Chương Chương 6 · 第3章（1）

"I looked at him, lost in astonishment. There he was before me, in

motley, as though he had absconded from a troupe of mimes, enthusiastic,

fabulous. His very existence was improbable, inexplicable, and

altogether bewildering. He was an insoluble problem. It was

inconceivable how he had existed, how he had succeeded in getting so

far, how he had managed to remain--why he did not instantly disappear.

'I went a little farther,' he said, 'then still a little farther--till

I had gone so far that I don't know how I'll ever get back. Never mind.

Plenty time. I can manage. You take Kurtz away quick--quick--I tell

you.' The glamour of youth enveloped his particolored rags, his

destitution, his loneliness, the essential desolation of his futile

wanderings. For months--for years--his life hadn't been worth a day's

purchase; and there he was gallantly, thoughtlessly alive, to all

appearance indestructible solely by the virtue of his few years and

of his unreflecting audacity. I was seduced into something like

admiration--like envy. Glamour urged him on, glamour kept him unscathed.

He surely wanted nothing from the wilderness but space to breathe in and

to push on through. His need was to exist, and to move onwards at

the greatest possible risk, and with a maximum of privation. If the

absolutely pure, uncalculating, unpractical spirit of adventure had ever

ruled a human being, it ruled this be-patched youth. I almost envied

him the possession of this modest and clear flame. It seemed to have

consumed all thought of self so completely, that, even while he was

talking to you, you forgot that it was he--the man before your eyes--who

had gone through these things. I did not envy him his devotion to Kurtz,

though. He had not meditated over it. It came to him, and he accepted it

with a sort of eager fatalism. I must say that to me it appeared about

the most dangerous thing in every way he had come upon so far.

"They had come together unavoidably, like two ships becalmed near

each other, and lay rubbing sides at last. I suppose Kurtz wanted an

audience, because on a certain occasion, when encamped in the forest,

they had talked all night, or more probably Kurtz had talked. 'We talked

of everything,' he said, quite transported at the recollection. 'I

forgot there was such a thing as sleep. The night did not seem to last

an hour. Everything! Everything! . . . Of love too.' 'Ah, he talked to

you of love!' I said, much amused. 'It isn't what you think,' he cried,

almost passionately. 'It was in general. He made me see things--things.'

"He threw his arms up. We were on deck at the time, and the headman

of my wood-cutters, lounging near by, turned upon him his heavy and

glittering eyes. I looked around, and I don't know why, but I assure you

that never, never before, did this land, this river, this jungle, the

very arch of this blazing sky, appear to me so hopeless and so dark, so

impenetrable to human thought, so pitiless to human weakness. 'And, ever

since, you have been with him, of course?' I said.

"On the contrary. It appears their intercourse had been very much broken

by various causes. He had, as he informed me proudly, managed to nurse

Kurtz through two illnesses (he alluded to it as you would to some risky

feat), but as a rule Kurtz wandered alone, far in the depths of the

forest. 'Very often coming to this station, I had to wait days and

days before he would turn up,' he said. 'Ah, it was worth waiting

for!--sometimes.' 'What was he doing? exploring or what?' I asked. 'Oh

yes, of course;' he had discovered lots of villages, a lake too--he

did not know exactly in what direction; it was dangerous to inquire

too much--but mostly his expeditions had been for ivory. 'But he had no

goods to trade with by that time,' I objected. 'There's a good lot of

cartridges left even yet,' he answered, looking away. 'To speak plainly,

he raided the country,' I said. He nodded. 'Not alone, surely!' He

muttered something about the villages round that lake. 'Kurtz got the

tribe to follow him, did he?' I suggested. He fidgeted a little. 'They

adored him,' he said. The tone of these words was so extraordinary that

I looked at him searchingly. It was curious to see his mingled eagerness

and reluctance to speak of Kurtz. The man filled his life, occupied his

thoughts, swayed his emotions. 'What can you expect?' he burst out; 'he

came to them with thunder and lightning, you know--and they had never

seen anything like it--and very terrible. He could be very terrible.

You can't judge Mr. Kurtz as you would an ordinary man. No, no, no!

Now--just to give you an idea--I don't mind telling you, he wanted to

shoot me too one day--but I don't judge him.' 'Shoot you!' I cried.

'What for?' 'Well, I had a small lot of ivory the chief of that village

near my house gave me. You see I used to shoot game for them. Well,

he wanted it, and wouldn't hear reason. He declared he would shoot me

unless I gave him the ivory and then cleared out of the country, because

he could do so, and had a fancy for it, and there was nothing on earth

to prevent him killing whom he jolly well pleased. And it was true too.

I gave him the ivory. What did I care! But I didn't clear out. No, no. I

couldn't leave him. I had to be careful, of course, till we got friendly

again for a time. He had his second illness then. Afterwards I had to

keep out of the way; but I didn't mind. He was living for the most part

in those villages on the lake. When he came down to the river, sometimes

he would take to me, and sometimes it was better for me to be careful.

This man suffered too much. He hated all this, and somehow he couldn't

get away. When I had a chance I begged him to try and leave while there

was time; I offered to go back with him. And he would say yes, and then

he would remain; go off on another ivory hunt; disappear for weeks;

forget himself amongst these people--forget himself--you know.' 'Why!

he's mad,' I said. He protested indignantly. Mr. Kurtz couldn't be mad.

If I had heard him talk, only two days ago, I wouldn't dare hint at

such a thing. . . . I had taken up my binoculars while we talked and was

looking at the shore, sweeping the limit of the forest at each side and

at the back of the house. The consciousness of there being people in

that bush, so silent, so quiet--as silent and quiet as the ruined house

on the hill--made me uneasy. There was no sign on the face of nature

of this amazing tale that was not so much told as suggested to me in

desolate exclamations, completed by shrugs, in interrupted phrases, in

hints ending in deep sighs. The woods were unmoved, like a mask--heavy,

like the closed door of a prison--they looked with their air of hidden

knowledge, of patient expectation, of unapproachable silence. The

Russian was explaining to me that it was only lately that Mr. Kurtz had

come down to the river, bringing along with him all the fighting men of

that lake tribe. He had been absent for several months--getting himself

adored, I suppose--and had come down unexpectedly, with the intention to

all appearance of making a raid either across the river or down stream.

Evidently the appetite for more ivory had got the better of the--what

shall I say?--less material aspirations. However he had got much worse

suddenly. 'I heard he was lying helpless, and so I came up--took my

chance,' said the Russian. 'Oh, he is bad, very bad.' I directed my

glass to the house. There were no signs of life, but there was the

ruined roof, the long mud wall peeping above the grass, with three

little square window-holes, no two of the same size; all this brought

within reach of my hand, as it were. And then I made a brusque movement,

and one of the remaining posts of that vanished fence leaped up in the

field of my glass. You remember I told you I had been struck at the

distance by certain attempts at ornamentation, rather remarkable in the

ruinous aspect of the place. Now I had suddenly a nearer view, and its

first result was to make me throw my head back as if before a blow. Then

I went carefully from post to post with my glass, and I saw my mistake.

These round knobs were not ornamental but symbolic; they were expressive

and puzzling, striking and disturbing--food for thought and also for

the vultures if there had been any looking down from the sky; but at all

events for such ants as were industrious enough to ascend the pole.

They would have been even more impressive, those heads on the stakes, if

their faces had not been turned to the house. Only one, the first I had

made out, was facing my way. I was not so shocked as you may think. The

start back I had given was really nothing but a movement of surprise.

I had expected to see a knob of wood there, you know. I returned

deliberately to the first I had seen--and there it was, black, dried,

sunken, with closed eyelids,--a head that seemed to sleep at the top of

that pole, and, with the shrunken dry lips showing a narrow white line

of the teeth, was smiling too, smiling continuously at some endless and

jocose dream of that eternal slumber.

"I am not disclosing any trade secrets. In fact the manager said

afterwards that Mr. Kurtz's methods had ruined the district. I have no

opinion on that point, but I want you clearly to understand that there

was nothing exactly profitable in these heads being there. They only

showed that Mr. Kurtz lacked restraint in the gratification of his

various lusts, that there was something wanting in him--some small

matter which, when the pressing need arose, could not be found under

his magnificent eloquence. Whether he knew of this deficiency himself I

can't say. I think the knowledge came to him at last--only at the very

last. But the wilderness had found him out early, and had taken on him a

terrible vengeance for the fantastic invasion. I think it had whispered

to him things about himself which he did not know, things of which he

had no conception till he took counsel with this great solitude--and the

whisper had proved irresistibly fascinating. It echoed loudly within him

because he was hollow at the core. . . . I put down the glass, and the

head that had appeared near enough to be spoken to seemed at once to

have leaped away from me into inaccessible distance.

"The admirer of Mr. Kurtz was a bit crestfallen. In a hurried,

indistinct voice he began to assure me he had not dared to take

these--say, symbols--down. He was not afraid of the natives; they would

not stir till Mr. Kurtz gave the word. His ascendency was extraordinary.

The camps of these people surrounded the place, and the chiefs came

every day to see him. They would crawl. . . . 'I don't want to know

anything of the ceremonies used when approaching Mr. Kurtz,' I shouted.

Curious, this feeling that came over me that such details would be more

intolerable than those heads drying on the stakes under Mr. Kurtz's

windows. After all, that was only a savage sight, while I seemed at

one bound to have been transported into some lightless region of subtle

horrors, where pure, uncomplicated savagery was a positive relief, being

something that had a right to exist--obviously--in the sunshine. The

young man looked at me with surprise. I suppose it did not occur to him

Mr. Kurtz was no idol of mine. He forgot I hadn't heard any of these

splendid monologues on, what was it? on love, justice, conduct of

life--or what not. If it had come to crawling before Mr. Kurtz, he

crawled as much as the veriest savage of them all. I had no idea of the

conditions, he said: these heads were the heads of rebels. I shocked him

excessively by laughing. Rebels! What would be the next definition I

was to hear? There had been enemies, criminals, workers--and these

were rebels. Those rebellious heads looked very subdued to me on their

sticks. 'You don't know how such a life tries a man like Kurtz,' cried

Kurtz's last disciple. 'Well, and you?' I said. 'I! I! I am a simple

man. I have no great thoughts. I want nothing from anybody. How can

you compare me to . . .?' His feelings were too much for speech, and

suddenly he broke down. 'I don't understand,' he groaned. 'I've been

doing my best to keep him alive, and that's enough. I had no hand in

all this. I have no abilities. There hasn't been a drop of medicine or a

mouthful of invalid food for months here. He was shamefully abandoned.

A man like this, with such ideas. Shamefully! Shamefully! I--I--haven't

slept for the last ten nights. . . .'

"His voice lost itself in the calm of the evening. The long shadows of

the forest had slipped down hill while we talked, had gone far beyond

the ruined hovel, beyond the symbolic row of stakes. All this was in the

gloom, while we down there were yet in the sunshine, and the stretch

of the river abreast of the clearing glittered in a still and dazzling

splendor, with a murky and over-shadowed bend above and below. Not a

living soul was seen on the shore. The bushes did not rustle.

"Suddenly round the corner of the house a group of men appeared, as

though they had come up from the ground. They waded waist-deep in the

grass, in a compact body, bearing an improvised stretcher in their

midst. Instantly, in the emptiness of the landscape, a cry arose whose

shrillness pierced the still air like a sharp arrow flying straight to

the very heart of the land; and, as if by enchantment, streams of human

beings--of naked human beings--with spears in their hands, with bows,

with shields, with wild glances and savage movements, were poured into

the clearing by the dark-faced and pensive forest. The bushes shook, the

grass swayed for a time, and then everything stood still in attentive

immobility.

"'Now, if he does not say the right thing to them we are all done for,'

said the Russian at my elbow. The knot of men with the stretcher had

stopped too, half-way to the steamer, as if petrified. I saw the man on

the stretcher sit up, lank and with an uplifted arm, above the shoulders

of the bearers. 'Let us hope that the man who can talk so well of love

in general will find some particular reason to spare us this time,' I

said. I resented bitterly the absurd danger of our situation, as if

to be at the mercy of that atrocious phantom had been a dishonoring

necessity. I could not hear a sound, but through my glasses I saw the

thin arm extended commandingly, the lower jaw moving, the eyes of

that apparition shining darkly far in its bony head that nodded with

grotesque jerks. Kurtz--Kurtz--that means short in German--don't it?

Well, the name was as true as everything else in his life--and death.

He looked at least seven feet long. His covering had fallen off, and his

body emerged from it pitiful and appalling as from a winding-sheet. I

could see the cage of his ribs all astir, the bones of his arm waving.

It was as though an animated image of death carved out of old ivory had

been shaking its hand with menaces at a motionless crowd of men made of

dark and glittering bronze. I saw him open his mouth wide--it gave him

a weirdly voracious aspect, as though he had wanted to swallow all the

air, all the earth, all the men before him. A deep voice reached

me faintly. He must have been shouting. He fell back suddenly. The

stretcher shook as the bearers staggered forward again, and almost at

the same time I noticed that the crowd of savages was vanishing without

any perceptible movement of retreat, as if the forest that had ejected

these beings so suddenly had drawn them in again as the breath is drawn

in a long aspiration.

"Some of the pilgrims behind the stretcher carried his arms--two

shot-guns, a heavy rifle, and a light revolver-carbine--the thunderbolts

of that pitiful Jupiter. The manager bent over him murmuring as

he walked beside his head. They laid him down in one of the little

cabins--just a room for a bed-place and a camp-stool or two, you know.

We had brought his belated correspondence, and a lot of torn envelopes

and open letters littered his bed. His hand roamed feebly amongst these

papers. I was struck by the fire of his eyes and the composed languor of

his expression. It was not so much the exhaustion of disease. He did not

seem in pain. This shadow looked satiated and calm, as though for the

moment it had had its fill of all the emotions.

"He rustled one of the letters, and looking straight in my face said,

'I am glad.' Somebody had been writing to him about me. These special

recommendations were turning up again. The volume of tone he emitted

without effort, almost without the trouble of moving his lips, amazed

me. A voice! a voice! It was grave, profound, vibrating, while the man

did not seem capable of a whisper. However, he had enough strength in

him--factitious no doubt--to very nearly make an end of us, as you shall

hear directly.

"The manager appeared silently in the doorway; I stepped out at once

and he drew the curtain after me. The Russian, eyed curiously by the

pilgrims, was staring at the shore. I followed the direction of his

glance.

"Dark human shapes could be made out in the distance, flitting

indistinctly against the gloomy border of the forest, and near the river

two bronze figures, leaning on tall spears, stood in the sunlight under

fantastic headdresses of spotted skins, warlike and still in statuesque

repose. And from right to left along the lighted shore moved a wild and

gorgeous apparition of a woman.

"She walked with measured steps, draped in striped and fringed cloths,

treading the earth proudly, with a slight jingle and flash of barbarous

ornaments. She carried her head high; her hair was done in the shape of

a helmet; she had brass leggings to the knee, brass wire gauntlets to

the elbow, a crimson spot on her tawny cheek, innumerable necklaces of

glass beads on her neck; bizarre things, charms, gifts of witch-men,

that hung about her, glittered and trembled at every step. She must have

had the value of several elephant tusks upon her. She was savage and

superb, wild-eyed and magnificent; there was something ominous and

stately in her deliberate progress. And in the hush that had fallen

suddenly upon the whole sorrowful land, the immense wilderness, the

colossal body of the fecund and mysterious life seemed to look at her,

pensive, as though it had been looking at the image of its own tenebrous

and passionate soul.

"She came abreast of the steamer, stood still, and faced us. Her long

shadow fell to the water's edge. Her face had a tragic and fierce

aspect of wild sorrow and of dumb pain mingled with the fear of some

struggling, half-shaped resolve. She stood looking at us without a

stir and like the wilderness itself, with an air of brooding over an

inscrutable purpose. A whole minute passed, and then she made a step

forward. There was a low jingle, a glint of yellow metal, a sway of

fringed draperies, and she stopped as if her heart had failed her. The

young fellow by my side growled. The pilgrims murmured at my back.

She looked at us all as if her life had depended upon the unswerving

steadiness of her glance. Suddenly she opened her bared arms and threw

them up rigid above her head, as though in an uncontrollable desire to

touch the sky, and at the same time the swift shadows darted out on the

earth, swept around on the river, gathering the steamer into a shadowy

embrace. A formidable silence hung over the scene.

"She turned away slowly, walked on, following the bank, and passed into

the bushes to the left. Once only her eyes gleamed back at us in the

dusk of the thickets before she disappeared.

"'If she had offered to come aboard I really think I would have tried to

shoot her,' said the man of patches, nervously. 'I had been risking my

life every day for the last fortnight to keep her out of the house. She

got in one day and kicked up a row about those miserable rags I picked

up in the storeroom to mend my clothes with. I wasn't decent. At least

it must have been that, for she talked like a fury to Kurtz for an hour,

pointing at me now and then. I don't understand the dialect of this

tribe. Luckily for me, I fancy Kurtz felt too ill that day to care, or

there would have been mischief. I don't understand. . . . No--it's too

much for me. Ah, well, it's all over now.'

"At this moment I heard Kurtz's deep voice behind the curtain, 'Save

me!--save the ivory, you mean. Don't tell me. Save _me!_ Why, I've had

to save you. You are interrupting my plans now. Sick! Sick! Not so sick

as you would like to believe. Never mind. I'll carry my ideas out

yet--I will return. I'll show you what can be done. You with your little

peddling notions--you are interfering with me. I will return. I . . .'

"The manager came out. He did me the honor to take me under the arm and

lead me aside. 'He is very low, very low,' he said. He considered it

necessary to sigh, but neglected to be consistently sorrowful. 'We have

done all we could for him--haven't we? But there is no disguising the

fact, Mr. Kurtz has done more harm than good to the Company. He did

not see the time was not ripe for vigorous action. Cautiously,

cautiously--that's my principle. We must be cautious yet. The district

is closed to us for a time. Deplorable! Upon the whole, the trade will

suffer. I don't deny there is a remarkable quantity of ivory--mostly

fossil. We must save it, at all events--but look how precarious the

position is--and why? Because the method is unsound.' 'Do you,' said I,

looking at the shore, 'call it "unsound method"?' 'Without doubt,' he

exclaimed, hotly. 'Don't you?' . . . 'No method at all,' I murmured

after a while. 'Exactly,' he exulted. 'I anticipated this. Shows a

complete want of judgment. It is my duty to point it out in the proper

quarter.' 'Oh,' said I, 'that fellow--what's his name?--the brickmaker,

will make a readable report for you.' He appeared confounded for a

moment. It seemed to me I had never breathed an atmosphere so vile,

and I turned mentally to Kurtz for relief--positively for relief.

'Nevertheless I think Mr. Kurtz is a remarkable man,' I said with

emphasis. He started, dropped on me a cold heavy glance, said very

quietly, 'He _was_,' and turned his back on me. My hour of favor was

over; I found myself lumped along with Kurtz as a partisan of methods

for which the time was not ripe: I was unsound! Ah! but it was something

to have at least a choice of nightmares.

"I had turned to the wilderness really, not to Mr. Kurtz, who, I was

ready to admit, was as good as buried. And for a moment it seemed to me

as if I also were buried in a vast grave full of unspeakable secrets. I

felt an intolerable weight oppressing my breast, the smell of the damp

earth, the unseen presence of victorious corruption, the darkness of an

impenetrable night. . . . The Russian tapped me on the shoulder. I heard

him mumbling and stammering something about 'brother seaman--couldn't

conceal--knowledge of matters that would affect Mr. Kurtz's reputation.'

I waited. For him evidently Mr. Kurtz was not in his grave; I suspect

that for him Mr. Kurtz was one of the immortals. 'Well!' said I at last,

'speak out. As it happens, I am Mr. Kurtz's friend--in a way.'

"He stated with a good deal of formality that had we not been 'of the

same profession,' he would have kept the matter to himself without

regard to consequences. 'He suspected there was an active ill-will

towards him on the part of these white men that--' 'You are right,' I

said, remembering a certain conversation I had overheard. 'The manager

thinks you ought to be hanged.' He showed a concern at this intelligence

which amused me at first. 'I had better get out of the way quietly,' he

said, earnestly. 'I can do no more for Kurtz now, and they would soon

find some excuse. What's to stop them? There's a military post three

hundred miles from here.' 'Well, upon my word,' said I, 'perhaps you

had better go if you have any friends amongst the savages near by.'

'Plenty,' he said. 'They are simple people--and I want nothing, you

know.' He stood biting his lips, then: 'I don't want any harm to happen

to these whites here, but of course I was thinking of Mr. Kurtz's

reputation--but you are a brother seaman and--' 'All right,' said I,

after a time. 'Mr. Kurtz's reputation is safe with me.' I did not know

how truly I spoke.

"He informed me, lowering his voice, that it was Kurtz who had ordered

the attack to be made on the steamer. 'He hated sometimes the idea of

being taken away--and then again. . . . But I don't understand these

matters. I am a simple man. He thought it would scare you away--that you

would give it up, thinking him dead. I could not stop him. Oh, I had an

awful time of it this last month.' 'Very well,' I said. 'He is all right

now.' 'Ye-e-es,' he muttered, not very convinced apparently. 'Thanks,'

said I; 'I shall keep my eyes open.' 'But quiet--eh?' he urged,

anxiously. 'It would be awful for his reputation if anybody here--' I

promised a complete discretion with great gravity. 'I have a canoe and

three black fellows waiting not very far. I am off. Could you give me a

few Martini-Henry cartridges?' I could, and did, with proper secrecy. He

helped himself, with a wink at me, to a handful of my tobacco. 'Between

sailors--you know--good English tobacco.' At the door of the pilot-house

he turned round--' I say, haven't you a pair of shoes you could spare?'

He raised one leg. 'Look.' The soles were tied with knotted strings

sandal-wise under his bare feet. I rooted out an old pair, at which he

looked with admiration before tucking it under his left arm. One of his

pockets (bright red) was bulging with cartridges, from the other (dark

blue) peeped 'Towson's Inquiry,' &c., &c. He seemed to think himself

excellently well equipped for a renewed encounter with the wilderness.

'Ah! I'll never, never meet such a man again. You ought to have heard

him recite poetry--his own too it was, he told me. Poetry!' He rolled

his eyes at the recollection of these delights. 'Oh, he enlarged my

mind!' 'Goodby,' said I. He shook hands and vanished in the night.

Sometimes I ask myself whether I had ever really seen him--whether it

was possible to meet such a phenomenon! . . .

"When I woke up shortly after midnight his warning came to my mind with

its hint of danger that seemed, in the starred darkness, real enough to

make me get up for the purpose of having a look round. On the hill a

big fire burned, illuminating fitfully a crooked corner of the

station-house. One of the agents with a picket of a few of our blacks,

armed for the purpose, was keeping guard over the ivory; but deep within

the forest, red gleams that wavered, that seemed to sink and rise from

the ground amongst confused columnar shapes of intense blackness, showed

the exact position of the camp where Mr. Kurtz's adorers were keeping

their uneasy vigil. The monotonous beating of a big drum filled the air

with muffled shocks and a lingering vibration. A steady droning sound of

many men chanting each to himself some weird incantation came out from

the black, flat wall of the woods as the humming of bees comes out of

a hive, and had a strange narcotic effect upon my half-awake senses.

I believe I dozed off leaning over the rail, till an abrupt burst of

yells, an overwhelming outbreak of a pent-up and mysterious frenzy, woke

me up in a bewildered wonder. It was cut short all at once, and the

low droning went on with an effect of audible and soothing silence. I

glanced casually into the little cabin. A light was burning within, but

Mr. Kurtz was not there.

"I think I would have raised an outcry if I had believed my eyes. But I

didn't believe them at first--the thing seemed so impossible. The fact

is I was completely unnerved by a sheer blank fright, pure abstract

terror, unconnected with any distinct shape of physical danger. What

made this emotion so overpowering was--how shall I define it?--the moral

shock I received, as if something altogether monstrous, intolerable to

thought and odious to the soul, had been thrust upon me unexpectedly.

This lasted of course the merest fraction of a second, and then the

usual sense of commonplace, deadly danger, the possibility of a sudden

onslaught and massacre, or something of the kind, which I saw impending,

was positively welcome and composing. It pacified me, in fact, so much,

that I did not raise an alarm.

"There was an agent buttoned up inside an ulster and sleeping on a chair

on deck within three feet of me. The yells had not awakened him; he

snored very slightly; I left him to his slumbers and leaped ashore. I

did not betray Mr. Kurtz--it was ordered I should never betray him--it

was written I should be loyal to the nightmare of my choice. I was

anxious to deal with this shadow by myself alone,--and to this day I

don't know why I was so jealous of sharing with anyone the peculiar

blackness of that experience.

"As soon as I got on the bank I saw a trail--a broad trail through the

grass. I remember the exultation with which I said to myself, 'He can't

walk--he is crawling on all-fours--I've got him.' The grass was wet

with dew. I strode rapidly with clenched fists. I fancy I had some vague

notion of falling upon him and giving him a drubbing. I don't know. I

had some imbecile thoughts. The knitting old woman with the cat obtruded

herself upon my memory as a most improper person to be sitting at the

other end of such an affair. I saw a row of pilgrims squirting lead in

the air out of Winchesters held to the hip. I thought I would never get

back to the steamer, and imagined myself living alone and unarmed in the

woods to an advanced age. Such silly things--you know. And I remember

I confounded the beat of the drum with the beating of my heart, and was

pleased at its calm regularity.

"I kept to the track though--then stopped to listen. The night was very

clear: a dark blue space, sparkling with dew and starlight, in which

black things stood very still. I thought I could see a kind of motion

ahead of me. I was strangely cocksure of everything that night. I

actually left the track and ran in a wide semicircle (I verily believe

chuckling to myself) so as to get in front of that stir, of that motion

I had seen--if indeed I had seen anything. I was circumventing Kurtz as

though it had been a boyish game.