an axe. But
even at these times the rest of his person seemed to
disclaim the intention. Otherwise there was only an
indefinable, faint expression of his lips, something
stealthy— a smile—not a smile—I remember it, but I can’t
explain. It was unconscious, this smile was, though just
after he had said something it got intensified for an instant.
It came at the end of his speeches like a seal applied on the
words to make the meaning of the commonest phrase
appear absolutely inscrutable. He was a common trader,
from his youth up employed in these parts—nothing
more. He was obeyed, yet he inspired neither love nor
fear, nor even respect. He inspired uneasiness. That was it!
Uneasiness. Not a definite mistrust—just uneasiness—
nothing more. You have no idea how effective such a …
a. … faculty can be. He had no genius for organizing, for
initiative, or for order even. That was evident in such
things as the deplorable state of the station. He had no
learning, and no intelligence. His position had come to
him—why? Perhaps because he was never ill … He had
served three terms of three years out there … Because
triumphant health in the general rout of constitutions is a
kind of power in itself. When he went home on leave he

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rioted on a large scale—pompously. Jack ashore—with a
difference— in externals only. This one could gather from
his casual talk. He originated nothing, he could keep the
routine going—that’s all. But he was great. He was great
by this little thing that it was impossible to tell what could
control such a man. He never gave that secret away.
Perhaps there was nothing within him. Such a suspicion
made one pause—for out there there were no external
checks. Once when various tropical diseases had laid low
almost every ‘agent’ in the station, he was heard to say,
‘Men who come out here should have no entrails.’ He
sealed the utterance with that smile of his, as though it had
been a door opening into a darkness he had in his keeping.
You fancied you had seen things—but the seal was on.
When annoyed at meal-times by the constant quarrels of
the white men about precedence, he ordered an immense
round table to be made, for which a special house had to
be built. This was the station’s mess-room. Where he sat
was the first place—the rest were nowhere. One felt this
to be his unalterable conviction. He was neither civil nor
uncivil. He was quiet. He allowed his ‘boy’—an overfed
young negro from the coast—to treat the white men,
under his very eyes, with provoking insolence.

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‘He began to speak as soon as he saw me. I had been
very long on the road. He could not wait. Had to start
without me. The up-river stations had to be relieved.
There had been so many delays already that he did not
know who was dead and who was alive, and how they got
on—and so on, and so on. He paid no attention to my
explanations, and, playing with a stick of sealing-wax,
repeated several times that the situation was ‘very grave,
very grave.’ There were rumours that a very important
station was in jeopardy, and its chief, Mr. Kurtz, was ill.
Hoped it was not true. Mr. Kurtz was … I felt weary and
irritable. Hang Kurtz, I thought. I interrupted him by
saying I had heard of Mr. Kurtz on the coast. ‘Ah! So they
talk of him down there,’ he murmured to himself. Then
he began again, assuring me Mr. Kurtz was the best agent
he had, an exceptional man, of the greatest importance to
the Company; therefore I could understand his anxiety.
He was, he said, ‘very, very uneasy.’ Certainly he fidgeted
on his chair a good deal, exclaimed, ‘Ah, Mr. Kurtz!’
broke the stick of sealing-wax and seemed dumfounded by
the accident. Next thing he wanted to know ‘how long it
would take to’ … I interrupted him again. Being hungry,
you know, and kept on my feet too. I was getting savage.
‘How can I tell?’ I said. ‘I haven’t even seen the wreck