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01 - Heart of Darkness - Joseph Conrad · Adventure Books Library

• The Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad, Part one of chapter one. 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 too 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 graves End, 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 fore affectionately watched his back as he stood in the boughs, looking to seaward. On the whole river, there was nothing that looked half so nautical. It 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. Marlowe sat cross legged, right aft, leaning against the mizzen mast. He had sunken cheeks, a yellow complexion, a straight back and ascetic aspect, and with his arms dropped the palms of his hands outwards, resembled an idol. The director, satisfied the anchor had good hold, moved 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 March 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 the 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 forever, 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 the 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 rotund 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 adventures and the settlers, King's ships, and the ships of men on change, captains, admirals, the dark interlopers of the Eastern trade, and the commissioned generals of the East India. Fleet 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 the unknown earth, the dreams of men, the seed of the 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 Marlin, 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 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 accepted, and to him the meaning of an episode was not inside like a colonel, but outside, enveloping the tail 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 Marlowe. 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 nights, yes, but it is like a running blaze on a plane, 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 do you call him, a trireme in the Mediterranean, ordered suddenly to the north, run overland, across the gulls in a hurry, put in charge of one of these craft. The Legionnaires, a wonderful lot of handymen. 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. Sand banks, marshes, forests, savages, precious little to eat 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 bye, 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 prefects or tax gatherer or trader, even to mend his fortunes, land in a swamp, marched through the woods, and in some inland post, feel the savagery, the utter savagery, had closed around him, all that mysterious life of the wilderness that stirs in the forest and 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 bow 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 that taking it away from those who have a different complexion, more 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, bred 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 seemed so often unaware of what their audience would like best to hear, yet to understand the effect of it upon 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 pindering 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 like that, I would put my finger on it and say, ah, when I grow up, I will go there. The North Pole was one of those places. I remember, well, I haven't been there yet, and shall not try now. The glamours off other places were scattered about the 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 anymore. 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 the 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 have 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 Freed 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 that 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 Marlowe, 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 et cetera. She was determined to make no end of fuss to get me a pointed skipper of a river steamboat. If such was my fancy. I got my appointments, 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 the misunderstanding about some hens, yes, two black hens. Freslaven 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 Freslavin 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. Thunder struck 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 Freshlaven commanded, left, also in a bad panic, in charge of the engineer. I believe afterwards nobody seemed to trouble much about fres Lavin'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 of 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 the city that always makes me think of a waighted 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 oversea 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 right and left, immense double door 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 slimman 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 sonombulist 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 around 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 deuice of a lot of blue, of little green, smears of orange, and on the east coast a purple patch to show where the jolly pioneers of progress drink the jolly lugger 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. Ah. 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 and 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 friend beou 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'm 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 woolf 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 footwarmer, and a cat reposed on her lap. She wore a starched white affair on her head and 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 to you, with foolish and cheery countenances, or 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. Bave 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 secret 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 upstairs and led me forth He was shabby and careless, with enstains 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 Vremouth's, 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 in front and every way, taking notes carefully. He was an unshaven little man in a threadbare coat like a gabardine, with his feet in slippers, and I thought him a harmless fool. I always ask leave in the interest of science to measure the crania of those going outs, eh, 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 ere 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 messieur 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 er good bye, ah, good bye hardieu. In the tropics, one must before everything keep calm. He lifted a warning forefinger. Do calm, do calm. One thing more remained to do. Say good bye to my excellent hands. 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 people besides as an exceptional and gifted creature, a piece of good fortune for the company, a man you didn't get hold of every day. Good heavens, and I was going to take charge of a tuppenny haypenny 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 feel quite uncomfortable. I ventured to hint that the company was run for a 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 has never been anything like it, that 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 flat, be sure to ride often, and so on, and I left in the streets. 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 coat 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 flagpole 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 Grand Bassam, little popo names. It seemed to belong to some sordid farce acted out in front of a sinister black cloth, the idleness of a passenger, my isolation amongst all these men with whom I had no point of contact. The oily and languid see 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 blackfellers. 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, and 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 O 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 six 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 six inch guns. A small flame would dart and vanish, A little white smoke would disappear, A tiny projector 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. We gave her her letters. I heard the men in that lonely ship were dying of fever at the rate of three a day, and went on. We call it some more places with farcical names, where the merry dance of death and trade goes on in a still and earthly atmosphere, as of an overheated catacomb, all along the formless coast, boarded by dangerous surf, as if nature herself had tried to ward off intruders in and out of rivers, streams of death in life, whose banks were ru into mud, whose waters thickened into slime, invaded the contorted mangroves that seemed to writhe at us in the extremity of an impotent despair. Nowhere did be stopped long enough to get a particularized impression, but the general sense of vague and oppressive wonder grew upon me. It was like a weary pilgrimage, amongst hints for nightmares. It was upward of thirty days before I saw the mouth of the big river. We anchored off the seat of the government. But my work would not begin till some two hundred miles further on. So as soon as I could, I made a start for the place thirty miles higher up, I had my passage on a little sea going steamer. A captain was a Swede, and, knowing me for a seaman, invited me on the bridge. He was a young man, lean, fair and morose, with lanky hair and a shuffling gate. As we left the miserable little wharf, he tossed his head contemptuously at the shore ben living there. He asked. I said, yes, fine lot, those cverment chaps, are they not? He went on, speaking English with great precision and considerable bitterness. It is funny what some people we'll do for a few francs a month. I wonder what becomes of that kind when it goes up country, I said to him. I expected to see that soon, so he exclaimed. He shuffled a thwart, keeping an eye. I head vigilantly. It don't be too sure, he continued. The other day I took up a man who hanged himself on the road. He was a Swede, too, hanged himself. Why in God's name? I cried? He kept on looking out watchfully. Who knows the sun too much for him or the country? Perhaps? At last we opened a reach, A rocky cliff appeared mounds of turned up earth by the shore houses on a hill, others with iron roofs, amongst a waste of excavations or hanging to the declivity. A continuous noise of the rapids above hovered over this scene of inhabited devastation. A lot of people, mostly black and naked, moved about like ants. A jetty projected into the river. A blinding sunlight drowned all this, at times in a sudden recrudescence of glare. There's your company station, said the swede, pointing to three wooden barrack like structures on the rocky slope. I will send your things up four boxes. Did you say so? Farewell? I came upon a boiler wallowing in the grass, then found a path leading up the hill. It turned aside for the boulders, and also for an undersized railway truck lying there on its back, with its wheels in the air. One was off. The thing looked as dead as the carcass of some animal. I came upon more pieces of decaying machinery, a stack of rusty rails. To the left, A clump of trees made a shady spot where dark things seemed to stir feebly. I blinked. The path was steep. A horn tooted to the right, and I saw the black people run. A heavy and dull detonation shook the ground. A puff of smoke came out of the cliff, and that was all. No change appeared on the face of the rock. They were building a railway. The cliff was not in the way or anything, but this objectless blasting was all the work going on. A slight clinking behind me made me turn my head. Six black men advanced in a file, toiling up the path. They walked erect and slow, balancing small baskets full of earth on their heads, and the clink kept time with their footsteps. Black rags were wound round their loins, and the short ends behind waggled to and fro like tails. I could see every rib. The joints of their limbs were like knots in a rope. Each had an iron collar on his neck, and all were connected together with a chain whose bites swung between them rhythmically clinking. Another report from the cliff made me think suddenly of that ship of war I had seen firing into a continent. It was the same kind of ominous voice But these men could, by no stretch of imagination be called enemies. They were called criminals, and the outraged law, like the bursting shells, had come to them an insoluble misas from the sea. All their meager breasts panted together, the violently dilated nostrils quivered, the eyes stared stonily up hill. They passed me within six inches without a glance, with that complete deathlike indifference of unhappy savages. Behind this raw matter, one of the reclaimed, the product of the new forces at work, Strode despondently, carrying a rifle by its middle. He had a uniform jacket with one button off, and seeing a white man on the path, hoisted his weapon to his shoulder with alacrity. This was simple prudence, white men being so much alike at a distance that he could not tell who I might be. He was speedily reassured, and with a large white, rascally grin and a glance at his charge, seemed to take me into partnership in his exalted trust. After all, I also was a part of the great cause of these high and just proceedings. Instead of going up, I turned and descended to the left. My idea was to let that chain gang get out of sight before I climbed the hill. You know, I am not particularly tender. I've had to strike and to fend off. I've had to resist and to attack. Sometimes that's only one way of resisting, without counting the exact costs according to the demands of such sort of life, as I had blundered into, I've seen the devil of violence, and the devil of greed, and the devil of hot desire. But by all the stars, these were strong, lusty, red eyed devils that swayed and drove men men, I tell you. But as I stood on this hillside, I foresaw that in the blinding sunshine of that land, I would become acquainted with a flabby, pretending, weak eyed devil of a rapation and pitiless folly. How insidious he could be too, I was only to find out several months later, and a thousand miles farther. For a moment I stood appalled, as though by a warning. Finally I descended the hill obliquely towards the trees I had seen. I avoided a vast artificial hole somebody had been digging on the slope, the purpose of which I found it impossible to divine. It wasn't a quarry or a sand pit anyhow, it was just a hole. It might have been connected with the philanthropic desire of giving the criminal something to do. I don't know. Then I nearly fell into a very narrow ravine, almost no more than a scar in the hillside. I discovered that a lot of imported drainage pipes for the settlement had been tumbled in there. There wasn't one that was not broken. It was a wanton smash up. At last I got under the trees. My purpose was to stroll into the shade for a moment, but no sooner within than it seemed to me I had stepped into the gloomy circle of some inferno. The rapids were near, and an uninterrupted, uniform, headlong rushing noise filled the mournful stillness of the grove, where not a breath stirred, not a leaf moved, with a mysterious sound, as though the tearing pace of the launched earth had suddenly become audible. Black shapes crouched lay sat between the trees, leaning against the trunks, clinging to the earth, half coming out, half efface within the dim light in all the attitudes of pain, abandonment, and despair. Another mine on the cliff went off, followed by a slight shudder of the soil under my feet. The work was going on, and this was the place where some of the helpers had withdrawn to die. They were dying slowly. It was very clear they were not enemies, they were not criminals. They were nothing earthly now, nothing but black shadows of disease and starvation, lying confusedly in the greenish gloom brought from all the recesses of the coasts, in all the legality of time, contracts lost in uncongenial surroundings, fed on unfamiliar food, they sickened, became inefficient, and were then allowed to crawl away and rest. These moribun shapes were free as air and nearly as thin. I began to distinguish the gleam of the eyes under the trees. Then, glancing down, I saw a face near my hand. The black bones reclined at full length with one shoulder against the tree, and slowly the eyelids rose, and the sunken eyes looked up at me, enormous and vacant, a kind of blind white flicker in the depths of the orbs, which died out slowly. The man seemed young, almost a boy, But you know, with them it's hard to tell. I found nothing else to do but to offer him one of my good swedes ship's biscuits I had in my pocket. The fingers closed slowly on it and held. There was no other movements, and no other glance. He had tied a bit of white worsted round his neck. Why where did he get it? Was it a badge, an ornament, a charm, a propitiatory act? Was there any idea at all connected with it? It looked startling round his black neck, this bit of white thread. From beyond the seas, near the same tree, two more bundles of a cute angles sat with their legs drawn up, one with his chin propped on his knees, stared at nothing in an intolerable and appalling manner. His brother phantom rested its forehead as if overcome with a great weariness, And all about others were scattered in every pose of contorted collapse, as in some picture of a massacre or a pestilence. While I stood horror struck, one of these creatures rose to his hands and knees, and went off on all fours towards the river to drink. He lapped out of his hand, then sat up in the sunlight, crossing his shins in front of him, and after a time let his wooly head fall on his breast bone. And of Part one