Heart of Darkness | Page 5

a kind of ship
about as rigid as a concertina-- and going up this river with stores, or
orders, or what you like. Sandbanks, marshes, forests,
savages,--precious little to eat fit for a civilized man, nothing but
Thames water to drink. No Falernian wine here, no going ashore. Here
and there a military camp lost in a wilderness, like a needle in a bundle
of hay--cold, fog, tempests, disease, exile, and death,-- death skulking
in the air, in the water, in the bush. They must have been dying like
flies here. Oh yes--he did it. Did it very well, too, no doubt, and
without thinking much about it either, except afterwards to brag of
what he had gone through in his time, perhaps. They were men enough
to face the darkness. And perhaps he was cheered by keeping his eye
on a chance of promotion to the fleet at Ravenna by-and-by, if he had
good friends in Rome and survived the awful climate. Or think of a
decent young citizen in a toga--perhaps too much dice, you
know--coming out here in the train of some prefect, or tax-gatherer, or
trader even, to mend his fortunes. Land in a swamp, march through the

woods, and in some inland post feel the savagery, the utter savagery,
had closed round him,-- all that mysterious life of the wilderness that
stirs in the forest, in the jungles, in the hearts of wild men. There's no
initiation either into such mysteries. He has to live in the midst of the
incomprehensible, which is also detestable. And it has a fascination,
too, that goes to work upon him. The fascination of the
abomination--you know. Imagine the growing regrets, the longing to
escape, the powerless disgust, the surrender, the hate."
He paused.
"Mind," he began again, lifting one arm from the elbow, the palm of
the hand outwards, so that, with his legs folded before him, he had the
pose of a Buddha preaching in European clothes and without a
lotus-flower--"Mind, none of us would feel exactly like this. What
saves us is efficiency--the devotion to efficiency. But these chaps were
not much account, really. They were no colonists; their administration
was merely a squeeze, and nothing more, I suspect. They were
conquerors, and for that you want only brute force-- nothing to boast of,
when you have it, since your strength is just an accident arising from
the weakness of others. They grabbed what they could get for the sake
of what was to be got. It was just robbery with violence, aggravated
murder on a great scale, and men going at it blind--as is very proper for
those who tackle a darkness. The conquest of the earth, which mostly
means the taking it away from those who have a different complexion
or slightly flatter noses than ourselves, is not a pretty thing when you
look into it too much. What redeems it is the idea only. An idea at the
back of it; not a sentimental pretense but an idea; and an unselfish
belief in the idea--something you can set up, and bow down before, and
offer a sacrifice to. . . ."
He broke off. Flames glided in the river, small green flames, red flames,
white flames, pursuing, overtaking, joining, crossing each other-- then
separating slowly or hastily. The traffic of the great city went on in the
deepening night upon the sleepless river. We looked on, waiting
patiently--there was nothing else to do till the end of the flood; but it
was only after a long silence, when he said, in a hesitating voice, "I

suppose you fellows remember I did once turn fresh-water sailor for a
bit," that we knew we were fated, before the ebb began to run, to hear
about one of Marlow's inconclusive experiences.
"I don't want to bother you much with what happened to me
personally," he began, showing in this remark the weakness of many
tellers of tales who seem so often unaware of what their audience
would best like to hear; "yet to understand the effect of it on me you
ought to know how I got out there, what I saw, how I went up that river
to the place where I first met the poor chap. It was the farthest point of
navigation and the culminating point of my experience. It seemed
somehow to throw a kind of light on everything about me-- and into my
thoughts. It was somber enough too--and pitiful-- not extraordinary in
any way--not very clear either. No, not very clear. And yet it seemed to
throw a kind of light.
"I had then, as you remember, just returned to London after a lot of
Indian Ocean, Pacific, China Seas--a regular dose of the East--six years
or so, and I was loafing