Heart of Darkness
Joseph Conrad
I
The Nellie, a cruising yawl, swung to her anchor
without a flutter of the sails, and was at rest. The flood
had made, the wind was nearly calm, and being bound
down the river, the only thing for it was to come to
and wait for the turn of the tide.
The sea-reach of the Thames stretched before us
like the beginning of an interminable waterway. In
the offing the sea and the sky were welded together
without a joint, and in the luminous space the tanned
sails of the barges drifting up with the tide seemed to
stand still in red clusters of canvas sharply peaked,
with gleams of varnished sprits. A haze rested on the
low shores that ran out to sea in vanishing flatness.
The air was dark above Gravesend, and farther back
still seemed condensed into a mournful gloom, brooding motionless over the biggest, and the greatest, town
on earth.
The Director of Companies was our captain and our
host. We four affectionately watched his back as he
stood in the bows looking to seaward. On the whole
river there was nothing that looked half so nautical.
He resembled a pilot, which to a seaman is trustworthiness personified. It was difficult to realize his
work was not out there in the luminous estuary, but
behind him, within the brooding gloom.
Between us there was, as I have already said somewhere, the bond of the sea. Besides holding our hearts
together through long periods of separation, it had
the effect of making us tolerant of each other's yarns
-- and even convictions. The Lawyer -- the best of old
fellows -- had, because of his many years and many
virtues, the only cushion on deck, and was lying on the
only rug. The Accountant had brought out already a
box of dominoes, and was toying architecturally with
the bones. Marlow sat cross-legged right aft, leaning
against the mizzenmast. He had sunken cheeks, a
yellow complexion, a straight back, an ascetic aspect,
and, with his arms dropped, the palms of hands outwards, resembled an idol. The Director, satisfied the
anchor had good hold, made his way aft and sat down
amongst us. We exchanged a few words lazily. Afterwards there was silence on board the yacht. For some
reason or other we did not begin that game of dominoes. We felt meditative, and fit for nothing but
placid staring. The day was ending in a serenity of
still and exquisite brilliance. The water shone pacifically; the sky, without a speck, was a benign immensity of unstained light; the very mist on the Essex
marsh was like a gauzy and radiant fabric, hung from
the wooded rises inland, and draping the low shores
in diaphanous folds. Only the gloom to the west,
brooding over the upper reaches, became more sombre
every minute, as if angered by the approach of the sun.
And at last, in its curved and imperceptible fall, the
sun sank low, and from glowing white changed to a
dull red without rays and without heat, as if about to
go out suddenly, stricken to death by the touch of
that gloom brooding over a crowd of men.
Forthwith a change came over the waters, and the
serenity became less brilliant but more profound. The
old river in its broad reach rested unruffled at the
decline of day, after ages of good service done to the
race that peopled its banks, spread out in the tranquil
dignity of a waterway leading to the uttermost ends
of the earth. We looked at the venerable stream not
in the vivid flush of a short day that comes and departs
for ever, but in the august light of abiding memories.
And indeed nothing is easier for a man who has, as
the phrase goes, "followed the sea" with reverence
and affection, than to evoke the great spirit of the past
upon the lower reaches of the Thames. The tidal current runs to and fro in its unceasing service, crowded
with memories of men and ships it had borne to the
rest of home or to the battles of the sea. It had known
and served all the men of whom the nation is proud,
from Sir Francis Drake to Sir John Franklin, knights
all, titled and untitled -- the great knights-errant of
the sea. It had borne all the ships whose names are
like jewels flashing in the night of time, from the
Golden Hind returning with her round flanks full of
treasure, to be visited by the Queen's Highness and
thus pass out of the gigantic tale, to the Erebus and
Terror, bound on other conquests -- and that never
returned. It had known the ships and the men. They
had sailed from Deptford, from Greenwich, from
Erith -- the adventurers and the settlers; kings' ships
and the ships of men on 'Change; captains, admirals,
the dark "interlopers" of the Eastern trade, and the
commissioned "generals" of East India fleets. Hunters
for gold or pursuers of fame, they all had gone out
on that stream, bearing the sword, and often the torch,
messengers of the might within the land, bearers of a
spark from the sacred fire. What greatness had not
floated on the ebb of that river into the mystery of
an unknown earth! . . . The dreams of men, the
seed of commonwealths, the germs of empires.
The sun set; the dusk fell on the stream, and lights
began to appear along the shore. The Chapman lighthouse, a three-legged thing erect on a mud-flat, shone
strongly. Lights of ships moved in the fairway -- a
great stir of lights going up and going down. And
farther west on the upper reaches the place of the
monstrous town was still marked ominously on the
sky, a brooding gloom in sunshine, a lurid glare under
the stars.
"And this also," said Marlow suddenly, "has been
one of the dark places of the earth."
He was the only man of us who still "followed the
sea." The worst that could be said of him was that he
did not represent his class. He was a seaman, but he
was a wanderer, too, while most seamen lead, if one
may so express it, a sedentary life. Their minds are
of the stay-at-home order, and their home is always
with them -- the ship; and so is their country -- the sea.
One ship is very much like another, and the sea is
always the same. In the immutability of their surroundings the foreign shores, the foreign faces, the
changLng immensity of life, glide past, veiled not by
a sense of mystery but by a slightly disdainful ignorance; for there is nothing mysterious to a seaman
unless it be the sea itself, which is the mistress of his
existence and as inscrutable as Destiny. For the rest,
after his hours of work, a casual stroll or a casual spree
on shore suffices to unfold for him the secret of a
whole continent, and generally he finds the secret not
worth knowing. The yarns of seamen have a direct
simplicity, the whole meaning of which lies within the
shell of a cracked nut. But Marlow was not typical
(if his propensity to spin yarns be excepted), and to
him the meaning of an episode was not inside like a
kernel but outside, enveloping the tale which brought
it out only as a glow brings out a haze, in the likeness
of one of these misty halos that sometimes are made
visible by the spectral illuminination of moonshine.
His remark did not seem at all surprising. It was
just like Marlow. It was accepted in silence. No one
took the trouble to grunt even; and presently he said,
very slow - "I was thinking of very old times, when the
Romans first came here, nineteen hundred years ago -the other day.... Light came out of this river
since -- you say Knights? Yes; but it is like a running
blaze on a plain, like a flash of lightning in the clouds.
We live in the flicker -- may it last as long as the old
earth keeps rolling! But darkness was here yesterday.
Imagine the feelings of a commander of a fine -- what
d'ye call 'em? -- trireme in the Mediterranean, ordered suddenly to the north run overland across the
Gauls in a hurry; put in charge of one of these craft
the legionaries -- a wonderful lot of handy men they
must have been, too -- used to build, apparently by the
hundred, in a month or two, if we may believe what
we read. Imagine him here -- the very end of the
world, a sea the colour of lead, a sky the colour of
smoke, a kind of ship about as rigid as a concertina -and going up this river with stores, or orders, or what
you like. Sand-banks, marshes, forests, savages, -precious little to eat fit for a civilized man, nothing but
Thames water ...
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