Part 4 (1/2)
”Soriuns, a heavy rifle, and a light revolver-carbine--the thunderbolts of that pitiful Jupiter Theas he walked beside his head They laid him down in one of the little cabins--just a room for a bed-place and a caht his belated correspondence, and a lot of torn envelopes and open letters littered his bed His hand roast these papers I was struck by the fire of his eyes and the couor of his expression It was not so much the exhaustion of disease He did not seeh for the moment it had had its fill of all the e straight into hiain The volume of tone he e his lips, a, while the h strength in him--factitious no doubt--to very nearly make an end of us, as you shall hear directly
”The er appeared silently in the doorway; I stepped out at once and he drew the curtain afterat the shore I followed the direction of his glance
”Dark hu indistinctly against the glooures, leaning on tall spears, stood in the sunlight under fantastic headdresses of spotted skins, warlike and still in statuesque repose And froorgeous apparition of a woman
”She walked withthe earth proudly, with a slight jingle and flash of barbarous ornah; her hair was done in the shape of a helauntlets to the elbow, a crilass beads on her neck; bizarre things, charlittered and trembled at every step She must have had the value of several elephant tusks upon her She was savage and superb, wild-eyed andoress And in the hush that had fallen suddenly upon the whole sorrowful land, the immense wilderness, the colossal body of the fecund and h it had been looking at the ie of its own tenebrous and passionate soul
”She ca shadow fell to the water's edge Her face had a tragic and fierce aspect of wild sorrow and of du, half-shaped resolve She stood looking at us without a stir and like the wilderness itself, with an air of brooding over an inscrutable purpose A whole minute passed, and then she lint of yellow ed draperies, and she stopped as if her heart had failed her The young fellow by rims murmured at my back
She looked at us all as if her life had depended upon the unswerving steadiness of her glance Suddenly she opened her bared arh in an uncontrollable desire to touch the sky, and at the same time the swift shadows darted out on the earth, swept around on the river, gathering the stea over the scene
”She turned away sloalked on, following the bank, and passed into the bushes to the left Once only her eyes gleamed back at us in the dusk of the thickets before she disappeared
”'If she had offered to come aboard I really think I would have tried to shoot her,' said theht to keep her out of the house She got in one day and kicked up a row about those s I picked up in the storeroom to mend my clothes with I wasn't decent At least it must have been that, for she talked like a fury to Kurtz for an hour, pointing at me now and then I don't understand the dialect of this tribe Luckily for me, I fancy Kurtz felt too ill that day to care, or there would have been mischief I don't understandNo--it's too much for me Ah, well, it's all over now'
”At this moment I heard Kurtz's deep voice behind the curtain, 'Save me!--save the ivory, you mean Don't tellmy plans now Sick! Sick! Not so sick as you would like to believe Never mind I'll carry my ideas out yet--I will return I'll show you what can be done You with your little peddling notions--you are interfering with er came out He did me the honor to take me under the arm and lead me aside 'He is very low, very low,' he said He considered it necessary to sigh, but neglected to be consistently sorrowful 'We have done all we could for hi the fact, Mr Kurtz has done ood to the Coorous action Cautiously, cautiously--that's my principle We must be cautious yet The district is closed to us for a time Deplorable! Upon the whole, the trade will suffer I don't deny there is a remarkable quantity of ivory--mostly fossil We must save it, at all events--but look how precarious the position is--and why? Because theat the shore, 'call it ”unsound method”?' 'Without doubt,' he exclaimed, hotly 'Don't you?''No method at all,' I murmured after a while 'Exactly,' he exulted 'I anticipated this Shows a coment It is my duty to point it out in the proper quarter' 'Oh,' said I, 'that fellohat's his name?--the brickmaker, will make a readable report for you' He appeared confounded for a moment It seemed to me I had never breathed an atmosphere so vile, and I turned mentally to Kurtz for relief--positively for relief
'Nevertheless I think Mr Kurtz is a remarkable man,' I said with elance, said very quietly, 'He _was_,' and turned his back onwith Kurtz as a partisan of methods for which the ti to have at least a choice of nightmares
”I had turned to the wilderness really, not to Mr Kurtz, who, I was ready to adood as buried And for a rave full of unspeakable secrets I felt an intolerable weight oppressing my breast, the smell of the damp earth, the unseen presence of victorious corruption, the darkness of an ihtThe Russian tappedsoe of matters that would affect Mr Kurtz's reputation'
I waited For hirave; I suspect that for him Mr Kurtz was one of the immortals 'Well!' said I at last, 'speak out As it happens, I aood deal of formality that had we not been 'of the same profession,' he would have kept the ard to consequences 'He suspected there was an active ill-will towards hiht,' I said, reer thinks you ought to be hanged' He showed a concern at this intelligence which aet out of the way quietly,' he said, earnestly 'I can do no more for Kurtz now, and they would soon find some excuse What's to stop them? There's a military post three hundred miles from here' 'Well, upon o if you have any friends aes near by'
'Plenty,' he said 'They are si his lips, then: 'I don't want any har of Mr Kurtz's reputation--but you are a brother seaht,' said I, after a time 'Mr Kurtz's reputation is safe with me' I did not kno truly I spoke
”He infor his voice, that it was Kurtz who had ordered the attack to betaken away--and then againBut I don't understand these ht it would scare you away--that you would give it up, thinking him dead I could not stop him Oh, I had an awful tiht now' 'Ye-e-es,' he muttered, not very convinced apparently 'Thanks,'
said I; 'I shall keep ed, anxiously 'It would be awful for his reputation if anybody here--' I proravity 'I have a canoe and three black felloaiting not very far I aes?' I could, and did, with proper secrecy He helped himself, with a wink at ood English tobacco' At the door of the pilot-house he turned round--' I say, haven't you a pair of shoes you could spare?'
He raised one leg 'Look' The soles were tied with knotted strings sandal-wise under his bare feet I rooted out an old pair, at which he looked with ad it under his left ares, from the other (dark blue) peeped 'Towson's Inquiry,' &c, &c He seemed to think himself excellently well equipped for a renewed encounter with the wilderness
'Ah! I'll never, never ht to have heard him recite poetry--his own too it was, he told me Poetry!' He rolled his eyes at the recollection of these delights 'Oh, he enlarged my mind!' 'Goodby,' said I He shook hands and vanished in the night
Sometimes I ask myself whether I had ever really seen him--whether it was possible to meet such a phenoht his warning caer that seeet up for the purpose of having a look round On the hill a big fire burned, illu fitfully a crooked corner of the station-house One of the agents with a picket of a few of our blacks, aruard over the ivory; but deep within the forest, red glearound ast confused columnar shapes of intense blackness, showed the exact position of the cail Thedru vibration A steady droning sound ofeach to himself some weird incantation ca of bees coe narcotic effect uponover the rail, till an abrupt burst of yells, an overwhel outbreak of a pent-up and mysterious frenzy, woke me up in a bewildered wonder It was cut short all at once, and the low droning went on with an effect of audible and soothing silence I glanced casually into the little cabin A light was burning within, but Mr Kurtz was not there
”I think I would have raised an outcry if I had believedseemed so impossible The fact is I was coht, pure abstract terror, unconnected with any distinct shape of physical danger Whatwas--how shall I define it?--the ether ht and odious to the soul, had been thrust upon me unexpectedly
This lasted of course the merest fraction of a second, and then the usual sense of coht and , was positively welco It pacified me, in fact, so ent buttoned up inside an ulster and sleeping on a chair on deck within three feet of htly; I left him to his slumbers and leaped ashore I did not betray Mr Kurtz--it was ordered I should never betray hihtmare of my choice I was anxious to deal with this shadow by myself alone,--and to this day I don't knohy I was so jealous of sharing with anyone the peculiar blackness of that experience
”As soon as I got on the bank I saw a trail--a broad trail through the grass I remember the exultation hich I said to ot hirass ith dew I strode rapidly with clenched fists I fancy I had so I don't know I had so old woman with the cat obtruded herself uponat the other end of such an affair I saw a row of pilgri lead in the air out of Winchesters held to the hip I thought I would never get back to the stea alone and unars--you know And I re of ularity
”I kept to the track though--then stopped to listen The night was very clear: a dark blue space, sparkling with dew and starlight, in which black things stood very still I thought I could see a kind ofthat night I actually left the track and ran in a wide seet in front of that stir, of thatI was circua, I would have fallen over hi, pale, indistinct, like a vapor exhaled by the earth, and swayed slightly, misty and silent before me; while at my back the fires loomed between the trees, and the murmur of many voices issued from the forest