Latest / Classic Adventure Books Library / 02 - Heart of Darkness - Joseph Conrad
Transcript
- Part two of chapter one of Heart of Darkness. I didn't want any more loitering in the shade, and I made haste towards the station. When near the buildings, I met a white man in such an unexpected elegance of get up that in the first moment I took him for a sort of vision. I saw a high starched collar, white cuffs, a light outpack of jacket, snowy trousers, a clean necktie, and varnished boots, no hat, hair parted, brushed, oiled under a green lined parasol, held in a big white hand. He was amazing and had a penholder behind his ear. I shook hands with this miracle, and I learned he was the company's chief accountants, and that all the bookkeeping was done at this station. He had come out for a moment, he said, to get a breath of fresh air. The expression sounded wonderfully odd, with its suggestion of sedentary desk life. I wouldn't have mentioned the fellow to you at all. Only it was from his lips that I first heard the name of the man who was so indissolubly connected with the memories of that time. Moreover, I respected the fellow. Yes, I respected his collars, his vast cuffs, his brushed hair. His appearance was certainly that of a head dresser's dummy. But in the great demoralization of the land, he kept up his appearance. That's backbone, his starched collars and got up shirt fronts were achievements of character. He had been out nearly three years, and later I could not help asking him how he managed to sport shut linen. He had just the faintest blush and said modestly, I've been teaching one of the native women about the station. It was difficult. She had a distaste for the work. Thus this man had verily accomplished something, and he was devoted to his books, which were in apple pie order. Everything else in the station was in a muddle. Heads, things, buildings, strings of dusty niggers with splay feets arrived and departed a stream of manufactured goods, rubbishy cottons, beads and brass wire set into the depths of darkness, and in return came a precious trickle of ivory. I had to wait in the station for ten days, an eternity. I lived in a hut in the yard, but to the out of the chaos. I would sometimes get into the accountant's office. It was built of horizontal planks, and so badly put together that as he bent over his high desk, he was barred from neck to heels with narrow strips of sunlight. There was no need to open the big shutter to see it was hot. There, too, big flies buzzed fiendishly and did not sting, but stabbed. I sat generally on the floor, while of faultless appearance, and even slightly scented, perching on a high stool, he wrote, He wrote, Sometimes he stood up for exercise when a truckled bed with a sick man, some invalid agent from up country was put in there. He exhibited a gentle annoyance. The groans of this sick person, he said, distract my attention, and without that it is extremely difficult to guard against clerical errors in this climate. One day, he remarked, without lifting his head in the interior, you will no doubt meet mister Kurtz. On my asking who mister Kurtz was, he said he was a first class agent's and seeing my disappointment at this information, he added, slowly, laying down his pen, he is a very remarkable person. Further questions elicited from him that mister Kurtz was at present in charge of a trading post, a very important one in the true ivory country at the very bottom of there sends in as much ivory as all the others put together. He began to write again. The sick man was too ill to groan. The flies buzzed in a great peace. Suddenly there was a growing murmur of voices and a great trampling of feet. A caravan had come in. A violent babble of uncouth sounds burst out on the other side of the planks. All the carriers were speaking together, and in the midst of the uproar, the mementable voice of the chief agent was heard, giving it up tearfully for the twentieth time that day. He rode slowly. What a frightful row, he said. He crossed the room gently to look at the sick man, and returning, said to me, he does not hear what dead? I asked, startled, No, not yet, he answered, with great composure, then alluding with the toss of the head to the tumult in the station yard. When one has got to make correct entries, one comes to hate those savages, hate them to the death. He remained thoughtful for a moment. When you see mister Kurtz, he went on, tell him from me that everything here he glanced at the desk, is very satisfactory. They don't like to write to him. With those messengers of ours. You never know who may get hold of your letter. At that central station, he stared at me for a moment with his mild bulging eyes. Oh oh, he will go far, very far, he began again. He will be a somebody in the administration before long they above the council in Europe, you know, mean him to be. He turned to his work. The noise outside had ceased, and presently, in going out, I stopped at the door, in the steady buzz of flies. The homeward bound agent was lying, finished and insensible. The other, bent over his books, was making correct entries of perfectly correct transactions. And fifty feet below the doorstep I could see the still treetops of the grove of death. Next day I left that station at last with a caravan of sixty men for a two hundred mile tramp. No use telling you much about that. Paths paths everywhere, A stamped in work of paths, spreading over the empty land, through the long grass, through burnt grass, through thickets, down and up chilly ravines, up and down stony hills, ablaze with heat and a solitude, a solitude, nobody, not a hut. The population had cleared out a long time ago. Well, if a lot of mysterious niggers, armed with all kinds of fearful weapons, suddenly took to traveling on the road between Deal and Gravesend, catching the yukele's right and left to carry heavy loads for them, I fancy every farm and cottage thereabouts would get empty very soon. Only here the dwellings were gone too. Still I passed through several abandoned villages. There's something pathetically childish in the ruins of grass walls, day after day, with the stamp and shuffle of sixty pair of bare feet behind me, each pair under a six pound load. Camp, cook, sleep, strike, camp, march now and then a carrier dead in harness, at rest in the long grass near the path, with an empty water good and his long staff lying by his side. A great silence around and above, perhaps on some quiet night, the tremor of far off drums sinking, swelling, a tremor, vast, faint, a sound, weird, appealing, suggestive and wild, and perhaps with as profound a meaning as the sound of bells in a Christian country. Once a white man in an unbuttoned uniform, camping on the path with an armed escort of lush Zanzabaris, very hospitable and festive, not to say drunk, was looking after the upkeep of the road. He declared, can't say I saw any road or any upkeep, unless the body of a middle aged Negro with a bullet hole in the forehead, upon which I absolutely stumbled three miles farther on, may be considered as a permanent improvement. I had a white companion too, not a bad chap, but rather too fleshy, and with the exasperating habit of fainting on the hot hillsides miles away from the least bit of shade and water. Annoying, you know, to hold your own coat like a parasol over a man's head while he's coming too. I couldn't help asking him once what he meant by coming there at all? To make money? Of course, what do you think, he said, scornfully. Then he got fever and had to be carried in a hammock slung under a pole. As he weighed sixteen stone. I had no end of rows with the carriers. They jibbed, ran away, sneaked off with their loads in the night. Quite a mutiny. So one evening I made a speech in English with gestures, not one of which was lost to the sixty pair of eyes before me, And the next morning I started the hammock off in front all right. An hour afterwards I came upon the whole concern wrecked in a bush man hammock, groans, blankets, horrors. The heavy pole had skinned his poor nose. He was very anxious for me to kill somebody. But there wasn't the shadow of a carrier near. I remembered the old doctor. It would be interesting for science to watch the mental changes of individuals. On the spot, I felt I was becoming scientifically interesting. However, all that is to know purpose. On the fifteenth day I came in sight of the Big River again and hobbled into the central station. It was on a back water, surrounded by scrub and forest, with a pretty border of smelly mud on one side and on the three others enclosed by a crazy fence of rushes. A neglected gap was all the gait it had, and the first glance at the place was enough to let you see the flabby devil was running that show. White men with long staves in their hands, appeared languidly from amongst the buildings, strolling up to take a look at me, and then retired out of sight somewhere. One of them, a stout, excitable chap with black mustaches, informed me with great volubility and many digressions. As soon as I told him who I was, that my steamer was at the bottom of the river. I was thunderstruck. What how why? Oh, it was all right. The manager himself was there, all quite correct. Everybody had behaved splendidly. Splendidly, you must, he said, in agitation, Go and see the general manager at once. He is waiting. I did not see the real significance of that wreck at once. I fancy I see it now, but I am not sure, not at all. Certainly the affair was too stupid when I think of it, to be altogether natural. Still, but at the moment it presented itself simply as a confounded nuisance. The steamer was sunk. They had started two days before in a sudden hurry up the river with the manager on board, in charge of some volunteer skipper, and before they had been out three hours, they tore the bottom out of her on stones, and she sank near the south bank. I asked myself what I was to do there now my boat was lost. As a matter of fact, I had plenty to do in fishing my mind command out of the river. I had to set about it the very next day. That and the repairs when I brought the pieces to the station took some months. My first interview with the manager was curious. He did not ask me to sit down after my twenty mile walk that morning. He was commonplace in complexion, in features, in manners, and in voice. He was of middle size and of ordinary build. His eyes of the usual blue, were perhaps remarkably cold, and he certainly could make his glance fall on one as trenchant and heavy as an axe. But even at these times, the rest of his person seemed to disclaim the intention. Otherwise there was only an indefinable faint expression of his lips, something stealthy. A smile. Not a smile, I remember it, but I can't explain. It was unconscious. This smile was though just after he had said something, it got intensified for an instant. It came at the end of his speeches, like a seal applied on the words to make the meaning of the commonest phrase appear absolutely inscrutable. He was a common trader from his youth up, employed in these parts. Nothing more. He was obeyed. Yet he inspired neither love, nor fear, nor even respect. He inspired uneasiness. That was its uneasiness, not a definite mistrusts, just uneasiness. Nothing more. You have no idea how effective such a faculty can be. He had no genius for organizing, for initiative, or for order, even that was evident in such things as the fplorable state of the station. He had no learning and no intelligence. His position had come to him. Why, perhaps because he was never ill, He had served three terms of three years out there, Because triumphant health in the general route of constitutions is a kind of power in itself. When he went home on leave, he rioted on a large scale pompously jack ashore, with a difference in externals. Only this one could gather from his casual talk he originated nothing. He can keep the routine going, that's all. But he was great. He was great by this little thing that it was impossible to tell what could control such a man. He never gave that secret away. Perhaps there was nothing within him. Such a suspicion made one pause. For out there there were no external checks. Once, when various tropical diseases had laid low almost every agent in the station, he was heard to say, men who come out here should have no entrails. He sealed the utterance with that smile of his, as though it had been a door opening into a darkness he had in his keeping. You fancied you had seen things. But the seal was on. When annoyed at meal times by the constant quarrels of the white men about precedents, he ordered an immense round table to be made, for which a special house had to be built. This was the station's mess room, where he sat, was the first place the rest were nowhere. One felt this to be his unalterable conviction. He was neither civil nor uncivil. He was quiet. He allowed his boy and over fed young Negro from the coast, to treat the white men under his very eyes, with provoking insolence. He began to speak as soon as he saw me. I had been very long on the road. He could not wait, had to start without me. The up river stations had to be relieved. There had been so many delays already that he did not know who was dead and who was alive, and how they got on, and so on and so on. He paid no attention to my explanations, and, playing with a stick of sealing wax, repeated several times that the situation was very grave, fairy grave. There were rumors that a very important station was in jeopardy, and its chief, mister Kurtz, was ill. Hoped it was not true. Mister Kurtz was. I felt weary and irritable. Hang Kurtz, I thought. I interrupted him by saying, I had heard of mister Kurtz on the coast. Ah, so they talk of him down there, he murmured to himself. Then he began again, assuring me mister Kurtz was the best agent he had, an exceptional man, of the greatest importance to the company. Therefore, I could understand his anxiety. He was, he said, very very uneasy. Certainly he fidgeted on his chair a good deal, exclaimed, Ah, mister Kurtz broke the stick of sealing wax and seemed dumbfounded by the accident. Next thing, he wanted to know how long it would take to I interrupted him again, being hungry, you know, and kept on my feet too. I was getting savage. How can I tell? I said, I haven't even seen the wreck yet. Some months, no doubt. All this talk seemed to me so futile. Some months he said, well, let us say three months before we can make a start. Yes, that ought to do the affair. I flung out of his hut. He lived all alone in a clay hut with a sort of verandah muttering to myself my opinion of him, he was a chattering idiot. Afterwards, I took it back when it was borne in upon me, startlingly with what extreme nicety he had estimated the time requisite for the affair. I went to work the next day, turning, so to speak, my back on that station. In that way, only it seemed to me I could keep my hold on the redeeming facts of life. Still one must look about sometimes, And then I saw this station, these men strolling aimlessly about in the sunshine of the yard, I asked myself sometimes what in all meant? They wandered here and there with their absurd long staves in their hands, like a lot of faithless pilgrims, bewitched inside a rotten fence. The word ivory rang in the air, was whispered, was sighed. You would think they were praying to it. A taint of imbecile rapacity blew through it all like a whiff from some corpse. By Jove, I've never seen anything so unreal in my life, and outside the silent wilderness surrounding, this cleared speck on the earth struck me as something great and invincible, like evil or truth, waiting patiently for the passing away of this fantastic invasion. Oh these months, well, never mind. Various things happened. One evening, a grass shed full of Calaco cotton prints, bees, and I don't know what else, burst into a blaze so suddenly that you would have thought the earth had opened to let an avenging fire consume all that trash. I was smoking my pipe quietly by my dismantled steamer, and saw them all cutting capers in the lights with their arms lifted high. When the stout man with mustaches came tearing down to the river, a tin pail in his hand, assured me that everybody was behaving splendidly. Splendidly, dipped about a quart of water and tore back again. I noticed there was a hole in the bottom of his pail. I strolled up. There was no hurry, you see. The thing had gone off like a box of matches. It had been hopeless from the very first. The flame had leaped high, driven everybody back, lighted up everything, and collapsed. The shed was already a heap of embers, glowing fiercely. It was being beaten near by. They said he had caused the fire in some way, but be that as it may, he was screeching most horribly. I saw him later for several days, sitting in a bit of shade, looking very sick and trying to recover himself. Afterwards, he arose and went out, and the wilderness, without a sound, took him into its bosom again. As I approached the glow from the dark, I found myself at the back of two men talking. I heard the name of Kurts pronounced, then the words take advantage of this unfortunate accident. One of the men was the manager. I wished him a good evening. Did you ever see anything like it? Say? It was incredible, he said, and walked off. The other man remained he was a first class agent, young gentlemanly bit reserved, with a forked little beard and a hooked nose. He was stand offish with the other agents, and they on their side said he was the manager's spy upon them. As to me, I had hardly ever spoken to him before we got into talk, and by and by we strolled away from the hissing ruins. Then he asked me to his room, which was in the main building of the station. He struck a match, and I perceived that this young aristocrat had not only a silver mounted dressing case, but also a whole candle all to himself. Just at that time the manager was the only man supposed to have any right to candles. Native mats covered the clay walls. A collection of spears, assgades, shiels knives was hung up in trophies. The business entrusted to this fellow was the making of bricks, so I had been informed. But there wasn't a fragment of a brick anywhere in the station, and he had been there more than a year waiting. It seems he could not make bricks without something. I don't know what, straw maybe. Anyway, it could not be found there, and as it was not likely to be sent from Europe, it did not appear clear to me what he was waiting for. An act of special creation perhaps. However, they were all waiting, all the sixteen or twenty pilgrims of them, for something, and upon my word, it did not seem an uncongenial occupation from the way they took it, though, the only thing that ever came to them was disease. As far as I could see. They beguiled the time by backbiding and in figuring against each other in a foolish kind of way. There was an air of plotting about that station, but nothing came of it. Of course, it was as unreal as everything else, as the philanthropic pretense of the whole concern as their talk, as their government, as their show of work. The only real feeling was a desire to get appointed to a trading post where ivory was to be had, so that they could earn percentages. They intrigued and slandered and hated each other only on that account. But as to effectually lifting a little finger, oh no, By heavens, there was something, after all in the world allowing one man to steal a horse while another must not look at a halter steal a horse straight out, very well, he has done it. Perhaps he can ride. But there is a way of looking at a halter that would provoke the most charitable of saints into a kick. I had no idea why he wanted to be sociable, but as we chatted in there, it suddenly occurred to me the fellow was trying to get at something, in fact pumping me. He alluded constantly to Europe, to the people I was supposed to know there, putting leading questions as to my acquaintances in the sepulchral city. So on his little eyes glittered like mica discs with curiosity, though he tried to keep up a bit of superciliousness. At first I was astonished, but very soon I became awfully curious to see what he would find out from me. I couldn't possibly imagine what I had in me to make it worth his while. It was very pretty to see how he baffled himself, for in truth, my body was full only of chills, and my head had nothing in it but that wretched steamboat business. It was evident he took me for a perfectly shameless prevaricator. At last he got angry, and to conceal a moment of furious annoyance, he yawned. I rose. Then I noticed a small sketch of oils on a panel representing a woman draped and blindfolded, carrying a lighted torch. The background was somber, almost black. The movement of the woman was stately, and the effect of the torchlight on the face was sinister. It arrested me, and he stood by civilly holding an empty half pint champagne bottle medical comforts, with the candle stuck in it. To my question, he said, mister Kurtz had painted this in this very station more than a year ago, while waiting for means to go to his trading post. Tell me, pray, said I. Who is this, mister Kurtz, the chief of the inner station, He answered, in a short tone, looking away. Much obliged, I said, laughing, and you are the brickmaker of the central station. Every one knows that he was silent for a while He is a prodigy, he said, at last, he is an emissary of pity and science and progress, and devil knows what else we want. He began to declaim suddenly for the guidance of the cause entrusted to us by Europe, so to speak, higher intelligence, wide sympathies, a singleness of purpose. Who says that? I asked lots of them, he replied, some even write that. And so he comes here a special bee, as you ought to know? Why ought I to know? I interrupted, really surprised he paid no attention. Yes, to day, he is chief of the best station. Next year he will be assistant manager two years more. And but I dare say you know what he will be in two years time. You are of the new gang, the gang of virtue. The same people who sent him specially also recommended you. Oh, don't say no, I've mine own eyes to trust. Lights dawned upon me. My dear aunt's influential acquaintances were producing an unexpected effect upon that young man. I nearly burst into a laugh. Do you read the company's confidential correspondence? I asked. He hadn't a word to say. It was great fun. When mister Kurtz, I continued severely. It's general, manager, you won't have the opportunity. He blew the candle out suddenly, and we went outside. The moon had risen. Black figures strolled about listlessly, pouring water on the glow. Whence proceeded, a sound of hissing steam ascended in the moonlight. The beaten nigger groaned. Somewhere, What a row the brute makes, said the indefatigable man with the mustaches appearing near us. Serve him right, transgression punishment, bang, pitiless, pitiless, That's the only way this will prevent all conflagrations for the future. I was just telling the manager. He noticed my companion and became crestfallen all at once. Not in bed yet, he said, with a kind of servile heartiness. It's so natural. Ah, danger agitation, he vanished. I went on to the river side, and the other followed me. I heard a scathing murmur at my ear. Heap of muffs go to the Pilgrims could be seen in nots gesticulating discussing. Several had stilled their staves in their hands. I verily believe they took these sticks to bed with them. Beyond the fence. The forest stood up spectrally in the moonlight, and through that dim stir, through the faint sounds of that lamentable courtyard, the silence of the land went home to one's very heart, its mystery, its greatness, the amazing reality of its concealed life. The hurt nigger moaned feebly somewhere near by, and then fetched a deep sigh that made me mend my pace away from there. I felt a hand introducing itself under my arm. My dear sir, said the fellow. I don't want to be misunderstood, and especially by you, who we'll see, mister Kurtz, long before I can have that pleasure. I wouldn't like him to get a false idea of my disposition. I let him run on this paper, Machet Mestopheles, And it seemed to me that if I tried, I could poke my forefinger through him and would find nothing inside but a little loose dirt. Maybe he don't, you see, had been planned to be the assistant manager by and by under the present man. And I could see that the coming of that Kurtz had upset them both not a little. He talked precipitately, and I did not try to stop him. I had my shoulders against the wreck of my steamer, hauled up on the slope, like a carcass of some big river animal. The smell of mud, of prime evil, mud, by jove was in my nostrils. The high stillness of primeval forests was before my eyes. There were shiny patches on the black creek. The moon had spread over everything, a thin layer of silver over the rank grass, over the mud open, the wall of matted vegetation, standing higher than the wall of a temple. Over the great river I could see through a somber gap, glittering, glittering, as it flowed broadly by, without a murmur. All this was great, expectant mute. While the man jabbered about himself. I wondered whether the stillness on the face of the immensity looking at us too, were meant as an appeal or as a menace? What were we who had strayed in there? Could we handle that dumb thing or would it handle us? I felt, how big, how confoundly big, was that thing that couldn't talk, and perhaps was deaf as well? What was in there? I could see a little ivory coming out from there, and I had heard mister Kurtz was in there. I had heard enough about it too, God knows. Yet somehow it didn't bring any image with it, no more than if I had been told an angel or a fiend was in there. I believed it in the same way one of you might believe there are inhabitants in the planet Mars. I knew once a Scotch salemanaker, who was certain dead sure there were people in Mars. If you asked him for some idea how they looked and behaved, he would get shy and mutter something about walking on all fours. If you as much as smiled, he would, though a man of sixty, offer to fight you. I would not have gone so far as to fight for Kurtz, but I went for him near enough to a lie. You know, I hate, detest, and can't bear a lie. Not because I am straighter than the rest of us, but simply because it appalls me. There is a taint of death, a flavor of mortality in lies, which is exactly what I hate and detest in the world, what I want to forget. It makes me miserable and sick, like biting something rotten would do temperament, I suppose well, I went near enough to it by letting the young fool believe anything he liked to imagine. As to my influence in Europe, I became in an instant as much of a pretense as the rest of the bewitched pilgrims. This simply because I had a notion it would somehow be of help to that Kurtz, whom at that time I did not see. You understand, he was just a word for me. I did not see the man in the name any more than you do. Do you see him? Do you see the story? Do you see anything? It seems to me I am trying to tell you a dream, making a vain attempt, because no relation of a dream can convey the dream sensation, that commingling of absurdity, surprise, and bewilderment in a tremor of struggling revolt, that notion of being captured by the incredible, which is of the very essence of dreams. He was silent for a while. Now it is in possible. It is impossible to convey the life sensation of any given epoch of one's existence, that which makes its truth, its meaning, its subtle and penetrating essence. It is impossible we live as we dream alone. He paused again, as if reflecting, then added, of course in this you fellas see more than I could. Then you see me whom you know. It had become so pitch dark that we listeners could hardly see one another for a long time. Already, he sitting apart, had been no more to us than a voice. There was not a word from anybody. The others might have been asleep, but I was awake. I listened. I listened, on the watch for the sentence, for the word that would give me the clue to the faint uneasiness inspired by this narrative that seemed to shape itself without human lips in the heavy night air of the river. Yes, I let him run on. Marlow began again, and think what he pleased about the powers that were behind me. I did, And there was nothing behind me. There was nothing but that wretched, old, mangled steamboat I was leaning against. While he talked fluently about the necessity for every man to get on, and when one comes out here you can see it is not to gaze at the moon. Mister Kurtz was a universal genius, but even a genius would find it easier to work with adequate tools intelligent men. He did not make bricks. Why there was a physical impossibility in the way, as I was well aware. And if he did secretarial work for the manager, it was because no sensible man rejects wantonly the confidence of his superiors. Did I see it? I saw it? What more did I want? What I really wanted was rivets by heaven, rivets to get on with the work, to stop the whole rivets I wanted. There were cases of them down at the coast, cases piled up, burst split. You kicked a loose rivet in every second step in that station yard. On the hillside, rivets had rolled into the grove of death. You could fill your pockets with rivets for the trouble of stooping down. And there wasn't one rivet to be found where it was wanted. We had plates that would do, but nothing to fasten them with. And every week the messenger, a long negro let, her bag on shoulder and staff in hand, left our station for the coast, And several times a week a coast caravan came in with trade goods, ghastly glazed calico that made you shudder only to look at it. Glass beads, value about penny court, confounded, spotted cotton, handkerchiefs, and no rivets. Three carriers could have brought all that was wanted to set that steamboat afloat. He was becoming confidential now, But I fancy my unresponsive attitude must have exasperated him at last, for he judged it necessary to inform me he feared neither God nor devil, let alone any mere man. I said, I could see that very well. But what I wanted was a certain quantity of rivets. And rivets were what really mister Kurtz wanted, if he had only known it now. Letters went to the coast every week. My dear sir, he cried, I write from dictation. I demanded rivets. There was a way for an intelligent man. He changed his manner, became very cold, and suddenly began to talk about a hippopotamus. Wondered whether sleeping on board the steamer. I stuck to my salvage night and day. I wasn't disturbed. There was an old hippo that had the bad habit of getting out on the bank and roaming at night over the station grounds. The pilgrims used to turn out in a body and empty every rifle they could lay hands on at him. Some had even sat up a night's for him. All this energy was wasted, though that animal has a charmed life, he said. But you can say this only are brutes in this country. No man you apprehend me, No man here bears a charmed life. He stood there for a moment in the moonlight, with his delicate hooked nose set a little askew, and his mica eyes glittering without a wink. Then with a curt good night, he strode off. I could see he was disturbed and considerably puzzled, which made me feel more hopeful than I had been for days. It was a great comfort to turn from that chap to my influential friend, the battered, twisted, ruined tin pot steamboat. I clambered on board. She rang under my feet like an empty Huntley and Palmer biscuit tin kicked along a gutter. She was nothing so solid in make, and rather less pretty in shape. But I had expended enough hard work on her to make me love her. No influential friend would have served me better. She had given me a chance to come out a bit to find out what I could do. No, I didn't like work. I would rather laze about and think of all the fine things that can be done. I don't like work, no man does. But I like what is in the work, the chance to find yourself, your own reality, for yourself, not for others. What no other man can ever know. They can only see the mere show and never can tell what it really means. I was not surprised to see somebody sitting aft on the deck, with his legs dangling over the mud. You see, I rather chummed with the few mechanics there were in that station, whom the other pilgrims naturally despised on account of their imperfect manners. I suppose this was the foreman, a boiler maker by trade, a good worker. He was a lank, bony, yellow faced man, with big, intense eyes. His aspect was worried, and his head was as bald as the palm of my hand. But his hair, in falling, seemed to have stuck to his chin and had prospered in the new locality, for his beard hung down to his waist. He was a widower with six young children. He had left them in charge of a sister of his to come out there. And the passion of his life was pigeon flying. He was an enthusias and a connoisseur. He would rave about pigeons after work hours. He used sometimes to come over from his hut for a little talk about his children and his pigeons. At work, when he had to crawl in the mud under the bottom of the steamboat, he would tie up that beard of his and a kind of white serviettes he brought for the purpose. It had loops to go over his ears. In the evening he could be seen squatted on the bank, rincing that wrapper in the creek with great care, then spreading it solemnly on a bush to dry. I slapped him on the back and shouted, we shall have rivets. He scrambled to his feet, exclaiming no rivets, as though he couldn't believe his ears. Then, in a low voice, you way, I don't know why we behave like lunatics. I put my finger to the side of my nose and nodded mysteriously. Good for you, he cried, snapped his fingers above his head, lifting one foot, I tried a jig. We capered on the iron deck. A frightful clatter came out of that hulk, and the virgin forest on the other bank of the creek sent it back in a thundering roll upon the sleeping station. It must have made some of the pilgrims sit up in their hovels. A dark figure obscured the lighted doorway of the manager's hut vanished, Then a second or so after the doorway itself vanished too. We stopped, and the silence, driven away by the stamping of our feet, flowed back again from the recesses of the land. The great wall of vegetation, an exuberant and entangled mass of trunks, branches, leaves, boughs, festoons, motionless in the moonlight, was like a rioting invasion of soundless life. A rolling wave of glance piled up, crested, ready to topple over the creek, to sweep every little man of us out of his little existence. And it moved not A deadened burst of mighty splashes and snorts reached us from afar, as though an ichtheosaurus had been taking a bath of glitter in the great river. After all, said the boilermaker, in a reasonable tone, Why shouldn't we get the rivets? Why not? Indeed, I did not know of any reason why we shouldn't. They'll come in three weeks, I said, confidently. But they didn't. Instead of rivets, there came an invasion, an infliction of visitation. It came in sections during the next three weeks, each section headed by a donkey carrying a white man in new clothes and tan shoes, bowing from that elevation right and left to the impressed pilgrims, a quarrelsome band of footsore, sulky niggers trode on the heels of the donkey. A lot of tents, campstools, tin boxes, white cases, brown bales would be shot down in the courtyard, and the air of mystery would deepen a little over the muddle of the station. Five such installments came, with their absurd air of disorderly flight, with the loot of innumerable outfit shops and provision stores that one would think they were lugging after a raid into the wilderness for equitable division. It was an inextricable mess of things decent in themselves, but that human folly made look like the spoils of thieving. This devoted band called itself the El Dorado Exploring Expedition, and I believe they were sworn to secrecy. Their talk, however, was the talk of sordid buccaneers. It was reckless without hardihood, greedy without audacity, and cruel without courage. There was not an atom of foresight or of serious intention in the whole batch of them, and they did not seem aware these things are wanted for the work of the world. To tear treasure out of the bowels of the land was their desire, with no more moral purpose at the back of it than there is in the burglars breaking into a safe. Who paid the expenses of the noble enterprise? I don't know, but the uncle of our manager was leader of that lot. In exterior, he resembled a butcher in a poor neighborhood, and his eyes had a look of sleepy cunning. He carried his fat paunch with ostentation on his short legs, and during the time his gang infested the station, spoke to no one but his nephew. You could see these two roaming about all day long with their heads close together in an everlasting confab. I had given up worrying myself about the rivets. One's capacity for that kind of folly is more limited than you would suppose. I said, hang and let things slide. I had plenty of time for meditation, and now and then I would give some thought to Kerts. I wasn't very interested in him. No, Still, I was curious to see whether this man, who had come out equipped with moral ideas of some sort, would climb to the top after all, and how he would set about his work When there end of chapter one