Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad (top 10 books to read TXT) 📕

That was his restraint. But when he muttered something about going on at once, I did not even take the trouble to answer him.

I knew, and he knew, that it was impossible. Were we to let go our hold of the bottom, we would be absolutely in the air—in space.

We wouldn’t be able to tell where we were going to—whether up or down stream, or across—till we fetched against one bank or the other,—and then we wouldn’t know at first which it was.

Of course I made no move. I had no mind for a smash-up. You couldn’t imagine a more deadly place for a shipwreck. Whether drowned at once or not, we were sure to perish speedily in one way or another.

`I authorize you to take all the risks,’ he said, after a short silence.

`I refuse to take any,’ I said shortly; which was just the answer he expected, though its tone might have surprised him.

`Well, I must defer to your judgment. You are captain,’ he said, with marked civility. I turned my shoulder to him in sign of my appreciation, and looked into the fog. How long would it last?

It was the most hopeless look-out. The approach to this Kurtz grubbing for ivory in the wretched bush was beset by as many dangers as though he had been an enchanted princess sleeping in a fabulous castle.

`Will they attack, do you think?’ asked the manager, in a confidential tone.

“I did not think they would attack, for several obvious reasons.

The thick fog was one. If they left the bank in their canoes they would get lost in it, as we would be if we attempted to move.

Still, I had also judged the jungle of both banks quite impenetrable—

and yet eyes were in it, eyes that had seen us. The river-side bushes were certainly very thick; but the undergrowth behind was evidently penetrable. However, during the short lift I had seen no canoes anywhere in the reach—certainly not abreast of the steamer. But what made the idea of attack inconceivable to me was the nature of the noise—of the cries we had heard.

They had not the fierce character boding of immediate hostile intention.

Unexpected, wild, and violent as they had been, they had given me an irresistible impression of sorrow. The glimpse of the steamboat had for some reason filled those savages with unrestrained grief.

The danger, if any, I expounded, was from our proximity to a great human passion let loose. Even extreme grief may ultimately vent itself in violence—but more generally takes the form of apathy.

…

“You should have seen the pilgrims stare! They had no heart to grin, or even to revile me; but I believe they thought me gone mad—with fright, maybe.

I delivered a regular lecture. My dear boys, it was no good bothering.

Keep a look-out? Well, you may guess I watched the fog for the signs of lifting as a cat watches a mouse; but for anything else our eyes were of no more use to us than if we had been buried miles deep in a heap of cotton-wool. It felt like it too—choking, warm, stifling. Besides, all I said, though it sounded extravagant, was absolutely true to fact.

What we afterwards alluded to as an attack was really an attempt at repulse.

The action was very far from being aggressive—it was not even defensive, in the usual sense: it was undertaken under the stress of desperation, and in its essence was purely protective.

“It developed itself, I should say, two hours after the fog lifted, and its commencement was at a spot, roughly speaking, about a mile and a half below Kurtz’s station. We had just floundered and flopped round a bend, when I saw an islet, a mere grassy hummock of bright green, in the middle of the stream.

It was the only thing of the kind; but as we opened the reach more, I perceived it was the head of a long sandbank, or rather of a chain of shallow patches stretching down the middle of the river.

They were discolored, just awash, and the whole lot was seen just under the water, exactly as a man’s backbone is seen running down the middle of his back under the skin.

Now, as far as I did see, I could go to the right or to the left of this. I didn’t know either channel, of course.

The banks looked pretty well alike, the depth appeared the same; but as I had been informed the station was on the west side, I naturally headed for the western passage.

“No sooner had we fairly entered it than I became aware it was much narrower than I had supposed. To the left of us there was the long uninterrupted shoal, and to the right a high, steep bank heavily overgrown with bushes. Above the bush the trees stood in serried ranks.

The twigs overhung the current thickly, and from distance to distance a large limb of some tree projected rigidly over the stream.

It was then well on in the afternoon, the face of the forest was gloomy, and a broad strip of shadow had already fallen on the water.

In this shadow we steamed up—very slowly, as you may imagine.

I sheered her well inshore—the water being deepest near the bank, as the sounding-pole informed me.

“One of my hungry and forbearing friends was sounding in the bows just below me. This steamboat was exactly like a decked scow.

On the deck there were two little teak-wood houses, with doors and windows.

The boiler was in the fore-end, and the machinery right astern.

Over the whole there was a light roof, supported on stanchions.

The funnel projected through that roof, and in front of the funnel a small cabin built of light planks served for a pilot-house.

It contained a couch, two camp-stools, a loaded Martini-Henry leaning in one corner, a tiny table, and the steering-wheel.

It had a wide door in front and a broad shutter at each side.

All these were always thrown open, of course. I spent my days perched up there on the extreme fore-end of that roof, before the door.

At night I slept, or tried to, on the couch. An athletic black belonging to some coast tribe, and educated by my poor predecessor, was the helmsman. He sported a pair of brass earrings, wore a blue cloth wrapper from the waist to the ankles, and thought all the world of himself. He was the most unstable kind of fool I had ever seen.

He steered with no end of a swagger while you were by; but if he lost sight of you, he became instantly the prey of an abject funk, and would let that cripple of a steamboat get the upper hand of him in a minute.

“I was looking down at the sounding-pole, and feeling much annoyed to see at each try a little more of it stick out of that river, when I saw my poleman give up the business suddenly, and stretch himself flat on the deck, without even taking the trouble to haul his pole in.

He kept hold on it though, and it trailed in the water.

At the same time the fireman, whom I could also see below me, sat down abruptly before his furnace and ducked his head.

I was amazed. Then I had to look at the river mighty quick, because there was a snag in the fairway. Sticks, little sticks, were flying about—thick: they were whizzing before my nose, dropping below me, striking behind me against my pilot-house.

All this time the river, the shore, the woods, were very quiet—

perfectly quiet. I could only hear the heavy splashing thump of the stern-wheel and the patter of these things. We cleared the snag clumsily. Arrows, by Jove! We were being shot at!

I stepped in quickly to close the shutter on the land side.

That fool-helmsman, his hands on the spokes, was lifting his knees high, stamping his feet, champing his mouth, like a reined-in horse.

Confound him! And we were staggering within ten feet of the bank.

I had to lean right out to swing the heavy shutter, and I saw a face amongst the leaves on the level with my own, looking at me very fierce and steady; and then suddenly, as though a veil had been removed from my eyes, I made out, deep in the tangled gloom, naked breasts, arms, legs, glaring eyes,—the bush was swarming with human limbs in movement, glistening, of bronze color.

The twigs shook, swayed, and rustled, the arrows flew out of them, and then the shutter came to. `Steer her straight,’

I said to the helmsman. He held his head rigid, face forward; but his eyes rolled, he kept on lifting and setting down his feet gently, his mouth foamed a little. `Keep quiet!’

I said in a fury. I might just as well have ordered a tree not to sway in the wind. I darted out. Below me there was a great scuffle of feet on the iron deck; confused exclamations; a voice screamed, `Can you turn back?’ I caught shape of a V-shaped ripple on the water ahead. What? Another snag!

A fusillade burst out under my feet. The pilgrims had opened with their Winchesters, and were simply squirting lead into that bush.

A deuce of a lot of smoke came up and drove slowly forward.

I swore at it. Now I couldn’t see the ripple or the snag either.

I stood in the doorway, peering, and the arrows came in swarms.

They might have been poisoned, but they looked as though they wouldn’t kill a cat. The bush began to howl.

Our woodcutters raised a warlike whoop; the report of a rifle just at my back deafened me. I glanced over my shoulder, and the pilot-house was yet full of noise and smoke when I made a dash at the wheel. The fool-nigger had dropped everything, to throw the shutter open and let off that Martini-Henry. He stood before the wide opening, glaring, and I yelled at him to come back, while I straightened the sudden twist out of that steamboat.

There was no room to turn even if I had wanted to, the snag was somewhere very near ahead in that confounded smoke, there was no time to lose, so I just crowded her into the bank—

right into the bank, where I knew the water was deep.

“We tore slowly along the overhanging bushes in a whirl of broken twigs and flying leaves. The fusillade below stopped short, as I had foreseen it would when the squirts got empty.

I threw my head back to a glinting whizz that traversed the pilot-house, in at one shutter-hole and out at the other.

Looking past that mad helmsman, who was shaking the empty rifle and yelling at the shore, I saw vague forms of men running bent double, leaping, gliding, distinct, incomplete, evanescent.

Something big appeared in the air before the shutter, the rifle went overboard, and the man stepped back swiftly, looked at me over his shoulder in an extraordinary, profound, familiar manner, and fell upon my feet. The side of his head hit the wheel twice, and the end of what appeared a long cane clattered round and knocked over a little camp-stool. It looked as though after wrenching that thing from somebody ashore he had lost his balance in the effort.

The thin smoke had blown away, we were clear of the snag, and looking ahead I could see that in another hundred yards or so I would be free to sheer off, away from the bank; but my feet felt so very warm and wet that I had to look down.

The man had rolled on his