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04 - Heart of Darkness - Joseph Conrad · Adventure Books Collection

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Chapter two, Part two of Heart of Darkness. No sooner had we fairly
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entered it than I became aware it was much narrower than I had supposed.
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To the left of us there was the long, uninterrupted shoal, and to
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the right a high steep bank, heavily overgrown with bushes. Above the bush,
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the trees stood in serried ranks. The twigs overhung the current thickly,
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and from distance to distance a large limb of some tree projected rigidly over the
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stream. It was then well on in the afternoon. The face of the
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forest was gloomy, and a broad strip of shadow had already fallen on the
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water. In this shadow we steamed up very slowly. As you may imagine,
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I shared her well inshore, the water being deepest near the bank.
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As the sounding pole informed me, one of my hungry and forbearing friends was
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sounding in the boughs just below me. This steambut was exactly like a decked
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scow. On one deck there were two little teak wood houses with doors and
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windows. The boiler was in the fore end, and the machinery right astern.
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Over the whole there was a light roof supported on stanchions. The funnel
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projected through that roof, and in front of the funnel a small cabin built
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of light planks served for a pilot house. It contained a couch, two
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campstools, a loaded martini henry leaning in one corner, tiny table, and
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the steering wheel. It had a wide door in front and a broad shutter
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at each side. All these were always thrown open. Of course, I
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spent my days perched up there on the extreme fore end of the roof,
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before the door. At night I slept or tried to on the couch.
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An athletic black belonging to some coast tribe and educated by my poor predecessor,
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was the helmsman. He sported a pair of brass ear rings, wore a
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blue cloth wrapper from the waist of the ankles, and thought all the world
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of himself. He was the most unstable kind of fool I had ever seen.
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He steered with no end of swagger while you were by, but if
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he lost sight of you, he became instantly the prey of an abject funk,
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and would let that cripple of a steamboat to get the upper hand of
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him. In a minute, I was looking down at the sounding pole and
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feeling much annoyed to see at each try a little more of it stick out
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of that river. When I saw my poleman give up on the business suddenly
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and stretch himself flat on the deck, without even taking the trouble to haul
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his pole in. He kept hold on it, though, and it trailed
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in the water. At the same time, the fireman, whom I could
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also see below me, sat down abruptly before his furnace and ducked his head.
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I was amazed. Then I had to look at the river mighty quick
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because there was a snag in the fairway. Sticks, little sticks were flying
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about, thick They were whizzing before my nose, dropping below me, striking
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behind me against my pilot house. All this time, the river, the
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shore, the woods were very quiet, perfectly quiet. I could only hear
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the heavy splashing thump of the stern wheel and the patter of these things.
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We cleared the snag clumsily. Arrows. By jove, we were being shot
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at. I stepped in quickly to close the shutter. On the land side.
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That fool helmsman, his hands on the spokes, was lifting his knees
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high, stamping his feet, champing his mouth like a reined in horse con
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found him, and we were staggering within ten feet of the bank. I
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had to lean right out to swing the heavy shutter, and I saw a
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face amongst the leaves on the level with my own, looking at me,
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very fierce and steady. And then, suddenly, as though a veil had
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been removed from my eyes, I made out deep in the tangled gloom,
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naked breasts, arms, legs, glaring eyes. The bush was swarming with
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human limbs in movement, glistening of bronze color. The twigs shook, swayed,
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and rustled. The arrows flew out of them, and then the shutter
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came to steer her straight, I said to the helmsman. He held his
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head rigid, face forward, but his eyes rolled. He kept on lifting
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and setting down his feet gently. His mouth foamed a little. Keep quiet,
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I said, in a fury. I might just as well have ordered
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a tree not to sway in the wind. I darted out below me.
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There was a great scuffle of feet on the iron deck, confused exclamations.
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A voice screamed, can you turn back? I caught sight of a V
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shaped ripple on the water ahead. What another snag? A fusillade burst out
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under my feet. The pilgrims had opened with their winchesters and were simply squirting
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lead into the bush. A deuce of a lot of smoke came up and
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drove slowly forward. I swore at it. Now. I couldn't see the
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ripple or the snag either. I stood in the doorway peering, and the
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arrows came in swarms. They might have been poisoned, but they looked as
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though they couldn't kill a cat. The bush began to howl. Our woodcutters
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raised a warlike whoop. The report of a rifle just at my back deafened
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me. I glanced over my shoulder, and the pilot house was yet full
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of noise and smoke. When I made a dash at the wheel, the
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fooled nigger had dropped everything to throw the shutter open and let off that Martini
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Henry. He stood before the wide opening, glaring, and I yelled at
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him to come back while I straightened the sudden twist out of that steamboat.
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There was no room to turn, even if I had wanted to. The
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snag was somewhere very near ahead. In that confounded smoke, there was no
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time to lose, so I just crowded her into the bank, right into
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the bank where I knew the water was deep. We tore slowly along the
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overhanging bushes and a whirl of broken twigs and flying leaves. The fusillade below
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stopped short, as I had foreseen it would when the squirts got empty.
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I threw my head back to a glinting whiz that traversed the pilot house in
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at one shutter hole and out at the other. Looking past that mad helmsman
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who was shaking the empty rifle and yelling at the shore, I saw vague
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forms of men running, bent, double, leaping, gliding, distinct incomplete
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evanescent. Something big appeared in the air before the shutter. The rifle went
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overboard, and the man stepped back swiftly, looked at me over his shoulder
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in an extraordinary, profound, familiar manner, and fell upon my feet.
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The side of his head hit the wheel twice, and the end of what
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appeared a long cane clattered round and knocked over a little campstool. It looked
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as though after wrenching that thing from somebody ashore, he had lost his balance
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in the effort. The thin smoke had blown away. We were clear of
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the snag, and looking ahead, I could see that in another hundred yards
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or so I would be free to shear off away from the bank. But
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my feet felt so vage, very warm, and wet, that I had
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to look down. The man had rolled on his back and stared straight up
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at me. Both his hands clutched that cane. It was the shaft of
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a spear that either thrown or lunged through the opening, had caught him in
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the side, just below the ribs. The blade had gone in out of
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sight after making a frightful gash. My shoes were full. A pool of
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blood lay very still, gleaming dark red under the wheel. His eyes shone
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with an amazing luster. The fusillade burst out again. He looked at me
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anxiously, gripping the spear like something precious, with an air of being afraid
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that I would try to take it away from him. I had to make
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an effort to free my eyes from his gaze and attend to the steering.
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With one hand, I felt above my head for the line of the steam
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whistle and jerked out screech after screech Hurriedly. The tumult of angry and warlike
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yells was checked instantly, and then from the depths of the woods went out
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such a tremulous and prolonged wail of mournful fear and utter despair, as may
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be imagined to follow the flight of the last hope from the earth. There
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was a great commotion in the bush. The shower of arrows stopped, A
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few dropping shots rang out sharply, then silence, in which the languid beat
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of the stern wheel came plainly to my ears. I put the helm hard
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a starboard. At the moment when the pilgrim in pink pajamas, very hot
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and agitated, appeared in the doorway, the manager sends me. He began
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in an official tone and stopped short. Good God, he said, glaring
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at the wounded man. We two whites stood over him, and his lustrous
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and inquiring glance envelop us both. I declare. It looked as though he
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would presently put to us some questions in an understandable language. But he died
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without uttering a sound, without moving a limb, without twitching a muscle,
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only in the very last moment, as though in response to some sign we
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could not see to some whisper we could not hear. He frowned heavily,
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and that frown gave to his black death mass, an inconceivably somber, brooding
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and menacing expression. The luster of inquiring glance faded swiftly into vacant glassiness.
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Can you steer, I asked the agent eagerly. He looked very dubious,
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but I made a grab at his arm, and he understood at once.
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I meant him to steer, whether or no. To tell you the truth,
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I was morbidly anxious to change my shoes and socks. He is dead,
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murmured the fellow, immensely impressed, no doubt about it, said I,
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tugging like mad at the shoelaces. And by the way, I suppose
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mister Kurtz is dead as well. By this time, for the moment that
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was the dominant thought, there was a sense of extreme disappointments, as though
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I had found out that I had been striving after something altogether without a substance.
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I couldn't have been more disgusted if I had traveled all this way for
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the sole purpose of talking with mister Kurtz. Talking with I flung one shoe
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overboard, and became aware that that was exactly what I had been looking forward
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to. A talk with Kurts. I made the strange discovery that I had
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never imagined him as doing, you know, but as discoursing. I didn't
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say to myself, now I will never see him, or now I will
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never shake him by the hand, But now I will never hear him.
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The man presented himself as a voice. Not of course, that I did
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not connect him with some sort of action. Had I been told, in
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all the tones of jealousy and admiration, that he had collected, bartered,
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swindled, or stolen more ivory than all the other agents together. That was
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not the point. The point was in his being a gifted creature, and
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that of all his gifts, the one that stood out preeminently, that carried
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with it a sense of real presence was his ability to talk, his words,
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the gift of expression, the bewildering, the illuminating, the most exalted
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and the most contemptible, the pulsating stream of light, or the deceitful flow
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from the heart of an impenetrable darkness. The other shoe went flying into the
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devil God of that river. I thought, by jove, it's all over.
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We are too late. He has vanished. The gift has vanished by
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means of some spear, arrow or club. I will never hear that chap
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speak after all, And my sorrow had a startling extravagance of emotion, even
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such as I had noticed in the howling sorrow of those savages in the bush.
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I couldn't have felt more of lonely desolation somehow, had I been robbed
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of a belief, or had missed my destiny in life? Why do you
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sigh in this beastly way? Somebody absurd? Well absurd? Good Lord,
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mustn't a man ever? Eh, give me some tobacco. There was a
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pause of profound stillness. Then a match flared, and Marlow's lean face appeared
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hollow with downward folds and dropped eyelids, with an aspect of concentrated attention.
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And as he took vigorous draws at his pipe, which seemed to retreat and
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advance out of the nights in the regular flicker of tiny flame, the match
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went out. Absurd, he cried, this is the worst of trying to
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tell you here. You all are each moored with two good addresses, like
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a hulk with two anchors, a butcher round one corner, a policeman round
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another, excellent appetites and temperature normal. You hear normal from year's and to
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year's end, and you say absurd, absurd, to be exploded. Absurd,
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My dear boys, what can you expect from a man who, out
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of sheered nervousness, had just flung overboard a pair of new shoes. Now
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I think of it, it is amazing. I did not shed tears.
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I am upon the whole proud of my fortitude. I was cut to the
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quick at the idea of having lost the inestimable privilege of listening to the gifted
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kurts. Of course I was wrong. The privilege was waiting for me.
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Oh yes, I heard more than enough, and I was right too.
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A voice, he was very little more than a voice, and I heard
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him it this voice, Other voices, all of them were so little more
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than voices. And the memory of that time itself lingers upon me impalpably,
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like a dying vibration of one immense jabber, silly, atrocious, sordid,
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savage, or simply mean, without any kind of sense, voices, voices,
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even the girl herself now he was silent for a long time. I
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laid the ghost of his gifts at last with a lie. He began suddenly,
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Girl, What did I mention a girl? Oh? She is out
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of it completely. They, the women, I mean, are out of
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it. Should be out of it. We must help them stay in that
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beautiful world of their own lest ours gets worse. Oh, she had to
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be out of it. You should have heard the disinterred body of mister kurt
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saying, my intended You would have perceived directly then how completely she was out
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of it. And the lofty frontal bow of mister Kurtz. They say the
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hair goes on growing sometimes, but this specimen was impressively bald. The wilderness
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had patted him on the head, and behold it was like a ball,
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an ivory ball. It had caressed him, and lo he had withered.
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It had taken him, loved him, embraced him, got into his veins,
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consumed his flesh, and sealed his soul to its own by the inconceivable
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ceremonies of some devilish initiation. He was its spoiled and pampered favorite ivory.
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I should think so. Heaps of it, stacks of it, the old
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mud shanty was bursting with it. You would think there was not a single
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tusk left either above or below the ground in the whole country. Mostly fossil.
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The manager had remarked disparagingly, It was no more fossil than I am.
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But they call it fossil when it is duga. It appears these niggers
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do bury the tusks sometimes, But evidently they couldn't bury this parcel deep enough.
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To save the gifted mister Kurtz from his fate, we filled the steamboat
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with it and had to pile a lot on the deck. Thus he could
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see and enjoy as long as he could see, because the appreciation of this
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favor had remained with him to the last. You should have heard him say,
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my ivy, Oh yes, I heard him. My intended, my
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ivy, my station, my river, my everything belonged to him. It
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made me hold my breath in expectation of hearing the wilderness burst into a prodigious
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peal of laughter that would shake the fixed stars in their places. Everything belonged
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to him, But that was a trifle. The thing was to know what
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he belonged to, how many powers of darkness claimed him for their own.
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That was the reflection that made you creepy all over. It was impossible.
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He was not good for one either, trying to imagine he had taken a
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high seat amongst the devils of the land. I mean literally, you can't
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understand. How could you, with solid pavement under your feet, surrounded by
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kind neighbors ready to cheer you or to fall on you, stepping delicately between
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the butcher and the policeman, in the holy terror of scandal and gallows and
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lunatic asylums. How can you imagine what particular region of the first ages a
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man's untrammeled feet made take him into by the way of solitude, utter solitude
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without a policeman, by the way of silence, utter silence, where no
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warning voice of a kind neighbor can be heard, whispering of public opinion.
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These little things make all the great difference. When they are gone, you
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must fall back upon your own innate strength, upon your own capacity for faithfulness.
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Of course, you may be too much of a fool to go wrong,
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too dull even to know you are being assaulted by the powers of darkness.
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I take it no fool if it made a bargain for his soul with
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the devil. The fool is too much of a fool, or the devil
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too much of a devil, I don't know which. Or you may be
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such a thunderingly exalted creature as to be altogether deaf and blind to anything but
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heavenly sights and sounds. Then the earth for you is only a standing place.
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And whether to be like this is your loss or your gain, I
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won't pretend to say. But most of us are neither one nor the other.
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The earth for us is a place to live in where we must put
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up with sights, with sounds, with smiles too, by Jove, breathe
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dead hippo, so to speak, andnot be contaminated. And there, don't
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you see? Your strength comes in the faith, in your ability for the
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digging of unostentatious holes to bury the stuff, in your power of devotion,
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not to yourself but to an obscure, backbreaking business. And that's difficult enough.
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Mind. I am not trying to excuse or even explain. I am
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trying to account to myself for for mister Kurtz, for the shade of mister
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Kurtz, this initiated wraith from the back of nowhere honored me with its amazing
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confidence before it vanished altogether. This was because it could speak English to me.
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The original Kurts have been educated partly in England, and as he was
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good enough to say himself, his sympathies were in the right place. His
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mother was half English, his father was half French. All Europe contributed to
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the making of Kurts, and by and by I learned that, most appropriately,
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the International Society for the Suppression of Savage Customs had entrusted him with the
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making of a report for its future guidance, and he had written it too.
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I've seen it, I've read it. It was elegant, vibrating with
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elegance, but too high strong, I think seventeen pages of close writing had
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found time for. But this must have been before his, let us say,
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nerves went wrong and caused him to preside at certain midnight dances ending with
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unspeakable rights, which, as far as I reluctantly gathered from what I heard
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at various times, were offered up to him. Do you understand? To
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mister Kurtz himself. But it was a beautiful piece of writing. The opening
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paragraph, However, in the light of later information strikes me now as ominous.
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He began with the argument that we whites, from the point of development
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we had arrived at, must necessarily appear to them savages in the nature of
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supernatural beings. We approached them with the might of a deity, and so
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on and so on. By the simple exercise of our will, we can
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exert a power for good, practically unbounded, et cetera, et cetera.
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From that point he soared and took me with him. The periation was magnificent,
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though difficult to remember. You know, it gave me the notion of
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an exotic immensity, ruled by an august benevolence. It made me tingle with
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enthusiasm. This was the unbounded power of eloquence, of words, of burning
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noble words. There were no practical hints to interrupt the magic current of phrases.
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Unless a kind of note at the foot of the last page, scrawled
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evidently much later in an unsteady hand, may be regarded as the exposition of
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a method. It was very simple, and at the end of that moving
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appeal to every altruistic sentiment, it blazed at you, luminous and terrifying,
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like a flash of light in a serene sky, exterminate all the brutes.
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The curious part was that he had apparently forgotten all about that valuable postscriptum,
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because later on, when he, in a sense came to himself, he
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repeatedly entreated me to take good care of my pamphlet. He called it,
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as it was sure to have in the future a good influence upon his career.
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I had full information about all these things. And besides, as it
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turned out, I was to have the care of his memory. I've done
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enough for it to give me the indisputable right to lay it if I choose
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for an everlasting rest in the dust bin of progress, amongst all the sweepings
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and figuratively speaking, all the dead cats of civilization. But then you see,
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I can't choose. He won't be forgotten. Whatever he was, he
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was not common. He had the power to charm or frighten rudimentary souls into
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an aggravated witch dance in his honor. He could also fill the small souls
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of the pilgrims with bitter misgivings. He had one devoted friend at least,
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and he had conquered one soul in the world that was neither rudimentary, nor
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tainted with self seeking. No, I can't forget him, though I am
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not prepared to affirm the fellow was exactly worth the life we lost in getting
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to him. I missed my late helmsman, awfully. I missed him even
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while his body was still lying in the pilot house. Perhaps you will think
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it passing strange, this regret for a savage who was no more account than
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a grain of sand in a black Sahara. Well, don't you see he
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had done something he had steered for months. I had him at my back,
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a help, an instrument. It was a kind of partnership he steered
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for me. I had to look after him. I worried about his deficiencies,
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and thus a subtle bond had been created of which I only became aware
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when it was suddenly broken. And the intimate profundity of that look he gave
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me when he received his hurt remains to this day in my memory like a
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claim of distant kinship affirmed in a supreme moment. Poor fool, if he
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had only left that shutter alone, he had no restraint, no restraint,
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just like Kerts a tree swayed by the wind. As soon as I had
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put on a dry pair of slippers. I dragged him out, after first
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jerking the spear out of his side, which operation I confess I performed with
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my eyes shut tight. His heels leaped together over the little doorstep, his
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shoulders were pressed to my breast. I hugged him from behind desperately. Oh
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he was heavy, heavy, heavy, heavier than any man on earth,
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I should imagine. Then, without more ado, I tipped him overboard.
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The current snatched him as though he had been a wisp of grass, and
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I saw the body roll over twice before I lost sight of it forever.
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All the pilgrims and the manager were then congregated on the awning deck about the
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pilot house, chattering at each other like a flock of excited magpies. And
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there was a scandalized murmur at my heartless promptitude. What they wanted to keep
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that body hanging about? For? I can't guess embowm it maybe, But
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I had also heard another and a very ominous murmur on the deck below.
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My friends, the woodcutters were likewise scandalized, and with a better show of
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reason, though I admit that the reason itself was quite inadmissible. Oh quite.
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I had made up my mind that if my late helmsman was to be
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eaten, the fishes alone should have him. He had been a very second
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rate helmsman while alive, but now he was dead he might have become a
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first class temptation and possibly caused some startling trouble. Besides, I was anxious
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to take the wheel the man in pink pajamas showing himself a hopeless duffer at
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the business. This I did directly. The simple funeral was over. We
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were going half speed, keeping right in the middle of the stream, and
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I listened to the talk about me. They had given up Kurtz, they
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had given up the station. Kurtz was dead, and the station had been
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burned, and so on and so on. The red haired pilgrim was beside
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himself with the thought that at least this poor Kerts had been properly avenged.
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Say, we must have made a glorious slaughter of them in the bush.
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Say what do you think? Say? He positively danced the bloodthirsty little gingery
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beggar, and he had nearly fainted when he saw the wounded man. I
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could not help saying, you made a glorious lot of smoke. Anyhow,
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I had seen from the way the tops of the bushes rustled and flew that
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almost all the shots had gone too high. You can't hit anything unless you
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take aim and fire from the shoulder. But these chaps fired from the hip
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with their eyes shut. The retreats, I maintained, and I was right,
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was caused by the screeching of the steam whistle. Upon this they forgot
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kurts and began to howl at me with indignant protests. The man stood by
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the wheel, murmuring confidentially about the necessity of getting well away down the river
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before dark at all events. When I saw in the distance a clearing on
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the river side, and the outlines of some sort of building. What's this,
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I asked, He clapped his hands in wonder. The station, he
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cried. I edged in at once, still going half speed through my glasses,
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I saw the slope of a hill, interspersed with rare trees and perfectly
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free from undergrowth. A long, decaying building on the summit was half buried
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in the high grass. The large holes in the peaked roof gaped black from
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afar. The jungle in the woods made a background there was no enclosure or
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fence of any kind, but there had been one, apparently for near the
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house. Half a dozen slim posts remained in a row, roughly trimmed and
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with their upper ends ornamented with drowned carved balls. The rails or whatever there
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had been between had disappeared, of course. The forest surrounded all that.
32:09
The river bank was clear, and on the water side I saw a white
32:14
man under a hat like a cartwheel, beckoning persistently with his whole arm examining
32:21
the edge of the forest above and below. I was almost certain I could
32:24
see movements human forms gliding here and there. I steamed past prudently, then
32:31
stopped the engines and let her drift down. The man on the shore began
32:37
to shout, urging us to land. We have been attacked, screamed the
32:42
manager. I know, I know it's all right, yelled back the other,
32:46
as cheerful as you please, come along. It's all right. I
32:51
am glad. His aspect reminded me of something I had seen, something funny
32:58
I had seen somewhere. As I maneuvered to get alongside, I was asking
33:04
myself, what does this fellow look like? Suddenly I got it. It
33:09
looked like a harlequin. His clothes had been made of some stuff that was
33:15
brown, horland, probably, but it was covered with patches all over,
33:20
with bright patches, blue, red, and yellow patches on the back,
33:24
patches on the front, patches on elbows, on knees, colored binding around
33:30
his jacket, scarlet edging at the bottom of his trousers. And the sunshine
33:34
made him look extremely gay and wonderfully neat withal because you could see how beautifully
33:39
all this patching had been done. A beardless, boyish face, very fair,
33:45
no features to speak of, nose peeling, little blue eyes, smiles
33:51
and frowns chasing each other over that open countenance, like sunshine and shadow on
33:57
a wind swept plane. Lookout did he replied, there's a snag lodged in
34:02
here last night. What another snag? I confess, I swore, shamefully,
34:09
I had nearly holed my cribble to finish off that charming trip. The
34:15
harlequin on the back turned his little pug nose up to me. You English,
34:21
he asked, All smiles are you, I shouted from the wheel.
34:25
The smiles vanished, and he shook his head as if sorry for my disappointment.
34:31
Then he brightened up. Never mind, he cried encouragingly. Are we
34:38
in time? I asked, He is up there, he replied, with
34:44
a toss of the head up the hill and becoming gloomy. All of a
34:47
sudden, His face was like the autumn sky, overcast one moment and bright
34:52
the next. When the manager, escorted by the pilgrims, all of them
34:58
armed to the teeth, gone to the house, this chap came on board.
35:02
I say, I don't like this. The natives are in the bush,
35:07
I said, He assured me earnestly, it was all right. They
35:12
are simple people. He added. Well, I am glad you came.
35:17
It took me all my time to keep them off, but you said it
35:22
was all right. I cried, Oh they meant no harm, he said,
35:27
And as I stared, he corrected himself, not exactly, then,
35:31
vivaciously, my faith, your pilot house wants a clean up. In the
35:37
next breath, he advised me to keep enough steam on the boiler to blow
35:42
the whistle in case of trouble. One good screech will do more for you
35:46
than all your rifles. They are simple people, he repeated. He rattled
35:53
away at such a rate. He quite overwhelmed me. He seemed to be
35:58
trying to make up for lots of silence, and actually hinted, laughing that
36:02
such was the case. But don't you talk with mister Kurtz, I said,
36:08
you don't talk with that man. You listen to him, he exclaimed
36:14
with severe exultation. But now he waved his arm, and in the twinkling
36:21
of an eye, was in the outermost depths of despondency. In a moment,
36:25
he came up again with a jump, possessed himself of both my hands,
36:30
shook them continuously while he gabbed A brother sailor, honor, a pleasure
36:37
delight, introduced myself, Russian son of an archpriest, government of timeboff What
36:44
tobacco, English tobacco, The excellent English tobacco. Now that's brotherly smoke.
36:52
Where's a sailor that does not smoke? The pipe soothed him. Gradually I
37:00
made out he had run away from school and had gone to sea in a
37:02
Russian ship, ran away again, served some time in English ships, was
37:08
now reconciled with the archpriest. He made a point of that. But when
37:14
one is young, one must see things gathered experience, ideas enlarge the mind
37:20
here, I interrupted, you can never tell here I met mister Kurtz,
37:25
he said, youthfully, solemn and reproachful. I held my tongue after that.
37:32
It appears he had persuaded a Dutch trading house on the coast to fit
37:37
him out with stores and goods, and started for the interior with a light
37:40
heart and no more idea of what would happen to him than a baby.
37:45
He had been wandering about that river for nearly two years alone, cut off
37:50
from everybody and everything. I am not so young as I look. I
37:57
am twenty five, he said. At first, Old von Schechten would tell
38:00
me to go to the devil. He narrated with keen enjoyment. But I
38:06
stuck to him and talked and talked till at last he got afraid I would
38:10
talk the hind leg off his favorite dog. So he gave me some cheap
38:15
things and a few guns, and told me he hoped he would never see
38:19
my face again, good old Dutchman von Scheten. I've sent him one small
38:25
lot of ivory a year ago so that he can't call me a little thief
38:30
when I get back. I hope he got it, and for the rest
38:35
I don't care. I had some wood stacked for you. That was my
38:38
old house, did you see. I gave him Towson's book. He made
38:45
as though he would kiss me, but restrained himself. The only book I
38:50
had left, and I thought I had lost it, he said, looking
38:53
at it ecstatically. So many accidents happened to a man about alone. You
39:00
know, canoes get upset sometimes, and sometimes you've got to clear out so
39:05
quick when the people get angry. He thumbed the pages. You made notes
39:10
in Russian, I asked. He nodded. I thought they were written in
39:16
cipher, I said. He laughed, then became serious. I had lots
39:22
of trouble to keep these people off, he said. Did they want to
39:27
kill you? I asked, Oh no, he cried and checked himself.
39:32
Why did they attack us? I pursued. He hesitated, then said,
39:37
shame facedly. They don't want him to go, don't they? I said
39:45
curiously. He nodded a nod full of mystery and wisdom, I tell you,
39:52
he cried, This man has enlarged my mind. He opened his arms
39:59
wide, staring at me with his little blue eyes that were perfectly round end
40:07
of chapter two,