Heart of DarknessEpisode 19 to 24

Heart of Darkness

 Heart of Darkness

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though the house was as still as a house in a city of the
dead— came from somewhere up-stairs, and led me forth.
He was shabby and careless, with inkstains on the sleeves
of his jacket, and his cravat was large and billowy, under a
chin shaped like the toe of an old boot. It was a little too
early for the doctor, so I proposed a drink, and thereupon
he developed a vein of joviality. As we sat over our
vermouths he glorified the Company’s business, and by
and by I expressed casually my surprise at him not going
out there. He became very cool and collected all at once.
‘I am not such a fool as I look, quoth Plato to his
disciples,’ he said sententiously, emptied his glass with
great resolution, and we rose.
‘The old doctor felt my pulse, evidently thinking of
something else the while. ‘Good, good for there,’ he
mumbled, and then with a certain eagerness asked me
whether I would let him measure my head. Rather
surprised, I said Yes, when he produced a thing like
calipers and got the dimensions back and front and every
way, taking notes carefully. He was an unshaven little man
in a threadbare coat like a gaberdine, with his feet in
slippers, and I thought him a harmless fool. ‘I always ask
leave, in the interests of science, to measure the crania of
those going out there,’ he said. ‘And when they come

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back, too?’ I asked. ‘Oh, I never see them,’ he remarked;
‘and, moreover, the changes take place inside, you know.’
He smiled, as if at some quiet joke. ‘So you are going out
there. Famous. Interesting, too.’ He gave me a searching
glance, and made another note. ‘Ever any madness in your
family?’ he asked, in a matter-of-fact tone. I felt very
annoyed. ‘Is that question in the interests of science, too?’
‘It would be,’ he said, without taking notice of my
irritation, ‘interesting for science to watch the mental
changes of individuals, on the spot, but …’ ‘Are you an
alienist?’ I interrupted. ‘Every doctor should be—a little,’
answered that original, imperturbably. ‘I have a little
theory which you messieurs who go out there must help
me to prove. This is my share in the advantages my
country shall reap from the possession of such a
magnificent dependency. The mere wealth I leave to
others. Pardon my questions, but you are the first
Englishman coming under my observation …’ I hastened
to assure him I was not in the least typical. ‘If I were,’ said
I, ‘I wouldn’t be talking like this with you.’ ‘What you say
is rather profound, and probably erroneous,’ he said, with
a laugh. ‘Avoid irritation more than exposure to the sun.
Adieu. How do you English say, eh? Good-bye. Ah!
Good-bye. Adieu. In the tropics one must before

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everything keep calm.’ … He lifted a warning
forefinger…. ‘DU CALME, DU CALME. ADIEU.’
‘One thing more remained to do—say good-bye to my
excellent aunt. I found her triumphant. I had a cup of
tea—the last decent cup of tea for many days—and in a
room that most soothingly looked just as you would
expect a lady’s drawing-room to look, we had a long quiet
chat by the fireside. In the course of these confidences it
became quite plain to me I had been represented to the
wife of the high dignitary, and goodness knows to how
many more people besides, as an exceptional and gifted
creature— a piece of good fortune for the Company—a
man you don’t get hold of every day. Good heavens! and I
was going to take charge of a two-penny-half-penny
river-steamboat with a penny whistle attached! It
appeared, however, I was also one of the Workers, with a
capital— you know. Something like an emissary of light,
something like a lower sort of apostle. There had been a
lot of such rot let loose in print and talk just about that
time, and the excellent woman, living right in the rush of
all that humbug, got carried off her feet. She talked about
‘weaning those ignorant millions from their horrid ways,’
till, upon my word, she made me quite uncomfortable. I
ventured to hint that the Company was run for profit.

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‘‘You forget, dear Charlie, that the labourer is worthy
of his hire,’ she said, brightly. It’s queer how out of touch
with truth women are. They live in a world of their own,
and there has never been anything like it, and never can
be. It is too beautiful altogether, and if they were to set it
up it would go to pieces before the first sunset. Some
confounded fact we men have been living contentedly
with ever since the day of creation would start up and
knock the whole thing over.
‘After this I got embraced, told to wear flannel, be sure
to write often, and so on—and I left. In the street—I don’t
know why—a queer feeling came to me that I was an
imposter. Odd thing that I, who used to clear out for any
part of the world at twenty-four hours’ notice, with less
thought than most men give to the crossing of a street, had
a moment—I won’t say of hesitation, but of startled pause,
before this commonplace affair. The best way I can
explain it to you is by saying that, for a second or two, I
felt as though, instead of going to the centre of a
continent, I were about to set off for the centre of the
earth.
‘I left in a French steamer, and she called in every
blamed port they have out there, for, as far as I could see,
the sole purpose of landing soldiers and custom-house

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officers. I watched the coast. Watching a coast as it slips by
the ship is like thinking about an enigma. There it is
before you— smiling, frowning, inviting, grand, mean,
insipid, or savage, and always mute with an air of
whispering, ‘Come and find out.’ This one was almost
featureless, as if still in the making, with an aspect of
monotonous grimness. The edge of a colossal jungle, so
dark-green as to be almost black, fringed with white surf,
ran straight, like a ruled line, far, far away along a blue sea
whose glitter was blurred by a creeping mist. The sun was
fierce, the land seemed to glisten and drip with steam.
Here and there greyish-whitish specks showed up
clustered inside the white surf, with a flag flying above
them perhaps. Settlements some centuries old, and still no
bigger than pinheads on the untouched expanse of their
background. We pounded along, stopped, landed soldiers;
went on, landed custom-house clerks to levy toll in what
looked like a God-forsaken wilderness, with a tin shed and
a flag-pole lost in it; landed more soldiers—to take care of
the custom-house clerks, presumably. Some, I heard, got
drowned in the surf; but whether they did or not, nobody
seemed particularly to care. They were just flung out
there, and on we went. Every day the coast looked the
same, as though we had not moved; but we passed various

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places—trading places—with names like Gran’ Bassam,
Little Popo; names that seemed to belong to some sordid
farce acted in front of a sinister back-cloth. The idleness of
a passenger, my isolation amongst all these men with
whom I had no point of contact, the oily and languid sea,
the uniform sombreness of the coast, seemed to keep me
away from the truth of things, within the toil of a
mournful and senseless delusion. The voice of the surf
heard now and then was a positive pleasure, like the
speech of a brother. It was something natural, that had its
reason, that had a meaning. Now and then a boat from the
shore gave one a momentary contact with reality. It was
paddled by black fellows. You could see from afar the
white of their eyeballs glistening. They shouted, sang;
their bodies streamed with perspiration; they had faces like
grotesque masks—these chaps; but they had bone, muscle,
a wild vitality, an intense energy of movement, that was as
natural and true as the surf along their coast. They wanted
no excuse for being there. They were a great comfort to
look at. For a time I would feel I belonged still to a world
of straightforward facts; but the feeling would not last
long. Something would turn up to scare it away. Once, I
remember, we came upon a man-of-war anchored off the
coast. There wasn’t even a shed there, and she was shelling