VII.

His

"I looked at him, lost in astonishment. There he was before me, in motley, as though he had absconded from a troupe of mimes, enthusiastic, fabulous. very existence was improbable, inexplicable, and altogether bewildering. He was an insolvable problem. It was inconceivable how he had existed, how he had succeeded in getting so far, how he had managed to remain-why he did not instantly disappear. 'I went a little farther,' he said, 'then a little farther-till I had gone so far that I don't know how I'll ever get back. Never mind. Plenty time. I can manage. You take Kurtz away quickquick-I tell you.' The glamor of youth enveloped his particolored rags, his des titution, his loneliness, the essential desolation of his futile wanderings. For months-for years-his life hadn't been worth a day's purchase; and there he was gallantly, thoughtlessly alive, indestructible to all appearance, solely by the virtue of his few years and of his unreflecting audacity. I was seduced into something like admirationlike envy. Glamor urged him on, glamor kept him unscathed. He surely wanted nothing from the wilderness but space to breathe in and to push on through. His need was to exist, and to move onwards at the greatest possible risk, and with a maximum of privation. If the absolutely pure, uncalculating, unpractical spirit of adventure had ever ruled a human being, it was this bepatched youth. I almost envied him the possession of this modest and clear flame. It seemed to have consumed all thought of self so com

* Copyright by S. S. McClure & Co.

pletely that even while he was talking to you, you forgot that it was he-the man before your eyes-who had gone through these things. I did not envy him his devotion to Kurtz, though. He had not meditated over it. It came to him and he accepted it with a sort of eager fatalism. I must say that to me it appeared about the most dangerous thing in every way he had come upon so far.

"They had come together unavoidably, like two ships becalmed near each other, and lay rubbing sides at last. I suppose Kurtz wanted an audience, because on a certain occasion, when encamped in the forest, they had talked all night, or more probably Kurtz had talked. 'We talked of everything,' he said, quite transported at the recollection. 'I forgot there was such a thing as sleep. The night did not seem to last an hour. Everything! Every thing! Of love, too.' 'Ah, he talked to you of love!' I said, much amused, 'It isn't what you think,' he cried, almost passionately. 'It was in general. He made me see thingsthings.'

"He threw his arms up. We were on deck at the time, and the head man of my woodcutters lounging near by, turned upon him his heavy and glittering eyes. I looked around, and I don't know why, but I assure you that never, never before, did this land, this river, this jungle, the very arch of the blazing sky, appear to me so hopeless and so dark, so impenetrable to human thought, so pitiless to human weakness. 'And, ever since, you have been with him, of course,' I said.

"On the contrary. It appears their intercourse was very much broken by

various causes. He had, as he informed me proudly, managed to nurse Kurtz through two illnesses (he spoke of it as he would of some risky achievement), but, as a rule, Kurtz wandered alone, far in the depths of the forest. "Very often coming to this station I had to wait days and days for him to turn up,' he said. 'Ah! it was worth waiting for!-sometimes.' 'What was he doing? Exploring or what?' I asked. 'O, yes, of course, he had discovered lots of villages, a lake, too-he did not know exactly in what direction; it was dangerous to inquire too much -but mostly his expeditions had been for ivory.' 'But he had no goods to trade with by that time,' I objected. "There's a good lot of cartridges left even yet,' he answered, looking away. "To speak plainly, he raided the country,' I said. He nodded. 'Not alone, surely!' He muttered something about the villages round that lake. 'Kurtz got the tribe to follow him, did he?' I suggested. He fidgeted a little. "They adored him,' he said. The tone of these words was so extraordinary that I looked at him searchingly. It was curious to see his mingled eagerness and reluctance to speak of Kurtz. The man filled his life, occupied his thoughts, swayed his emotions. 'What can you expect,' he burst out; 'he came to them with thunder and lightning, you know -and they had never seen anything like it-and very terrible. He could be very terrible. You can't judge Mr. Kurtz as you would an ordinary man. No, no, no! Now, just to give you an idea-I don't mind telling you, he wanted to shoot me, too, one day-but I don't judge him.' 'Shoot you!' I cried. 'What for?' 'Well, I had a small lot of ivory the chief of that village near my house gave me. You see I used to shoot game for them. Well, he wanted it and wouldn't hear reason. He said he would shoot me unless I gave him the ivory and cleared out of the coun

try, because he could do so, and had a fancy for it, and there was nothing on earth to prevent him killing whom he jolly well pleased. And it was true, too. I gave him the ivory. What did I care. But I didn't clear out. No, no, I couldn't leave him. I had to be careful, though, for a time. Then we got friendly as before. He had his second illness then. Afterward I had to keep out of the way again. But he was mostly living in those villages on the lake. When he came down to the river sometimes he would take to me, and sometimes I had to keep out of his way. Just as it happened. This man suffered too much. He hated all this, and somehow he couldn't get away. When I had a chance I begged him to try and leave while there was time. I offered to go back with him. And he would say yes, and then he would remain; go off on another ivory hunt; disappear for weeks; forget himself among these people-forget himself, you know.' 'Why, he's mad,' I said. He protested indignantly. Mr. Kurtz couldn't be mad. If I had heard him talk only two days ago, I wouldn't dare hint at such a thing. I had taken up my binoculars while we talked, and was looking at the shore, sweeping the limit of the forest at each side and at the back of the house. The consciousness of there being people in that bush, so silent, so quiet-as silent and quiet as the ruined house on the hill-made me uneasy. There was no sign on the face of nature of this amazing tale of cruelty and greed that was not so much told as suggested to me in desolate exclamations, completed by shrugs, in interrupted phrases, in hints ending in deep sighs. The woods were unmoved, like a mask-heavy, like the closed door of a prison-they looked with their air of hidden knowledge, of patient expectation, of unapproachable silence. The house came into the range of the glass. The Russian was telling me that it was

only lately that Mr. Kurtz had come down to the river, bringing along with him that lake tribe. He had been away for several months-getting himself adored, I suppose and came down purposing a raid either across the river or down stream. Evidently the appetite for more ivory had got the better of the-what shall I say?-less material aspirations. However, he had got much worse, suddenly. 'I heard he was lying helpless and so I came up; took my chance,' said the Russian. 'O, he is bad, very bad.' I kept my glass steadily on the house. There were no signs of life, but there was the ruined roof, the long mud wall peeping above the grass, with three little, square windowholes, no two of the same size; all this brought within reach of my hand, as it were. And then I made a brusque movement, and one of the remaining posts of that vanished fence leaped up in the field of my glass. You remember I told you I had been struck at the distance by certain attempts at ornamentation, rather remarkable in the ruinous neglect of the place. Now I had suddenly a nearer view, and its first result was to make me throw my head back as if before a blow. Then I went carefully from post to post with my glass, and I saw my mistake. Those round knobs were not ornamental, but symbolic; symbolic of some cruel and forbidden knowledge. They were expressive and puzzling, striking and disturbing, food for thought and also for the vultures if there had been any looking down from the sky, but, at all events, for such ants as were industrious enough to ascend the pole. They would have been even more impressive, those heads on the stakes, if their faces had not been turned to the house. Only one, the first I had made out, was facing my way. I was not so shocked as you may think. The start back I had given was really nothing but a movement of surprise. I had expected to see

I

a knob of wood there, you know. returned deliberately to the first I had seen-and there it was, black, dried, sunken, with closed eyelids a head that seemed to sleep at the top of that pole, and with the shrunken, dry lips, showing a narrow white line of teeth, was smiling, too, smiling continuously, at some endless and jocose dream of that eternal slumber.

"I am not disclosing any trade secrets. In fact, the manager said afterward that Mr. Kurtz had ruined that district. I have no opinion as to that, but I want you clearly to understand that there was nothing profitable in these heads being there. They only showed that Mr. Kurtz lacked restraint in the gratification of his various lusts, that there was something wanting in him-some small matter which, when the pressing need arose, could not be found under his magnificent eloquence. Whether he knew of this deficiency himself, I can't say. I think the knowledge came to him at last-only at the very last. But the wilderness had found him out early, and had taken on him a terrible vengeance for the fantastic invasion. It had tempted him with all the sinister suggestions of its loneliness. I think it had whispered to him things about himself which he did not know, things of which he had no conception till he took counsel with this great solitude-and the whisper had proved irresistibly fascinating. It echoed loudly within him because he was hollow at the core. I put down the glass, and the head that had appeared near enough to be spoken to seemed at once to have leaped away from me into the illusion of an inaccessible distance.

"The admirer of Mr. Kurtz hung his head. With a hurried, indistinct voice he began to tell me he had not dared to take these-say, symbols-down. He was not afraid of the natives; they would not move until Mr. Kurtz gave the word. His ascendancy was extra

T

ordinary. The camps of these people surrounded the place, and the chiefs came every day to see him. They crawled. 'I don't want to know anything of the ceremonies used when approaching Mr. Kurtz,' I shouted. Curious, this feeling that came over me that those details would be more intolerable to hear than those heads drying on stakes under Mr. Kurtz's windows were to see. After all, that was only a savage sight, while I seemed at one bound to have been transported into some lightless region of subtle horrors, where pure, uncomplicated savagery was a positive relief, being something that had a right to exist, obviously in the sunshine. The young man looked at me with surprise. I suppose it did not occur to him Mr. Kurtz was no idol of mine. He forgot I hadn't heard any of these splendid monologues on, what was it? on love, justice, conduct of life or what not. If it had come to crawling before Mr. Kurtz, he crawled as much as the veriest savage of them all. I had no idea of the conditionshe said these heads were the heads of rebels. I shocked him excessively by laughing. Rebels! What would be the next definition I was to hear? There had been enemies, criminals, workersand these were rebels. Those rebelflous heads looked very pacific to me on their sticks. 'You don't know how such a life tries a man like Kurtz,' cried Kurtz's last disciple. 'Well, and you?' I said. 'I I! I am a simple man. I have no great thoughts. I want nothing from anybody. How can you compare me to... His feelings were too much for speech, and suddenly he broke down. 'I don't understand,' he groaned. 'I've been doing my best to keep him alive, and that's enough. I had no hand in all this. I have no abilities. There hasn't been a drop of medicine or a mouthful of invalid food for months here. He was shamefully abandoned. A man like this, with such

ideas. Shamefully. Shamefully.

II haven't slept for the last 10 nights . . .'

"His voice lost itself in the calm of the evening. The long shadows of the forest had slipped down hill while we talked, had gone far beyond the ruined hovel, beyond the symbolic row of stakes. All this was in the gloom, while we down there were yet in the sunshine, and the stretch of the river abreast of the clearing glittered in a still and dazzling splendor, with a murky and overshadowed band above and below. Not a living soul was seen on the shore. The bushes did not rustle.

It

"Suddenly, round the corner of the house a group of men appeared. was as though they had come up from the ground. They waded waist-deep in the grass, in a compact body, bearing an improvised stretcher in their midst. Instantly, in the emptiness of the landscape, a cry arose whose shrillness pierced the still air like a sharp arrow flying straight to the very heart of the land; and, as if by enchantment, streams of human beings of naked human beings-with spears in their hands, with bows, with shields, with wild glances and savage movements, were poured into the clearing by the dark-faced and pensive forest. The bushes shook, the grass swayed for a time, and then everything stood still in attentive immobility.

66

'Now, if he does not speak to them we are all done for,' said the Russian, at my elbow. The knot of men with the stretcher had stopped, too, half-way to the steamer, as if petrified. I saw the man on the stretcher sit up, lank and with an uplifted arm, above the shoulders of the bearers. 'Let us hope that the man who can talk so well of love in general will find some particufar reason to spare us this time,' I said. I resented bitterly the absurd danger of our situation, as if to be at the mercy

of the atrocious phantom who ruled this land had been a dishonoring necessity. I could not hear anything, but through my glasses I saw the thin arm extended commandingly, the lower jaw moving, the eyes of that apparition shining darkly far in his bony head that nodded with grotesque jerks. Kurtz-kurtz-that means short in German-don't it? Well, the name was as true as everything else in his life-and death. He looked at least seven feet long. His covering had fallen off, and his body emerged from it pitiful and appalling as from a winding-sheet. I could see the cage of his ribs all astir, the bones of his arm waving. It was as though an animated image of death carved out of old ivory had been shaking his hand with menaces at a motion'less crowd of men made of dark and glittering bronze. I saw him open his mouth wide-it gave him a weirdly voracious aspect, as though he had wanted to swallow all the air, all the earth, all the men before him. A deep 'sound reached me faintly. He must have been shouting. He fell back sud'denly. The stretcher shook as the bearers staggered forward again, and almost at the same time, I noticed that the crowd of savages had already diminished, was vanishing without any perceptible movement of retreat, as if the forest that had ejected these beings so suddenly had drawn them in again as the breath is drawn in a long as'piration.

"Some of the pilgrims behind the stretcher carried his arms-two shotguns, a heavy rifle and a light revolver carbine the thunderbolts of that pitiful Jupiter. The manager bent over him murmuring as he walked beside his head. They laid him down in one of the little cabins, just a room for a bedplace and a camp stool or two, you know. We had brought his belated correspondence, and a lot of torn envelopes and open letters littered his

bed. His hand roamed feebly amongst these papers. I was struck by the fire in his eyes and the composed languor of his expression. It was not so much the exhaustion of disease. He did not seem in pain. This shadow looked satiated and calm as though for the moment it had had its fill of all the emotions.

"He rustled one of the letters, and looking in my face said, 'I am glad.' Somebody had been writing to him about me. These special recommendations again. The volume of tone he emitted without effort, almost without the trouble of moving his lips, amazed me. A voice! a voice! It was grave, profound, vibrating, while the man did not seem capable of a whisper. However, he had enough strength in himfactitious, no doubt-to very nearly make an end of us, as you shall hear directly. The manager appeared in the doorway, so I stepped out at once, and he drew the curtain after me. The Russian, eyed curiously by the pilgrims, was staring at the shore. I followed the direction of his glance.

"Several bronze figures could be made out in the distance moving indistinctly against the gloomy border of the forest, and near the river two were standing leaning on spears in the sunlight, under fantastic headdresses of spotted skins, warlike, and still in statuesque repose. And from right to left along the lighted shore moved a wild and gorgeous apparition of a woman.

"She walked with measured steps, draped in striped and fringed cloths, treading the earth proudly, with a slight jingle and flash of barbarous ornaments. She carried her head high; her hair was done in the shape of a helmet; she had brass leggings to the knee, brass wire gauntlets to the elbow, a crimson spot on her tawny cheek, innumerable necklaces of glass beads on her neck; bizarre things, charms, gifts of witchmen, that hung about her, glit