Chapter Chapter 1 · 第1章（1）

The Nellie, a cruising yawl, swung to her anchor without a flutter of

the sails, and was at rest. The flood had made, the wind was nearly

calm, and being bound down the river, the only thing for it was to come

to and wait for the turn of the tide.

The sea-reach of the Thames stretched before us like the beginning of

an interminable waterway. In the offing the sea and the sky were welded

together without a joint, and in the luminous space the tanned sails

of the barges drifting up with the tide seemed to stand still in red

clusters of canvas sharply peaked, with gleams of varnished sprits. A

haze rested on the low shores that ran out to sea in vanishing flatness.

The air was dark above Gravesend, and farther back still seemed

condensed into a mournful gloom, brooding motionless over the biggest,

and the greatest, town on earth.

The Director of Companies was our captain and our host. We four

affectionately watched his back as he stood in the bows looking to

seaward. On the whole river there was nothing that looked half so

nautical. He resembled a pilot, which to a seaman is trustworthiness

personified. It was difficult to realize his work was not out there in

the luminous estuary, but behind him, within the brooding gloom.

Between us there was, as I have already said somewhere, the bond of

the sea. Besides holding our hearts together through long periods of

separation, it had the effect of making us tolerant of each other's

yarns--and even convictions. The Lawyer--the best of old fellows--had,

because of his many years and many virtues, the only cushion on deck,

and was lying on the only rug. The Accountant had brought out already a

box of dominoes, and was toying architecturally with the bones. Marlow

sat cross-legged right aft, leaning against the mizzen-mast. He had

sunken cheeks, a yellow complexion, a straight back, an ascetic aspect,

and, with his arms dropped, the palms of hands outwards, resembled an

idol. The Director, satisfied the anchor had good hold, made his way

aft and sat down amongst us. We exchanged a few words lazily. Afterwards

there was silence on board the yacht. For some reason or other we did

not begin that game of dominoes. We felt meditative, and fit for nothing

but placid staring. The day was ending in a serenity of still and

exquisite brilliance. The water shone pacifically; the sky, without a

speck, was a benign immensity of unstained light; the very mist on the

Essex marshes was like a gauzy and radiant fabric, hung from the wooded

rises inland, and draping the low shores in diaphanous folds. Only the

gloom to the west, brooding over the upper reaches, became more somber

every minute, as if angered by the approach of the sun.

And at last, in its curved and imperceptible fall, the sun sank low, and

from glowing white changed to a dull red without rays and without heat,

as if about to go out suddenly, stricken to death by the touch of that

gloom brooding over a crowd of men.

Forthwith a change came over the waters, and the serenity became less

brilliant but more profound. The old river in its broad reach rested

unruffled at the decline of day, after ages of good service done to the

race that peopled its banks, spread out in the tranquil dignity of a

waterway leading to the uttermost ends of the earth. We looked at the

venerable stream not in the vivid flush of a short day that comes and

departs for ever, but in the august light of abiding memories. And

indeed nothing is easier for a man who has, as the phrase goes,

"followed the sea" with reverence and affection, than to evoke the

great spirit of the past upon the lower reaches of the Thames. The tidal

current runs to and fro in its unceasing service, crowded with memories

of men and ships it had borne to the rest of home or to the battles

of the sea. It had known and served all the men of whom the nation is

proud, from Sir Francis Drake to Sir John Franklin, knights all, titled

and untitled--the great knights-errant of the sea. It had borne all the

ships whose names are like jewels flashing in the night of time, from

the Golden Hind returning with her round flanks full of treasure, to be

visited by the Queen's Highness and thus pass out of the gigantic tale,

to the Erebus and Terror, bound on other conquests--and that never

returned. It had known the ships and the men. They had sailed from

Deptford, from Greenwich, from Erith--the adventurers and the settlers;

kings' ships and the ships of men on 'Change; captains, admirals, the

dark "interlopers" of the Eastern trade, and the commissioned "generals"

of East India fleets. Hunters for gold or pursuers of fame, they all

had gone out on that stream, bearing the sword, and often the torch,

messengers of the might within the land, bearers of a spark from the

sacred fire. What greatness had not floated on the ebb of that river

into the mystery of an unknown earth! . . . The dreams of men, the seed

of commonwealths, the germs of empires.

The sun set; the dusk fell on the stream, and lights began to appear

along the shore. The Chapman lighthouse, a three-legged thing erect on a

mud-flat, shone strongly. Lights of ships moved in the fairway--a great

stir of lights going up and going down. And farther west on the upper

reaches the place of the monstrous town was still marked ominously on

the sky, a brooding gloom in sunshine, a lurid glare under the stars.

"And this also," said Marlow suddenly, "has been one of the dark places

of the earth."

He was the only man of us who still "followed the sea." The worst that

could be said of him was that he did not represent his class. He was a

seaman, but he was a wanderer, too, while most seamen lead, if one may

so express it, a sedentary life. Their minds are of the stay-at-home

order, and their home is always with them--the ship; and so is their

country--the sea. One ship is very much like another, and the sea is

always the same. In the immutability of their surroundings the foreign

shores, the foreign faces, the changing immensity of life, glide past,

veiled not by a sense of mystery but by a slightly disdainful ignorance;

for there is nothing mysterious to a seaman unless it be the sea itself,

which is the mistress of his existence and as inscrutable as Destiny.

For the rest, after his hours of work, a casual stroll or a casual spree

on shore suffices to unfold for him the secret of a whole continent,

and generally he finds the secret not worth knowing. The yarns of seamen

have a direct simplicity, the whole meaning of which lies within the

shell of a cracked nut. But Marlow was not typical (if his propensity

to spin yarns be excepted), and to him the meaning of an episode was not

inside like a kernel but outside, enveloping the tale which brought it

out only as a glow brings out a haze, in the likeness of one of these

misty halos that sometimes are made visible by the spectral illumination

of moonshine.

His remark did not seem at all surprising. It was just like Marlow.

It was accepted in silence. No one took the trouble to grunt even; and

presently he said, very slow--

"I was thinking of very old times, when the Romans first came here,

nineteen hundred years ago--the other day. . . . Light came out of this

river since--you say Knights? Yes; but it is like a running blaze on

a plain, like a flash of lightning in the clouds. We live in the

flicker--may it last as long as the old earth keeps rolling! But

darkness was here yesterday. Imagine the feelings of a commander of

a fine--what d'ye call 'em?--trireme in the Mediterranean, ordered

suddenly to the north; run overland across the Gauls in a hurry; put in

charge of one of these craft the legionaries,--a wonderful lot of handy

men they must have been too--used to build, apparently by the hundred,

in a month or two, if we may believe what we read. Imagine him here--the

very end of the world, a sea the color of lead, a sky the color of

smoke, a kind of ship about as rigid as a concertina--and going up this

river with stores, or orders, or what you like. Sandbanks, marshes,

forests, savages,--precious little to eat fit for a civilized man,

nothing but Thames water to drink. No Falernian wine here, no going

ashore. Here and there a military camp lost in a wilderness, like a

needle in a bundle of hay--cold, fog, tempests, disease, exile, and

death,--death skulking in the air, in the water, in the bush. They must

have been dying like flies here. Oh yes--he did it. Did it very well,

too, no doubt, and without thinking much about it either, except

afterwards to brag of what he had gone through in his time, perhaps.

They were men enough to face the darkness. And perhaps he was cheered

by keeping his eye on a chance of promotion to the fleet at Ravenna

by-and-by, if he had good friends in Rome and survived the awful

climate. Or think of a decent young citizen in a toga--perhaps too

much dice, you know--coming out here in the train of some prefect, or

tax-gatherer, or trader even, to mend his fortunes. Land in a swamp,

march through the woods, and in some inland post feel the savagery, the

utter savagery, had closed round him,--all that mysterious life of the

wilderness that stirs in the forest, in the jungles, in the hearts of

wild men. There's no initiation either into such mysteries. He has to

live in the midst of the incomprehensible, which is also detestable. And

it has a fascination, too, that goes to work upon him. The fascination

of the abomination--you know. Imagine the growing regrets, the longing

to escape, the powerless disgust, the surrender, the hate."

He paused.

"Mind," he began again, lifting one arm from the elbow, the palm of the

hand outwards, so that, with his legs folded before him, he had the

pose of a Buddha preaching in European clothes and without a

lotus-flower--"Mind, none of us would feel exactly like this. What saves

us is efficiency--the devotion to efficiency. But these chaps were not

much account, really. They were no colonists; their administration was

merely a squeeze, and nothing more, I suspect. They were conquerors, and

for that you want only brute force--nothing to boast of, when you have

it, since your strength is just an accident arising from the weakness of

others. They grabbed what they could get for the sake of what was to

be got. It was just robbery with violence, aggravated murder on a great

scale, and men going at it blind--as is very proper for those who tackle

a darkness. The conquest of the earth, which mostly means the taking

it away from those who have a different complexion or slightly flatter

noses than ourselves, is not a pretty thing when you look into it too

much. What redeems it is the idea only. An idea at the back of it; not

a sentimental pretense but an idea; and an unselfish belief in the

idea--something you can set up, and bow down before, and offer a

sacrifice to. . . ."

He broke off. Flames glided in the river, small green flames, red

flames, white flames, pursuing, overtaking, joining, crossing each

other--then separating slowly or hastily. The traffic of the great city

went on in the deepening night upon the sleepless river. We looked on,

waiting patiently--there was nothing else to do till the end of

the flood; but it was only after a long silence, when he said, in

a hesitating voice, "I suppose you fellows remember I did once turn

fresh-water sailor for a bit," that we knew we were fated, before

the ebb began to run, to hear about one of Marlow's inconclusive

experiences.

"I don't want to bother you much with what happened to me personally,"

he began, showing in this remark the weakness of many tellers of tales

who seem so often unaware of what their audience would best like to

hear; "yet to understand the effect of it on me you ought to know how I

got out there, what I saw, how I went up that river to the place where I

first met the poor chap. It was the farthest point of navigation and the

culminating point of my experience. It seemed somehow to throw a kind of

light on everything about me--and into my thoughts. It was somber enough

too--and pitiful--not extraordinary in any way--not very clear either.

No, not very clear. And yet it seemed to throw a kind of light.

"I had then, as you remember, just returned to London after a lot of

Indian Ocean, Pacific, China Seas--a regular dose of the East--six years

or so, and I was loafing about, hindering you fellows in your work and

invading your homes, just as though I had got a heavenly mission to

civilize you. It was very fine for a time, but after a bit I did get

tired of resting. Then I began to look for a ship--I should think the

hardest work on earth. But the ships wouldn't even look at me. And I got

tired of that game too.

"Now when I was a little chap I had a passion for maps. I would look for

hours at South America, or Africa, or Australia, and lose myself in all

the glories of exploration. At that time there were many blank spaces on

the earth, and when I saw one that looked particularly inviting on a map

(but they all look that) I would put my finger on it and say, 'When

I grow up I will go there.' The North Pole was one of these places, I

remember. Well, I haven't been there yet, and shall not try now. The

glamour's off. Other places were scattered about the Equator, and in

every sort of latitude all over the two hemispheres. I have been in some

of them, and . . . well, we won't talk about that. But there was one

yet--the biggest, the most blank, so to speak--that I had a hankering

after.

"True, by this time it was not a blank space any more. It had got filled

since my boyhood with rivers and lakes and names. It had ceased to be

a blank space of delightful mystery--a white patch for a boy to dream

gloriously over. It had become a place of darkness. But there was in it

one river especially, a mighty big river, that you could see on the map,

resembling an immense snake uncoiled, with its head in the sea, its

body at rest curving afar over a vast country, and its tail lost in the

depths of the land. And as I looked at the map of it in a shop-window,

it fascinated me as a snake would a bird--a silly little bird. Then I

remembered there was a big concern, a Company for trade on that river.

Dash it all! I thought to myself, they can't trade without using some

kind of craft on that lot of fresh water--steamboats! Why shouldn't I

try to get charge of one? I went on along Fleet Street, but could not

shake off the idea. The snake had charmed me.

"You understand it was a Continental concern, that Trading society; but

I have a lot of relations living on the Continent, because it's cheap

and not so nasty as it looks, they say.

"I am sorry to own I began to worry them. This was already a fresh

departure for me. I was not used to get things that way, you know. I

always went my own road and on my own legs where I had a mind to go. I

wouldn't have believed it of myself; but, then--you see--I felt somehow

I must get there by hook or by crook. So I worried them. The men said

'My dear fellow,' and did nothing. Then--would you believe it?--I tried

the women. I, Charlie Marlow, set the women to work--to get a job.

Heavens! Well, you see, the notion drove me. I had an aunt, a dear

enthusiastic soul. She wrote: 'It will be delightful. I am ready to do

anything, anything for you. It is a glorious idea. I know the wife of a

very high personage in the Administration, and also a man who has lots

of influence with,' &c., &c. She was determined to make no end of fuss

to get me appointed skipper of a river steamboat, if such was my fancy.

"I got my appointment--of course; and I got it very quick. It appears

the Company had received news that one of their captains had been killed

in a scuffle with the natives. This was my chance, and it made me the

more anxious to go. It was only months and months afterwards, when I

made the attempt to recover what was left of the body, that I heard the

original quarrel arose from a misunderstanding about some hens. Yes,

two black hens. Fresleven--that was the fellow's name, a Dane--thought

himself wronged somehow in the bargain, so he went ashore and started to

hammer the chief of the village with a stick. Oh, it didn't surprise

me in the least to hear this, and at the same time to be told that

Fresleven was the gentlest, quietest creature that ever walked on two

legs. No doubt he was; but he had been a couple of years already out

there engaged in the noble cause, you know, and he probably felt the

need at last of asserting his self-respect in some way. Therefore he

whacked the old nigger mercilessly, while a big crowd of his people

watched him, thunderstruck, till some man,--I was told the chief's

son,--in desperation at hearing the old chap yell, made a tentative jab

with a spear at the white man--and of course it went quite easy between

the shoulder-blades. Then the whole population cleared into the forest,

expecting all kinds of calamities to happen, while, on the other hand,

the steamer Fresleven commanded left also in a bad panic, in charge of

the engineer, I believe. Afterwards nobody seemed to trouble much

about Fresleven's remains, till I got out and stepped into his shoes. I

couldn't let it rest, though; but when an opportunity offered at last to

meet my predecessor, the grass growing through his ribs was tall enough

to hide his bones. They were all there. The supernatural being had not

been touched after he fell. And the village was deserted, the huts gaped

black, rotting, all askew within the fallen enclosures. A calamity

had come to it, sure enough. The people had vanished. Mad terror had

scattered them, men, women, and children, through the bush, and they had

never returned. What became of the hens I don't know either. I should

think the cause of progress got them, anyhow. However, through this

glorious affair I got my appointment, before I had fairly begun to hope

for it.

"I flew around like mad to get ready, and before forty-eight hours I

was crossing the Channel to show myself to my employers, and sign the

contract. In a very few hours I arrived in a city that always makes me

think of a whited sepulcher. Prejudice no doubt. I had no difficulty in

finding the Company's offices. It was the biggest thing in the town,

and everybody I met was full of it. They were going to run an over-sea

empire, and make no end of coin by trade.

"A narrow and deserted street in deep shadow, high houses, innumerable

windows with venetian blinds, a dead silence, grass sprouting between

the stones, imposing carriage archways right and left, immense double

doors standing ponderously ajar. I slipped through one of these cracks,

went up a swept and ungarnished staircase, as arid as a desert, and

opened the first door I came to. Two women, one fat and the other slim,

sat on straw-bottomed chairs, knitting black wool. The slim one got up

and walked straight at me--still knitting with downcast eyes--and only

just as I began to think of getting out of her way, as you would for a

somnambulist, stood still, and looked up. Her dress was as plain as an

umbrella-cover, and she turned round without a word and preceded me

into a waiting-room. I gave my name, and looked about. Deal table in

the middle, plain chairs all round the walls, on one end a large shining

map, marked with all the colors of a rainbow. There was a vast amount of

red--good to see at any time, because one knows that some real work

is done in there, a deuce of a lot of blue, a little green, smears of

orange, and, on the East Coast, a purple patch, to show where the jolly

pioneers of progress drink the jolly lager-beer. However, I wasn't going

into any of these. I was going into the yellow. Dead in the center. And

the river was there--fascinating--deadly--like a snake. Ough! A door

opened, a white-haired secretarial head, but wearing a compassionate

expression, appeared, and a skinny forefinger beckoned me into the

sanctuary. Its light was dim, and a heavy writing-desk squatted in

the middle. From behind that structure came out an impression of pale

plumpness in a frock-coat. The great man himself. He was five feet

six, I should judge, and had his grip on the handle-end of ever so many

millions. He shook hands, I fancy, murmured vaguely, was satisfied with

my French. Bon voyage.

"In about forty-five seconds I found myself again in the waiting-room

with the compassionate secretary, who, full of desolation and sympathy,

made me sign some document. I believe I undertook amongst other things

not to disclose any trade secrets. Well, I am not going to.

"I began to feel slightly uneasy. You know I am not used to such

ceremonies, and there was something ominous in the atmosphere. It

was just as though I had been let into some conspiracy--I don't

know--something not quite right; and I was glad to get out. In the outer

room the two women knitted black wool feverishly. People were arriving,

and the younger one was walking back and forth introducing them. The

old one sat on her chair. Her flat cloth slippers were propped up on

a foot-warmer, and a cat reposed on her lap. She wore a starched

white affair on her head, had a wart on one cheek, and silver-rimmed

spectacles hung on the tip of her nose. She glanced at me above the

glasses. The swift and indifferent placidity of that look troubled me.

Two youths with foolish and cheery countenances were being piloted over,

and she threw at them the same quick glance of unconcerned wisdom. She

seemed to know all about them and about me too. An eerie feeling came

over me. She seemed uncanny and fateful. Often far away there I thought

of these two, guarding the door of Darkness, knitting black wool as for

a warm pall, one introducing, introducing continuously to the unknown,

the other scrutinizing the cheery and foolish faces with unconcerned old

eyes. Ave! Old knitter of black wool. Morituri te salutant. Not many of

those she looked at ever saw her again--not half, by a long way.

"There was yet a visit to the doctor. 'A simple formality,' assured me

the secretary, with an air of taking an immense part in all my sorrows.

Accordingly a young chap wearing his hat over the left eyebrow, some

clerk I suppose,--there must have been clerks in the business, 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

ink-stains 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 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-by. Ah! Good-by. Adieu. In the tropics one must before

everything keep calm.' . . . He lifted a warning forefinger. . . . 'Du

calme, du calme. Adieu.'

"One thing more remained to do--say good-by 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-halfpenny 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.

"'You forget, dear Charlie, that the laborer 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 had 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 impostor. 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

center of a continent, I were about to set off for the center 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 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 grayish-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

pin-heads 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

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

backcloth. 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 somberness 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 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 eight-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

eight-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.