University of Virginia Library
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Youth, a narrative, and two ol
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Ronald Lambert Tree

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YOUTH: A NARRATIVE


BY THE SAME AUTHOR.
Uniform with this Volume.
LORD JIM.
Other Works.
ALMAYER'B FOLLY.
OUTCAST OF THE ISLANDS.
THE NIGGER OF THE NARCISSUS.
TALES OF UNREST.
(WITH F. M. HUEFFEB.)
THE INHERITORS: AN EXTRAVAGANT STORY.


YOUTH: A NARRATIVE
AND
TWO OTHER STORIES
BY
JOSEPH CONRAD
"... But the Dwarf answered: No; something
human is dearer to me than the wealth of all the
world."—Grimm's Tales.
SECOND IMPRESSION
WILLIAM BLACKWOOD AND SONS
EDINBURGH AND LONDON
M C M 111
All Bights rturvcd


nv.
504056


TO
MY WIFE





CONTENTS.
PAGEYOUTH: A NARRATIVE .... 1
HEART OF DARKNESS .... 49
THE END OF THE TETHER . . .183





YOUTH
A NARRATIVE





YOUTH.
This could have occurred nowhere but in England,
where men and sea interpenetrate, so to speak—the
sea entering into the life of most men, and the men
knowing something or everything about the sea, in
the way of amusement, of travel, or of bread-winning.
We were sitting round a mahogany table that
reflected the bottle, the claret-glasses, and our faces
as we leaned on our elbows. There was a director
of companies, an accountant, a lawyer, Marlow, and
myself. The director had been a Conway boy, the
accountant had served four years at sea, the lawyer
—a fine crusted Tory, High Churchman, the best of
old fellows, the soul of honour—had been chief officer
in the P. & O. service in the good old days when
mail-boats were square-rigged at least on two masts,
and used to come down the China Sea .before a fair
monsoon with stun'-sails set alow and aloft. We all
began life in the merchant service. Between the
five of us there was the strong bond of the sea, and
also the fellowship of the craft, which no amount of
enthusiasm for yachting, cruising, and so on can give,


4 YOUTH.
since one is only the amusement of life and the other
is life itself.
Marlow (at least I think that is how he spelt his
name) told the story, or rather the chronicle, of a
voyage:—
"Yes, I have seen a little of the Eastern seas;
but what I remember best is my first voyage there.
You fellows know there are those voyages that seem
ordered for the illustration of life, that might stand
for a symbol of existence. You fight, work, sweat,
nearly kill yourself, sometimes do kill yourself, trying
to accomplish something—and you can't. Not from
any fault of yours. You simply can do nothing,
neither great nor little—not a thing in the world
—not even marry an old maid, or get a wretched
600-ton cargo of coal to its port of destination.
"It was altogether a memorable affair. It was
my first voyage to the East, and my first voyage as
second mate; it was also my skipper's first com-
mand . You'll admit it was time. He was sixty if
a day; a little man, with a broad, not very straight
back, with bowed shoulders and one leg more bandy
than the other, he had that queer twisted-about
appearance you see so often in men who work in the
fields. He had a nut-cracker face—chin and nose
trying to come together over a sunken mouth—and
it was framed in iron-grey fluffy hair, that looked
like a chin-strap of cotton-wool sprinkled with coal-
dust. And he had blue eyes in that old face of his,
which were amazingly like a boy's, with that candid
expression some quite common men preserve to the
end of their days by a rare internal gift of simplicity
of heart and rectitude of soul . What induced him


YOUTH. 5
to accept me was a wonder. I had come out of a
crack Australian clipper, where I had been third
officer, and he seemed to have a prejudice against
crack clippers as aristocratic and high-toned. He
said to me, 'You know, in this ship you will have to
work.' I said I had to work in every ship I had
ever been in. 'Ah, but this is different, and you
gentlemen out of them big ships; . . . but there! I
daresay you will do. Join to-morrow.'
"I joined to-morrow. It was twenty-two years
ago; and I was just twenty. How time passes!
It was one of the happiest days of my life. Fancy!
Second mate for the first time —a really responsible
officer! I wouldn't have thrown up my new billet
for a fortune. The mate looked me over carefully.
He was also an old chap, but of another stamp. He
had a Roman nose, a snow-white, long beard, and
his name was Mahon, but he insisted that it should
be pronounced Mann. He was well connected; yet
there was something wrong with his luck, and he
had never got on.
"As to the captain, he had been for years in
coasters, then in the Mediterranean, and last in the
West Indian trade. He had never been round the
Capes. He could just write a kind of sketchy hand,
and didn't care for writing at all . Both were
thorough good seamen of course, and between those
two old chaps I felt like a small boy between two
grandfathers.
"The ship also was old . Her name was the Judea.
Queer name, isn't it? She belonged to a man
Wilmer, Wilcox—some name like that; but he has
been bankrupt and dead these twenty years or more,


6 YOUTH.
and his name don't matter. She had been laid up
in Shadwell basin for ever so long. You may imagine
her state. She was all rust, dust, grime—soot aloft,
dirt on deck. To me it was like coming out of a
palace into a ruined cottage. She was about 400
tons, had a primitive windlass, wooden latches to the
doors, not a bit of brass about her, and a big square
stern. There was on it, below her name in big
letters, a lot of scrollwork, with the gilt off, and some
sort of a coat of arms, with the motto 'Do or Die'
underneath. I remember it took my fancy immensely.
There was a touch of romance in it, something that
made me love the old thing—something that appealed
to my youth!
"We left London in ballast—sand ballast—to load
a cargo of coal in a northern port for Bankok
.
Bankok! I thrilled. I had been six years at sea,
but had only seen Melbourne and Sydney, very good
places, charming places in their way—but Bankok!
"We worked out of the Thames under canvas, with
a North Sea pilot on board. His name was Jermyn,
and he dodged all day long about the galley drying
his handkerchief before the stove. Apparently he
never slept. He was a dismal man, with a perpetual
tear sparkling at the end of his nose, who either had
been in trouble, or was in trouble, or expected to be
in trouble—couldn't be happy unless something went
wrong. He mistrusted my youth, my common-sense,
and my seamanship, and made a point of showing it
in a hundred little ways. I daresay he was right.
It seems to me I knew very little then, and I know
not much more now; but I cherish a hate for that
Jermyn to this day.


YOUTH. 7
"We were a week working up as far as Yarmouth
Roads, and then we got into a gale—the famous
October gale of twenty-two years ago. It was wind,
lightning, sleet, snow, and a terrific sea. We were
flying light, and you may imagine how bad it was
when I tell you we had smashed bulwarks and a
flooded deck . On the second night she shifted her
ballast into the lee bow, and by that time we had
been blown off somewhere on the Dogger Bank.
There was nothing for it but go below with shovels
and try to right her, and there we were in that vast
hold, gloomy like a cavern, the tallow dips stuck and
flickering on the beams, the gale howling above, the
ship tossing about like mad on her side; there we
all were, Jermyn, the captain, every one, hardly able
to keep our feet, engaged on that gravedigger's
work, and trying to toss shovelfuls of wet sand up
to windward. At every tumble of the ship you
could see vaguely in the dim light men falling down
with a great flourish of shovels . One of the ship's
boys (we had two), impressed by the weirdness of the
scene, wept as if his heart would break. We could
hear him blubbering somewhere in the shadows.
"On the third day the gale died out, and by-and-
by a north-country tug picked us up. We took
sixteen days in all to get from London to the Tyne!
When we got into dock we had lost our turn for
loading, and they hauled us off to a tier where we
remained for a month. Mrs Beard (the captain's
name was Beard) came from Colchester to see the
old man. She lived on board. The crew of runners
had left, and there remained only the officers, one
boy, and the steward, a mulatto who answered to the


8 YOUTH.
name of Abraham. Mrs Beard was an old woman,
with a face all wrinkled and ruddy like a winter
apple, and the figure of a young girl . She caught
sight of me once, sewing on a button, and insisted
on having my shirts to repair. This was something
different from the captains' wives I had known on
board crack clippers. When I brought her the
shirts, she said: 'And the socks? They want mend-
ing, I am sure, and John's —Captain Beard's—things
are all in order now. I would be glad of something
to do.' Bless the old woman. She overhauled my
outfit for me, and meantime I read for the first time
'Sartor Resartus' and Burnaby's 'Ride to Khiva.'
I didn't understand much of the first then; but I
remember I preferred the soldier to the philosopher
at the time; a preference which life has only con-
firmed. One was a man, and the other was either
more—or less. However, they are both dead, and
Mrs Beard is dead, and youth, strength, genius,
thoughts, achievements, simple hearts—all dies . . .
No matter.
"They loaded us at last. We shipped a crew.
Eight able seamen and two boys. We hauled off
one evening to the buoys at the dock-gates, ready to
go out, and with a fair prospect of beginning the
voyage next day. Mrs Beard was to start for home
by a late train. When the ship was fast we went to
tea. We sat rather silent through the meal—Mahon,
the old couple, and I. I finished first, and slipped
away for a smoke, my cabin being in a deck-house
just against the poop. It was high water, blowing
fresh with a drizzle; the double dock-gates were
opened, and the steam-colliers were going in and out


YOUTH. 9
in the darkness with their lights burning bright, a
great plashing of propellers, rattling of winches, and
a lot of hailing on the pier-heads. I watched the
procession of head-lights gliding high and of green
lights gliding low in the night, when suddenly
a red gleam flashed at me, vanished, came into
view again, and remained. The fore-end of a
steamer loomed up close. I shouted down the
cabin, 'Come up, quick!' and then heard a startled
voice saying afar in the dark, 'Stop her, sir.' A
bell jingled. Another voice cried warningly,'We are
going right into that barque, sir.' The answer to
this was a gruff 'All right,' and the next thing was
to heavy crash as the steamer struck a glancing blow
with the bluff of her bow about our fore-rigging.
There was a moment of confusion, yelling, and
running about. Steam roared. Then somebody
was heard saying, 'All clear, sir.' . . . 'Are you all
right?' asked the gruff voice. I had jumped for-
ward to see the damage, and hailed back, 'I think
so.' 'Easy astern,' said the gruff voice. A bell
jingled. 'What steamer is that?' screamed Mahon.
By that time she was no more to us than a bulky
shadow manoeuvring a little way off. They shouted
at us some name—a woman's name, Miranda or
Melissa—or some such thing. 'This means another
month in this beastly hole,' said Mahon to me, as we
peered with lamps about the splintered bulwarks and
broken braces. 'But where's the captain?'
"We had not heard or seen anything of him all
that time. We went aft to look. A doleful voice
arose hailing somewhere in the middle of the dock,
'Judea ahoy!' . . . How the devil did he get


10 YOUTH.
there? . . . 'Hallo!' we shouted. 'I am adrift in
our boat without oars,' he cried . A belated water-
man offered his services, and Mahon struck a bargain
with him for half-a-crown to tow our skipper along-
side; but it was Mrs Beard that came up the ladder
first. They had been floating about the dock in that
mizzly cold rain for nearly an hour. I was never so
surprised in my life.
"It appears that when he heard my shout 'Come
up' he understood at once what was the matter,
caught up his wife, ran on deck, and across, and
down into our boat, which was fast to the ladder.
Not bad for a sixty-year-old. Just imagine that old
fellow saving heroically in his arms that old woman—
the woman of his life. He set her down on a thwart,
and was ready to climb back on board when the
painter came adrift somehow, and away they went
together. Of course in the confusion we did not hear
him shouting. He looked abashed. She said cheer-
fully, 'I suppose it does not matter my losing the
train now?' 'No, Jenny—you go below and get
warm,' he growled. Then to us: 'A sailor has no
business with a wife—I say. There I was, out of
the ship. Well, no harm done this time. Let's go
and look at what that fool of a steamer smashed.'
"It wasn't much, but it delayed us three weeks.
At the end of that time, the captain being engaged
with his agents, I carried Mrs Beard's bag to the
railway-station and put her all comfy into a third-
class carriage. She lowered the window to say,
'You are a good young man. If you see John —
Captain Beard—without his muffler at night, just
remind him from me to keep his throat well wrapped


YOUTH. 11
up.' 'Certainly, Mrs Beard,' I said, 'You are a
good young man; I noticed how attentive you are
to John —to Captain 'The train pulled out
suddenly; I took my cap off to the old woman: I
never saw her again. . . . Pass the bottle.
"We went to sea next day. When we made that
start for Bankok we had been already three months
out of London. We had expected to be a fortnight
or so—at the outside.
"It was January, and the weather was beautiful—
the beautiful sunny winter weather that has more
charm than in the summer-time, because it is unex-
pected, and crisp, and you know it won't, it can't last long. It's like a windfall, like a godsend, like
an unexpected piece of luck
.
"It lasted all down the North Sea, all down
Channel; and it lasted till we were three
hundred miles or so to the westward of the Lizards:
then the wind went round to the sou'west and began
to pipe up. In two days it blew a gale. The Judea,
hove to, wallowed on the Atlantic like an old candle-
box. It blew day after day: it blew with spite,
without interval, without mercy, without rest. The
world was nothing but an immensity of great foam-
ing waves rushing at us, under a sky low enough to
touch with the hand and dirty like a smoked ceiling.
In the stormy space surrounding us there was as
much flying spray as air. Day after day and night
after night there was nothing round the ship but
the howl of the wind, the tumult of the sea, the noise
of water pouring over her deck. There was no rest for
her and no rest for us. She tossed, she pitched, she
stood on her head, she sat on her tail, she rolled, she


12 YOUTH.
groaned, and we had to hold on while on deck and
cling to our bunks when below, in a constant effort
of body and worry of mind.
"One night Mahon spoke through the small
window of my berth. It opened right into my very
bed, and I was lying there sleepless, in my boots,
feeling as though I had not slept for years, and could
not if I tried. He said excitedly—
"'You got the sounding-rod in here, Marlow? I
can't get the pumps to suck . By God! it's no
child's play.'
"I gave him the sounding-rod and lay down again,
trying to think of various things—but I thought
only of the pumps. When I came on deck they were
still at it, and my watch relieved at the pumps. By
the light of the lantern brought on deck to examine
the sounding-rod I caught a glimpse of their weary,
serious faces. We pumped all the four hours. We
pumped all night, all day, all the week—watch and
watch. She was working herself loose, and leaked
badly—not enough to drown us at once, but enough
to kill us with the work at the pumps. And while
we pumped the ship was going from us piecemeal:
the bulwarks went, the stanchions were torn out, the
ventilators smashed, the cabin-door burst in. There
was not a dry spot in the ship. She was being
gutted bit by bit. The long-boat changed, as if by
magic, into matchwood where she stood in her gripes.
I had lashed her myself, and was rather proud of my
handiwork, which had withstood so long the malice
of the sea. And we pumped. And there was no
break in the weather. The sea was white like a
sheet of foam, like a caldron of boiling milk; there


YOUTH. 13
was not a break in the clouds, no—not the size of a
man's hand—no, not for so much as ten seconds.
There was for us no sky, there were for us no stars,
no sun, no universe—nothing but angry clouds and
an infuriated sea. We pumped watch and watch,
for dear life; and it seemed to last for months, for
years, for all eternity, as though we had been dead
and gone to a hell for sailors. We forgot the day of
the week, the name of the month, what year it was,
and whether we had ever been ashore. The sails
blew away, she lay broadside on under a weather-
cloth, the ocean poured over her, and we did not
care. We turned those handles, and had the eyes of
idiots. As soon as we had crawled on deck I used
to take a round turn with a rope about the men, the
pumps, and the mainmast, and we turned, we turned
incessantly, with the water to our waists, to our
necks, over our heads. It was all one. We had
forgotten how it felt to be dry.
"And there was somewhere in me the thought:
By Jove! this is the deuce of an adventure—some-
thing you read about; and it is my first voyage as
second mate—and I am only twenty—and here I am
lasting it out as well as any of these men, and keep-
ing my chaps up to the mark . I was pleased. I
would not have given up the experience for worlds.
I had moments of exultation. Whenever the old
dismantled craft pitched heavily with her counter
high in the air, she seemed to me to throw up, like
an appeal, like a defiance, like a cry to the clouds
without mercy, the words written on her stern:
'Judea, London. Do or Die.'
"O youth! The strength of it, the faith of it, the


14 YOUTH.
imagination of it! To me she was not an old rattle-
trap carting about the world a lot of coal for a
freight—to me she was the endeavour, the test, the
trial of life. I think of her with pleasure, with
affection, with regret—as you would think of some
one dead you have loved, I shall never forget her.
. . . Pass the bottle.
"One night when tied to the mast, as I explained,
we were pumping on, deafened with the wind, and
without spirit enough in us to wish ourselves dead,
a heavy sea crashed aboard and swept clean over us.
As soon as I got my breath I shouted, as in duty
bound, 'Keep on, boys!' when suddenly I felt some-
thing hard floating on deck strike the calf of my leg.
I made a grab at it and missed. It was so dark we
could not see each other's faces within a foot—you
understand.
"After that thump the ship kept quiet for a while,
and the thing, whatever it was, struck my leg again.
This time I caught it—and it was a sauce-pan. At
first, being stupid with fatigue and thinking of
nothing but the pumps, I did not understand what
I had in my hand. Suddenly it dawned upon me,
and I shouted, 'Boys, the house on deck is gone.
Leave this, and let's look for the cook.'
"There was a deck-house forward, which contained
the galley, the cook's berth, and the quarters of the
crew. As we had expected for days to see it swept
away, the hands had been ordered to sleep in the
cabin—the only safe place in the ship. The steward,
Abraham, however, persisted in clinging to his berth,
stupidly, like a mule—from sheer fright I believe,
like an animal that won't leave a stable falling in an


YOUTH 15
earthquake. So we went to look for him. It was
chancing death, since once out of our lashings we
were as exposed as if on a raft. But we went. The
house was shattered as if a shell had exploded inside.
Most of it had gone overboard—stove, men's quarters,
and their property, all was gone; but two posts, hold-
ing a portion of the bulkhead to which Abraham's
bunk was attached, remained as if by a miracle.
We groped in the ruins and came upon this, and
there he was, sitting in his bunk, surrounded by
foam and wreckage, jabbering cheerfully to himself.
He was out of his mind; completely and for ever
mad, with this sudden shock coming upon the fag-
end of his endurance. We snatched him up, lugged
him aft, and pitched him head-first down the cabin
companion. You understand there was no time to
carry him down with infinite precautions and wait
to see how he got on. Those below would pick him
up at the bottom of the stairs all right. We were
in a hurry to go back to the pumps. That business
could not wait. A bad leak is an inhuman thing.
"One would think that the sole purpose of that
fiendish gale had been to make a lunatic of that
poor devil of a mulatto. It eased before morning,
and next day the sky cleared, and as the sea went
down the leak took up. When it came to bending
a fresh set of sails the crew demanded to put back—
and really there was nothing else to do. Boats
gone, decks swept clean, cabin gutted, men without
a stitch but what they stood in, stores spoiled, ship
strained. We put her head for home, and—would
you believe it? The wind came east right in our
teeth. It blew fresh, it blew continuously. We had


16 YOUTH.
to beat up every inch of the way, but she did not
leak so badly, the water keeping comparatively
smooth. Two hours' pumping in every four is no
joke—but it kept her afloat as far as Falmouth.
"The good people there live on casualties of the
sea, and no doubt were glad to see us. A hungry
crowd of shipwrights sharpened their chisels at the
sight of that carcass of a ship. And, by Jove! they
had pretty pickings off us before they were done.
I fancy the owner was already in a tight place.
There were delays. Then it was decided to take
part of the cargo out and caulk her topsides. This
was done, the repairs finished, cargo reshipped; a
new crew came on board, and we went out—for
Bankok . At the end of a week we were back again.
The crew said they weren't going to Bankok—a
hundred and fifty days' passage—in a something
hooker that wanted pumping eight hours out of
the twenty-four; and the nautical papers inserted
again the little paragraph: 'Judea. Barque. Tyne
to Bankok; coals; put back to Falmouth leaky and
with crew refusing duty.'
"There were more delays—more tinkering. The
owner came down for a day, and said she was as
right as a little fiddle. Poor old Captain Beard
looked like the ghost of a Geordie skipper—through
the worry and humiliation of it. Remember he was
sixty, and it was his first command. Mahon said
it was a foolish business, and would end badly. I
loved the ship more than ever, and wanted awfully
to get to Bankok . To Bankok! Magic name,
blessed name. Mesopotamia wasn't a patch on it.
Remember I was twenty, and it was my first second


YOUTH. 17
mate's billet, and the East was waiting for
me.
"We went out and anchored in the outer roads
with a fresh crew—the third. She leaked worse
than ever. It was as if those confounded ship-
wrights had actually made a hole in her. This
time we did not even go outside. The crew simply
refused to man the windlass.
"They towed us back to the inner harbour, and
we became a fixture, a feature, an institution of the
place. People pointed us out to visitors as 'That
'ere barque that's going to Bankok—has been here
six months—put back three times.' On holidays
the small boys pulling about in boats would hail,
'Judea, ahoy!' and if a head showed above the rail
shouted, 'Where you bound to? — Bankok?' and
jeered. We were only three on board. The poor
old skipper mooned in the cabin. Mahon undertook
the cooking, and unexpectedly developed all a
Frenchman's genius for preparing nice little messes.
I looked languidly after the rigging. We became
citizens of Falmouth. Every shopkeeper knew us.
At the barber's or tobacconist's they asked familiarly,
'Do you think you will ever get to Bankok?' Mean-
time the owner, the underwriters, and the charterers
squabbled amongst themselves in London, and our
pay went on. . . . Pass the bottle.
"It was horrid. Morally it was worse than pump-
ing for life. It seemed as though we had been for-
gotten by the world, belonged to nobody, would get
nowhere; it seemed that, as if bewitched, we would
have to live for ever and ever in that inner harbour,
a derision and a byword to generations of long-shore


18 YOUTH.
loafers and dishonest boatmen. I obtained three
months' pay and a five days' leave, and made a
rush for London. It took me a day to get there
and pretty well another to come back—but three
months' pay went all the same. I don't know what
I did with it. I went to a music-hall, I believe,
lunched, dined, and supped in a swell place in Regent
Street, and was back to time, with nothing but a
complete set of Byron's works and a new railway
rug to show for three months' work. The boat-
man who pulled me off to the ship said: 'Hallo! I
thought you had left the old thing. She will never
get to Bankok.' 'That's all you know about it,' I
said, scornfully — but I didn't like that prophecy
at all.
"Suddenly a man, some kind of agent to some-
body, appeared with full powers. He had grog-
blossoms all over his face, an indomitable energy,
and was a jolly soul. We leaped into life again.
A hulk came alongside, took our cargo, and then we
went into dry dock to get our copper stripped . No
wonder she leaked. The poor thing, strained be-
yond endurance by the gale, had, as if in disgust,
spat out all the oakum of her lower seams. She
was recaulked, new coppered, and made as tight as
a bottle. We went back to the hulk and reshipped
our cargo.
"Then, on a fine moonlight night, all the rats left
the ship.
"We had been infested with them. They had
destroyed our sails, consumed more stores than the
crew, affably shared our beds and our dangers, and
now, when the ship was made seaworthy, concluded


TOOTH. 19
to clear out, I called Mahon to enjoy the spectacle.
Rat after rat appeared on our rail, took a last look
over his shoulder, and leaped with a hollow thud
into the empty hulk. We tried to count them, but
soon lost the tale. Mahon said: 'Well, wellI don't
talk to me about the intelligence of rats. They
ought to have left before, when we had that narrow
squeak from foundering. There you have the proof
how silly is the superstition about them. They leave
a good ship for an old rotten hulk, where there is
nothing to eat, too, the fools! . . . I don't believe
they know what is safe or what is good for them,
any more than you or I.' "And after some more talk we agreed that the
wisdom of rats had been grossly overrated, being in
fact no greater than that of men.
"The story of the ship was known, by this, all up
the Channel from Land's End to the Forelands, and
we could get no crew on the south coast. They sent
us one all complete from Liverpool, and we left once
more—for Bankok.
"We had fair breezes, smooth water right into the
tropics, and the old Judea lumbered along in the
sunshine. When she went eight knots everything
cracked aloft, and we tied our caps to our heads;
but mostly she strolled on at the rate of three miles
an hour. What could you expect? She was tired
—that old ship. Her youth was where mine is—
where yours is—you fellows who listen to this yarn;
and what friend would throw your years and your
weariness in your face? We didn't grumble at her.
To us aft, at least, it seemed as though we had been
born in her, reared in her, had lived in her for ages,


20 YOUTH.
had never known any other ship. I would just as
soon have abused the old village church at home for
not being a cathedral.
"And for me there was also my youth to make me
patient. There was all the East before me, and all
life, and the thought that I had been tried in that
ship and had come out pretty well . And I thought
of men of old who, centuries ago, went that road in
ships that sailed no better, to the land of palms, and
spices, and yellow sands, and of brown nations ruled
by kings more cruel than Nero the Roman and more
splendid than Solomon the Jew. The old bark
lumbered on, heavy with her age and the burden of
her cargo, while I lived the life of youth in ignorance
and hope. She lumbered on through an interminable
procession of days; and the fresh gilding flashed
back at the setting sun, seemed to cry out over the
darkening sea the words painted on her stern, 'Judea,
London. Do or Die.'
"Then we entered the Indian Ocean and steered
northerly for Java Head. The winds were light.
Weeks slipped by. She crawled on, do or die, and
people at home began to think of posting us as
overdue.
"One Saturday evening, I being off duty, the men
asked me to give them an extra bucket of water or
so—for washing clothes. As I did not wish to screw
on the fresh-water pump so late, I went forward
whistling, and with a key in my hand to unlock the
forepeak scuttle, intending to serve the water out of a
spare tank we kept there.
"The smell down below was as unexpected as it
was frightful . One would have thought hundreds of


YOUTH. 21
paraffin-lamps had been flaring and smoking in that
hole for days. I was glad to get out. The man
with me coughed and said, 'Funny smell, sir.' I
answered negligently, 'It's good for the health they
say,' and walked aft.
"The first thing I did was to put my head down
the square of the midship ventilator. As I lifted the
lid a visible breath, something like a thin fog, a puff
of faint haze, rose from the opening. The ascending
air was hot, and had a heavy, sooty, paraffiny smell.
I gave one sniff, and put down the lid gently. It
was no use choking myself. The cargo was on fire.
"Next day she began to smoke in earnest. You
see it was to be expected, for though the coal was of
a safe kind, that cargo had been so handled, so
broken up with handling, that it looked more like
smithy coal than anything else. Then it had been
wetted—more than once. It rained all the time we
were taking it back from the hulk, and now with this
long passage it got heated, and there was another
case of spontaneous combustion.
"The captain called us into the cabin. He had a
chart spread on the table, and looked unhappy. He
said, 'The coast of West Australia is near, but I
mean to proceed to our destination. It is the hurri-
cane month too; but we will just keep her head for
Bankok, and fight the fire. No more putting back
anywhere, if we all get roasted. We will try first to
stifle this 'ere damned combustion by want of air.'
"We tried . We battened down everything, and
still she smoked . The smoke kept coming out
through imperceptible crevices; it forced itself
through bulkheads and covers; it oozed here and


22 YOUTH.
there and everywhere in slender threads, in an
invisible film, in an incomprehensible manner. It
made its way into the cabin, into the forecastle; it
poisoned the sheltered places on the deck, it could be
sniffed as high as the mainyard. It was clear that if
the smoke came out the air came in. This was dis-
heartening. This combustion refused to be stifled.
"We resolved to try water, and took the hatches
off. Enormous volumes of smoke, whitish, yellowish,
thick, greasy, misty, choking, ascended as high as
the trucks. All hands cleared out aft. Then the
poisonous cloud blew away, and we went back to
work in a smoke that was no thicker now than that
of an ordinary factory chimney.
"We rigged the force-pump, got the hose along,
and by-and-by it burst. Well, it was as old as the
ship—to prehistoric hose, and past repair. Then we
pumped with the feeble head-pump, drew water with
buckets, and in this way managed in time to pour
lots of Indian Ocean into the main hatch. The
bright stream flashed in sunshine, fell into a layer of
white crawling smoke, and vanished on the black
surface of coal. Steam ascended mingling with the
smoke. We poured salt water as into a barrel with-
out a bottom. It was our fate to pump in that ship,
to pump out of her, to pump into her; and after
keeping water out of her to save ourselves from being
drowned, we frantically poured water into her to save
ourselves from being burnt.
"And she crawled on, do or die, in the serene
weather. The sky was a miracle of purity, a miracle
of azure. The sea was polished, was blue, was
pellucid, was sparkling like a precious stone, extend-


YOUTH. 23
ing on all sides, all round to the horizon—as if the
whole terrestrial globe had been one jewel, one
colossal sapphire, a single gem fashioned into a
planet. And on the lustre of the great calm waters
the Judea glided imperceptibly, enveloped in languid
and unclean vapours, in a lazy cloud that drifted to
leeward, light and slow: a pestiferous cloud defiling
the splendour of sea and sky.
"All this time of course we saw no fire. The
cargo smouldered at the bottom somewhere. Once
Mahon, as we were working side by side, said to me
with a queer smile: 'Now, if she only would spring
a tidy leak—like that time when we first left the
Channel — it would put a stopper on this fire.
Wouldn't it?' I remarked irrelevantly, 'Do you
remember the rats?'
"We fought the fire and sailed the ship too as
carefully as though nothing had been the matter.
The steward cooked and attended on us. Of the
other twelve men, eight worked while four rested.
Every one took his turn, captain included. There
was equality, and if not exactly fraternity, then a
deal of good feeling. Sometimes a man, as he dashed
a bucketful of water down the hatchway, would yell
out, 'Hurrah for Bankok 1' and the rest laughed.
But generally we were taciturn and serious—and
thirsty. Oh! how thirsty! And we had to be
careful with the water. Strict allowance. The
ship smoked, the sun blazed. . . . Pass the bottle.
"We tried everything. We even made an attempt
to dig down to the fire. No good, of course. No
man could remain more than a minute below.
Mahon, who went first, fainted there, and the man


24 YOUTH.
who went to fetch him out did likewise. We lugged
them out on deck. Then I leaped down to show how
easily it could be done. They had learned wisdom
by that time, and contented themselves by fishing
for me with a chain-hook tied to a broom-handle, I
believe. I did not offer to go and fetch up my
shovel, which was left down below.
"Things began to look bad. We put the long-
boat into the water. The second boat was ready to
swing out. We had also another, a 14-foot thing,
on davits aft, where it was quite safe.
"Then, behold, the smoke suddenly decreased.
We redoubled our efforts to flood the bottom of the
ship. In two days there was no smoke at all
.
Everybody was on the broad grin. This was on a
Friday. On Saturday no work, but sailing the ship
of course, was done. The men washed their clothes
and their faces for the first time in a fortnight, and
had a special dinner given them. They spoke of
spontaneous combustion with contempt, and implied
they were the boys to put out combustions . Some-
how we all felt as though we each had inherited a
large fortune. But a beastly smell of burning hung
about the ship. Captain Beard had hollow eyes and
sunken cheeks. I had never noticed so much before
how twisted and bowed he was . He and Mahon
prowled soberly about hatches and ventilators,
sniffing. It struck me suddenly poor Mahon was a
very, very old chap. As to me, I was as pleased and
proud as though I had helped to win a great naval
battle. Of Youth!
"The night was fine. In the morning a home-
ward-bound ship passed us hull down,—the first we


26 YOUTH.
up and scrambled out. It was quick like a rebound.
The deck was a wilderness of smashed timber, lying
crosswise, like trees in a wood after a hurricane; an
immense curtain of soiled rags waved gently before
me—it was the mainsail blown to strips. I thought,
The masts will be toppling over directly; and to get
out of the way bolted on all-fours towards the poop-
ladder. The first person I saw was Mahon, with
eyes like saucers, his mouth open, and the long white
hair standing straight on end round his head like a
silver halo. He was just about to go down when
the sight of the main-deck stirring, heaving up, and
changing into splinters before his eyes, petrified him
on the top step. I stared at him in unbelief, and he
stared at me with a queer kind of shocked curiosity.
I did not know that I had no hair, no eyebrows, no
eyelashes, that my young moustache was burnt off,
that my face was black, one cheek laid open, my nose
out, and my chin bleeding. I had lost my cap, one
of my slippers, and my shirt was torn to rags. Of
all this I was not aware I was amazed to see the
ship still afloat, the poop-deck whole—and, most of
all, to see anybody alive. Also the peace of the sky
and the serenity of the sea were distinctly surprising, I suppose I expected to see them convulsed with
horror. . . . Pass the bottle.
"There was a voice hailing the ship from some-
where—in the air, in the sky—I couldn't tell . Pre-
sently I saw the captain—and he was mad. He
asked me eagerly, 'Where's the cabin-table?' and to
hear such a question was a frightful shock . I had
just been blown up, you understand, and vibrated
with that experience,—I wasn't quite sure whether


YOUTH. 27
I was alive. Mahon began to stamp with both feet
and yelled at him, 'Good God! don't you see the
deck's blown out of her?' I found my voice, and
stammered out as if conscious of some gross neglect
of duty, 'I don't know where the cabin-table is.' It
was like an absurd dream.
"Do you know what he wanted next? Well, he
wanted to trim the yards. Very placidly, and as if
lost in thought, he insisted on having the foreyard
squared. 'I don't know if there's anybody alive,'
said Mahon, almost tearfully. 'Surely,' he said,
gently, 'there will be enough left to square the
foreyard.'
"The old chap, it seems, was in his own berth,
winding up the chronometers, when the shock sent
him spinning. Immediately it occurred to him—as
he said afterwards—that the ship had struck some-
thing, and he ran out into the cabin. There, he saw,
the cabin-table had vanished somewhere. The deck
being blown up, it had fallen down into the lazarette
of course. Where we had our breakfast that morn-
ing he saw only a great hole in the floor. This
appeared to him so awfully mysterious, and impressed
him so immensely, that what he saw and heard after
he got on deck were mere trifles in comparison. And,
mark, he noticed directly the wheel deserted and his
barque off her course—and his only thought was to
get that miserable, stripped, undecked, smouldering
shell of a ship back again with her head pointing at
her port of destination. Bankok! That's what he
was after. I tell you this quiet, bowed, bandy-legged,
almost deformed little man was immense in the
singleness of his idea and in his placid ignorance of


28 YOUTH.
our agitation. He motioned us forward with a
commanding gesture, and went to take the wheel
himself.
"Yes; that was the first thing we did—trim the
yards of that wreck! No one was killed, or even
disabled, but every one was more or less hurt. You
should have seen them! Some were in rags, with
black faces, like coallleavers, like sweeps, and had
bullet heads that seemed closely cropped, but were
in fact singed to the skin. Others, of the watch
below, awakened by being shot out from their
collapsing bunks, shivered incessantly, and kept on
groaning even as we went about our work. But
they all worked. That crew of Liverpool hard cases
had in them the right stuff. It's my experience they
always have. It is the sea that gives it—the vast-
ness, the loneliness surrounding their dark stolid
souls. Ah! Well! we stumbled, we crept, we fell,
we barked our shins on the wreckage, we hauled.
The masts stood, but we did not know how much
they might be charred down below. It was nearly
calm, but a long swell ran from the west and made
her roll. They might go at any moment. We
looked at them with apprehension. One could not
foresee which way they would fall.
"Then we retreated aft and looked about us.
The deck was a tangle of planks on edge, of planks
on end, of splinters, of ruined woodwork. The
masts rose from that chaos like big trees above a
matted undergrowth. The interstices of that mass
of wreckage were full of something whitish, sluggish,
stirring—of something that was like a greasy fog.
The smoke of the invisible fire was coming up again,


YOUTH. 29
was trailing, like a poisonous thick mist in some
valley choked with dead wood. Already lazy wisps
were beginning to curl upwards amongst the mass
of splinters. Here and there a piece of timber, stuck
upright, resembled a post. Half of a fife-rail had
been shot through the foresail, and the sky made a
patch of glorious blue in the ignobly soiled canvas.
A portion of several boards holding together had
fallen across the rail, and one end protruded over-
board, like a gangway leading upon nothing, like a
gangway leading over the deep sea, leading to death
—as if inviting us to walk the plank at once and be
done with our ridiculous troubles. And still the air,
the sky—a ghost, something invisible was hailing
the ship.
"Some one had the sense to look over, and there
was the helmsman, who had impulsively jumped
overboard, anxious to come back. He yelled and
swam lustily like a merman, keeping up with the
ship. We threw him a rope, and presently he stood
amongst us streaming with water and very crest-
fallen. The captain had surrendered the wheel, and
apart, elbow on rail and chin in hand, gazed at the
sea wistfully. We asked ourselves, What next? I
thought, Now, this is something like. This is great, I wonder what will happen. O youth!
"Suddenly Mahon sighted a steamer far astern.
Captain Beard said, 'We may do something with
her yet.' We hoisted two flags, which said in the
international language of the sea, 'On fire. Want
immediate assistance.' The steamer grew bigger
rapidly, and by-and-by spoke with two flags on her
foremast, 'I am coming to your assistance.'


YOUTH. 31
fiercely. He shook his fist at the sky. Nobody
else said a word.
"At noon the steamer began to tow. She went
ahead slim and high, and what was left of the Judeafollowed at the end of seventy fathom of tow-rope,—
followed her swiftly like a cloud of smoke with mast-
heads protruding above. We went aloft to furl the
sails. We coughed on the yards, and were careful
about the bunts. Do you see the lot of us there,
putting a neat furl on the sails of that ship doomed
to arrive nowhere? There was not a man who
didn't think that at any moment the masts would
topple over. From aloft we could not see the ship
for smoke, and they worked carefully, passing the
gaskets with even turns. 'Harbour furl — aloft
there!' cried Mahon from below.
"You understand this? I don't think one of those
chaps expected to get down in the usual way. When
we did I heard them saying to each other, 'Well, I
thought we would come down overboard, in a lump
—sticks and all—blame me if I didn't.' 'That's
what I was thinking to myself,' would answer
wearily another battered and bandaged scarecrow.
And, mind, these were men without the drilled-in
habit of obedience. To an onlooker, they would be a
lot of profane scallywags without a redeeming point.
What made them do it—what made them obey me
when I, thinking consciously how fine it was, made
them drop the bunt of the foresail twice to try and
do it better? What? They had no professional
reputation—no examples, no praise. It wasn't a
sense of duty; they all knew well enough how to
shirk, and laze, and dodge—when they had a mind


32 youth.
to it—and mostly they had. Was it the two pounds
ten a-month that sent them there? They didn't
think their pay half good enough. No; it was
something in them, something inborn and subtle
and everlasting. I don't say positively that the
crew of a French or German merchantman wouldn't
have done it, but I doubt whether it would have
been done in the same way. There was a complete-
ness in it, something solid like a principle, and
masterful like an instinct—a disclosure of something
secret—of that hidden something, that gift of good
or evil that makes racial difference, that shapes the
fate of nations.
"It was that night at ten that, for the first time
since we had been fighting it, we saw the fire. The
speed of the towing had fanned the smouldering
destruction. A blue gleam appeared forward, shin-
ing below the wreck of the deck . It wavered in
patches, it seemed to stir and creep like the light
of a glowworm. I saw it first, and told Mahon.
'Then the game's up,' he said. 'We had better
stop this towing, or she will burst out suddenly fore
and aft before we can clear out.' We set up a yell;
rang bells to attract their attention; they towed on.
At last Mahon and I had to crawl forward and cut
the rope with an axe. There was no time to cast off
the lashings. Red tongues could be seen licking the
wilderness of splinters under our feet as we made our
way back to the poop.
"Of course they very soon found out in the
steamer that the rope was gone. She gave a loud
blast of her whistle, her lights were seen sweeping
in a wide circle, she came up ranging close along-
side, and stopped. We were all in a tight group on


YOUTH. 33
the poop looking at her. Every man had saved a
little bundle or a bag. Suddenly a conical flame
with a twisted top shot up forward and threw upon
the black sea a circle of light, with the two vessels
side by side and heaving gently in its centre
.
Captain Beard had been sitting on the gratings still
and mute for hours, but now he rose slowly and
advanced in front of us, to the mizzen-shrouds.
Captain Nash hailed: 'Come along! Look sharp.
I have mail-bags on board. I will take you and
your boats to Singapore' "' Thank you! No!' said our skipper. 'We
must see the last of the ship.'
"' I can't stand by any longer,' shouted the other.
'Mails—you know.'
"' Ay! ay! We are all right.'
"' Very well! I'll report you in Singapore. . . .
Good-bye!'
"He waved his hand . Our men dropped their
bundles quietly. The steamer moved ahead, and
passing out of the circle of light, vanished at once
from our sight, dazzled by the fire which burned
fiercely. And then I knew that I would see the
East first as commander of a small boat. I thought
it fine; and the fidelity to the old ship was fine. We
should see the last of her. Oh the glamour of youth!
Oh the fire of it, more dazzling than the flames of
the burning ship, throwing a magic light on the wide
earth, leaping audaciously to the sky, presently to
be quenched by time, more cruel, more pitiless, more
bitter than the sea—and like the flames of the burn-
ing ship surrounded by an impenetrable night.


34 YOUTH.
"The old man warned us in his gentle and
inflexible way that it was part of our duty to save
for the underwriters as much as we could of the
ship's gear. Accordingly we went to work aft,
while she blazed forward to give us plenty of light.
We lugged out a lot of rubbish. What didn't we
save? An old barometer fixed with an absurd
quantity of screws nearly cost me my life: a
sudden rush of smoke came upon me, and I just got
away in time. There were various stores, bolts of
canvas, coils of rope; the poop looked like a marine
bazaar, and the boats were lumbered to the gun-
wales. One would have thought the old man
wanted to take as much as he could of his first
command with him. He was very, very quiet, but
off his balance evidently. Would you believe it?
He wanted to take a length of old stream-cable and
a kedge-anchor with him in the long-boat. We
said, 'Ay, ay, sir,' deferentially, and on the quiet let
the things slip overboard. The heavy medicine-
chest went that way, two bags of green coffee, tins
of paint—fancy, paint!—a whole lot of things
.
Then I was ordered with two hands into the boats
to make a stowage and get them ready against
the time it would be proper for us to leave the
ship.
"We put everything straight, stepped the long-
boat's mast for our skipper, who was to take charge
of her, and I was not sorry to sit down for a
moment. My face felt raw, every limb ached as if
broken, I was aware of all my ribs, and would have
sworn to a twist in the backbone. The boats, fast
astern, lay in a deep shadow, and all around I could


YOUTH. 35
see the circle of the sea lighted by the fire. A
gigantic flame rose forward straight and clear. It
flared fierce, with noises like the whirr of wings,
with rumbles as of thunder. There were cracks,
detonations, and from the cone of flame the sparks
flew upwards, as man is born to trouble, to leaky
ships, and to ships that burn.
"What bothered me was that the ship, lying
broadside to the swell and to such wind as there
was—a mere breath—the boats would not keep
astern where they were safe, but persisted, in a pig-
headed way boats have, in getting under the counter
and then swinging alongside. They were knocking
about dangerously and coming near the flame, while
the ship rolled on them, and, of course, there was
always the danger of the masts going over the side
at any moment. I and my two boat-keepers kept
them off as best we could, with oars and boat-hooks;
but to be constantly at it became exasperating, since
there was no reason why we should not leave at
once. We could not see those on board, nor could
we imagine what caused the delay. The boat-
keepers were swearing feebly, and I had not only
my share of the work but also had to keep at it two
men who showed a constant inclination to lay them-
selves down and let things slide.
"At last I hailed, 'On deck there,' and some one
looked over. 'We're ready here,' I said. The head
disappeared, and very soon popped up again. 'The
captain says, All right, sir, and to keep the boats
well clear of the ship.'
"Half an hour passed. Suddenly there was a
frightful racket, rattle, clanking of chain, hiss of


36 YOTJTH.
water, and millions of sparks flew up into the shiver-
ing column of smoke that stood leaning slightly above
the ship. The cat-heads had burned away, and the
two red-hot anchors had gone to the bottom, tearing
out after them two hundred fathom of red-hot chain.
The ship trembled, the mass of flame swayed as if
ready to collapse, and the fore top-gallant-mast fell.
It darted down like an arrow of fire, shot under, and
instantly leaping up within an oar's-length of the
boats, floated quietly, very black on the luminous
sea. I hailed the deck again. After some time a
man in an unexpectedly cheerful but also muffled
tone, as though he had been trying to speak with his
mouth shut, informed me, 'Coming directly, sir,' and
vanished. For a long time I heard nothing but the
whirr and roar of the fire. There were also whistling
sounds. The boats jumped, tugged at the painters,
ran at each other playfully, knocked their sides toge-
ther, or, do what we would, swung in a bunch
against the ship's side. I couldn't stand it any
longer, and swarming up a rope, clambered aboard
over the stern.
"It was as bright as day. Coming up like this,
the sheet of fire facing me, was a terrifying sight,
and the heat seemed hardly bearable at first. On a
settee cushion dragged out of the cabin, Captain
Beard, his legs drawn up and one arm under his
head, slept with the light playing on him. Do you
know what the rest were busy about? They were
sitting on deck right aft, round an open case, eating
bread and cheese and drinking bottled stout. .
"On the background of flames twisting in fierce
tongues above their heads they seemed at home like


TOOTH. 37
salamanders, and looked like a band of desperate
pirates. The fire sparkled in the whites of their
eyes, gleamed on patches of white skin seen through
the torn shirts. Each had the marks as of a battle
about him—bandaged heads, tied-up arms, a strip of
dirty rag round a knee—and each man had a bottle
between his legs and a chunk of cheese in his hand.
Mahon got up. With his handsome and disreputable
head, his hooked profile, his long white beard, and
with an uncorked bottle in his hand, he resembled
one of those reckless sea-robbers of old making merry
amidst' violence and disaster. 'The last meal on
board,' he explained solemnly. 'We had nothing to
eat all day, and it was no use leaving all this.'
He flourished the bottle and indicated the sleeping
skipper. 'He said he couldn't swallow anything, so
I got him to lie down,' he went on; and as I stared,
'I don't know whether you are aware, young fellow,
the man had no sleep to speak of for days—and there
will be dam' little sleep in the boats.' 'There will
be no boats by-and-by if you fool about much longer,'
I said, indignantly. I walked up to the skipper and
shook him by the shoulder. At last he opened his
eyes, but did not move. 'Time to leave her, sir,' I
said, quietly.
"He got up painfully, looked at the flames, at the
sea sparkling round the ship, and black, black as ink
farther away; he looked at the stars shining dim
through a thin veil of smoke in a sky black, black
as Erebus.
"' Youngest first,' he said.
"And the ordinary seaman, wiping his mouth with
the back of his hand, got up, clambered over the


38 YOUTH.
taffrail, and vanished. Others followed. One, on
the point of going over, stopped short to drain his
bottle, and with a great swing of his arm flung it at
the fire. 'Take this!' he cried
.
"The skipper lingered disconsolately, and we left
him to commune alone for a while with his first
command . Then I went up again and brought him
away at last. It was time. The ironwork on the
poop was hot to the touch.
"Then the painter of the long-boat was out, and
the three boats, tied together, drifted clear of the
ship. It was just sixteen hours after the explosion
when we abandoned her. Mahon had charge of the
second boat, and I had the smallest—the 14-foot
thing. The long-boat would have taken the lot of
us; but the skipper said we must save as much pro-
perty as we could—for the underwriters—and so I got
my first command . I had two men with me, a bag
of biscuits, a few tins of meat, and a breaker of water.
I was ordered to keep close to the long-boat, that in
case of bad weather we might be taken into her.
"And do you know what I thought? I thought
I would part company as soon as I could . I wanted
to have my first command all to myself. I wasn't
going to sail in a squadron if there were a chance for
independent cruising. I would make land by myself.
I would beat the other boats. Youth! All youth!
The silly, charming, beautiful youth.
"But we did not make a start at once. We must
see the last of the ship. And so the boats drifted
about that night, heaving and setting on the swell.
The men dozed, waked, sighed, groaned I looked
at the burning ship.


TOTJTH. 39
"Between the darkness of earth and heaven she
was burning fiercely upon a disc of purple sea shot
by the blood-red play of gleams; upon a disc of
water glittering and sinister. A high, clear flame,
an immense and lonely flame, ascended from the
ocean, and from its summit the black smoke poured
continuously at the sky. She burned furiously,
mournful and imposing like a funeral pile kindled
in the night, surrounded by the sea, watched over
by the stars. A magnificent death had come like a
grace, like a gift, like a reward to that old ship at
the end of her laborious days . The surrender of her
weary ghost to the keeping of stars and sea was
stirring like the sight of a glorious triumph. The
masts fell just before daybreak, and for a moment
there was a burst and turmoil of sparks that seemed
to fill with flying fire the night patient and watchful,
the vast night lying silent upon the sea. At daylight
she was only a charred shell, floating still under a
cloud of smoke and bearing a glowing mass of coal
within.
"Then the oars were got out, and the boats forming
in a line moved round her remains as if in procession
—the long-boat leading. As we pulled across her
stern a slim dart of fire shot out viciously at us, and
suddenly she went down, head first, in a great hiss
of steam. The unconsumed stern was the last to
sink; but the paint had gone, had cracked, had
peeled off, and there were no letters, there was no
word, no stubborn device that was like her soul, to
flash at the rising sun her creed and her name.
"We made our way north. A breeze sprang up,
and about noon all the boats came together for the


40 TOTTTH.
last time. I had no mast or sail in mine, but I made
a mast out of a spare oar and hoisted a boat-awning
for a sail, with a boat-hook for a yard. She was
certainly over-masted, but I had the satisfaction of
knowing that with the wind aft I could beat the
other two. I had to wait for them. Then we all
had a look at the captain's chart, and, after a sociable
meal of hard bread and water, got our last instruc-
tions. These were simple : steer north, and keep
together as much as possible. 'Be careful with that
jury-rig, Marlow,' said the captain; and Mahon, as
I sailed proudly past his boat, wrinkled his curved
nose and hailed, 'You will sail that ship of yours
under water, if you don't look out, young fellow.'
He was a malicious old man—and may the deep sea
where he sleeps now rock him gently, rock him
tenderly to the end of time!
"Before sunset a thick rain-squall passed over the
two boats, which were far astern, and that was the
last I saw of them for a time. Next day I sat
steering my cockle-shell—my first command—with
nothing but water and sky around me . I did sight
in the afternoon the upper sails of a ship far away,
but said nothing, and my men did not notice her.
You see I was afraid she might be homeward bound,
and I had no mind to turn back from the portals of
the East, I was steering for Java—another blessed
name — like Bankok, you know. I steered many
days.
"I need not tell you what it is to be knocking
about in an open boat. I remember nights and days
of calm when we pulled, we pulled, and the boat
seemed to stand still, as if bewitched within the


YOUTH. 41
circle of the sea horizon. I remember the heat,
the deluge of rain-squalls that kept us baling for
dear life (but filled our water-cask), and I remember
sixteen hours on end with a mouth dry as a cinder
and a steering-oar over the stern to keep my first
command head on to a breaking sea. I did not
know how good a man I was till then. I remember
the drawn faces, the dejected figures of my two men,
and I remember my youth and the feeling that will
never come back any more—the feeling that I could
last for ever, outlast the sea, the earth, and all men;
the deceitful feeling that lures us on to joys, to perils,
to love, to vain effort—to death; the triumphant
conviction of strength, the heat of life in the handful
of dust, the glow in the heart that with every year
grows dim, grows cold, grows small, and expires—
and expires, too soon, too soon—before life itself.
"And this is how I see the East. I have seen its
secret places and have looked into its very soul; but
now I see it always from a small boat, a high outline
of mountains, blue and afar in the morning; like
faint mist at noon; a jagged wall of purple at
sunset. I have the feel of the oar in my hand, the
vision of a scorching blue sea in my eyes. And I
see a bay, a wide bay, smooth as glass and polished
like ice, shimmering in the dark . A red light burns
far off upon the gloom of the land, and the night is
soft and warm. We drag at the oars with aching
arms, and suddenly a puff of wind, a puff faint and
tepid and laden with strange odours of blossoms, of
aromatic wood, comes out of the still night—the
first sigh of the East on my face. That I can
never forget. It was impalpable and enslaving,


YOUTH. 43
Marlowe' 'Mind the end of that jetty, sir,' I
cried.
"He approached cautiously, and brought up with
the deep-sea lead-line which we had saved—for the
underwriters. I eased my painter and fell alongside.
He sat, a broken figure at the stern, wet with dew,
his hands clasped in his lap. His men were asleep
already. 'I had a terrible time of it,' he murmured.
'Mahon is behind—not very far.' We conversed in
whispers, in low whispers, as if afraid to wake up
the land. Guns, thunder, earthquakes would not
have awakened the men just then.
"Looking round as we talked, I saw away at sea
a bright light travelling in the night. 'There's a
steamer passing the bay,' I said. She was not
passing, she was entering, and she even came close
and anchored. 'I wish,' said the old man, 'you
would find out whether she is English. Perhaps
they could give us a passage somewhere.' He
seemed nervously anxious. So by dint of punch-
ing and kicking I started one of my men into a
state of somnambulism, and giving him an oar,
took another and pulled towards the lights of the
steamer. "There was a murmur of voices in her, metallic
hollow clang of the engine-room, footsteps on the
deck. Her ports shone, round like dilated eyes.
Shapes moved about, and there was a shadowy
man high up on the bridge. He heard my oars.
"And then, before I could open my lips, the East
spoke to me, but it was in a Western voice. A
torrent of words was poured into the enigmatical,
the fateful silence; outlandish, angry words, mixed


44 YOUTH.
with words and even whole sentences of good
English, less strange but even more surprising.
The voice swore and cursed violently; it riddled
the solemn peace of the bay by a volley of abuse.
It began by calling me Pig, and from that went
crescendo into unmentionable adjectives—in English.
The man up there raged aloud in two languages,
and with a sincerity in his fury that almost con-
vinced me I had, in some way, sinned against the
harmony of the universe. I could hardly see him,
but began to think he would work himself into a fit.
"Suddenly he ceased, and I could hear him snort-
ing and blowing like a porpoise. I said—
"' What steamer is this, pray?'
"'Eh? What's this? And who are you?'
"' Castaway crew of an English barque burnt at
sea. We came here to-night. I am the second mate.
The captain is in the long-boat, and wishes to know
if you would give us a passage somewhere.'
"' Oh, my goodness! I say. . . . This is the
Celestial from Singapore on her return trip. I'll
arrange with your captain in the morning, . . .
and, ... I say, . . . did you hear me just
now?'
"'I should think the whole bay heard you.'
"' I thought you were a shore-boat. Now, look
here—this infernal lazy scoundrel of a caretaker has
gone to sleep again—curse him. The light is out,
and I nearly ran foul of the end of this damned
jetty. This is the third time he plays me this trick
.
Now, I ask you, can anybody stand this kind of
thing? It's enough to drive a man out of his mind, I'll report him. ... I'll get the Assistant


YOUTH. 45
Resident to give him the sack, by ...! See—
there's no light. It's out, isn't it? I take you to
witness the light's out. There should be a light,
you know. A red light on the'
"'There was a light,' I said, mildly.
"' But it's out, man! What's the use of talking
like this? You can see for yourself it's out—don't
you? If you had to take a valuable steamer along
this God-forsaken coast you would want a light too.
I'll kick him from end to end of his miserable wharf.
You'll see if I don't . I will'
"' So I may tell my captain you'll take us?' I
broke in.
"'Yes, I'll take you. Good night,' he said,
brusquely.
"I pulled back, made fast again to the jetty, and
then went to sleep at last. I had faced the silence
of the East . I had heard some of its language.
But when I opened my eyes again the silence was as
complete as though it had never been broken. I
was lying in a flood of light, and the sky had never
looked so far, so high, before. I opened my eyes and
lay without moving.
"And then I saw the men of the East—they were
looking at me. The whole length of the jetty was
full of people. I saw brown, bronze, yellow faces,
the black eyes, the glitter, the colour of an Eastern
crowd. And all these beings stared without a
murmur, without a sigh, without a movement
.
They stared down at the boats, at the sleeping men
who at night had come to them from the sea. Noth-
ing moved. The fronds of palms stood still against
the sky. Not a branch stirred along the shore, and


46 YOUTH.
the brown roofs of hidden houses peeped through the
green foliage, through the big leaves that hung
shining and still like leaves forged of heavy metal.
This was the East of the ancient navigators, so old,
so mysterious, resplendent and sombre, living and
unchanged, full of danger and promise. And these
were the men. I sat up suddenly. A wave of
movement passed through the crowd from end to
end, passed along the heads, swayed the bodies, ran
along the jetty like a ripple on the water, like a
breath of wind on a field—and all was still again.
I see it now—the wide sweep of the bay, the glitter-
ing sands, the wealth of green infinite and varied,
the sea blue like the sea of a dream, the crowd of
attentive faces, the blaze of vivid colour—the water
reflecting it all, the curve of the shore, the jetty, the
high-sterned outlandish craft floating still, and the
three boats with the tired men from the West sleep-
ing, unconscious of the land and the people and of
the violence of sunshine. They slept thrown across
the thwarts, curled on bottom-boards, in the careless
attitudes of death. The head of the old skipper,
leaning back in the stern of the long-boat, had fallen
on his breast, and he looked as though he would
never wake. Farther out old Mahon's face was up-
turned to the sky, with the long white beard spread
out on his breast, as though he had been shot where
he sat at the tiller; and a man, all in a heap in the
bows of the boat, slept with both arms embracing
the stem-head and with his cheek laid on the gun-
wale. The East looked at them without a sound.
"I have known its fascination since: I have seen
the mysterious shores, the still water, the lands of


48 YOUTH.
our faces marked by toil, by deceptions, by success,
by love; our weary eyes looking still, looking always,
looking anxiously for something out of life, that while
it is expected is already gone—has passed unseen, in
a sigh, in a flash—together with the youth, with the
strength, with the romance of illusions.


HEART OF DARKNESS





LA
HEART OF DARKNESS.
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 van-
ishing flatness. The air was dark above Gravesend,
and farther back still seemed condensed into a
mournful gloom, brooding motionless over the big-
gest, and the greatest, town on earth.
The Director of Companies was our captain and
our host. We four affectionately watched his back


52 HEART OF DARKNESSas he stood in the bows looking to seaward. On the
whole river there was nothing that looked half be
nautical. He resembled a pilot, which to a seaman
is trustworthiness personified . It was difficult to
realise 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 separa-
tion, 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 mizzen-
mast. 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 seren-
ity 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 marshes 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


HEARTOF DARKNESS. 53
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 utter-
most 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 totlpe 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 treas-
ure, to be visited by the Queen's Highness and thus
pass out of the gigantic tale, to the Erebus and


54 HEART OF DARKNESS.
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 Chap-
man 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 omin-
ously on the sky, a brooding gloom in sunshine, a
lurid glare under thestars.
"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


HEART OF DARKNESS. 85
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
changing immensity of life, glide past, veiled not by
a sense of mystery but by a slightly disdainful ignor-
ance; 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
illumination 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 com-


56 HEART OF DARKNESS.
mander 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 won-
derful 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 civilised 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 pro-
motion 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—per-
haps 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 wilder-


HEART OF DARKNESS. '57
ness 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 ac-
count, really. They were no colonists; their admin-
istration 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 com-
plexion 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 pretence but an idea;
and an unselfish belief in the idea—something you


HEART OF DARKNESS. 59
your work and invading your homes, just as though
I had got a heavenly mission to civilize you. It was
very fine for a time, but after a bit I did get tired of
resting. Then I began to look for a ship—I should
think the hardest work on earth. But the ships
wouldn't even look at me. And I got tired of that
game too.
"Now when I was a little chap I had a passion for
maps. I would look for hours at South America, or
Africa, or Australia, and lose myself in all the glories
of exploration. At that time there were many blank
spaces on the earth, and when I saw one that looked
particularly inviting on a map (but they all look
that) I would put my finger on it and say, When I
grow up I will go there. The North Pole was one of
these places, I remember. Well, I haven't been there
yet, and shall not try now. The glamour's off.
Other places were scattered about the Equator, and
in every sort of latitude all over the two hemispheres.
I have been in some of them, and . . . well, we won't
talk about that. But there was one yet—the biggest,
the most blank, so to speak—that I had a hankering
after.
"True, by this time it was not a blank space any
more. It had got filled since my boyhood with rivers
and lakes and names. It had ceased to be a blank
space of delightful mystery—a white patch for a boy
to dream gloriously over. It had become a place of
darkness. But there was in it one river especially, a
mighty big river, that you could see on the map,
resembling an immense snake uncoiled, with its head
in the sea, its body at rest curving afar over a vast
country, and its tail lost in the depths of the land
.


60 HEART OF DARKNESS
.
And as I looked at the map of it in a shop-window,
it fascinated me as a snake would a bird — a silly
little bird. Then I remembered there was a big con-
cern, a Company for trade on that river. Dash it all!
I thought to myself, they can't trade without using
some kind of craft on that lot of fresh water—steam-
boats! Why shouldn't I try to get charge of one.
I went on along Fleet Street, but could not shake off
the idea. The snake had charmed me.
"You understand it was a Continental concern,
that Trading society; but I have a lot of relations
living on the Continent, because it's cheap and not so
nasty as it looks, they say.
"I am sorry to own I began to worry them. This
was already a fresh departure for me. I was not
used to get things that way, you know. I always
went my own road and on my own legs where I had
a mind to go. I wouldn't have believed it of myself;
but, then—you see—I felt somehow I must get there by
hook or by crook . So I worried them. The men said
'My dear fellow,' and did nothing. Then—would
you believe it? — I tried the women. I, Charlie
Marlow, set the women to work — to get a job.
Heavens! Well, you see, the notion drove me. I
had an aunt, a dear enthusiastic soul. She wrote:
'It will be delightful. I am ready to do anything,
anything for you. It is a glorious idea. I know the
wife of a very high personage in the Administration,
and also a man who has lots of influence with,' &c., &c.
She was determined to make no end of fuss to get me
appointed skipper of a river steamboat, if such was
my fancy.
"I got my appointment—of course; and I got it


HEART OF DARKNESS. 61
very quick. It appears the Company had received
news that one of their captains had been killed in a
scuffle with the natives. This was my chance, and it
made me the more anxious to go. It was only
months and months afterwards, when I made the
attempt to recover what was left of the body, that I
heard the original quarrel arose from a misunder-
standing about some hens. Yes, two black hens.
Fresleven—that was the fellow's name, a Dane—
thought himself wronged somehow in the bargain, so
he went ashore and started to hammer the chief of
the village with a stick. Oh, it didn't surprise me
in the least to hear this, and at the same time to be
told that Fresleven was the gentlest, quietest creature
that ever walked on two legs. No doubt he was;
but he had been a couple of years already out there
engaged in the noble cause, you know, and he pro-
bably felt the need at last of asserting his self-respect
in some way. Therefore he whacked the old nigger
mercilessly, while a big crowd of his people watched
him, thunderstruck, till some man,—I was told the
chief's son,—in desperation at hearing the old chap
yell, made a tentative jab with a spear at the white
man—and of course it went quite easy between the
shoulder-blades. Then the whole population cleared
into the forest, expecting all kinds of calamities to
happen, while, on the other hand, the steamer Fres-
leven commanded left also in a bad panic, in charge
of the engineer, I believe. Afterwards nobody seemed
to trouble much about Fresleven's remains, till I got
out and stepped into his shoes. I couldn't let it rest,
though; but when an opportunity offered at last to
meet my predecessor, the grass growing through his


62 HEART OF DARKNESS.
ribs was tall enough to hide his bones. They were
all there. The supernatural being had not been
touched after he fell . And the village was deserted,
the huts gaped black, rotting, all askew within the
fallen enclosures. A calamity had come to it, sure
enough. The people had vanished. Mad terror had
scattered them, men, women, and children, through
the bush, and they had never returned. What
became of the hens I don't know either. I should
think the cause of progress got them, anyhow.
However, through this glorious affair I got my
appointment, before I had fairly begun to hope
for it.
"I flew around like mad to get ready, and before
forty-eight hours I was crossing the Channel to show
myself to my employers, and sign the contract. In
a very few hours I arrived in a city that always
makes me think of a whited sepulchre. Prejudice no
doubt. I had, no difficulty in finding the Company's
offices. It was the biggest thing in the town, and
everybody I met was full of it. They were going to
run an over-sea empire, and make no end of coin by
trade.
"A narrow and deserted street in deep shadow,
high houses, innumerable windows with venetian
blinds, a dead silence, grass sprouting between the
stones, imposing carriage archways right and left,
immense double doors standing ponderously ajar.
I slipped through one of these cracks, went up a
swept and ungarnished staircase, as arid as a desert,
and opened the first door I came to. Two women,
one fat and the other slim, sat on straw-bottomed
chairs, knitting black wool . The slim one got up


HEART OF DARKNESS. 63
and walked straight at me—still knitting with down-
cast eyes—and only just as I began to think of
getting out of her way, as you would for a somnam-
bulist, stood still, and looked up. Her dress was as
plain as an umbrella-cover, and she turned round
without a word and preceded me into a waiting-room.
I gave my name, and looked about. Deal table in
the middle, plain chairs all round the walls, on one
end a large shining map, marked with all the colours
of a rainbow. There was a vast amount of red—
good to see at any time, because one knows that
some real work is done in there, a deuce of a lot of
blue, a little green, smears of orange, and, on the
East Coast, a purple patch, to show where the jolly
pioneers of progress drink the jolly lager-beer. How-
ever, I wasn't going into any of these. I was going
into the yellow. Dead in the centre. And the river
was there — fascinating — deadly — like a snake.
Ough! A door opened, a white-haired secretarial
head, but wearing a compassionate expression, ap-
peared, and a skinny forefinger beckoned me into
the sanctuary. Its light was dim, and a heavy
writing-desk squatted in the middle. From behind
that structure came out an impression of pale plump-
ness in a frock-coat. The great man himself. He
was five feet six, I should judge, and had his grip on
the handle-end of ever so many millions. He shook
hands, I fancy, murmured vaguely, was satisfied with
my French. Bon voyage.
"In about forty-five seconds I found myself again
in the waiting-room with the compassionate secretary,
who, full of desolation and sympathy, made me sign
some document. I believe I undertook amongst


64 HEART OF DARKNESS.
other things not to disclose any trade secrets. Well
.
I am not going to.
"I began to feel slightly uneasy. You know I am
not used to such ceremonies, and there was some-
thing ominous in the atmosphere. It was just as
though I had been let into some conspiracy—I don't
know—something not quite right; and I was glad
to get out. In the outer room the two women
knitted black wool feverishly. People were arriving,
and the younger one was walking back and forth
introducing them. The old one sat on her chair.
Her flat cloth slippers were propped up on a foot-
warmer, and a cat reposed on her lap. She wore a
starched white affair on her head, had a wart on one
cheek, and silver-rimmed spectacles hung on the tip
of her nose. She glanced at me above the glasses.
The swift and indifferent placidity of that look
troubled me. Two youths with foolish and cheery
countenances were being piloted over, and she threw
at them the same quick glance of unconcerned
wisdom. She seemed to know all about them and
about me too. An eerie feeling came over me. She
seemed uncanny and fateful . Often far away there
I thought of these two, guarding the door of Dark-
ness, knitting black wool as for a warm pall, one
introducing, introducing continuously to the un-
known, the other scrutinising the cheery and foolish
faces with unconcerned old eyes. Ave! Old knitter
of black wool . Morituri te salutant. Not many of
those she looked at ever saw her again—not half, by
a long way.
"There was yet a visit to the doctor. 'A simple
formality,' assured me the secretary, with an air of


HEART OF DARKNESS. 65
taking an immense part in all my sorrows. Accord-
ingly a young chap wearing his hat over the left
eyebrow, some clerk I suppose,—there must have
been clerks in the business, though the house was as
still as a house in a city of the dead,—came from
somewhere up-stairs, and led me forth. He was
shabby and careless, with ink-stains on the sleeves of
his jacket, and his cravat was large and billowy,
under a chin shaped like the toe of an old boot. It
was a little too early for the doctor, so I proposed a
drink, and thereupon he developed a vein of joviality.
As we sat over our vermuths he glorified the Com-
pany's business, and by-and-by I expressed casually
my surprise at him not going out there. He became
very cool and collected all at once. 'I am not such
a fool as I look, quoth Plato to his disciples,' he said
sententiously, emptied his glass with great resolution,
and we rose.
"The old doctor felt my pulse, evidently thinking
of something else the while. 'Good, good for there,'
he mumbled, and then with a certain eagerness
asked me whether I would let him measure my
head. Rather surprised, I said Yes, when he pro-
duced a thing like calipers and got the dimensions
back and front and every way, taking notes care-
fully. He was an unshaven little man in a
threadbare coat like a gaberdine, with his feet in
slippers, and I thought him a harmless fool. 'I
always ask leave, in the interests of science, to
measure the crania of those going out there,' he
said, 'And when they come back too?' I asked.
'Oh, I never see them,' he remarked; 'and, more-
over, the changes take place inside, you know.' He
E


66 HEART OF DARKNESS.
smiled, as if at some quiet joke. 'So you are going
out there. Famous. Interesting too.' He gave
me a searching glance, and made another note.
'Ever any madness in your family?' he asked, in
a matter-of-fact tone. I felt very annoyed. 'Is
that question in the interests of science too?' 'It
would be,' he said, without taking notice of my
irritation, 'interesting for science to watch the
mental changes of individuals, on the spot, but
. . .' 'Are you an alienist?' I interrupted.
'Every doctor should be—a little,' answered that
original, imperturbably. 'I have a little theory which you Messieurs who go out there must help
me to prove. This is my share in the advantages
my country shall reap from the possession of such
a magnificent dependency. The mere wealth I
leave to others. Pardon my questions, but you
are the first Englishman coming under my obser-
vation . . .' I hastened to assure him I was not
in the least typical. 'If I were,' said I, 'I
wouldn't be talking like this with you.' 'What
you say is rather profound, and probably erron-
eous,' he said, with a laugh. 'Avoid irritation
more than exposure to the sun. Adieu. How do
you English say, eh? Good-bye. Ah! Good-bye.
Adieu. In the tropics one must before everything
keep calm.' . . . He lifted a warning forefinger. . . .
'Du calme, du calme. Adieu.'
"One thing more remained to do—say good-bye
to my excellent aunt. I found her triumphant. I
had a cup of tea—the last decent cup of tea for
many days—and in a room that most soothingly
looked just as you would expect a lady's drawing-


HEART OF DARKNESS. 67
room to look, we had a long quiet chat by the
fireside. In the course of these confidences it
became quite plain to me I had been represented
to the wife of the high dignitary, and goodness
knows to how many more people besides, as an
exceptional and gifted creature—a piece of good
fortune for the Company—a man you don't get
hold of every day. Good heavens! and I was
going to take charge of a two-penny-halfpenny
river-steamboat with a penny whistle attached! It
appeared, however, I was also one of the Workers,
with a capital — you know. Something like an
emissary of light, something like a lower sort of
apostle. There had been a lot of such rot let
loose in print and talk just about that time, and
the excellent woman, living right in the rush of all
that humbug, got carried off her feet. She talked
about 'weaning those ignorant millions from their
horrid ways,' till, upon my word, she made me
quite uncomfortable. I ventured to hint that the
Company was run for profit.
'"You forget, dear Charlie, that the labourer is
worthy of his hire,' she said, brightly. It's queer
how out of touch with truth women are. They live
in a world of their own, and there had never been
anything like it, and never can be. It is too
beautiful altogether, and if they were to set it up
it would go to pieces before the first sunset. Some
confounded fact we men have been living contentedly
with ever since the day of creation would start up
and knock the whole thing over.
"After this I got embraced, told to wear flannel,
be sure to write often, and so on—and I left. In


68 HEART OF DARKNESS.
the street—I don't know why—a queer feeling came
to me that I was an impostor. Odd thing that I,
who used to clear out for any part of the world at
twenty-four hours' notice, with less thought than
most men give to the crossing of a street, had a
moment—I won't say of hesitation, but of startled
pause, before this commonplace affair. The best
way I can explain it to you is by saying that, for
a second or two, I felt as though, instead of going
to the centre of a continent, I were about to set off
for the centre of the earth.
"I left in a French steamer, and she called in
every blamed port they have out there, for, as far
as I could see, the sole purpose of landing soldiers
and custom-house officers. I watched the coast.
Watching a coast as it slips by the ship is like
thinking about an enigma. There it is before you
—smiling, frowning, inviting, grand, mean, insipid,
or savage, and always mute with an air of whisper-
ing, Come and find out. This one was almost
featureless, as if still in the making, with an
aspect of monotonous grimness. The edge of a
colossal jungle, so dark - green as to be almost
black, fringed with white surf, ran straight, like
a ruled line, far, far away along a blue sea whose
glitter was blurred by a creeping mist. The sun
was fierce, the land seemed to glisten and drip with
steam. Here and there greyish - whitish specks
showed up, clustered inside the white surf, with a
flag flying above them perhaps. Settlements some
centuries old, and still no bigger than pin-heads on
the untouched expanse of their background. We
pounded along, stopped, landed soldiers; went on,


HEART OF DARKNESS. 69
landed custom-house clerks to levy toll in what
looked like a God-forsaken wilderness, with a tin
shed and a flag-pole lost in it; landed more soldiers
—to take care of the custom-house clerks, presum-
ably. Some, I heard, got drowned in the surf; but
whether they did or not, nobody seemed particularly
to care. They were just flung out there, and on we
went. Every day the coast looked the same, as
though we had not moved; but we passed various
places — trading places — with names like Gran'
Bassam Little Popo, names that seemed to belong to
some sordid farce acted in front of a sinister back-
cloth. The idleness of a passenger, my isolation
amongst all these men with whom I had no point of
contact, the oily and languid sea, the uniform
sombreness of the coast, seemed to keep me away
from the truth of things, within the toil of a mourn-
ful and senseless delusion. The voice of the surf
heard now and then was a positive pleasure, like the
speech of a brother It was something natural, that
had its reason, that had a meaning. Now and then
a boat from the shore gave one a momentary contact
with reality. It was paddled by black fellows. You
could see from afar the white of their eyeballs
glistening. They shouted, sang; their bodies
streamed with perspiration; they had faces like gro-
tesque masks — these chaps; but they had bone,
muscle, a wild vitality, an intense energy of move-
ment, that was as natural and true as the surf along
their coast. They wanted no excuse for being there.
They were a great comfort to look at. For a time
I would feel I belonged still to a world of straight-
forward facts; but the feeling would not last long.


70 HEART OF DARKNESS.
Something would turn up to scare it away. Once, I
remember, we came upon a man-of-war anchored off
the coast. There wasn't even a shed there, and she
was shelling the bush . It appears the French had
one of their wars going on thereabouts. Her en-
sign dropped limp like a rag; the muzzles of the
long eight-inch guns stuck out all over the low hull;
the greasy, slimy swell swung her up lazily and let
her down, swaying her thin masts. In the empty
immensity of earth, sky, and water, there she was,
incomprehensible, firing into a continent. Pop,
would go one of the eight-inch guns; a small flame
would dart and vanish, a little white smoke would
disappear, a tiny projectile would give a feeble
screech — and nothing happened. Nothing could
happen. There was a touch of insanity in the pro-
ceeding, a sense of lugubrious drollery in the sight;
and it was not dissipated by somebody on board
assuring me earnestly there was a camp of natives—
he called them enemies!—hidden out of sight some-
where.
"We gave her her letters (I heard the men in that
lonely ship were dying of fever at the rate of three
a-day) and went on. We called at some more places
with farcical names, where the merry dance of death
and trade goes on in a still and earthy atmosphere
as of an overheated catacomb; all along the formless
coast bordered by dangerous surf, as if Nature her-
self had tried to ward off intruders; in and out
of rivers, streams of death in life, whose banks were
rotting into mud, whose waters, thickened into slime,
invaded the contorted mangroves, that seemed to
writhe at us in the extremity of an impotent despair.


HEART OF DARKNESS. 71
Nowhere did we stop long enough to get a par-
ticularised impression, but the general sense of
vague and oppressive wonder grew upon me. It
was like a weary pilgrimage amongst hints for
nightmares.
"It was upward of thirty days before I saw the
mouth of the big river. We anchored off the seat of
the government. But my work would not begin till
some two hundred miles farther on. So as soon as I
could I made a start for a place thirty miles higher
up.
"I had my passage on a little sea-going steamer.
Her captain was a Swede, and knowing me for a
seaman, invited me on the bridge. He was a young
man, lean, fair, and morose, with lanky hair and a
shuffling gait. As we left the miserable little wharf, he
tossed his head contemptuously at the shore . 'Been
living there ?' he asked. I said, 'Yes.' 'Fine lot
these government chaps—are they not?' he went on,
speaking English with great precision and consider-
able bitterness. 'It is funny what some people will do for a few francs a-month. I wonder what
becomes of that kind when it goes up country?'
I said to him I expected to see that soon. 'So-o-o!'
he exclaimed. He shuffled athwart, keeping one
eye ahead vigilantly. 'Don't be too sure,' he
continued. 'The other day I took up a man
who hanged himself on the road. He was a
Swede, too.' 'Hanged himself! Why, in God's
name?' I cried. He kept on looking out watchfully.
'Who knows? The sun too much for him, or the
country perhaps.'
At last we opened a reach. A rocky cliff ap-


72 HEART OF DARKNESS.
peared, mounds of turned-up earth by the shore,
houses on a hill, others, with iron roofs, amongst a
waste of excavations, or hanging to the declivity.
A continuous noise of the rapids above hovered over
this scene of inhabited devastation. A lot of people, mostly black and naked, moved about like ants. A
jetty projected into the river. A blinding sunlight
drowned all this at times in a sudden recrudescence
of glare. 'There's your Company's station,' said the
Swede, pointing to three wooden barrack-like struc-
tures on the rocky slope. 'I will send your things
up. Four boxes did you say? Bo. Farewell.'
"I came upon a boiler wallowing in the grass,
then found a path leading up the hill. It turned
aside for the boulders, and also for an undersized
railway-truck lying there on its back with its wheels
in the air. One was off. The thing looked as dead
as the carcass of some animal. I came upon more
pieces of decaying machinery, a stack of rusty rails.
To the left a clump of trees made a shady spot,
where dark things seemed to stir feebly. I blinked,
the path was steep. A horn tooted to the right, and
I saw the black people run. A heavy and dull
detonation shook the ground, a puff of smoke came
out of the cliff, and that was all. No change ap-
peared on the face of the rook. They were building
a railway. The cliff was not in the way or any-
thing; but this objectless blasting was all the work
going on.
"A slight clinking behind me made me turn my
head. Six black men advanced in a file, toiling up
the path. They walked erect and slow, balancing
small baskets full of earth on their heads, and the


HEART OF DARKNESS. 73
clink kept time with their footsteps. Black rags
were wound round their loins, and the short ends
behind waggled to and fro like tails. I could see
every rib, the joints of their limbs were like knots
in a rope; each had an iron collar on his neck, and
all were connected together with a chain whose
bights swung between them, rhythmically clinking.
Another report from the cliff made me think sud-
denly of that ship of war I had seen firing into a
continent. It was the same kind of ominous voice;
but these men could by no stretch of imagination
be called enemies. They were called criminals, and
the outraged law, like the bursting shells, had come
to them, an insoluble mystery from over the sea. All
their meagre breasts panted together, the violently
dilated nostrils quivered, the eyes stared stonily up-
hill . They passed me within six inches, without a
glance, with that complete, deathlike indifference of
unhappy savages. Behind this raw matter one of
the reclaimed, the product of the new forces at work,
strolled despondently, carrying a rifle by its middle.
He had a uniform jacket with one button off, and
seeing a white man on the path, hoisted his weapon
to his shoulder with alacrity. This was simple pru-
dence, white men being so much alike at a distance
that he could not tell who I might be. He was
speedily reassured, and with a large, white, rascally
grin, and a glance at his charge, seemed to take
me into partnership in his exalted trust. After all,
I also was a part of the great cause of these high
and just proceedings.
"Instead of going up, I turned and descended to
the left. My idea was to let that chain-gang get


74 HEART OF DARKNESS.
out of sight before I climbed the hill. You know
I am not particularly tender; I've had to strike and
to fend off. I've had to resist and to attack some-
times—that's only one way of resisting—without
counting the exact cost, according to the demands
of such sort of life as I had blundered into. I've
seen the devil of violence, and the devil of greed,
and the devil of hot desire; but, by all the stars!
these were strong, lusty, red-eyed devils, that swayed
and drove men—men, I tell you. But as I stood on
this hillside, I foresaw that in the blinding sunshine
of that land I would become acquainted with a
flabby, pretending, weak-eyed devil of a rapacious
and pitiless folly. How insidious he could be, too,
I was only to find out several months later and a
thousand miles farther. For a moment I stood
appalled, as though by the warning. Finally I de-
scended the hill, obliquely, towards the trees I had
"I avoided a vast artificial hole somebody had
been digging on the slope, the purpose of which
I found it impossible to divine. It wasn't a quarry
or a sandpit, anyhow. It was just a hole. It might
have been connected with the philanthropic desire
of giving the criminals something to do. I don't
know. Then I nearly fell into a very narrow ravine,
almost no more than a scar in the hillside. I dis-
covered that a lot of imported drainage-pipes for
the settlement had been tumbled in there. There
wasn't one that was not broken. It was a wanton
smash-up. At last I got under the trees. My pur-
pose was to stroll into the shade for a moment; but
no sooner within than it seemed to me I had stepped


HEART OF DARKNESS. 75
into the gloomy circle of some Inferno. The rapids
were near, and an uninterrupted, uniform, headlong,
rushing noise filled the mournful stillness of the
grove, where not a breath stirred, not a leaf moved,
with a mysterious sound — as though the tearing
pace of the launched earth had suddenly become
audible.
"Black shapes crouched, lay, sat between the
trees, leaning against the trunks, clinging to the
earth, half coming out, half effaced within the dim
light, in all the attitudes of pain, abandonment, and
despair. Another mine on the cliff went off, followed
by a slight shudder of the soil under my feet. The
work was going on. The work! And this was the
place where some of the helpers had withdrawn to
die.
"They were dying slowly — it was very clear.
They were not enemies, they were not criminals,
they were nothing earthly now,—nothing but black
shadows of disease and starvation, lying confusedly
in the greenish gloom. Brought from all the re-
cesses of the coast in all the legality of time con-
tracts, lost in uncongenial surroundings, fed on
unfamiliar food, they sickened, became inefficient,
and were then allowed to crawl away and rest.
These moribund shapes were free as air—and nearly
as thin. I began to distinguish the gleam of eyes
under the trees. Then, glancing down, I saw a
face near my hand. The black bones reclined at
full length with one shoulder against the tree, and
slowly the eyelids rose and the sunken eyes looked
up at me, enormous and vacant, a kind of blind,
white nigger in the depths of the orbs, which died


76 HEART OF DARKNESSout slowly. The man seemed young—almost a boy
—but you know with them it's hard to tell. I
found nothing else to do but to offer him one of
my good Swede's ship's biscuits I had in my pocket.
The fingers closed slowly on it and held—there was
no other movement and no other glance. He had
tied a bit of white worsted round his neck—Why?
Where did he get it? Was it a badge—an orna-
ment—a charm—a propitiatory act? Was there
any idea at all connected with it? It looked start-
ling round his black neck, this bit of white thread
from beyond the seas.
"Near the same tree two more bundles of acute
angles sat with their legs drawn up. One, with
his chin propped on his knees, stared at nothing, in
an intolerable and appalling manner: his brother
phantom rested its forehead, as if overcome with a
great weariness; and all about others were scattered
in every pose of contorted collapse, as in some picture
of a massacre or a pestilence. While I stood horror-
struck, one of these creatures rose to his hands and
knees, and went off on all-fours towards the river to
drink . He lapped out of his hand, then sat up in
the sunlight, crossing his shins in front of him,
and after a time let his woolly head fall on his
breastbone.
"I didn't want any more loitering in the shade,
and I made haste towards the station. When near
the buildings I met a white man, in such an unex-
pected elegance of get-up that in the first moment I
took him for a sort of vision. I saw a high starched
collar, white cuffs, a light alpaca jacket, snowy
trousers, a clean necktie, and varnished boots. No


HEART OF DAHKNESS. 77
hat. Hair parted, brushed, oiled, under a green-
lined parasol held in a big white hand . He was
amazing, and had a penholder behind his ear.
"I shook hands with this miracle, and I learned
he was the Company's chief accountant, and that
all the book-keeping was done at this station. He
had come out for a moment, he said, 'to get a breath
of fresh air.' The expression sounded wonderfully
odd, with its suggestion of sedentary desk-life. I
wouldn't have mentioned the fellow to you at all, only it was from his lips that I first heard the name
of the man who is so indissolubly connected with the
memories of that time. Moreover, I respected the
fellow. Yes; I respected his collars, his vast cuffs,
his brushed hair. His appearance was certainly
that of a hairdresser's dummy; but in the great
demoralisation of the land he kept up his appear-
ance. That's backbone. His starched collars and
got-up shirt-fronts were achievements of character.
He had been out nearly three years; and, later on, I
could not help asking him how he managed to sport
such linen. He had just the faintest blush, and
said modestly, 'I've been teaching one of the native
women about the station. It was difficult. She
had a distaste for the work.' Thus this man had
verily accomplished something. And he was devoted
to his books, which were in apple-pie order.
"Everything else in the station was in a muddle,
—heads, things, buildings. Strings of dusty niggers
with splay feet arrived and departed; a stream of
manufactured goods, rubbishy cottons, beads, and
brass-wire set into the depths of darkness, and in
return came a precious trickle of ivory.


78 HE ART OF DARKNESS.
"I had to wait in the station for ten days—an
eternity. I lived in a hut in the yard, but to be
out of the chaos I would sometimes get into the
accountant's office. It was built of horizontal
planks, and so badly put together that, as he bent
over his high desk, he was barred from neck to heels
with narrow strips of sunlight. There was no need
to open the big shutter to see. It was hot there too;
big flies buzzed fiendishly, and did not sting, but
stabbed. I sat generally on the floor, while, of
faultless appearance (and even slightly scented),
perching on a high stool, he wrote, he wrote. Some-
times he stood up for exercise. When a truckle-bed
with a sick man (some invalided agent from up-
country) was put in there, he exhibited a gentle
annoyance. 'The groans of this sick person,' he
said, 'distract my attention. And without that it
is extremely difficult to guard against clerical errors
in this climate.' "One day he remarked, without lifting his head,
'In the interior you will no doubt meet Mr Kurtz.'
On my asking who Mr Kurtz was, he said he was a
first-class agent; and seeing my disappointment at
this information, he added slowly, laying down his
pen, 'He is a very remarkable person.' Further
questions elicited from him that Mr Kurtz was at
present in charge of a trading post, a very important
one, in the true ivory-country, at 'the very bottom
of there. Sends in as much ivory as all the others
put together . . .' He began to write again. The
sick man was too ill to groan. The flies buzzed in a
great peace.
"Suddenly there was a growing murmur of voices


HEART OF DARKNESS. 79
and a great tramping of feet. A caravan had come
in. A violent babble of uncouth sounds burst out on
the other side of the planks. All the carriers were
speaking together, and in the midst of the uproar
the lamentable voice of the chief agent was heard
'giving it up' tearfully for the twentieth time that
day. . . . He rose slowly. 'What a frightful row,'
he said. He crossed the room gently to look at the
sick man, and returning, said to me, 'He does not
hear.' 'What! Dead?' I asked, startled . 'No, not
yet,' he answered, with great composure. Then,
alluding with a toss of the head to the tumult in the
station-yard, 'When one has got to make correct
entries, one comes to hate those savages — hate
them to the death.' He remained thoughtful for a
moment. 'When you see Mr Kurtz,' he went on,
'tell him from me that everything here'—he glanced
at the desk—'is very satisfactory. I don't like to
write to him—with those messengers of ours you
never know who may get hold of your letter—at that
Central Station.' He stared at me for a moment
with his mild, bulging eyes. 'Oh, he will go far,
very far,' he began again. 'He will be a somebody
in the Administration before long. They, above—
the Council in Europe, you know—mean him to be.'
"He turned to his work. The noise outside had
ceased, and presently in going out I stopped at the
door. In the steady buzz of flies the homeward-
bound agent was lying flushed and insensible; the
other, bent over his books, was making correct
entries of perfectly correct transactions; and fifty
feet below the doorstep I could see the still tree-
tops of the grove of death.


80 HEART OF DARKNESS.
"Next day I left that station at last, with a
caravan of sixty men, for a two - hundred - mile
tramp.
"No use telling you much about that. Paths,
paths, everywhere; a stamped-in network of paths
spreading over the empty land, through long grass,
through burnt grass, through thickets, down and
up chilly ravines, up and down stony hills ablaze
with heat; and a solitude, a solitude, nobody, not
a hut. The population had cleared out a long
time ago. Well, if a lot of mysterious niggers
armed with all kinds of fearful weapons suddenly
took to travelling on the road between Deal and
Gravesend, catching the yokels right and left to
carry heavy loads for them, I fancy every farm
and cottage thereabouts would get empty very soon.
Only here the dwellings were gone too. Still I
passed through several abandoned villages . There's
something pathetically childish in the ruins of grass
walls. Day after day, with the stamp and shuffle
of sixty pair of bare feet behind me, each pair
under a 60-lb. load. Camp, cook, sleep, strike camp,
march. Now and then a carrier dead in harness,
at rest in the long grass near the path, with an
empty water-gourd and his long staff lying by his
side. A great silence around and above. Perhaps
on some quiet night the tremor of far-off drums,
sinking, swelling, a tremor vast, faint; a sound
weird, appealing, suggestive, and wild—and perhaps
with as profound a meaning as the sound of bells
in a Christian country. Once a white man in an
unbuttoned uniform, camping on the path with an
armed escort of lank Zanzibaris, very hospitable


HEART OF DARKNESS. 81
and festive—not to say drunk. Was looking after
the upkeep of the road, he declared. Can't say I
saw any road or any upkeep, unless the body of a
middle-aged negro, with a bullet-hole in the fore-
head, upon which I absolutely stumbled three miles
farther on, may be considered as a permanent im-
provement. I had a white companion too, not a
bad chap, but rather too fleshy and with the ex-
asperating habit of fainting on the hot hillsides,
miles away from the least bit of shade and water.
Annoying, you know, to hold your own coat like
a parasol over a man's head while he is coming-to.
I couldn't help asking him once what he meant
by coming there at all. 'To make money, of course.
What do you think?' he said, scornfully. Then he
got fever, and had to be carried in a hammock
slung under a pole. As he weighed sixteen stone
I had no end of rows with the carriers. They
jibbed, ran away, sneaked off with their loads in
the night — quite a mutiny. So, one evening, I
made a speech in English with gestures, not one
of which was lost to the sixty pairs of eyes before
me, and the next morning I started the hammock
off in front all right. An hour afterwards I came
upon the whole concern wrecked in a bush—man,
hammock, groans, blankets, horrors. The heavy
pole had skinned his poor nose. He was very
anxious for me to kill somebody, but there wasn't
the shadow of a carrier near. I remembered the
old doctor,—' It would be interesting for science to
watch the mental changes of individuals, on the
spot.' I felt I was becoming scientifically inter-
esting. However, all that is to no purpose. On
F


82 HEART OF DARKNESS.
the fifteenth day I came in sight of the big river
again, and hobbled into the Central Station. It
was on a back water surrounded by scrub and
forest, with a pretty border of smelly mud on one
side, and on the three others enclosed by a crazy
fence of rushes. A neglected gap was all the gate
it had, and the first glance at the place was enough
to let you see the flabby devil was running that
show. White men with long staves in their hands
appeared languidly from amongst the buildings,
strolling up to take a look at me, and then re-
tired out of sight somewhere. One of them, a stout,
excitable chap with black moustaches, informed me
with great volubility and many digressions, as soon
as I told him who I was, that my steamer was
at the bottom of the river. I was thunderstruck
.
What, how, why? Oh, it was 'all right.' The
'manager himself' was there. All quite correct.
'Everybody had. behaved splendidly! splendidly!'
—'you must,' he said in agitation, 'go and see
the general manager at once. He is waiting!'
"I did not see the real significance of that wreck
at once. I fancy I see it now, but I am not sure—
not at all . Certainly the affair was too stupid—
when I think of it—to be altogether natural. Still
.
. . . But at the moment it presented itself simply
as a confounded nuisance. The steamer was sunk.
They had started two days before in a sudden hurry
up the river with the manager on board, in charge
of some volunteer skipper, and before they had been
out three hours they tore the bottom out of her on
stones, and she sank near the south bank. I asked
myself what I was to do there, now my boat was


HEART OF DARKNESS. 83
lost. As a matter of fact, I had plenty to do in
fishing my command out of the river. I had to
set about it the very next day. That, and the
repairs when I brought the pieces to the station,
took some months.
"My first interview with the manager was curi-
ous. He did not ask me to sit down after my
twenty-mile walk that morning. He was common-
place in complexion, in feature, in manners, and in
voice. He was of middle size and of ordinary build.
His eyes, of the usual blue, were perhaps remark-
ably cold, and he certainly could make his glance
fall on one as trenchant and heavy as an axe. But
even at these times the rest of his person seemed to
disclaim the intention. Otherwise there was only
an indefinable, faint expression of his lips, something
stealthy—a smile—not a smile—I remember it, but
I can't explain. It was unconscious, this smile was,
though just after he had said something it got in-
tensified for an instant. It came at the end of his
speeches like a seal applied on the words to make
the meaning of the commonest phrase appear ab-
solutely inscrutable. He was a common trader,
from his youth up employed in these parts —
nothing more. He was obeyed, yet he inspired
neither love nor fear, nor even respect. He in-
spired uneasiness. That was it! Uneasiness. Not
a definite mistrust—just uneasiness—nothing more.
You have no idea how effective such a . . . a . . .
faculty can be. He had no genius for organising,
for initiative, or for order even. That was evident
in such things as the deplorable state of the
station. He had no learning, and no intelligence.
/"


84 HEART OF DARKNESS. His position had come to him — why? Perhaps
because he was never ill . . . He had served
three terms of three years out there . . . Because
triumphant health in the general rout of constitu-
tions is a kind of power in itself. When he went
home on leave he rioted on a large scale — pom-
pously. Jack ashore — with a difference — in ex-
ternals only. This one could gather from his
casual talk. He originated nothing, he could keep
the routine going — that's all. But he was great.
He was great by this little thing that it was
impossible to tell what could control such a man.
He never gave that secret away. Perhaps there
was nothing within him. Such a suspicion made
one pause — for out there there were no external
checks. Once when various tropical diseases had
laid low almost every 'agent' in the station, he
was heard to say, 'Men who come out here should
have no entrails' He sealed the utterance with
that smile of his, as though it had been a door
opening into a darkness he had in his keeping.
You fancied you had seen things — but the seal
was on. When annoyed at meal-times by the con-
stant quarrels of the white men about precedence,
he ordered an immense round table to be made,
for which a special house had to be built. This
was the station's mess - room. Where he sat was
the first place — the rest were nowhere. One felt
this to be his unalterable conviction. He was
neither civil nor uncivil. He was quiet. He
allowed his 'boy' — an overfed young negro from
the coast—to treat the white men, under his very
eyes, with provoking insolence.


HEART OF DARKNESS. 85
"He began to speak as soon as he saw me. I
had been very long on the road. He could not
wait. Had to start without me. The up - river
stations had to be relieved. There had been so
many delays already that he did not know who
was dead and who was alive, and how they got
on — and so on, and so on. He paid no attention
to my explanations, and, playing with a stick of
sealing-wax, repeated several times that the situa-
tion was 'very grave, very grave.' There were
rumours that a very important station was in
jeopardy, and its chief, Mr Kurtz, was ill . Hoped
it was not true. Mr Kurtz was ... I felt weary
and irritable. Hang Kurtz, I thought. I inter-
rupted him by saying I had heard of Mr Kurtz
on the coast. 'Ah! So they talk of him down
there,' he murmured to himself. Then he began
again, assuring me Mr Kurtz was the best agent
he had, an exceptional man, of the greatest im-
portance to the Company; therefore I could under-
stand his anxiety. He was, he said, 'very, very
uneasy.' Certainly he fidgeted on his chair a good
deal, exclaimed, 'Ah, Mr Kurtz!' broke the stick
of sealing-wax and seemed dumfounded by the
accident. Next thing he wanted to know 'how
long it would take to' ... I interrupted him
again. Being hungry, you know, and kept on
my feet too, I was getting savage. 'How could
I tell.' I said. 'I hadn't even seen the wreck yet
— some months, no doubt.' All this talk seemed
to me so futile. 'Some months,' he said. 'Well,
let us say three months before we can make a
start. Yes. That ought to do the affair.' I


86 HE AST OF DARKNESS.
flung out of his hut (he lived all alone in a clay
hut with a sort of verandah) muttering to myself
my opinion of him. He was a chattering idiot.
Afterwards I took it back when it was borne in
upon me startlingly with what extreme nicety he
had estimated the time requisite for the 'affair.'
"I went to work the next day, turning, so to
speak, my back on that station. In that way
only it seemed to me I could keep my hold on
the redeeming facts of life. Still, one must look
about sometimes; and then I saw this station,
these men strolling aimlessly about in the sun-
shine of the yard. I asked myself sometimes
what it all meant. They wandered here and
there with their absurd long staves in their hands,
like a lot of faithless pilgrims bewitched inside a
rotten fence. The word 'ivory' rang in the air,
was whispered, was sighed. You would think
they were praying to it. A taint of imbecile
rapacity blew through it all, like a whiff from
some corpse. By Jove! I've never seen anything
so unreal in my life. And outside, the silent
wilderness surrounding this cleared speck on the
earth struck me as something great and invin-
cible, like evil or truth, waiting patiently for the
passing away of this fantastic invasion.
"Oh, these months! Well, never mind. Various
things happened. One evening a grass shed full
of calico, cotton prints, beads, and I don't know
what else, burst into a blaze so suddenly that
you would have thought the earth had opened to
let an avenging fire consume all that trash. I
was smoking my pipe quietly by my dismantled


HEART OF DARKNESS. 87
steamer, and saw them all cutting capers in the
light, with their arms lifted high, when the stout
man with moustaches came tearing down to the
river, a tin pail in his hand, assured me that
everybody was 'behaving splendidly, splendidly,'
dipped about a quart of water and tore back
again. I noticed there was a hole in the bottom
of his pail.
"I strolled up. There was no hurry. You see the
thing had gone off like a box of matches. It had
been hopeless from the very first. The flame had
leaped high, driven everybody back, lighted up
everything—and collapsed. The shed was already a
heap of embers glowing fiercely. A nigger was being
beaten near by. They said he had caused the fire in
some way; be that as it may, he was screeching most
horribly. I saw him, later on, for several days,
sitting in a bit of shade looking very sick and trying
to recover himself: afterwards he arose and went out
—and the wilderness without a sound took him into
its bosom again. As I approached the glow from the
dark I found myself at the back of two men, talking.
I heard the name of Kurtz pronounced, then the
words, 'take advantage of this unfortunate accident.'
One of the men was the manager. I wished him a
good evening. 'Did you ever see anything like it—
eh? it is incredible,' he said, and walked off. The
other man remained. He was a first-class agent,
young, gentlemanly, a bit reserved, with a forked
little beard and a hooked nose. He was stand-offish
with the other agents, and they on their side said he
was the manager's spy upon them. As to me, I had
hardly ever spoken to him before. We got into talk,


88 BEASTOF DARKNESS.
and by-and-by we strolled away from the hissing
ruins. Then he asked me to his room, which was in
the main building of the station. He struck a
match, and I perceived that this young aristocrat
had not only a silver-mounted dressing-case but also
a whole candle all to himself. Just at that time the
manager was the only man supposed to have any
right to candles. Native mats covered the clay
walls; a collection of spears, assegais, shields, knives
was hung up in trophies. The business intrusted to
this fellow was the making of bricks—so I had been
informed; but there wasn't a fragment of a brick
anywhere in the station, and he had been there more
than a year—waiting. It seems he could not make
bricks without something, I don't know what—straw
maybe. Anyways, it could not be found there, and
as it was not likely to be sent from Europe, it did not
appear clear to me what he was waiting for. An act
of special creation perhaps. However, they were all
waiting—all the sixteen or twenty pilgrims of them
—for something; and upon my word it did not seem
an uncongenial occupation, from the way they took
it, though the only thing that ever came to them was
disease—as far as I could see. They beguiled the
time by backbiting and intriguing against each other
in a foolish kind of way. There was an air of
plotting about that station, but nothing came of it,
of course. It was as unreal as everything else—as
the philanthropic pretence of the whole concern, as
their talk, as their government, as their show of
work. The only real feeling was a desire to get
appointed to a trading-post where ivory was to be
had, so that they could earn percentages. They in-


HEART OF DARKNESS. 89
trigued and slandered and hated each other only on
that account —but as to effectually lifting a little
finger—oh, no. By heavens! there is something after
all in the world allowing one man to steal a horse
while another must not look at a halter. Steal a
horse straight out. Very well . He has done it.
Perhaps he can ride. But there is a way of looking
at a halter that would provoke the most charitable of
saints into a kick.
"I had no idea why he wanted to be sociable, but
as we chatted in there it suddenly occurred to me
the fellow was trying to get at something—in fact,
pumping me. He alluded constantly to Europe, to
the people I was supposed to know there—putting
leading questions as to my acquaintances in the
sepulchral city, and so on. His little eyes glittered
like mica discs—with curiosity,—though he tried to
keep up a bit of superciliousness. At first I was
astonished, but very soon I became awfully curious
to see what he would find out from me. I couldn't
possibly imagine what I had in me to make it worth
his while. It was very pretty to see how he baffled
himself, for in truth my body was full of chills, and
my head had nothing in it but that wretched steam-
boat business . It was evident he took me for a per-
fectly shameless prevaricator. At last he got angry,
and, to conceal a movement of furious annoyance, he
yawned. I rose. Then I noticed a small sketch in
oils, on a panel, representing a woman, draped and
blindfolded, carrying a lighted torch. The back-
ground was sombre—almost black . The movement
of the woman was stately, and the effect of the torch-
light on the face was sinister.


90 HEART OF DARKNESS.
"It arrested me, and he stood by civilly, holding a
half-pint champagne bottle (medical comforts) with
the candle stuck in it. To my question he said Mr
Kurtz had painted this—in this very station more
than a year ago—while waiting for means to go to
his trading-post. 'Tell me, pray,' said I, 'who is
this Mr Kurtz?'
'"The chief of the Inner Station,' he answered in
a short tone, looking away. 'Much obliged,' I said,
laughing. 'And you are the brickmaker of the
Central Station. Every one knows that.' He was
silent for a while. 'He is a prodigy,' he said at last.
'He is an emissary of pity, and science, and progress,
and devil knows what else. We want,' he began to
declaim suddenly, 'for the guidance of the cause in-
trusted to us by Europe, so to speak, higher intelli-
gence, wide sympathies, a singleness of purpose.'
'Who says that?' I asked. 'Lots of them,' he replied.
'Some even write that; and so he comes here, a
special being, as you ought to know.' 'Why ought
I to know?' I interrupted, really surprised. He paid
no attention. 'Yes. To-day he is chief of the best
station, next year he will be assistant-manager, two
years more and . . . but I daresay you know what
he will be in two years' time. You are of the new
gang—the gang of virtue. The same people who
sent him specially also recommended you. Oh, don't
say no. I've my own eyes to trust.' Light dawned
upon me. My dear aunt's influential acquaintances
were producing an unexpected effect upon that young
man. I nearly burst into a laugh. 'Do you read
the Company's confidential correspondence?' I asked.
He hadn't a word to say. It was great fun. 'When


HEART OF DARKNESS. 91
Mr Kurtz,' I continued severely, 'is General Manager,
you won't have the opportunity.'
"He blew the candle out suddenly, and we went
outside. The moon had risen. Black figures strolled
about listlessly, pouring water on the glow, whence
proceeded a sound of hissing; steam ascended in the
moonlight, the beaten nigger groaned somewhere.
'What a row the brute makes!' said the indefati-
gable man with the moustaches, appearing near us.
'Serve him right. Transgression—punishment—
bang! Pitiless, pitiless. That's the only way. This
will prevent all conflagrations for the future. I was
just telling the manager ..." He noticed my com-
panion, and became crestfallen all at once. 'Not in
bed yet,' he said, with a kind of servile heartiness;
'it's so natural. Ha! Danger—agitation.' He
vanished. I went on to the river-side, and the other
followed me. I heard a scathing murmur at my ear,
'Heap of muffs—go to.' The pilgrims could be seen
in knots gesticulating, discussing. Several had still
their staves in their hands. I verily believe they
took these sticks to bed with them. Beyond the
fence the forest stood up spectrally in the moonlight,
and through the dim stir, through the faint sounds
of that lamentable courtyard, the silence of the land
went home to one's very heart,—its mystery, its
greatness, the amazing reality of its concealed life.
The hurt nigger moaned feebly somewhere near by,
and then fetched a deep sigh that made me mend
my pace away from there. I felt a hand intro-
ducing itself under my arm. 'My dear sir,' said
the fellow, 'I don't want to be misunderstood, and
especially by you, who will see Mr Kurtz long before


92 HEART OF DARKNESS.
I can have that pleasure. I wouldn't like him to
get a false idea of my disposition. . . .'
"I let him run on, this papier-mache Mephisto-
pheles, and it seemed to me that if I tried I could
poke my forefinger through him, and would find noth-
ing inside but a little loose dirt, maybe. He, don't
you see, had been planning to be assistant-manager
by-and-by under the present man, and I could see that
the coming of that Kurtz had upset them both not a
little. He talked precipitately, and I did not try to
stop him. I had my shoulders against the wreck
of my steamer, hauled up on the slope like a carcass
of some big river animal. The smell of mud, of
primeval mud, by Jove! was in my nostrils, the high
stillness of primeval forest was before my eyes; there
were shiny patches on the black creek. The moon
had spread over everything a thin layer of silver—
over the rank grass, over the mud, upon the wall of
matted vegetation standing higher than the wall of
a temple, over the great river I could see through a
sombre gap glittering, glittering, as it flowed broadly
by without a murmur. All this was great, expectant,
mute, while the man jabbered about himself. I
wondered whether the stillness on the face of the
immensity looking at us two were meant as an
appeal or as a menace. What were we who had
strayed in here? Could we handle that dumb thing,
or would it handle us? I felt how big, how con-
foundedly big, was that thing that couldn't talk, and
perhaps was deaf as well. What was in there? I
could see a little ivory coming out from there, and I
had heard Mr Kurtz was in there, I had heard
enough about it too—God knows! Yet somehow it


HEART OF DARKNESS. 93
didn't bring any image with it—no more than if I
had been told an angel or a fiend was in there. I
believed it in the same way one of you might believe
there are inhabitants in the planet Mars. I knew
once a Scotch sailmaker who was certain, dead sure,
there were people in Mars. If you asked him for
some idea how they looked and behaved, he would
get shy and mutter something about 'walking on
all-fours.' If you as much as smiled, he would—
though a man of sixty—offer to fight you. I would
not have gone so far as to fight for Kurtz, but I
went for him near enough to a lie. You know I
hate, detest, and can't bear a lie, not because I am
straighter than the rest of us, but simply because it
appalls me. There is a taint of death, a flavour of
mortality in lies,—which is exactly what I hate and
detest in the world—what I want to forget. It
makes me miserable and sick, like biting something
rotten would do. Temperament, I suppose. Well,
I went near enough to it by letting the young fool
there believe anything he liked to imagine as to my
influence in Europe. I became in an instant as
much of a pretence as the rest of the bewitched
pilgrims. This simply because I had a notion it
somehow would be of help to that Kurtz whom at
the time I did not see—you understand. He was
just a word for me. I did not see the man in the
name any more than you do. Do you see him? Do
you see the story? Do you see anything? It seems
to me I am trying to tell you a dream—making a
vain attempt, because no relation of a dream can
convey the dream-sensation, that commingling of
absurdity, surprise, and bewilderment in a tremor


94 HEART OF DARKNESS.
of struggling revolt, that notion of being captured
by the incredible which is of the very essence of
dreams. ..."
He was silent for a while.
"... No, it is impossible; it is impossible to
convey the life-sensation of any given epoch of one's
existence —that which makes its truth, its meaning
—its subtle and penetrating essence. It is impossible.
We live, as we dream—alone. . . ."
He paused again as if reflecting, then added—
"Of course in this you fellows see more than I
could then. You see me, whom you know. . . ."
It had become so pitch dark that we listeners
could hardly see one another. For a long time
already he, sitting apart, had been no more to us
than a voice. There was not a word from anybody.
The others might have been asleep, but I was awake.
I listened, I listened on the watch for the sentence,
for the word, that would give me the clue to the
faint uneasiness inspired by this narrative that
seemed to shape itself without human lips in the
heavy night-air of the river.
"... Yes—I let him run on," Marlow began
again, "and think what he pleased about the powers
that were behind me. I did! And there was nothing
behind me! There was nothing but that wretched,
old, mangled steamboat I was leaning against, while
he talked fluently about 'the necessity for every man
to get on.' 'And when one comes out here, you
conceive, it is not to gaze at the moon.' Mr Kurtz
was a 'universal genius,' but even a genius would
find it easier to work with 'adequate tools—intel-
ligent men,' He did not make bricks—why, there


HEABT OF DARKNESS. 95
was a physical impossibility in the way—as I was
well aware; and if he did secretarial work for the
manager, it was because 'no sensible man rejects
wantonly the confidence of his superiors' Did I
see it? I saw it. What more did I want? What
I really wanted was rivets, by heaven! Rivets. To
get on with the work—to stop the hole. Rivets I
wanted. There were cases of them down at the
coast—cases—piled up—burst—split! You kicked
a loose rivet at every second step in that station
yard on the hillside . Rivets had rolled into the
grove of death. You could fill your pockets with
rivets for the trouble of stooping down—and there
wasn't one rivet to be found where it was wanted.
We had plates that would do, but nothing to fasten
them with. And every week the messenger, a lone
negro, letter-bag on shoulder and staff in hand, left
our station for the coast. And several times a week
a coast caravan came in with trade goods,—ghastly
glazed calico that made you shudder only to look at
it, glass beads value about a penny a quart, con-
founded spotted cotton handkerchiefs. And no
rivets. Three carriers could have brought all that
was wanted to set that steamboat afloat.
"He was becoming confidential now, but I fancy
my unresponsive attitude must have exasperated
him at last, for he judged it necessary to inform
me he feared neither God nor devil, let alone any
mere man. I said I could see that very well, but
what I wanted was a certain quantity of rivets—
and rivets were what really Mr Kurtz wanted, if he
had only known it. Now letters went to the coast
every week. . . . 'My dear sir,' he cried, 'I write


HEART OF DARKNESS. 97
—but I like what is in the work,—the chance to find
yourself. Your own reality—for yourself, not for
others—what no other man can ever know. They
can only see the mere show, and never can tell what
it really means.
"I was not surprised to see somebody sitting aft,
on the deck, with his legs dangling over the mud.
You see I rather chummed with the few mechanics
there were in that station, whom the other pilgrims
naturally despised—on account of their imperfect
manners, I suppose. This was the foreman—a
boiler-maker by trade—a good worker. He was a
lank, bony, yellow-faced man, with big intense eyes.
His aspect was worried, and his head was as bald as
the palm of my hand; but his hair in falling seemed
to have stuck to his chin, and had prospered in the
new locality, for his beard hung down to his waist.
He was a widower with six young children (he had
left them in charge of a sister of his to come out
there), and the passion of his life was pigeon-flying.
He was an enthusiast and a connoisseur. He would
rave about pigeons. After work hours he used some-
times to come over from his hut for a talk about his
children and his pigeons ; at work, when he had to
crawl in the mud under the bottom of the steamboat,
he would tie up that beard of his in a kind of white
serviette he brought for the purpose. It had loops
to go over his ears. In the evening he could be seen
squatted on the bank rinsing that wrapper in the
creek with great care, then spreading it solemnly on
a bush to dry.
"I slapped him on the back and shouted 'We
shall have rivets!' He scrambled to his feet ex-
G


98 HEART OF DARKNESS.
claiming 'No! Rivets!' as though he couldn't
believe his ears. Then in a low voice, 'You . . . eh?'
I don't know why we behaved like lunatics. I put
my finger to the side of my nose and nodded mys-
teriously. 'Good for you!' he cried, snapped his
fingers above his head, lifting one foot. I tried a jig.
We capered on the iron deck . A frightful clatter
came out of that hulk, and the virgin forest on the
other bank of the creek sent it back in a thundering
roll upon the sleeping station. It must have made
some of the pilgrims sit up in their hovels. A dark
figure obscured the lighted doorway of the manager's
hut, vanished, then, a second or so after, the doorway
itself vanished too. We stopped, and the silence
driven away by the stamping of our feet flowed back
again from the recesses of the land. The great wall
of vegetation, an exuberant and entangled mass of
trunks, branches, leaves, boughs, festoons, motionless
in the moonlight, was like a rioting invasion of sound-
less life, a rolling wave of plants, piled up, crested,
ready to topple over the creek, to sweep every little
man of us out of his little existence. And it moved
not. A deadened burst of mighty splashes and snorts
reached us from afar, as though an ichthyosaurus
had been taking a bath of glitter in the great river.
'After all,' said the boiler-maker in a reasonable tone,
'why shouldn't we get the rivets?' Why not, indeed!
I did not know of any reason why we shouldn't.
'They'll come in three weeks,' I said, confidently.
"But they didn't. Instead of rivets there came
an invasion, an infliction, a visitation. It came in
sections during the next three weeks, each section
headed by a donkey carrying a white man in new


HEART OF DARKNESS. 99
clothes and tan shoes, bowing from that elevation
right and left to the impressed pilgrims. A quarrel-
some band of footsore sulky niggers trod on the heels
of the donkey; a lot of tents, camp-stools, tin boxes,
white cases, brown bales would be shot down in the
courtyard, and the air of mystery would deepen a
little over the muddle of the station. Five such
instalments came, with their absurd air of disorderly
flight with the loot of innumerable outfit shops and
provision stores, that, one would think, they were
lugging, after a raid, into the wilderness for equit-
able division. It was an inextrioable mess of things
decent in themselves but that human folly made look
like the spoils of thieving.
"This devoted band called itself the Eldorado Ex-
ploring Expedition, and I believe they were sworn
to secrecy. Their talk, however, was the talk of
sordid buccaneers: it was reckless without hardi-
hood, greedy without audacity, and cruel without
courage; there was not an atom of foresight or of
serious intention in the whole batch of them, and
they did not seem aware these things are wanted
for the work of the world. To tear treasure out
of the bowels of the land was their desire, with no
more moral purpose at the back of it than there is in
burglars breaking into a safe. Who paid the ex-
penses of the noble enterprise I don't know; but
the uncle of our manager was leader of that lot.
"In exterior he resembled a butcher in a poor
neighbourhood, and his eyes had a look of sleepy
cunning. He carried his fat paunch with ostenta-
tion on his short legs, and during the time his gang
infested the station spoke to no one but his nephew.


100 HEART OF DARKNESS.You could see these two roaming about all day long
with their heads close together in an everlasting
confab.
"I had given up worrying myself about the rivets.
One's capacity for that kind of folly is more limited
than you would suppose. I said Hang!—and let
things slide. I had plenty of time for meditation, and
now and then I would give some thought to Kurtz.
I wasn't very interested in him. No. Still, I was
curious to see whether this man, who had come out
equipped with moral ideas of some sort, would climb
to the top after all, and how he would set about
his work when there."
IL
"One evening as I was lying flat on the deck of
my steamboat, I heard voices approaching — and
there were the nephew and the uncle strolling along
the bank. I laid my head on my arm again, and had
nearly lost myself in a doze, when somebody said in
my ear, as it were: 'I am as harmless as a little
child, but I don't like to be dictated to. Am I the
manager—or am I not? I was ordered to send him
there. It's incredible.' ... I became aware that
the two were standing on the shore alongside the
forepart of the steamboat, just below my head. I
did not move; it did not occur to me to move: I was
sleepy. 'It is unpleasant,' grunted the uncle. 'He
has asked the Administration to be sent there,' said
the other, 'with the idea of showing what he could


HEARTOF DARKNESS.101
do; and I was instructed accordingly. Look at the
influence that man must have. Is it not frightful?'
They both agreed it was frightful, then made several
bizarre remarks: 'Make rain and fine weather—one
man—the Council—by the nose '—bits of absurd
sentences that got the better of my drowsiness, so
that I had pretty near the whole of my wits about
me when the uncle said, 'The climate may do away
with this difficulty for you. Is he alone there?'
'Yes,' answered the manager; 'he sent his assistant
down the river with a note to me in these terms:
"Clear this poor devil out of the country, and don't
bother sending more of that sort. I had rather be
alone than have the kind of men you can dispose of
with me." It was more than a year ago. Can you
imagine such impudence!' 'Anything since then?'
asked the other, hoarsely. 'Ivory,' jerked the
nephew; 'lots of it—prime sort—lots—most annoy-
ing, from him.' 'And with that?' questioned the
heavy rumble. 'Invoice,' was the reply fired out, so
to speak . Then silence. They had been talking
about Kurtz.
"I was broad awake by this time, but, lying
perfectly at ease, remained still, having no induce-
ment to change my position. 'How did that ivory
come all this way?' growled the elder man, who
seemed very vexed. The other explained that it had
come with a fleet of canoes in charge of an English
half-caste clerk Kurtz had with him; that Kurtz had
apparently intended to return himself, the station
being by that time bare of goods and stores, but after
coming three hundred miles, had suddenly decided to
go back, which he started to do alone in a small dug-


102 HEART OF DARKNESSout with four paddlers, leaving the half-caste to con-
tinue down the river with the ivory. The two
fellows there seemed astounded at anybody attempt-
ing such a thing. They were at a loss for an
adequate motive. As to me, I seemed to see Kurtz
for the first time. It was a distinct glimpse: the dug-
out, four paddling savages, and the lone white man
turning his back suddenly on the headquarters, on
relief, on thoughts of home—perhaps; setting his
face towards the depths of the wilderness, towards his
empty and desolate station. I did not know the
motive. Perhaps he was just simply a fine fellow
who stuck to his work for its own sake. His name,
you understand, had not been pronounced once. He
was 'that man.' The half-caste, who, as far as I
could see, had conducted a difficult trip with great
prudence and pluck, was invariably alluded to as
'that scoundrel' The 'scoundrel' had reported that
the 'man' had been very ill — had recovered im-
perfectly. . . . The two below me moved away then
a few paces, and strolled back and forth at some little
distance. I heard: 'Military post — doctor — two
hundred miles—quite alone now—unavoidable delays
—nine months—no news—strange rumours.' They
approached again, just as the manager was saying,
'No one, as far as I know, unless a species of wander-
ing trader—a pestilential fellow, snapping ivory from
the natives.' Who was it they were talking about
now? I gathered in snatches that this was some
man supposed to be in Kurtz's district, and of whom
the manager did not approve. 'We will not be free
from unfair competition till one of these fellows is
hanged for an example,' he said, 'Certainly,'


HEART OF DARKNESS. 103
grunted the other; 'get him hanged! Why not?
Anything—anything can be done in this country.
That's what I say; nobody here, you understand,
here, can endanger your position. And why? You
stand the climate — you outlast them all. The
danger is in Europe; but there before I left I took
care to 'They moved off and whispered, then
their voices rose again. 'The extraordinary series of
delays is not my fault. I did my possible.' The fat
man sighed, 'Very sad.' 'And the pestiferous
absurdity of his talk,' continued the other; 'he
bothered me enough when he was here. "Each
station should be like a beacon on the road towards
better things, a centre for trade of course, but also for
humanizing, improving, instructing." Conceive you
—that ass! And he wants to be manager! No,
it's 'Here he got choked by excessive indigna-
tion, and I lifted my head the least bit. I was
surprised to see how near they were—right under
me. I could have spat upon their hats. They were
looking on the ground, absorbed in thought. The
manager was switching his leg with a slender twig:
his sagacious relative lifted his head. 'You have
been well since you came out this time?' he asked.
The other gave a start. 'Who? I? Oh! Like a
charm—like a charm. But the rest—oh, my good-
ness! All sick . They die so quick, too, that I
haven't the time to send them out of the country—
it's incredible!' 'H'm. Just so,' grunted the uncle.
'Ah! my boy, trust to this—I say, trust to this.' I
saw him extend his short flipper of an arm for a
gesture that took in the forest, the creek, the mud,
the river,—seemed to beckon with a dishonouring


104 HEART OF DARKNESS.
flourish before the sunlit face of the land a treach-
erous appeal to the lurking death, to the hidden evil,
to the profound darkness of its heart. It was so
startling that I leaped to my feet and looked back at
the edge of the forest, as though I had expected an
answer of some sort to that black display of con-
fidence. You know the foolish notions that come to
one sometimes. The high stillness confronted these
two figures with its ominous patience, waiting for the
passing away of a fantastic invasion.
"They swore aloud together—out of sheer fright,
I believe—then pretending not to know anything of
my existence, turned back to the station. The sun
was low; and leaning forward side by side, they
seemed to be tugging painfully uphill their two
ridiculous shadows of unequal length, that trailed
behind them slowly over the tall grass without
bending a single blade.
"In a few days the Eldorado Expedition went
into the patient wilderness, that closed upon it as
the sea closes over a diver. Long afterwards the
news came that all the donkeys were dead. I know
nothing as to the fate of the less valuable animals.
They, no doubt, like the rest of us, found what they
deserved. I did not inquire. I was then rather ex-
cited at the prospect of meeting Kurtz very soon.
When I say very soon I mean it comparatively. It
was just two months from the day we left the creek
when we came to the bank below Kurtz's station.
"Going up that river was like travelling back to
the earliest beginnings of the world, when vegetation
rioted on the earth and the big trees were kings.
An empty stream, a great silence, an impenetrable


HEART OF DARKNESS. 105
forest. The air was warm, thick, heavy, sluggish.
There was no joy in the brilliance of sunshine. The
long stretches of the waterway ran on, deserted, into
the gloom of overshadowed distances. On silvery
sandbanks hippos and alligators sunned themselves
side by side. The broadening waters flowed through
a mob of wooded islands; you lost your way on that
river as you would in a desert, and butted all day
long against shoals, trying to find the channel, till
you thought yourself bewitched and cut off for ever
from everything you had known once—somewhere—
far away—in another existence perhaps. There were
moments when one's past came back to one, as it
will sometimes when you have not a moment to spare
to yourself; but it came in the shape of an unrestful
and noisy dream, remembered with wonder amongst
the overwhelming realities of this strange world of
plants, and water, and silence. And this stillness of
life did not in the least resemble a peace. It was the
stillness of an implacable force brooding over an in-
scrutable intention. It looked at you with a venge-
ful aspect. I got used to it afterwards; I did not
see it any more; I had no time. I had to keep
guessing at the channel; I had to discern, mostly by
inspiration, the signs of hidden banks; I watched for
sunken stones; I was learning to clap my teeth
smartly before my heart flew out, when I shaved by
a fluke some infernal sly old snag that would have
ripped the life out of the tin-pot steamboat and
drowned all the pilgrims; I had to keep a look-out
for the signs of dead wood we could cut up in the
night for next day's steaming. When you have to
attend to things of that sort, to the mere incidents


106 HEART OF DARKNESS.
of the surface, the reality—the reality, I tell you—
fades. The inner truth is hidden—luckily, luckily.
But I felt it all the same; I felt often its mysterious
stillness watching me at my monkey tricks, just as
it watches you fellows performing on your re-
spective tight-ropes for—what is it? half-a-crown
a tumble"
"Try to be civil, Marlow," growled a voice, and
I knew there was at least one listener awake besides
myself.
"I beg your pardon. I forgot the heartache which
makes up the rest of the price. And indeed what
does the price matter, if the trick be well done?
You do your tricks very well . And I didn't do badly
either, since I managed not to sink that steamboat
on my first trip. It's a wonder to me yet. Imagine
a blindfolded man set to drive a van over a bad road.
I sweated and shivered over that business consider-
ably, I can tell you. After all, for a seaman, to
scrape the bottom of the thing that's supposed to
float all the time under his care is the unpardonable
sin. No one may know of it, but you never forget
the thump—eh? A blow on the very heart. You
remember it, you dream of it, you wake up at night
and think of it—years after—and go hot and cold
all over. I don't pretend to say that steamboat
floated all the time. More than once she had to
wade for a bit, with twenty cannibals splashing
around and pushing. We had enlisted some of these
chaps on the way for a crew. Fine fellows—canni-
bals—in their place. They were men one could work
with, and I am grateful to them. And, after all,
they did not eat each other before my face: they had


HEART OF DARKNESS. 107
brought along a provision of hippo-meat which went
rotten, and made the mystery of the wilderness stink
in my nostrils. Phoo! I can sniff it now. I had
the manager on board and three or four pilgrims
with their staves — all complete. Sometimes we
came upon a station close by the bank, clinging to the
skirts of the unknown, and the white men rushing
out of a tumble-down hovel, with great gestures of
joy and surprise and welcome, seemed very strange,
—had the appearance of being held there captive by
a spell. The word ivory would ring in the air for a
while—and on we went again into the silence, along
empty reaches, round the still bends, between the
high walls of our winding way, reverberating in
hollow claps the ponderous beat of the stern-wheel.
Trees, trees, millions of trees, massive, immense, run-
ning up high; and at their foot, hugging the bank
against the stream, crept the little begrimed steam-
boat, like a sluggish beetle crawling on the floor of a
lofty portico. It made you feel very small, very lost,
and yet it was not altogether depressing that feeling.
After all, if you were small, the grimy beetle crawled
on — which was just what you wanted it to do.
Where the pilgrims imagined it crawled to I don't
know. To some place where they expected to get
something, I bet! For me it crawled towards Kurtz
—exclusively; but when the steam - pipes started
leaking we crawled very slow. The reaches opened
before us and closed behind, as if the forest had
stepped leisurely across the water to bar the way for
our return. We penetrated deeper and deeper into
the heart of darkness. It was very quiet there. At
night sometimes the roll of drums behind the curtain


108 HEART OF DARKNESS of trees would run up the river and remain sustained
faintly, as if hovering in the air high over our heads,
till the first break of day. Whether it meant war,
peace, or prayer we could not tell . The dawns were
heralded by the descent of a chill stillness; the woodcutters slept, their fires burned low; the snapping of
a twig would make you start. We were wanderers
on a prehistoric earth, on an earth that wore the
aspect of an unknown planet. We could have fan-
cied ourselves the first of men taking possession of
an accursed inheritance, to be subdued at the cost
of profound anguish and of excessive toil . But sud-
denly, as we struggled round a bend, there would be
a glimpse of rush walls, of peaked grass-roofs, a burst
of yells, a whirl of black limbs, a mass of hands clap-
ping, of feet stamping, of bodies swaying, of eyes
rolling, under the droop of heavy and motionless
foliage. The steamer toiled along slowly on the
edge of a black and incomprehensible frenzy. The
prehistoric man was cursing us, praying to us, wel-
coming us—who could tell? We were cut off from
the comprehension of our surroundings; we glided
past like phantoms, wondering and secretly appalled,
as sane men would be before an enthusiastic out-
break in a madhouse. We could not understand,
because we were too far and could not remember,
because we were travelling in the night of first ages,
of those ages that are gone, leaving hardly a sign—
and no memories.
"The earth seemed unearthly. We are accus-
tomed to look upon the shackled form of a conquered
monster, but there—there you could look at a thing
monstrous and free. It was unearthly, and the men


HEART OF DARKNESS. 109
were No, they were not inhuman. Well, you
know, that was the worst of it — this suspicion of
their not being inhuman. It would come slowly to
one. They howled, and leaped, and spun, and made
horrid faces; but what thrilled you was just the
thought of their humanity—like yours—the thought
of your remote kinship with this wild and passionate
uproar. Ugly. Yes, it was ugly enough; but if
you were man enough you would admit to yourself
that there was in you just the faintest trace of a
response to the terrible frankness of that noise, a
dim suspicion of there being a meaning in it which
you — you so remote from the night of first ages
—could comprehend. And why not? The mind of
man is capable of anything—because everything is
in it, all the past as well as all the future. What
was there after all? Joy, fear, sorrow, devotion,
valour, rage — who can tell?—but truth — truth
stripped of its cloak of time. Let the fool gape and
shudder—the man knows, and can look on without a
wink. But he must at least be as much of a man as
these on the shore. He must meet that truth with
his own true stuff—with his own inborn strength.
Principles? Principles won't do. Acquisitions,
clothes, pretty rags—rags that would fly off at the
first good shake. No; you want a deliberate belief.
An appeal to me in this fiendish row — is there?
Very well; I hear; I admit, but I have a voice too,
and for good or evil mine is the speech that cannot
be silenced. Of course, a fool, what with sheer fright
and fine sentiments, is always safe. Who's that
grunting? You wonder I didn't go ashore for a
howl and a dance? Well, no—I didn't. Fine senti-


110 HEART OF DARKNESS.
ments, you say? Fine sentiments, be hanged! I
had no time. I had to mess about with white-lead
and strips of woollen blanket helping to put band-
ages on those leaky steam-pipes—I tell you. I had
to watch the steering, and circumvent those snags,
and get the tin-pot along by hook or by crook
.
There was surface-truth enough in these things to
save a wiser man. And between whiles I had to
look after the savage who was fireman. He was an
improved specimen; he could fire up a vertical
boiler. He was there below me, and, upon my word,
to look at him was as edifying as seeing a dog in a
parody of breeches and a feather hat, walking on
his hind-legs. A few months of training had done
for that really fine chap. He squinted at the steam-
gauge and at the water-gauge with an evident effort
of intrepidity—and he had filed teeth too, the poor
devil, and the wool of his pate shaved into queer
patterns, and three ornamental scars on each of his
cheeks. He ought to have been clapping his hands
and stamping his feet on the bank, instead of which
he was hard at work, a thrall to strange witchcraft,
full of improving knowledge . He was useful because
he had been instructed; and what he knew was this
—that should the water in that transparent thing
disappear, the evil spirit inside the boiler would get
angry through the greatness of his thirst, and take a
terrible vengeance. So he sweated and fired up and
watched the glass fearfully (with an impromptu
charm, made of rags, tied to his arm, and a piece of
polished bone, as big as a watch, stuck flatways
through his lower lip), while the wooded banks
slipped past us slowly, the short noise was left be-


HEART OF DARKNESS&111
hind, the interminable miles of silence—and we crept
on, towards Kurtz. But the snags were thick, the
water was treacherous and shallow, the boiler seemed
indeed to have a sulky devil in it, and thus neither
that fireman nor I had any time to peer into our
creepy thoughts.
"Some fifty miles below the Inner Station we
came upon a hut of reeds, an inclined and melan-
choly pole, with the unrecognisable tatters of what
had been a flag of some sort flying from it, and a
neatly stacked wood-pile. This was unexpected.
We came to the bank, and on the stack of fire-
wood found a flat piece of board with some faded
pencil-writing on it. When deciphered it said:
'Wood for you. Hurry up. Approach cautiously.'
There was a signature, but it was illegible not
Kurtz—a much longer word. Hurry up. Where?
Up the river? 'Approach cautiously.' We had
not done so. But the warning could not have
been meant for the place where it could be only
found after approach. Something was wrong
above. But what—and how much? That was
the question. We commented adversely upon the
imbecility of that telegraphic style. The bush
around said nothing, and would not let us look
very far, either. A torn curtain of red twill hung
in the doorway of the hut, and flapped sadly in
our faces. The dwelling was dismantled; but we
could see a white man had lived there not very
long ago. There remained a rude table-- a plank
on two posts; a heap of rubbish reposed in a
dark corner, and by the door I picked up a book.
It had lost its covers, and the pages had been


112 HEART OF DARKNESS.
thumbed into a state of extremely dirty softness;
but the back had been lovingly stitched afresh with
white cotton thread, which looked clean yet. It
was an extraordinary find. Its title was, 'An
Inquiry into some Points of Seamanship,' by a
man Tower, Towson—some such name—Master in
his Majesty's Navy. The matter looked dreary
reading enough, with illustrative diagrams and re-
pulsive tables of figures, and the copy was sixty
years old. I handled this amazing antiquity with
the greatest possible tenderness, lest it should dis-
solve in my hands. Within, Towson or Towser
was inquiring earnestly into the breaking strain of
ships' chains and tackle, and other such matters.
Not a very enthralling book; but at the first
glance you could see there a singleness of intention,
an honest concern for the right way of going to
work, which made these humble pages, thought out
so many years ago, luminous with another than a
professional light. The simple old sailor, with his
talk of chains and purchases, made me forget the
jungle and the pilgrims in a delicious sensation
of having come upon something unmistakably real.
Such a book being there was wonderful enough;
but still more astounding were the notes pencilled
in the margin, and plainly referring to the text.
I couldn't believe my eyes! They were in cipher!
Yes, it looked like cipher. Fancy a man lugging
with him a book of that description into this no-
where and studying it — and making notes — in
cipher at that! It was an extravagant mystery.
"I had been dimly aware for some time of a
worrying noise, and when I lifted my eyes I saw


HEART OF DARKNESS. 113
the wood-pile was gone, and the manager, aided
by all the pilgrims, was shouting at me from the
river-side. I slipped the book into my pocket. I
assure you to leave off reading was like tearing
myself away from the shelter of an old and solid
friendship.
"I started the lame engine ahead. 'It must be
this miserable trader—this intruder,' exclaimed the
manager, looking back malevolently at the place
we had left. 'He must be English,' I said, 'It
will not save him from getting into trouble if he
is not careful,' muttered the manager darkly. I
observed with assumed innocence that no man was
safe from trouble in this world.
"The current was more rapid now, the steamer
seemed at her last gasp, the stern-wheel flopped
languidly, and I caught myself listening on tiptoe for the next beat of the float, for in sober truth I
expected the wretched thing to give up every
moment . It was like watching the last flickers
of a life. But still we crawled. Sometimes I
would pick out a tree a little way ahead to measure
our progress towards Kurtz by, but I lost it in-
variably before we got abreast. To keep the eyes
so long on one thing was too much for human
patience. The manager displayed a beautiful re-
signation. I fretted and fumed and took to
arguing with myself whether or no I would talk
openly with Kurtz; but before I could come to
any conclusion it occurred to me that my speech
or my silence, indeed any action of mine, would be
a mere futility. What did it matter what any
one knew or ignored? What did it matter who
H


114 HEART OF DARKNESS.
was manager? One gets sometimes such the flash
of insight. The essentials of this affair lay deep
under the surface, beyond my reach, and beyond
my power of meddling.
"Towards the evening of the second day we
judged ourselves about eight miles from Kurtz's
station. I wanted to push on; but the manager
looked grave, and told me the navigation up there
was so dangerous that it would be advisable, the
sun being very low already, to wait where we were
till next morning. Moreover, he pointed out that
if the warning to approach cautiously were to be
followed, we must approach in daylight—not at
dusk, or in the dark. This was sensible enough.
Eight miles meant nearly three hours' steaming for
us, and I could also see suspicious ripples at the
upper end of the reach. Nevertheless, I was an-
noyed beyond expression at the delay, and most
unreasonably too, since one night more could not
matter much after so many months. As we had
plenty of wood, and caution was the word, I brought
up in the middle of the stream. The reach was
narrow, straight, with high sides like a railway
cutting. The dusk came gliding into it long before
the sun had set. The current ran smooth and swift,
but a dumb immobility sat on the banks. The liv-
ing trees, lashed together by the creepers and every
living bush of the undergrowth, might have been
changed into stone, even to the slenderest twig, to
the lightest leaf. It was not sleep—it seemed un-
natural, like a state of trance. Not the faintest
sound of any kind could be heard. You looked on
amazed, and began to suspect yourself of being


HEART OF DARKNESS. 115
deaf — then the night came suddenly, and struck
you blind as well. About three in the morning
some large fish leaped, and the loud splash made
me jump as though a gun had been fired. When
the sun rose there was a white fog, very warm and
clammy, and more blinding than the night. It did
not shift or drive; it was just there, standing all
round you like something solid. At eight or nine,
perhaps, it lifted as a shutter lifts. We had a
glimpse of the towering multitude of trees, of the
immense matted jungle, with the blazing little ball
of the sun hanging over it—all perfectly still—and
then the white shutter came down again, smoothly,
as if sliding in greased grooves. I ordered the chain,
which we had begun to heave in, to be paid out
again. Before it stopped running with a muffled
rattle, a cry, a very loud cry, as of infinite desola-
tion, soared slowly in the opaque air. It ceased.
A complaining clamour, modulated in savage dis-
cords, filled our ears. The sheer unexpectedness of
it made my hair stir under my cap. I don't know
how it struck the others: to me it seemed as though
the mist itself had screamed, so suddenly, and ap-
parently from all sides at once, did this tumultuous and mournful uproar arise. It culminated in a
hurried outbreak of almost intolerably excessive
shrieking, which stopped short, leaving us stiffened
in a variety of silly attitudes, and obstinately listen-
ing to the nearly as appalling and excessive silence.
'Good God! What is the meaning ?' stam-
mered at my elbow one of the pilgrims,—a little
fat man, with sandy hair and red whiskers, who
wore side-spring boots, and pink pyjamas tucked


116 HEART OF DARKNESS.
into his socks. Two others remained open-mouthed
a whole minute, then dashed into the little cabin,
to rush out incontinently and stand darting scared
glances, with Winchesters at 'ready' in their hands.
What we could see was just the steamer we were
on, her outlines blurred as though she had been on
the point of dissolving, and a misty strip of water,
perhaps two feet broad, around her—and that was
all . The rest of the world was nowhere, as far as
our eyes and ears were concerned. Just nowhere.
Gone, disappeared; swept off without leaving a
whisper or a shadow behind.
"I went forward, and ordered the chain to be
hauled in short, so as to be ready to trip the
anchor and move the steamboat at once if neces-
sary. 'Will they attack?' whispered an awed voice.
'We will be all butchered in this fog,' murmured
another. The faces twitched with the strain, the
hands trembled slightly, the eyes forgot to wink.
It was very curious to see the contrast of expres-
sions of the white men and of the black fellows
of our crew, who were as much strangers to that
part of the river as we, though their homes were
only eight hundred miles away. The whites, of
course greatly discomposed, had besides a curious
look of being painfully shocked by such an outra-
geous row. The others had an alert, naturally inter-
ested expression; but their faces were essentially
quiet, even those of the one or two who grinned
as they hauled at the chain. Several exchanged
short, grunting phrases, which seemed to settle the
matter to their satisfaction. Their headman, a
young, broad - chested black, severely draped in


HEART OF DARKNESS. 117
dark-blue fringed cloths, with fierce nostrils and
his hair all done up artfully in oily ringlets, stood
near me. 'Aha!' I said, just for good fellowship's
sake . 'Catch 'im,' he snapped, with a bloodshot
widening of his eyes and a flash of sharp teeth—
'catch 'im. Give 'im to us.' 'To you, eh?' I
asked; 'what would you do with them?' 'Eat
'im!' he said, curtly, and, leaning his elbow on the
rail, looked out into the fog in a dignified and pro-
foundly pensive attitude. I would no doubt have
been properly horrified, had it not occurred to me
that he and his chaps must be very hungry: that
they must have been growing increasingly hungry
for at least this month past. They had been en-
gaged for six months (I don't think a single one
of them had any clear idea of time, as we at the
end of countless ages have. They still belonged
to the beginnings of time — had no inherited ex-
perience to teach them as it were), and of course,
as long as there was a piece of paper written over
in accordance with some farcical law or other made
down the river, it didn't enter anybody's head to
trouble how they would live. Certainly they had
brought with them some rotten hippo-meat, which
couldn't have lasted very long, anyway, even if the
pilgrims hadn't, in the midst of a shocking hulla-
baloo, thrown a considerable quantity of it over-
board. It looked like a high - handed proceeding;
but it was really a case of legitimate self-defence.
You can't breathe dead hippo waking, sleeping, and
eating, and at the same time keep your precarious
grip on existence. Besides that, they had given
them every week three pieces of brass wire, each


118 HEART OF DARKNESS.
about nine inches long; and the theory was they
were to buy their provisions with that currency in
river-side villages. You can see how that worked.
There were either no villages, or the people were
hostile, or the director, who like the rest of us fed
out of tins, with an occasional old he-goat thrown
in, didn't want to stop the steamer for some more
or less recondite reason. So, unless they swallowed
the wire itself, or made loops of it to snare the
fishes with, I don't see what good their extravagant
salary could be to them. I must say it was paid
with a regularity worthy of a large and honourable
trading company. For the rest, the only thing to
eat—though it didn't look eatable in the least—I
saw in their possession was a few lumps of some
stuff like half-cooked dough, of a dirty lavender
colour, they kept wrapped in leaves, and now and
then swallowed a piece of, but so small that it
seemed done more for the looks of the thing than
for any serious purpose of sustenance. Why in
the name of all the gnawing devils of hunger they
didn't go for us—they were thirty to five—and
have a good tuck in for once, amazes me now
when I think of it. They were big powerful men,
with not much capacity to weigh the consequences,
with courage, with strength, even yet, though their
skins were no longer glossy and their muscles no
longer hard. And I saw that something restraining,
one of those human secrets that baffle probability,
had come into play there. I looked at them with
a swift quickening of interest — not because it
occurred to me I might be eaten by them before
very long, though I own to you that just then I


HEART OF DARKNESS. 119
perceived—in a new light, as it were—how un-
wholesome the pilgrims looked, and I hoped, yes,
I positively hoped, that my aspect was not so—
what shall I say ?—so—unappetising: a touch of
fantastic vanity which fitted well with the dream-
sensation that pervaded all my days at that time.
Perhaps I had a little fever too. One can't live
with one's finger everlastingly on one's pulse. I
had often 'a little fever,' or a little touch of other
things—the playful paw-strokes of the wilderness,
the preliminary trifling before the more serious
onslaught which came in due course. Yes; I
looked at them as you would on any human being,
with a curiosity of their impulses, motives, capaci-
ties, weaknesses, when brought to the test of an
inexorable physical necessity. Restraint! What
possible restraint? Was it superstition, disgust,
patience, fear—or some kind of primitive honour?
No fear can stand up to hunger, no patience can
wear it out, disgust simply does not exist where
hunger is; and as to superstition, beliefs, and what
you may call principles, they are less than chaff in
a breeze. Don't you know the devilry of linger-
ing starvation, its exasperating torment, its black
thoughts, its sombre and brooding ferocity? Well,
I do. It takes a man all his inborn strength to
fight hunger properly. It's really easier to face
bereavement, dishonour, and the perdition of one's
soul — than this kind of prolonged hunger. Sad,
but true. And these chaps too had no earthly
reason for any kind of scruple. Restraint! I
would just as soon have expected restraint from a
hyena prowling amongst the corpses of thebattlefield.


120 HEART OF DARKNESS.
But there was the fact facing me—the fact dazzling,
to be seen, like the foam on the depths of the sea,
like a ripple on an unfathomable enigma, a mystery
greater—when I thought of it—than the curious,
inexplicable note of desperate grief in this savage
clamour that had swept by us on the river-bank,
behind the blind whiteness of the fog.
"Two pilgrims were quarrelling in hurried whispers
as to which bank . 'Left.' 'No, no; how can you?
Right, right, of course.' 'It is very serious,' said the
manager's voice behind me; 'I would be desolated if
anything should happen to Mr Kurtz before we came
up.' I looked at him, and had not the slightest
doubt he was sincere. He was just the kind of man
who would wish to preserve appearances. 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 authorise 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 judg-


HEART OF DARKNESS. 121
ment. 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 sleep-
ing 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 ex-
pounded, 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


122 HEART OF DARKNESS.
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 ex-
travagant, 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 discoloured, 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 ap-


HEART OF DARKNESS. 123
peared 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 be-
came 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 after-
noon, 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 steam-
boat 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 fun-
nel 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


124 HEARTOF DARKNESS.
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 pre-
decessor, 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 to 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,


HEART OF DARKNESS. 125
was lifting his knees high, stamping his feet, champ-
ing 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 colour. 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; con-
fused exclamations; a voice screamed, 'Can you turn
back?' I caught sight 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 wood-cutters raised a warlike
whoop; the report of a rifle just at my back deafened


126 HEAHT OF DARKNESa
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, leap-
ing, gliding, distinct, incomplete, evanescent. Some-
thing 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 extra-
ordinary, 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


HEART OF DARKNESS. 127
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 back and stared straight up at me; both
his hands clutched that cane. It was the shaft of a
spear that, either thrown or lounged through the
opening, had caught him in the side just below the
ribs; the blade had gone in out of sight, after making
a frightful gash; my shoes were full; a pool of
blood lay very still, gleaming dark-red under the
wheel; his eyes shone with an amazing lustre. The
fusillade burst out again. He looked at me anxiously,
gripping the spear like something precious, with an
air of being afraid I would try to take it away from
him. I had to make an effort to free my eyes from
his gaze and attend to the steering. With one hand
I felt above my head for the line of the steam-whistle,
and jerked out screech after screech hurriedly. The
tumult of angry and warlike yells was checked
instantly, and then from the depths of the woods
went out such a tremulous and prolonged wail of
mournful fear and utter despair as may be imagined
to follow the flight of the last hope from the earth.
There was a great commotion in the bush; the
shower of arrows stopped, a few dropping shots rang
out sharply—then silence, in which the languid beat
of the stern-wheel came plainly to my ears. I put
the helm hard a-starboard at the moment when
the pilgrim in pink pyjamas, very hot and agi-
tated, appeared in the doorway. 'The manager
sends me 'he began in an official tone, and
stopped short. 'Good God!' he said, glaring at
the wounded man.


128 HEART OF DARKNESS.
"We two whites stood over him, and his lustrous
and inquiring glance enveloped us both. I declare
it looked as though he would presently put to us
some question in an understandable language; but
he died without uttering a sound, without moving a
limb, without twitching a muscle. Only in the very
last moment, as though in response to some sign we
could not see, to some whisper we could not hear, he
frowned heavily, and that frown gave to his black
death-mask an inconceivably sombre, brooding, and
menacing expression. The lustre of inquiring glance
faded swiftly into vacant glassiness. 'Can you
steer?' I asked the agent eagerly. He looked very
dubious; but I made a grab at his arm, and he
understood at once I meant him to steer whether or
no. To tell you the truth, I was morbidly anxious
to change my shoes and socks. 'He is dead,' mur-
mured the fellow, immensely impressed . 'No doubt
about it,' said I, tugging like mad at the shoe-laces.
'And, by the way, I suppose Mr Kurtz is dead as
well by this time.'
"For the moment that was the dominant thought.
There was a sense of extreme disappointment, as
though I had found out I had been striving after
something altogether without a substance. I couldn't
have been more disgusted if I had travelled all this
way for the sole purpose of talking with Mr Kurtz.
Talking with, ... I flung one shoe overboard, and
became aware that that was exactly what I had been
looking forward to—a talk with Kurtz. I made the
strange discovery that I had never imagined him as
doing, you know, but as discoursing. I didn't say
to myself, 'Now I will never see him,' or 'Now I will


130 HEART OF DARKNESS.
retreat and advance out of the night in the regular
flicker of the tiny flame. The match went out.
"Absurd!" he cried, "This is the worst of trying
to tell. . . . Here you all are, each moored with
two good addresses, like a hulk with two anchors, a
butcher round one corner, a policeman round an-
other, excellent appetites, and temperature normal
—you hear — normal from year's end to year's
end . And you say, Absurd! Absurd be—exploded!
Absurd! My dear boys, what can you expect from
a man who out of sheer nervousness had just flung
overboard a pair of new shoes. Now I think of it,
it is amazing I did not shed tears. I am, upon the
whole, proud of my fortitude. I was cut to the
quick at the idea of having lost the inestimable
privilege of listening to the gifted Kurtz. Of course
I was wrong. The privilege was waiting for me.
Oh yes, I heard more than enough. And I was
right, too. A voice. He was very little more than
a voice. And I heard—him—it—this voice—other
voices—all of them were so little more than voices—
and the memory of that time itself lingers around
me, impalpable, like a dying vibration of one immense
jabber, silly, atrocious, sordid, savage, or simply
mean, without any kind of sense. Voices, voices—
even the girl herself—now"
He was silent for a long time.
"I laid the ghost of his gifts at last with a lie," he
began suddenly. "Girl! What? Did I mention a
girl? Oh, she is out of it—completely. They—the
women I mean—are out of it—should be out of it.
We must help them to stay in that beautiful world of
their own, lest ours gets worse. Oh, she had to be


HEART OF DARKNESS. 131
out of it. You should have heard the disinterred
body of Mr Kurtz saying, 'My Intended.' You
would have perceived directly then how completely
she was out of it. And the lofty frontal bone of Mr
Kurtz! They say the hair goes on growing some-
times, but this — ah — specimen, was impressively
bald. The wilderness had patted him on the head,
and, behold, it was like a ball—an ivory ball; it had
caressed him, and—lo!—he had withered; it had
taken him, loved him, embraced him, got into his
veins, consumed his flesh, and sealed his soul to its
own by the inconceivable ceremonies of some devil-
ish initiation. He was its spoiled and pampered
favourite. Ivory? I should think so. Heaps of it,
stacks of it. The old mud shanty was bursting with
it. You would think there was not a single tusk left
either above or below the ground in the whole coun-
try. 'Mostly fossil,' the manager had remarked dis-
paragingly. It was no more fossil than I am; but
they call it fossil when it is dug up. It appears these
niggers do bury the tusks sometimes—but evidently
they couldn't bury this parcel deep enough to save
the gifted Mr Kurtz from his fate. We filled the
steamboat with it, and had to pile a lot on the deck
.
Thus he could see and enjoy as long as he could see,
because the appreciation of this favour had remained
with him to the last. You should have heard him
say, 'My ivory.' Oh yes, I heard him. 'My In-
tended, my ivory, my station, my river, my'
everything belonged to him. It made me hold my
breath in expectation of hearing the wilderness burst
into a prodigious peal of laughter that would shake
the fixed stars in their places. Everything belonged


132 HEART OF DARKNESS
.
to him—but that was a trifle. The thing was to
know what he belonged to, how many powers of
darkness claimed him for their own. That was the
reflection that made you creepy all over. It was
impossible—it was not good for one either—trying
to imagine. He had taken a high seat amongst
the devils of the land—I mean literally. You can't
understand. How could you ?—with solid pavement
under your feet, surrounded by kind neighbours
ready to cheer you or to fall on you, stepping deli-
cately between the butcher and the policeman, in the
holy terror of scandal and gallows and lunatic
asylums — how can you imagine what particular
region of the first ages a man's untrammelled feet
may take him into by the way of solitude—utter
solitude without a policeman—by the way of silence
—utter silence, where no warning voice of a kind
neighbour can be heard whispering of public opinion?
These little things make all the great difference.
When they are gone you must fall back upon your
own innate strength, upon your own capacity for
faithfulness. Of course you may be too much of a
fool to go wrong—too dull even to know you are
being assaulted by the powers of darkness. I take
it, no fool ever made a bargain for his soul with the
devil: the fool is too much of a fool, or the devil too
much of a devil—I don't know which. Or you may
be such a thunderingly exalted creature as to be
altogether deaf and blind to anything but heavenly
sights and sounds. Then the earth for you is only
a standing place—and whether to be like this is your
loss or your gain I won't pretend to say. But most
of us are neither one nor the other. The earth


HEART OF DARKNESS. 133
for us is a place to live in, where we must put up
with sights, with sounds, with smells too, by Jove!—
breathe dead hippo, so to speak, and not be contam-
inated. And there, don't you see? your strength
comes in, the faith in your ability for the digging of
unostentatious holes to bury the stuff in — your
power of devotion, not to yourself, but to an obscure,
back-breaking business. And that's difficult enough.
Mind, I am not trying to excuse or even explain—I
am trying to account to myself for-- for—Mr Kurtz
—for the shade of Mr Kurtz. This initiated wraith
from the back of Nowhere honoured me with its
amazing confidence before it vanished altogether.
This was because it could speak English to me. The
original Kurtz had been educated partly in England,
and—as he was good enough to say himself—his
sympathies were in the right place. His mother
was half-English, his father was half-French. All
Europe contributed to the making of Kurtz; and
by-and-by I learned that, most appropriately, the
International Society for the Suppression of Savage
Customs had intrusted him with the making of
a report, for its future guidance. And he had
written it too. I've seen it. I've read it. It was
eloquent, vibrating with eloquence, but too high-
strung, I think. Seventeen pages of close writing
he had found time for! But this must have been
before his — let us say — nerves, went wrong, and
caused him to preside at certain midnight dances
ending with unspeakable rites, which—as far as I
reluctantly gathered from what I heard at various
times—were offered up to him—do you understand?
—to Mr Kurtz himself. But it was a beautiful


134 HEART OF DARKNESS
.
piece of writing. The opening paragraph, however,
in the light of later information, strikes me now as
ominous. He began with the argument that we
whites, from the point of development we had ar-
rived at, 'must necessarily appear to them [savages]
in the nature of supernatural beings—we approach
them with the might as of a deity,' and so on, and so
on. 'By the simple exercise of our will we can
exert a power for good practically unbounded,' &c.,
&c. From that point he soared and took me with
him. The peroration was magnificent, though diffi-
cult to remember, you know. It gave me the notion
of an exotic Immensity ruled by an august Benevo-
lence. It made me tingle with enthusiasm. This
was the unbounded power of eloquence—of words—
of burning noble words. There were no practical
hints to interrupt the magic current of phrases,
unless a kind of note at the foot of the last page,
scrawled evidently much later, in an unsteady hand,
may be regarded as the exposition of a method. It
was very simple, and at the end of that moving
appeal to every altruistic sentiment it blazed at you,
luminous and terrifying, like a flash of lightning in
a serene sky: 'Exterminate all the brutes!' The
curious part was that he had apparently forgotten
all about that valuable postscriptum, because, later
on, when he in a sense came to himself, he repeatedly
entreated me to take good care of 'my pamphlet' (he
called it), as it was sure to have in the future a good
influence upon his career. I had full information about
all these things, and, besides, as it turned out, I was to
have the care of his memory. I've done enough for
it to give me the indisputable right to lay it, if I


HEART OF DARKNESS. 135
choose, for an everlasting rest in the dust-bin of
progress, amongst all the sweepings and, figur-
atively speaking, all the dead cats of civilisation.
But then, you see, I can't choose. He won't be
forgotten. Whatever he was, he was not common.
He had the power to charm or frighten rudiment-
ary souls into an aggravated witch-dance in his
honour; he could also fill the small souls of the
pilgrims with bitter misgivings: he had one devoted
friend at least, and he had conquered one soul in the
world that was neither rudimentary nor tainted with
self-seeking. No; I can't forget him, though I am
not prepared to affirm the fellow was exactly worth
the life we lost in getting to him. I missed my late
helmsman awfully,—I missed him even while his body
was still lying in the pilot-house. Perhaps you will
think it passing strange this regret for the savage
who was no more account than a grain of sand in
a black Sahara. Well, don't you see, he had done
something, he had steered; for months I had him at
my back—a help—an instrument. It was a kind of
partnership. He steered for me—I had to look after
him, I worried about his deficiencies, and thus a
subtle bond had been created, of which I only be-
came aware when it was suddenly broken. And the
intimate profundity of that look he gave me when
he received his hurt remains to this day in my
memory—like a claim of distant kinship affirmed in
a supreme moment.
"Poor fool! If he had only left that shutter
alone. He had no restraint, no restraint—just like
Kurtz—a tree swayed by the wind. As soon as I
had put on a dry pair of slippers, I dragged him out,


136 HEART OF DARKNESS.
after first jerking the spear out of his side, which
operation I confess I performed with my eyes shut
tight. His heels leaped together over the little door-
step; his shoulders were pressed to my breast; I
hugged him from behind desperately. Oh! he was
heavy, heavy; heavier than any man on earth, I
should imagine. Then without more ado I tipped
him overboard. The current snatched him as though
he had been a wisp of grass, and I saw the body roll
over twice before I lost sight of it for ever. All the
pilgrims and the manager were then congregated on
the awning-deck about the pilot-house, chattering at
each other like a flock of excited magpies, and there
was a scandalised murmur at my heartless prompt-
itude. What they wanted to keep that body hanging
about for I can't guess. Embalm it, maybe. But I
had also heard another, and a very ominous, murmur
on the deck below. My friends the wood-cutters
were likewise scandalized, and with a better show of
reason—though I admit that the reason itself was
quite inadmissible. Oh, quite! I had made up my
mind that if my late helmsman was to be eaten, the
fishes alone should have him. He had been a very
second-rate helmsman while alive, but now he was
dead he might have become a first-class temptation,
and possibly cause some startling trouble. Besides, I
was anxious to take the wheel, the man in pink
pyjamas showing himself a hopeless duffer at the
business.
"This I did directly the simple funeral was over.
We were going half-speed, keeping right in the
middle of the stream, and I listened to the talk about
me. They had given up Kurtz, they had given up


HEART OF DARKNESS. 137
the station; Kurtz was dead, and the station had
been burnt—and so on—and so on. The red-haired
pilgrim was beside himself with the thought that at
least this poor Kurtz had been properly revenged.
'Say! We must have made a glorious slaughter of
them in the bush. Eh? What do you think? Say?'
He positively danced, the bloodthirsty little gingery
beggar. And he had nearly fainted when he saw the
wounded man! I could not help saying, 'You made
a glorious lot of smoke, anyhow.' I had seen, from
the way the tops of the bushes rustled and flew, that
almost all the shots had gone too high. You can't
hit anything unless you take aim and fire from the
shoulder; but these chaps fired from the hip with
their eyes shut. The retreat, I maintained—and I
was right — was caused by the screeching of the
steam-whistle. Upon this they forgot Kurtz, and
began to howl at me with indignant protests.
"The manager stood by the wheel murmuring con-
fidentially about the necessity of getting well away
down the river before dark at all events, when I saw
in the distance a clearing on the river-side and the
outlines of some sort of building. 'What's this?' I
asked. He clapped his hands in wonder. 'The
station!' he cried. I edged in at once, still going
half-speed.
"Through my glasses I saw the slope of a hill
interspersed with rare trees and perfectly free from
undergrowth. A long decaying building on the
summit was half buried in the higfcfcgrass; the large
holes in the peaked roof gaped black from afar; the
jungle and the woods made a background. There
was no enclosure or fence of any kind; but there had


138 HEART OF DARKNESS. been one apparently, for near the house half-a-dozen
slim posts remained in a row, roughly trimmed, and
with their upper ends ornamented with round carved
balls. The rails, or whatever there had been between,
had disappeared. Of course the forest surrounded
all that. The river-bank was clear, and on the
water-side I saw a white man under a hat like a
cart-wheel beckoning persistently with his whole
arm. Examining the edge of the forest above and
below, I was almost certain I could see movements—
human forms gliding here and there. I steamed
past prudently, then stopped the engines and let her
drift down. The man on the shore began to shout,
urging us to land. 'We have been attacked,'
screamed the manager. 'I know—I know. It's all
right,' yelled back the other, as cheerful as you
please. 'Come along. It's all right. I am glad.'
"His aspect reminded me of something I had seen
—something funny I had seen somewhere. As I
manoeuvred to get alongside, I was asking myself,
'What does this fellow look like?' Suddenly I got
it. He looked like a harlequin. His clothes had
been made of some stuff that was brown holland pro-
bably, but it was covered with patches all over, with
bright patches, blue, red, and yellow,—patches on
the back, patches on front, patches on elbows, on
knees; coloured binding round his jacket, scarlet
edging at the bottom of his trousers; and the sun-
shine made him look extremely gay and wonderfully
neat withal, because you could see how beautifully
all this patching had been done. A beardless, boyish
face, very fair, no features to speak of, nose peeling,
little blue eyes, smiles and frowns chasing each other


HEART OF DARKNESS. 139
over that open countenance like sunshine and shadow
on a wind-swept plain. 'Look out, captain!' he
cried; 'there's a snag lodged in here last night.'
What! Another snag? I confess I swore shamefully.
I had nearly holed my cripple, to finish off that charm-
ing trip. The harlequin on the bank turned his
little pug nose up to me. 'You English?' he asked,
all smiles. 'Are you?' I shouted from the wheel.
The smiles vanished, and he shook his head as if
sorry for my disappointment. Then he brightened
up. 'Never mind!' he cried encouragingly. 'Are
we in time?' I asked. 'He is up there,' he replied,
with a toss of the head up the hill, and becoming
gloomy all of a sudden. His face was like the
autumn sky, overcast one moment and bright the
next.
"When the manager, escorted by the pilgrims, all
of them armed to the teeth, had gone to the house,
this chap came on board. 'I say, I don't like this.
These natives are in the bush,' I said. He assured
me earnestly it was all right. 'They are simple
people,' he added; 'well, I am glad you came. It
took me all my time to keep them off.' 'But you
said it was all right,' I cried, 'Oh, they meant no
harm,' he said; and as I stared he corrected him-
self, 'Not exactly.' Then vivaciously, 'My faith,
your pilot-house wants a clean- up!' In the next
breath he advised me to keep enough steam on
the boiler to blow the whistle in case of any trouble.
'One good screech will do more for you than all your
rifles. They are simple people,' he repeated. He
rattled away at such a rate he quite overwhelmed
me. He seemed to be trying to make up for lots of


140 HEART OF DARKNESS
.
silence, and actually hinted, laughing, that such was
the case. 'Don't you talk with Mr Kurtz?' I said, 'You don't talk with that man—you listen to him,'
he exclaimed with severe exaltation. 'But now'
He waved his arm, and in the twinkling of an eye
was in the uttermost depths of despondency. In a
moment he came up again with a jump, possessed
himself of both my hands, shook them continuously,
while he gabbled: 'Brother sailor . . . honour . . .
pleasure . . . delight . . . introduce myself . . .
Russian . . . son of an arch-priest . . . Goverment
of Tambov . . .What? Tobacco! English tobacco;
the excellent English tobacco! Now, that's brotherly.
Smoke? Where's a sailor that does not smoke?'
"The pipe soothed him, and gradually I made out
he had run away from school, had gone to sea in a
Russian ship; ran away again; served some time in
English ships; was now reconciled with the arch-
priest. He made a point of that. 'But when one is
young one must see things, gather experience, ideas;
enlarge the mind.' 'Here!' I interrupted. 'You
can never tell! Here I have met Mr Kurtz,' he
said, youthfully solemn and reproachful. I held my
tongue after that. It appears he had persuaded a
Dutch trading-house on the coast to fit him out with
stores and goods, and had started for the interior
with a light heart, and no more idea of what would
happen to him than a baby. He had been wander-
ing about that river for nearly two years alone, out
off from everybody and everything. 'I am not so
young as I look . I am twenty-five,' he said, 'At
first old Van Shuyten would tell me to go to the
devil,' he narrated with keen enjoyment; 'but I


HEART OF DARKNESS. 141
stuck to him, and talked and talked, till at last he
got afraid I would talk the hind-leg off his favourite
dog, so he gave me some cheap things and a few
guns, and told me he hoped he would never see my
face again. Good old Dutchman, Van Shuyten.
I've sent him one small lot of ivory a year ago, so
that he can't call me a little thief when I get back. I hope he got it. And for the rest I don't care. I
had some wood stacked for you. That was my old
house. Did you see?'
"I gave him Towson's book. He made as though
he would kiss me, but restrained himself. 'The only
book I had left, and I thought I had lost it,' he
said, looking at it ecstatically. 'So many accidents
happen to a man going about alone, you know.
Canoes get upset sometimes—and sometimes you've
got to clear out so quick when the people get
angry.' He thumbed the pages. 'You made notes
in Russian?' I asked. He nodded. 'I thought they
were written in cipher,' I said. He laughed, then
became serious. 'I had lots of trouble to keep these
people off,' he said, 'Did they want to kill you?' I
asked, 'Oh no!' he cried, and checked himself.
'Why did they attack us?' I pursued. He hesi-
tated, then said shamefacedly, 'They don't want
him to go.' 'Don't they?' I said, curiously. He
nodded a nod full of mystery and wisdom. 'I tell
you,' he cried, 'this man has enlarged my mind.'
He opened his arms wide, staring at me with his
little blue eyes that were perfectly round."


142 HEART OF DARKNESS
.
IIL
"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. His
very existence was improbable, inexplicable, and al-
together bewildering. He was an insoluble 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 still 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 quick—quick
—I tell you.' The glamour of youth enveloped his
particoloured rags, his destitution, 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, thought-
lessly alive, to all appearance indestructible solely by
the virtue of his few years and of his unreflecting
audacity. I was seduced into something like admir-
ation—like envy. Glamour urged him on, glamour
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 ruled this be-patched
youth. I almost envied him the possession of this


HEART OF DARKNESS. 143
modest and clear flame. It seemed to have con-
sumed all thought of self so completely, 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 de-
votion 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! Everything!
... 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 things—things' "He threw his arms up. We were on deck at the
time, and the headman of my wood-cutters, loung-
ing near by, turned upon him his heavy and glitter-
ing 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 this
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.


144 HEART OF DARKNESS.
"On the contrary. It appears their intercourse
had been very much broken by various causes. He
had, as he informed me proudly, managed to nurse
Kurtz through two illnesses (he alluded to it as
you would to some risky feat), 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 before he would turn up,' he said.
'Ah, it was worth waiting for!—sometimes' 'What
was he doing? exploring or what?' I asked. 'Oh
yes, of course'; he had discovered lots of villages,
a lake too—he did not know exactly in what direc-
tion; 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 ordin-
ary man. No, no, no! Now—just to give you
an idea—I don't mind telling you, he wanted to


HEART OF DARKNESS. 145
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 declared he would shoot me unless I
gave him the ivory and then cleared out of the
country, 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, of course, till we
got friendly again for a time. He had his second
illness then. Afterwards I had to keep out of the
way; but I didn't mind. He was living for the
most part in those villages on the lake. When he
came down to the river, sometimes he would take
to me, and sometimes it was better for me to be
careful. 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 amongst 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
K


146 HEART OF DARKNESS.
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 that was not so much told as sug-
gested 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 Russian
was explaining to me that it was only lately that
Mr Kurtz had come down to the river, bringing
along with him all the fighting men of that lake
tribe. He had been absent for several months—
getting himself adored, I suppose—and had come
down unexpectedly, with the intention to all ap-
pearance of making 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 help-
less, and so I came up—took my chance,' said the
Russian. 'Oh, he is bad, very bad.' I directed
my glass to 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 window-holes, 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


148 HEART OF DARKNESS.
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. 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 inaccessible distance.
"The admirer of Mr Kurtz was a bit crestfallen.
In a hurried, indistinct voice he began to assure
me he had not dared to take these—say, symbols
—down. He was not afraid of the natives; they
would not stir till Mr Kurtz gave the word.
His ascendancy was extraordinary. The camps
of these people surrounded the place, and the
chiefs came every day to see him. They would
crawl, . . . '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 such details would be more intoler-
able than those heads drying on the stakes
under Mr Kurtz's windows.' After all, that
was only a savage sight, while I seemed at one
bound to have been transported into some light-


HEARTOF DARKNESS. 149
less region of subtle horrors, where pure, uncom-
plicated 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 con-
ditions, he 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,
workers—and these were rebels. Those rebellious
heads looked very subdued 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, 'II 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 sud-
denly 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! I—I—haven't slept for the last ten
nights. . . .'
"His voice lost itself in the calm of the evening.


150 HEART OF DARKNESS.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 splendour, with a murky and over-
shadowed bend above and below. Not a living
soul was seen on the shore. The bushes did not
rustle.
"Suddenly round the corner of the house a
group of men appeared, as though they had come
up from the ground. They waded waist-deep in
the grass, in a compact body, bearing an impro-
vised 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.
"' Now, if he does not say the right thing 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 up-
lifted 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 particular reason to spare


HEAET OF DARKNESS. 151
us this time,' I said. I resented bitterly the absurd
danger of our situation, as if to be at the mercy of
that atrocious phantom had been a dishonouring
necessity. I could not hear a sound, but through
my glasses I saw the thin arm extended command-
ingly, the lower jaw moving, the eyes of that ap-
parition shining darkly far in its 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 its
hand with menaces at a motionless crowd of men
made of dark and glittering bronze. I saw him
open his mouth wide—it gave him a weirdly vor-
acious aspect, as though he had wanted to swallow
all the air, all the earth, all the men before him.
A deep voice reached me faintly. He must have
been shouting. He fell back suddenly. The stretcher
shook as the bearers staggered forward again, and
almost at the same time I noticed that the crowd
of savages 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 aspiration.
"Some of the pilgrims behind the stretcher carried
his arms—two shot-guns, a heavy rifle, and a light
revolver-carbine — the thunderbolts of that pitiful
Jupiter. The manager bent over him murmuring


152 HEART OF DARKNESS.
as he walked beside his head. They laid him down
in one of the little cabins—just a room for a, bed-
place 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 of 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 straight
in my face said, 'I am glad.' Somebody had been
writing to him about me. These special recommen-
dations were turning up 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 him—factitious no doubt—
to very nearly make an end of us, as you shall hear
directly.
"The manager appeared silently in the doorway;
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.
"Dark human shapes could be made out in the
distance, flitting indistinctly against the gloomy
border of the forest, and near the river two bronze
figures, leaning on tall spears, stood in the sunlight
under fantastic head-dresses of spotted skins, war-
like and still in statuesque repose . And from right


HEART OF DARKNESS. 153
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 barbar-
ous 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, in-
numerable necklaces of glass beads on her neck;
bizarre things, charms, gifts of witch-men, that
hung about her, glittered and trembled at every
step. She must have had the value of several
elephant tusks upon her. She was savage and
superb, wild-eyed and magnificent; there was some-
thing ominous and stately in her deliberate progress.
And in the hush that had fallen suddenly upon the
whole sorrowful land, the immense wilderness, the
colossal body of the fecund and mysterious life
seemed to look at her, pensive, as though it had
been looking at the image of its own tenebrous and
passionate soul.
"She came abreast of the steamer, stood still, and
faced us. Her long shadow fell to the water's edge.
Her face had a tragic and fierce aspect of wild
sorrow and of dumb pain mingled with the fear
of some struggling, 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
made a step forward. There was a low jingle, a
glint of yellow metal, a sway of fringed draperies,
and she stopped as if her heart had failed her. The


154 HEART OF DARKNESS.young fellow by my side growled. The pilgrims
murmured at my back. She looked at us all as if
her life had depended upon the unswerving steadi-
ness of her glance. Suddenly she opened her bared
arms and threw them up rigid above her head, as
though 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 steamer into a shadowy embrace. A formidable
silence hung over the scene.
"She turned away slowly, walked 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 the
man of patches, nervously. 'I had been risking my
life every day for the last fortnight to keep her
out of the house. She got in one day and kicked
up a row about those miserable rags 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 understand. . . . No
—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 tell me. Save me! Why, I've had
to save you. You are interrupting my plans now.


HEART OF DARKNESS. 155
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 me. I will return, I . . .'
"The manager came out. He did me the honour
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 him—
haven't we? But there is no disguising the fact,
Mr Kurtz has done more harm than good to the
Company. He did not see the time was not ripe
for vigorous action. Cautiously, cautiously—that's
my principle. We must be cautious yet. The dis-
trict 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 pre-
carious the position is—and why? Because the
method is unsound.' 'Do you,' said I, looking at
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 complete want of judgment. It is my duty to
point it out in the proper quarter.' 'Oh,' said I,
'that fellow—what'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


156 HEART OF DARKNESS.
man,' I said with emphasis. He started, dropped
on me a cold heavy glance, said very quietly, 'He
was,' and turned his back on me. My hour of
favour was over; I found myself lumped along
with Kurtz as a partisan of methods for which
the time was not ripe: I was unsound! Ah! but
it was something to have at least a choice of night-
mares.
"I had turned to the wilderness really, not to
Mr Kurtz, who, I was ready to admit, was as good
as buried. And for a moment it seemed to me as
if I also were buried in a vast grave full of un-
speakable 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 impenetrable night. . . . The
Russian tapped me on the shoulder. I heard him
mumbling and stammering something about 'brother
seaman—couldn't conceal—knowledge of matters
that would affect Mr Kurtz's reputation.' I waited.
For him evidently Mr Kurtz was not in his grave;
I suspect that for him Mr Kurtz was one of the
immortals. 'Well!' said I at last, 'speak out.
As it happens, I am Mr Kurtz's friend—in a way.'
"He stated with the good deal of formality that
had we not been 'of the same profession,' he would
have kept the matter to himself without regard to
consequences. 'He suspected there was an active ill-
will towards him on the part of these white men
that ''You are right,' I said, remembering a
certain conversation I had overheard. 'The manager
thinks you ought to be hanged.' He showed a con-
oern at this intelligence which amused me at first


HEART OF DARKNESS. 157
'I had better get 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 my word,' said I, 'perhaps
you had better go if you have any friends amongst
the savages near by.' 'Plenty,' he said, 'They are
simple people —and I want nothing, you know.' He
stood biting his lip, then: 'I don't want any harm
to happen to these whites here, but of course I was
thinking of Mr Kurtz's reputation—but you are a
brother seaman and ''All right,' said I, after a
time. 'Mr Kurtz's reputation is safe with me.' I
did not know how truly I spoke.
"He informed me, lowering his voice, that it
was Kurtz who had ordered the attack to be made
on the steamer. 'He hated sometimes the idea of
being taken away — and then again. . . . But I
don't understand these matters. I am a simple
man. He thought it would scare you away—that
you would give it up, thinking him dead. I could
not stop him. Oh, I had an awful time of it this
last month.' 'Very well,' I said, 'He is all right
now.' 'Ye-e-es,' he muttered, not very convinced
apparently. 'Thanks,' said I; 'I shall keep my
eyes open.' 'But quiet—eh?' he urged, anxiously.
'It would be awful for his reputation if anybody
here 'I promised a complete discretion with
great gravity. 'I have a canoe and three black
fellows waiting not very far. I am off. Could you
give me a few Martini-Henry cartridges?' I could,
and did, with proper secrecy. He helped himself,
with a wink at me, to a handful of my tobacco. 'Be-


158 HEART OF DARKNESS.
tween sailors—you know—good 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
admiration before tucking it under his left arm.
One of his pockets (bright red) was bulging with
cartridges, from the other (dark blue) peeped ' Tow-
son's Inquiry,' &a, &c. He seemed to think himself
excellently well equipped for a renewed encounter
with the wilderness. 'Ah! I'll never, never meet
such a man again. You ought 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!' 'Good-
bye,' 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 phenomenon! . . .
"When I woke up shortly after midnight his
warning came to my mind with its hint of danger
that seemed, in the starred darkness, real enough
to make me get up for the purpose of having a look
round. On the hill a big fire burned, illuminating
fitfully a crooked corner of the station-house. One
of the agents with a picket of a few of our blacks,
armed for the purpose, was keeping guard over the
ivory; but deep within the forest, red gleams that
wavered, that seemed to sink and rise from the
ground amongst confused columnar shapes of in-
tense blackness, showed the exact position of the
camp where Mr Kurtz's adorers were keeping their


HEAET OF DARKNESS.159
uneasy vigil . The monotonous beating of a big
drum filled the air with muffled shocks and a linger-
ing vibration. A steady droning sound of many
men chanting each to himself some weird incantation
came out from the black, flat wall of the woods as
the humming of bees comes out of a hive, and had
a strange narcotic effect upon my half-awake senses.
I believe I dozed off leaning over the rail, till an
abrupt burst of yells, an overwhelming 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
believed my eyes. But I didn't believe them at first
—the thing seemed so impossible. The fact is I was
completely unnerved by a sheer blank fright, pure
abstract terror, unconnected with any distinct shape
of physical danger. What made this emotion so
overpowering was—how shall I define it ?—the moral
shock I received, as if something altogether mon-
strous, intolerable to thought 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 commonplace, deadly danger, the
possibility of a sudden onslaught and massacre, or
something of the kind, which I saw impending, was
positively welcome and composing. It pacified me,
in fact, so much, that I did not raise an alarm.
"There was an agent buttoned up inside an ulster
and sleeping on a chair on deck within three feet of


160 HEART OF DARKNESS.
me. The yells had not awakened him; he snored
very slightly; I left him to his slumbers and leaped
ashore. I did not betray Mr Kurtz—it was ordered
I should never betray him—it was written I should
be loyal to the nightmare of my choice. I was
anxious to deal with this shadow by myself alone,
—and to this day I don't know why I was so jealous
of sharing with any one 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 with which I said to myself, 'He can't
walk—he is crawling on all-fours—I've got him.'
The grass was wet with dew. I strode rapidly with
clenched fists. I fancy I had some vague notion of
falling upon him and giving him a drubbing. I
don't know. I had some imbecile thoughts. The
knitting old woman with the cat obtruded herself
upon my memory as a most improper person to be
sitting at the other end of such an affair. I saw a
row of pilgrims squirting lead in the air out of
Winchesters held to the hip. I thought I would
never get back to the steamer, and imagined myself
living alone and unarmed in the woods to an ad-
vanced age. Such silly things—you know. And
I remember I confounded the beat of the drum with
the beating of my heart, and was pleased at its
calm regularity.
"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
of motion ahead of me. I was strangely cocksure


HEART OF DARKNESS. 161
of everything that night. I actually left the track
and ran in a wide semicircle (I verily believe chuck-
ling to myself) so as to get in front of that stir,
of that motion I had seen—if indeed I had seen
anything. I was circumventing Kurtz as though
it had been a boyish game.
"I came upon him, and, if he had not heard me
coming, I would have fallen over him too, but he got
up in time. He rose, unsteady, long, pale, indistinct,
like a vapour 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. I
had cut him off cleverly; but when actually con-
fronting him I seemed to come to my senses, I saw
the danger in its right proportion. It was by no
means over yet. Suppose he began to shout?
Though he could hardly stand, there was still plenty
of vigour in his voice. 'Go away—hide yourself,'
he said, in that profound tone. It was very awful.
I glanced back. We were within thirty yards from
the nearest fire. A black figure stood up, strode on
long black legs, waving long black arms, across the
glow. It had horns—antelope horns, I think—on
its head. Some sorcerer, some witch-man, no doubt:
it looked fiend-like enough. 'Do you know what
you are doing?' I whispered, 'Perfectly,' he
answered, raising his voice for that single word:
it sounded to me far off and yet loud, like a hail
through a speaking-trumpet. If he makes a row
we are lost, I thought to myself. This clearly was
not a case for fisticuffs, even apart from the very
natural aversion I had to beat that Shadow—this
L


162 HEART OF DARKNESS.
wandering and tormented thing. 'You will be lost,'
I said—'utterly lost.' One gets sometimes such a
flash of inspiration, you know. I did say the right
thing, though indeed he could not have been more
irretrievably lost than he was at this very moment,
when the foundations of our intimacy were being
laid—to endure-- to endure—even to the end—even
beyond.
"'I had immense plans,' he muttered irresolutely.
'Yes,' said I; 'but if you try to shout I'll smash
your head with 'there was not a stick or a stone
near. 'I will throttle you for good,' I corrected
myself. 'I was on the threshold of great things,'
he pleaded, in a voice of longing, with a wistfulness
of tone that made my blood run cold. 'And now
for this stupid scoundrel ''Your success in
Europe is assured in any case,' I affirmed, steadily.
I did not want to have the throttling of him, you
understand—and indeed it would have been very
little use for any practical purpose. I tried to break
the spell—the heavy, mute spell of the wilderness—
that seemed to draw him to its pitiless breast by the
awakening of forgotten and brutal instincts, by the
memory of gratified and monstrous passions. This
alone, I was convinced, had driven him out to the
edge of the forest, to the bush, towards the gleam of
fires, the throb of drums, the drone of weird incanta-
tions; this alone had beguiled his unlawful soul
beyond the bounds of permitted aspirations. And,
don't you see, the terror of the position was not in
being knocked on the head—though I had a very
lively sense of that danger too—but in this, that I
had to deal with a being to whom I could not appeal


HEAET OF DARKNESS.163
in the name of anything high or low. I had, even like
the niggers, to invoke him—himself—his own exalted
and incredible degradation. There was nothing either
above or below him, and I knew it. He had kicked
himself loose of the earth. Confound the man! he
had kicked the very earth to pieces. He was alone,
and I before him did not know whether I stood on
the ground or floated in the air. I've been telling
you what we said—repeating the phrases we pro-
nounced,—but what's the good? They were common
everyday words,—the familiar, vague sounds ex-
changed on every waking day of life. But what of
that? They had behind them, to my mind, the
terrific suggestiveness of words heard in dreams, of
phrases spoken in nightmares . Soul! If anybody
had ever struggled with a soul, I am the man. And
I wasn't arguing with a lunatic either. Believe me
or not, his intelligence was perfectly clear—con-
centrated, it is true, upon himself with horrible in-
tensity, yet clear; and therein was my only chance
—barring, of course, the killing him there and then,
which wasn't so good, on account of unavoidable
noise. But his soul was mad. Being alone in the
wilderness, it had looked within itself, and, by
heavens! I tell you, it had gone mad. I had—for
my sins, I suppose—to go through the ordeal of
looking into it myself. No eloquence could have
been so withering to one's belief in mankind as his
final burst of sincerity. He struggled with himself,
too. I saw it,—I heard it. I saw the inconceivable
mystery of a soul that knew no restraint, no faith,
and no fear, yet struggling blindly with itself. I
kept my head pretty well; but when I had him at


164 HEART OF DARKNESS.
last stretched on the couch, I wiped my forehead,
while my legs shook under me as though I had
carried half a ton on my back down that hill . And
yet I had only supported him, his bony arm clasped
round my neck—and he was not much heavier than
a child
.
"When next day we left at noon, the crowd, of
whose presence behind the curtain of trees I had
been acutely conscious all the time, flowed out of the
woods again, filled the clearing, covered the slope
with a mass of naked, breathing, quivering, bronze
bodies. I steamed up a bit, then swung down-
stream, and two thousand eyes followed the evolu-
tions of the splashing, thumping, fierce river-demon
beating the water with its terrible tail and breathing
black smoke into the air. In front of the first rank,
along the river, three men, plastered with bright
red earth from head to foot, strutted to and fro rest-
lessly. When we came abreast again, they faced
the river, stamped their feet, nodded their horned
heads, swayed their scarlet bodies; they shook
towards the fierce river-demon a bunch of black
feathers, a mangy skin with a pendent tail—some-
thing that looked like a dried gourd; they shouted
periodically together strings of amazing words that
resembled no sounds of human language; and the
deep murmurs of the crowd, interrupted suddenly,
were like the responses of some satanic litany.
"We had carried Kurtz into the pilot-house: there
was more air there. Lying on the couch, he stared
through the open shutter. There was an eddy in
the mass of human bodies, and the woman with
helmeted head and tawny cheeks rushed out to the


HEART OF DARKNESS. 165
very brink of the stream. She put out her hands,
shouted something, and all that wild mob took up
the shout in a roaring chorus of articulated, rapid,
breathless utterance.
"' Do you understand this?' I asked.
"He kept on looking out past me with fiery, long-
ing eyes, with a mingled expression of wistfulness and
hate. He made no answer, but I saw a smile, a smile
of indefinable meaning, appear on his colourless lips
that a moment after twitched convulsively. 'Do I
not?' he said slowly, gasping, as if the words had
been torn out of him by a supernatural power.
"I pulled the string of the whistle, and I did this
because I saw the pilgrims on deck getting out their
rifles with an air of anticipating a jolly lark . At the
sudden screech there was a movement of abject terror
through that wedged mass of bodies. 'Don't! don't!
you frighten them away,' cried some one on deck
disconsolately. I pulled the string time after time.
They broke and ran, they leaped, they crouched, they
swerved, they dodged the flying terror of the sound.
The three red chaps had fallen flat, face down on the
shore, as though they had been shot dead. Only the
barbarous and superb woman did not so much as
flinch, and stretched tragically her bare arms after
us over the sombre and glittering river.
"And then that imbecile crowd down on the deck
started their little fun, and I could see nothing more
for smoke.
"The brown current ran swiftly out of the heart
of darkness, bearing us down towards the sea with
twice the speed of our upward progress; and Kurtz's


166 HEART OF DARKNESS
.
life was running swiftly too, ebbing, ebbing out of
his heart into the sea of inexorable time. The
manager was very placid, he had no vital anxieties
now, he took us both in with a comprehensive and
satisfied glance: the 'affair' had come off as well as
could be wished. I saw the time approaching when
I would be left alone of the party of 'unsound
method.' The pilgrims looked upon me with dis-
favour. I was, so to speak, numbered with the dead.
It is strange how I accepted this unforeseen partner-
ship, this choice of nightmares forced upon me in the
tenebrous land invaded by these mean and greedy
phantoms.
"Kurtz discoursed. A voice! a voice! It rang
deep to the very last. It survived his strength to
hide in the magnificent folds of eloquence the barren
darkness of his heart. Oh, he struggled! he struggled!
The wastes of his weary brain were haunted by
shadowy images now—images of wealth and fame
revolving obsequiously round his unextinguishable
gift of noble and lofty expression. My Intended,
my station, my career, my ideas—these were the
subjects for the occasional utterances of elevated
sentiments. The shade of the original Kurtz fre-
quented the bedside of the hollow sham, whose fate
it was to be buried presently in the mould of primeval
earth. But both the diabolic love and the unearthly
hate of the mysteries it had penetrated fought for
the possession of that soul satiated with primitive
emotions, avid of lying fame, of sham distinction, of
all the appearances of success and power.
"Sometimes he was contemptibly childish. He
desired to have kings meet him at railway-stations


HEART OF DARKNESS. 167
on his return from some ghastly Nowhere, where he
intended to accomplish great things. 'You show
them you have in you something that is really pro-
fitable, and then there will be no limits to the recog-
nition of your ability,' he would say. 'Of course you
must take care of the motives —right motives—
always.' The long reaches that were like one and
the same reach, monotonous bends that were exactly
alike, slipped past the steamer with their multitude
of secular trees looking patiently after this grimy
fragment of another world, the forerunner of change,
of conquest, of trade, of massacres, of blessings. I
looked ahead—piloting. 'Close the shutter,' said
Kurtz suddenly one day; 'I can't bear to look at
this.' I did so. There was a silence. 'Oh, but I
will wring your heart yet!' he cried at the invisible
wilderness.
"We broke down—as I had expected—and had to
lie up for repairs at the head of an island. This
delay was the first thing that shook Kurtz's con-
fidence. One morning he gave me a packet of papers
and a photograph,—the lot tied together with a shoe-
string. 'Keep this for me,' he said. 'This noxious
fool' (meaning the manager) 'is capable of prying into
my boxes when I am not looking.' In the afternoon
I saw him. He was lying on his back with closed
eyes, and I withdrew quietly, but I heard him mutter,
'Live rightly, die, die . . .' I listened. There was
nothing more. Was he rehearsing some speech in
his sleep, or was it a fragment of a phrase from some
newspaper article ? He had been writing for the
papers and meant to do so again, 'for the furthering
of my ideas. It's a duty.'


168 HEART OF DARKNESS.
"His was an impenetrable darkness. I looked at
him as you peer down at a man who is lying at the
bottom of a precipice where the sun never shines.
But I had not much time to give him, because I was
helping the engine-driver to take to pieces the leaky
cylinders, to straighten a bent connecting-rod, and
in other such matters. I lived in an infernal
mess of rust, filings, nuts, bolts, spanners, hammers,
ratchet-drills—things I abominate, because I don't
get on with them. I tended the little forge we
fortunately had aboard; I toiled wearily in a
wretched scrap-heap — unless I had the shakes
too bad to stand.
"One evening coming in with a candle I was
startled to hear him say a little tremulously, 'I am
lying here in the dark waiting for death.' The light
was within a foot of his eyes. I forced myself to
murmur, 'Oh, nonsense' and stood over him as if
transfixed.
"Anything approaching the change that came
over his features I have never seen before, and hope
never to see again. Oh, I wasn't touched. I was
fascinated. It was as though a veil had been rent.
I saw on that ivory face the expression of sombre
pride, of ruthless power, of craven terror—of an
intense and hopeless despair. Did he live his life
again in every detail of desire, temptation, and sur-
render during that supreme moment of complete
knowledge? He cried in a whisper at some image,
at some vision,—he cried out twice, a cry that was
no more than a breath—
"' The horror! The horror!'
"I blew the candle out and left the cabin. The


HEART OF DARKNESS. 169
pilgrims were dining in the mess-room, and I took
my place opposite the manager, who lifted his eyes
to give me a questioning glance, which I successfully
ignored. He leaned back, serene, with that peculiar
smile of his sealing the unexpressed depths of his
meanness. A continuous shower of small flies
streamed upon the lamp, upon the cloth, upon our
hands and faces. Suddenly the manager's boy put
his insolent black head in the doorway, and said in a
tone of scathing contempt—
'"Mistah Kurtz—he dead.'
"All the pilgrims rushed out to see. I remained,
and went on with my dinner. I believe I was con-
sidered brutally callous. However, I did not eat
much. There was a lamp in there—light, don't you
know—and outside it was so beastly, beastly dark
.
I went no more near the remarkable man who had
pronounced a judgment upon the adventures of his
soul on this earth. The voice was gone. What else
had been there? But I am of course aware that
next day the pilgrims buried something in a muddy
hole.
"And then they very nearly buried me.
"However, as you see, I did not go to join Kurtz
there and then. I did not. I remained to dream
the nightmare out to the end, and to show my
loyalty to Kurtz once more. Destiny. My destiny!
Droll thing life is—that mysterious arrangement of
merciless logic for a futile purpose. The most you
can hope from it is some knowledge of yourself—
that comes too late—a crop of unextinguishable
regrets. I have wrestled with death. It is the
most unexciting contest you can imagine. It takes


170 HEART OF DARKNESS.
place in an impalpable greyness, with nothing under-
foot, with nothing around, without spectators, with-
out clamour, without glory, without the great desire
of victory, without the great fear of defeat, in a
sickly atmosphere of tepid scepticism, without much
belief in your own right, and still less in that of your
adversary. If such is the form of ultimate wisdom,
then life is a greater riddle than some of us think
it to be. I was within a hair's-breadth of the last
opportunity for pronouncement, and I found with
humiliation that probably I would have nothing to
say. This is the reason why I affirm that Kurtz
was a remarkable man. He had something to say.
He said it. Since I had peeped over the edge my-
self, I understand better the meaning of his stare,
that could not see the flame of the candle, but was
wide enough to embrace the whole universe, piercing
enough to penetrate all the hearts that beat in the
darkness. He had summed up—he had judged.
'The horror!' He was a remarkable man. After
all, this was the expression of some sort of belief;
it had candour, it had conviction, it had a vibrating
note of revolt in its whisper, it had the appalling
face of a glimpsed truth—the strange commingling
of desire and hate. And it is not my own extremity
I remember best—a vision of greyness without form
filled with physical pain, and a careless contempt for
the evanescence of all things—even of this pain it-
self. No! It is his extremity that I seem to have
lived through. True, he had made that last stride,
he had stepped over the edge, while I had been per-
mitted to draw back my hesitating foot. And per-
haps in this is the whole difference; perhaps all the


HEART OF DAKKNESS. 171
wisdom, and all truth, and all sincerity, are just
compressed into that inappreciable moment of time
in which we step over the threshold of the invisible.
Perhaps! I like to think my summing-up would not
have been a word of careless contempt. Better his
cry—much better. It was an affirmation, a moral
victory paid for by innumerable defeats, by abomin-
able terrors, by abominable satisfactions. But it was
a victory! That is why I have remained loyal to
Kurtz to the last, and even beyond, when a long time
after I heard once more, not his own voice, but the
echo of his magnificent eloquence thrown to me from
a soul as translucently pure as a cliff of crystal
.
"No, they did not bury me, though there is a
period of time which I remember mistily, with a
shuddering wonder, like a passage through some
inconceivable world that had no hope in it and no
desire. I found myself back in the sepulchral city
resenting the sight of people hurrying through the
streets to filch a little money from each other, to
devour their infamous cookery, to gulp their un-
wholesome beer, to dream their insignificant and
silly dreams. They trespassed upon my thoughts.
They were intruders whose knowledge of life was
to me an irritating pretence, because I felt so sure
they could not possibly know the things I knew.
Their bearing, which was simply the bearing of
commonplace individuals going about their business
in the assurance of perfect safety, was offensive to
me like the outrageous flauntings of folly in the face
of a danger it is unable to comprehend. I had no
particular desire to enlighten them, but I had some
difficulty in restraining myself from laughing in


172 HEART OF DARKNESS.
their faces, so full of stupid importance. I daresay
I was not very well at that time. I tottered about
the streets—there were various affairs to settle—
grinning bitterly at perfectly respectable persons. I
admit my behaviour was inexcusable, but then my
temperature was seldom normal in these days. My
dear aunt's endeavours to 'nurse up my strength'
seemed altogether beside the mark. It was not my
strength that wanted nursing, it was my imagination
that wanted soothing. I kept the bundle of papers
given me by Kurtz, not knowing exactly what to do
with it. His mother had died lately, watched over,
as I was told, by his Intended. A clean-shaved man,
with an official manner and wearing gold-rimmed
spectacles, called on me one day and made inquiries,
at first circuitous, afterwards suavely pressing, about
what he was pleased to denominate certain 'docu-
ments.' I was not surprised, because I had had two
rows with the manager on the subject out there. I
had refused to give up the smallest scrap out of that
package, and I took the same attitude with the
spectacled man. He became darkly menacing at
last, and with much heat argued that the Company
had the right to every bit of information about its
'territories' And, said he, 'Mr Kurtz's knowledge
of unexplored regions must have been necessarily ex-
tensive and peculiar—owing to his great abilities
and to the deplorable circumstances in which he had
been placed: therefore 'I assured him Mr
Kurtz's knowledge, however extensive, did not bear
upon the problems of commerce or administration.
He invoked then the name of science. 'It would be
an incalculable loss if,' &c., &c. I offered him the


HEART OF DARKNESS. 173
report on the 'Suppression of Savage Customs,' with
the postscriptum torn off. He took it up eagerly,
but ended by sniffing at it with an air of contempt.
'This is not what we had a right to expect,' he
remarked. 'Expect nothing else,' I said, 'There
are only private letters.' He withdrew upon some
threat of legal proceedings, and I saw him no more;
but another fellow, calling himself Kurtz's cousin,
appeared two days later, and was anxious to hear
all the details about his dear relative's last moments.
Incidentally he gave me to understand that Kurtz
had been essentially a great musician. 'There was
the making of an immense success,' said the man,
who was an organist, I believe, with lank grey hair
flowing over a greasy coat-collar. I had no reason
to doubt his statement; and to this day I am unable
to say what was Kurtz's profession, whether he ever
had any—which was the greatest of his talents. I
had taken him for a painter who wrote for the papers,
or else for a journalist who could paint—but even
the cousin (who took snuff during the interview)
could not tell me what he had been—exactly. He
was a universal genius—on that point I agreed with
the old chap, who thereupon blew his nose noisily
into a large cotton handkerchief and withdrew in
senile agitation, bearing off some family letters and
memoranda without importance. Ultimately a jour-
nalist anxious to know something of the fate of his
'dear colleague' turned up. This visitor informed
me Kurtz's proper sphere ought to have been politics
'on the popular side.' He had furry straight eye-
brows, bristly hair cropped short, an eye-glass on
a broad ribbon, and, becoming expansive, confessed


174 HEART OF DARKNESS.
his opinion that Kurtz really couldn't write a bit—
'but heavens! how that man could talk! He elec-
trified large meetings. He had faith—don't you see ?—
he had the faith. He could get himself to believe any-
thing— anything. He would have been a splendid
leader of an extreme party.' 'What party?' I
asked. 'Any party,'answered the other. 'He was an
—an—extremist.' Did I not think so? I assented.
Did I know, he asked, with a sudden flash of curiosity,
'what it was that had induced him to go out there?'
'Yes,' said I, and forthwith handed him the famous
Report for publication, if he thought fit. He glanced
through it hurriedly, mumbling all the time, judged
'it would do,' and took himself off with this plunder.
"Thus I was left at last with a slim packet of
letters and the girl's portrait. She struck me as
beautiful—I mean she had a beautiful expression. I
know that the sunlight can be made to lie too, yet one
felt that no manipulation of light and pose could
have conveyed the delicate shade of truthfulness
upon those features. She seemed ready to listen
without mental reservation, without suspicion, with-
out a thought for herself. I concluded I would go
and give her back her portrait and those letters
myself. Curiosity? Yes; and also some other feel-
ing perhaps. All that had been Kurtz's had passed
out of my hands: his soul, his body, his station, his
plans, his ivory, his career. There remained only
his memory and his Intended—and I wanted to give
that up too to the past, in a way,—to surrender per-
sonally all that remained of him with me to that
oblivion which is the last word of our common fate.
I don't defend myself. I had no clear perception of


176 HEARTOF DARKNESS.
ity. I remembered his abject pleading, his abject
threats, the colossal scale of his vile desires, the
meanness, the torment, the tempestuous anguish of
his soul. And later on I seemed to see his collected
languid manner, when he said one day, 'This lot of
ivory now is really mine. The Company did not
pay for it. I collected it myself at a very great
personal risk. I am afraid they will try to claim
it as theirs though. H'm. It is a difficult case.
What do you think I ought to do—resist? Eh?
I want no more than justice.' . . . He wanted no
more than justice—no more than justice. I rang
the bell before a mahogany door on the first floor,
and while I waited he seemed to stare at me out of
the glassy panel—stare with that wide and immense
stare embracing, condemning, loathing all the uni-
verse. I seemed to hear the whispered cry, 'The
horror! The horror!'
"The dusk was falling. I had to wait in a lofty
drawing-room with three long windows from floor to
ceiling that were like three luminous and bedraped
columns. The bent gilt legs and backs of the furni-
ture shone in indistinct curves. The tall marble
fireplace had a cold and monumental whiteness. A
grand piano stood massively in a corner, with dark
gleams on the flat surfaces like a sombre and polished
sarcophagus. A high door opened—closed. I rose.
"She came forward, all in black, with a pale
head, floating towards me in the dusk. She was
in mourning. It was more than a year since his
death, more than a year since the news came; she
seemed as though she would remember and mourn
for ever. She took both my hands in hers and


HEART OF DARKNESS. 177
murmured, 'I had heard you were coming.' I
noticed she was not very young — I mean not
girlish. She had a mature capacity for fidelity,
for belief, for suffering. The room seemed to have
grown darker, as if all the sad light of the cloudy
evening had taken refuge on her forehead. This
fair hair, this pale visage, this pure brow, seemed
surrounded by an ashy halo from which the dark
eyes looked out at me. Their glance was guileless,
profound, confident, and trustful . She carried her
sorrowful head as though she were proud of that
sorrow, as though she would say, I—I alone know
how to mourn for him as he deserves. But while
we were still shaking hands, such a look of awful
desolation came upon her face that I perceived she
was one of those creatures that are not the play-
things of Time. For her he had died only yesterday.
And, by Jove! the impression was so powerful that
for me too he seemed to have died only yesterday—
nay, this very minute. I saw her and him in the
same instant of time—his death and her sorrow—
I saw her sorrow in the very moment of his death.
Do you understand? I saw them together—I heard
them together. She had said, with a deep catch of
the breath, 'I have survived'; while my strained
ears seemed to hear distinctly, mingled with her
tone of despairing regret, the summing-up whisper
of his eternal condemnation. I asked myself what
I was doing there, with a sensation of panic in my
heart as though I had blundered into a place of cruel
and absurd mysteries not fit for a human being to
behold. She motioned me to a chair. We sat down.
I laid the packet gently on the little table, and she
If


178 HEART OF DARKNESS& put her hand over it. ... 'You knew him well,' she
murmured, after a moment of mourning silence.
"'Intimacy grows quickly out there,' I said. 'I
knew him as well as it is possible for one man to
know another.'
"' And you admired him,' she said, 'It was
impossible to know him and not to admire him.
Was it?'
'"He was a remarkable man,' I said, unsteadily.
Then before the appealing fixity of her gaze, that
seemed to watch for more words on my lips, I went
on, 'It was impossible not to'
"'Love him,' she finished eagerly, silencing me into
an appalled dumbness. 'How true! how true! But
when you think that no one knew him so well as I!
I had all his noble confidence. I knew him best.'
"' You knew him best,' I repeated. And perhaps
she did. But with every word spoken the room was
growing darker, and only her forehead, smooth and
white, remained illumined by the unextinguishable
light of belief and love.
"' You were his friend,' she went on. 'His friend,'
she repeated, a little louder. 'You must have been,
if he had given you this, and sent you to me. I feel
I can speak to you—and oh ! I must speak . I want
you—you who have heard his last words—to know I
have been worthy of him. ... It is not pride. . . .
Yes! I am proud to know I understood him better
than any one on earth—he told me so himself. And
since his mother died I have had no one—no one—to
—to'
"I listened. The darkness deepened. I was not
even sure whether he had given me the right bundle.


HEARTOF DARKNESS. 179
I rather suspect he wanted me to take care of another
batch of his papers which, after his death, I saw the
manager examining under the lamp. And the girl
talked, easing her pain in the certitude of my
sympathy; she talked as thirsty men drink. I had
heard that her engagement with Kurtz had been
disapproved by her people. He wasn't rich enough
or something. And indeed I don't know whether he
had not been a pauper all his life. He had given me
some reason to infer that it was his impatience of
comparative poverty that drove him out there.
"'. . . Who was not his friend who had heard
him speak once?' she was saying. 'He drew men
towards him by what was best in them.' She looked
at me with intensity. 'It is the gift of the great,'
she went on, and the sound of her low voice seemed
to have the accompaniment of all the other sounds,
full of mystery, desolation, and sorrow, I had ever
heard—the ripple of the river, the soughing of the
trees swayed by the wind, the murmurs of wild
crowds, the faint ring of incomprehensible words
cried from afar, the whisper of a voice speaking from
beyond the threshold of an eternal darkness. • But
you have heard him! You know!' she cried.
"' Yes, I know,' I said with something like despair
in my heart, but bowing my head before the faith
that was in her, before that great and saving illusion
that shone with an unearthly glow in the darkness,
in the triumphant darkness from which I could not
have defended her—from which I could not even
defend myself.
"'What a loss to me—to us!'—she corrected her-
self with beautiful generosity; then added in a


180 HEART OF DARKNESS.
murmur, 'To the world.' By the last gleams of
twilight I could see the glitter of her eyes, full of
tears—of tears that would not fall
.
"'I have been very happy — very fortunate —
very proud,' she went on. 'Too fortunate. Too
happy for a little while. And now I am unhappy
for—for life.'
"She stood up her fair hair seemed to catch all
the remaining light in a glimmer of gold. I rose
too.
'"And of all this,' she went on, mournfully, 'of all
his promise, and of all his greatness, of his generous
mind, of his noble heart, nothing remains—nothing
but a memory. You and I'
"' We shall always remember him,' I said, hastily.
"'No!' she cried, 'It is impossible that all this
should be lost—that such a life should be sacrificed to
leave nothing—but sorrow. You know what vast
plans he had. I knew of them too—I could not
perhaps understand, — but others knew of them.
Something must remain. His words, at least, have
not died.'
"' His words will remain,' I said.
"'And his example,' she whispered to herself.
'Men looked up to him,—his goodness shone in every
act. His example'
"'True,' I said; 'his example too. Yes, his
example. I forgot that.'
"' But I do not. I cannot—I cannot believe—not
yet. I cannot believe that I shall never see him
again, that nobody will see him again, never, never,
never.'
"She put out her arms as if after a retreating


HEART OF DARKNESS. 181
figure, stretching them black and with clasped pale
hands across the fading and narrow sheen of the
window. Never see him! I saw him clearly enough
then. I shall see this eloquent phantom as long as I
live, and I shall see her too, a tragic and familiar
Shade, resembling in this gesture another one, tragic
also, and bedecked with powerless charms, stretching
bare brown arms over the glitter of the infernal
stream, the stream of darkness. She said suddenly
very low, 'He died as he lived.'
"' His end,' said I, with dull anger stirring in me,
'was in every way worthy of his life.'
"'And I was not with him,' she murmured. My
anger subsided before a feeling of infinite pity.
"' Everything that could be done 'I mumbled.
"' Ah, but I believed in him more than any one on
earth—more than his own mother, more than—him-
self. He needed me! Me! I would have treasured
every sigh, every word, every sign, every glance.'
"I felt like a chill grip on my chest . 'Don't,' I
said, in a muffled voice.
"'Forgive me. I—I—have mourned so long in
silence—in silence . . . You were with him—to
the last? I think of his loneliness. Nobody near
to understand him as I would have understood.
Perhaps no one to hear . . .'
"' To the very end,' I said, shakily. 'I heard his
very last words. . . .' I stopped in a fright.
"' Repeat them,' she said, in a heart-broken tone.
'I want—I want—something—something—to—to
live with.'
"I was on the point of crying at her, 'Don't you
hear them?' The dusk was repeating them in a


182 HEART OF DARKNESSpersistent whisper all around us, in a whisper that
seemed to swell menacingly like the first whisper of a
rising wind. 'The horror! the horror!'
"' His last word—to live with,' she murmured.
'Don't you understand I loved him—I loved him—I
loved him!'
"I pulled myself together and spoke slowly.
"'The last word he pronounced was—your name.'
"I heard a light sigh and then my heart stood
still, stopped dead short by an exulting and terrible
cry, by the cry of inconceivable triumph and of un-
speakable pain. 'I knew it—I was sure!' . . . She
knew. She was sure. I heard her weeping; she
had hidden her face in her hands. It seemed to me
that the house would collapse before I could escape,
that the heavens would fall upon my head. But
nothing happened. The heavens do not fall for
such a trifle. Would they have fallen, I wonder,
if I had rendered -Kurtz that justice which was his
due? Hadn't he said he wanted onlyjustice? But
I couldn't. I could not tell her. It would have been
too dark—too dark altogether. . . ."
Marlow ceased, and sat apart, indistinct and silent,
in the pose of a meditating Buddha. Nobody moved
for a time. "We have lost the first of the ebb," said
the Director, suddenly. I raised my head. The
offing was barred by a black bank of clouds, and
the tranquil waterway leading to the uttermost
ends of the earth flowed sombre under an overcast
sky—seemed to lead into the heart of an immense
darkness.


THE END OF THE TETHER





186 THE END OF THE TETHER.
helmsman. And then slowly Captain Whalley sat
down again in the arm-chair on the bridge and
fixed his eyes on the deck between his feet.
He could not hope to see anything new upon this
lane of the sea. He had been on these coasts for
the last three years. From Low Cape to Malantan
the distance was fifty miles, six hours' steaming for
the old ship with the tide, or seven against. Then
you steered straight for the land, and by-and-by
three palms would appear on the sky, tall and slim,
and with their dishevelled heads in a bunch, as if
in confidential criticism of the dark mangroves.
The Sofala would be headed towards the sombre
strip of the coast, which at a given moment, as the
ship closed with it obliquely, would show several
clean shining fractures—the brimful estuary of a
river. Then on through a brown liquid, three
parts water and one part black earth, on and on
between the low shores, three parts black earth and
one part brackish water, the Sofala would plough
her way up-stream, as she had done once every
month for these seven years or more, long before he
was aware of her existence, long before he had ever
thought of having anything to do with her and her
invariable voyages. The old ship ought to have
known the road better than her men, who had not
been kept so long at it without a change; better
than the faithful Serang, whom he had brought
over from his last ship to keep the captain's watch;
better than he himself, who had been her captain
for the last three years only. She could always be
depended upon to make her courses. Her com-
passes were never out. She was no trouble at all


THE END OF THE TETHER. 187
to take about, as if her great age had given her
knowledge, wisdom, and steadiness. She made her
landfalls to a degree of the bearing, and almost to
a minute of her allowed time. At any moment, as
he sat on the bridge without looking up, or lay
sleepless in his bed, simply by reckoning the days
and the hours he could tell where he was—the pre-
cise spot of the beat. He knew it well too, this
monotonous huckster's round, up and down the
Straits; he knew its order and its sights and its
people. Malacca to begin with, in at daylight and
out at dusk, to cross over with a rigid phosphor-
escent wake this highway of the Far East. Dark-
ness and gleams on the water, clear stars on a black
sky, perhaps the lights of a home steamer keeping
her unswerving course in the middle, or maybe the
elusive shadow of a native craft with her mat sails
flitting by silently—and the low land on the other
side in sight at daylight. At noon the three
palms of the next place of call, up a sluggish river.
The only white man residing there was a retired
young sailor, with whom he had become friendly
in the course of many voyages. Sixty miles farther
on there was another place of call, a deep bay
with only a couple of houses on the beach. And
so on, in and out, picking up coastwise cargo
here and there, and finishing with a hundred miles'
steady steaming through the maze of an archipelago
of small islands up to a large native town at the
end of the beat. There was a three days' rest for
the old ship before he started her again in inverse
order, seeing the same shores from another bearing,
hearing the same voices in the same places, back


188 THE END OF THE TETHER.
again to the Sofala's port of registry on the great
highway to the East, where he would take up a
berth nearly opposite the big stone pile of the
harbour office till it was time to start again on the
old round of 1600 miles and thirty days. Not a
very enterprising life, this, for Captain Whalley,
Henry Whalley, otherwise Dare - devil Harry—
Whalley of the Condor, a famous clipper in her
day. No. Not a very enterprising life for a man
who had served famous firms, who had sailed famous
ships (more than one or two of them his own); who
had made famous passages, had been the pioneer of
new routes and new trades; who had steered across
the unsurveyed tracts of the South Seas, and had
seen the sun rise on uncharted islands. Fifty years
at sea, and forty out in the East (" a pretty thorough
apprenticeship," he used to remark smilingly), had
made him honourably known to a generation of
shipowners and merchants in all the ports from
Bombay clear over to where the East merges into
the West upon the coast of the two Americas. His
fame remained writ, not very large but plain
enough, on the Admiralty charts. Was there not
somewhere between Australia and China a Whalley
Island and a Condor Reef? On that dangerous
coral formation the celebrated clipper had hung
stranded for three days, her captain and crew
throwing her cargo overboard with one hand and
with the other, as it were, keeping off her a flotilla
of savage war-canoes. At that time neither the
island nor the reef had any official existence. Later
the officers of her Majesty's steam-vessel Fusilier,
despatched to make a survey of the route, recognised


THE END OF THE TETHER. 189
in the adoption of these two names, the enterprise of
the man and the solidity of the ship. Besides, as
any one who cares may see, the 'General Directory,'
vol. ii. p. 410, begins the description of the " Malotu
or Whalley Passage " with the words: "This advan-
tageous route, first discovered in 1850 by Captain
Whalley in the ship Condor," &c., and ends by
recommending it warmly to sailing vessels leaving
the China ports for the south in the months from
December to April inclusive.
This was the clearest gain he had out of life.
Nothing could rob him of this kind of fame. The
piercing of the Isthmus of Suez, like the breaking
of a dam, had let in upon the East a flood of new
ships, new men, new methods of trade. It had
changed the face of the Eastern seas and the very
spirit of their life; so that his early experiences meant
nothing whatever to the new generation of seamen.
In those bygone days he had handled many
thousands of pounds of his employers' money and
of his own; he had attended faithfully, as by law
a shipmaster is expected to do, to the conflicting
interests of owners, charterers, and underwriters.
He had never lost a ship or consented to a shady
transaction; and he had lasted well, outlasting in
the end the conditions that had gone to the making
of his name. He had buried his wife (in the Gulf
of Petchili), had married off his daughter to the man
of her unlucky choice, and had lost more than an
ample competence in the crash of the notorious
Travancore and Deccan Banking Corporation, whose
downfall had shaken the East like an earthquake.
And he was sixty-five years old.


THE END OF THE TETHER 191
after him. With the fortune he was able to leave
her, the value of a 500-ton barque was neither here
nor there. All this would be said with a jocular
twinkle in his eye: the vigorous old man had too
much vitality for the sentimentalism of regret; and
a little wistfully withal, because he was at home in
life, taking a genuine pleasure in its feelings and its
possessions; in the dignity of his reputation and his
wealth, in his love for his daughter, and in his
satisfaction with the ship—the plaything of his
lonely leisure.
He had the cabin arranged in accordance with his
simple ideal of comfort at sea. A big bookcase (he
was a great reader) occupied one side of his state-
room; the portrait of his late wife, a flat bituminous
oil-painting representing the profile and one long
black ringlet of a young woman, faced his bedplace.
Three chronometers ticked him to sleep and greeted
him on waking with the tiny competition of their
beats. He rose at five every day. The officer of the
morning watch, drinking his early cup of coffee aft by
the wheel, would hear through the wide orifice of the
copper ventilators all the splashings, blowings, and
splutterings of his captain's toilet. These noises
would be followed by a sustained deep murmur of the
Lord's Prayer recited in a loud earnest voice. Five
minutes afterwards the head and shoulders of Cap-
tain Whalley emerged out of the companion-hatch-
way. Invariably he paused for a while on the stairs,
looking all round at the horizon; upwards at the
trim of the sails; inhaling deep draughts of the
fresh air. Only then he would step out on the
poop, acknowledging the hand raised to the peak of


192 THE END OF THE TETHER.
the cap with a majestic and benign "Good morning
to you." He walked the deck till eight scrupulously.
Sometimes, not above twice a-year, he had to use a
thick cudgel-like stick on account of a stiffness in
the hip—a slight touch of rheumatism, he supposed.
Otherwise he knew nothing of the ills of the flesh.
At the ringing of the breakfast bell he went below
to feed his canaries, wind up the chronometers, and
take the head of the table. From there he had
before his eyes the big carbon photographs of his
daughter, her husband, and two fat-legged babies—
his grandchildren — set in black frames into the
maple-wood bulkheads of the cuddy. After break-
fast he dusted the glass over these portraits himself
with a cloth, and brushed the oil painting of his
wife with a plummet kept suspended from a small
brass hook by the side of the heavy gold frame.
Then with the door of his state-room shut, he would
sit down on the couch under the portrait to read a
chapter out of a thick pocket Bible—her Bible. But
on some days he only sat there for half an hour with
his finger between the leaves and the closed book
resting on his knees. Perhaps he had remembered
suddenly how fond of boat-sailing she used to be.
She had been a real shipmate and a true woman
too. It was like an article of faith with him that
there never had been, and never could be, a brighter,
cheerier home anywhere afloat or ashore than his
home under the poop-deck of the Condor, with the
big main cabin, all white and gold, garlanded as if
for a perpetual festival with an unfading wreath.
She had decorated the centre of every panel with a
cluster of home flowers. It took her a twelvemonth


THE END OF THE TETHER. 193
to go round the cuddy with this labour of love.
To him it had remained a marvel of painting, the
highest achievement of taste and skill; and as to old
Swinburne, his mate, every time he came down to
his meals he stood transfixed with admiration before
the progress of the work. You could almost smell
these roses, he declared, sniffing the faint flavour of
turpentine which at that time pervaded the saloon,
and (as he confessed afterwards) made him some-
what less hearty than usual in tackling his food.
But there was nothing of the sort to interfere with
his enjoyment of her singing. "Mrs Whalley is a
regular out-and-out nightingale, sir," he would pro-
nounce with a judicial air after listening profoundly
over the skylight to the very end of the piece. In
fine weather, in the second dog-watch, the two men
could hear her trills and roulades going on to the
accompaniment of the piano in the cabin. On the
very day they got engaged he had written to London
for the instrument; but they had been married for
over a year before it reached them, coming out
round the Cape. The big case made part of the first
direct general cargo landed in Hongkong harbour—
an event that to the men who walked the busy
quays of to-day seemed as hazily remote as the dark
ages of history. But Captain Whalley could in a
half hour of solitude live again all his life, with its
romance, its idyl, and its sorrow. He had to close
her eyes himself. She went away from under the
ensign like a sailor's wife, a sailor herself at heart.
He had read the service over her, out of her own
prayer-book, without a break in his voice. When he
raised his eyes he could see old Swinburne facing him
H


194 THE END OF THE TETHER.
with his cap pressed to his breast, and his rugged,
weather-beaten, impassive face streaming with drops
of water like a lump of chipped red granite in a
shower. It was all very well for that old sea-dog to
cry. He had to read on to the end; but after the
splash he did not remember much of what happened
for the next few days. An elderly sailor of the
crew, deft at needlework, put together a mourning
frock for the child out of one of her black skirts.
He was not likely to forget; but you cannot dam
up life like a sluggish stream. It will break out and
flow over a man's troubles, it will close upon a
sorrow like the sea upon a dead body, no matter
how much love has gone to the bottom. And the
world is not bad. People had been very kind to
him; especially Mrs Gardner, the wife of the senior
partner in Gardner, Patterson, & Co., the owners of
the Condor. It was she who volunteered to look
after the little one, and in due course took her to
England (something of a journey in those days,
even by the overland mail route) with her own girls
to finish her education. It was ten years before he
saw her again.
As a little child she had never been frightened of
bad weather; she would beg to be taken up on deck
in the bosom of his oilskin coat to watch the big
seas hurling themselves upon the Condor. The swirl
and crash of the waves seemed to fill her small soul
with a breathless delight. "A good boy spoiled,"
he used to say of her in joke. He had named her
Ivy because of the sound of the word, and obscurely
fascinated by a vague association of ideas. She
had twined herself tightly round his heart, and he


THE END OF THE TETHEB. 195
intended her to cling close to her father as to a
tower of strength; forgetting, while she was little,
that in the nature of things she would probably
elect to cling to some one else. But he loved life
well enough for even that event to give him a
certain satisfaction, apart from his more intimate
feeling of loss.
After he had purchased the Fair Maid to occupy
his loneliness, he hastened to accept a rather un-
profitable freight to Australia simply for the oppor-
tunity of seeing his daughter in her own home.
What made him dissatisfied there was not to see
that she clung now to somebody else, but that the
prop she had selected seemed on closer examination
"a rather poor stick "—even in the matter of health.
He disliked his son-in-law's studied civility perhaps
more than his method of handling the sum of money
he had given Ivy at her marriage. But of his
apprehensions he said nothing. Only on the day
of his departure, with the hall-door open already,
holding her hands and looking steadily into her
eyes, he had said, "You know, my dear, all I have
is for you and the chicks. Mind you write to
me openly." She had answered him by an almost
imperceptible movement of her head. She re-
sembled her mother in the colour of her eyes, and
in character—and also in this, that she understood
him without many words.
Sure enough she had to write; and some of these
letters made Captain Whalley lift his white eye-
brows. For the rest he considered he was reaping
the true reward of his life by being thus able to
produce on demand whatever was needed. He had


196 THE END OF THE TETHER,
not enjoyed himself so much in a way since his wife
had died. Characteristically enough his son-in-law's
punctuality in failure caused him at a distance to
feel a sort of kindness towards the man. The fellow
was so perpetually being jammed on a lee shore, that
to charge it all to his reckless navigation would be
manifestly unfair. No, no! He knew well what
that meant. It was bad luck. His own had been
simply marvellous, but he had seen in his life too
many good men—seamen and others—go under with
the sheer weight of bad luck not to recognise the
fatal signs. For all that, he was cogitating on the
best way of tying up very strictly every penny he
had to leave, when, with a preliminary rumble of
rumours (whose first sound reached him in Shanghai
as it happened), the shock of the big failure came;
and, after passing through the phases of stupor, of
incredulity, of indignation, he had to accept the fact
that he had nothing to speak of to leave.
Upon that, as if he had only waited for this
catastrophe, the unlucky man, away there in
Melbourne, gave up his unprofitable game, and
sat down—in an invalid's bath-chair at that too.
"He will never walk again," wrote the wife. For
the first time in his life Captain Wh alley was a
bit staggered.
The Fair Maid had to go to work in bitter earnest
now. It was no longer a matter of preserving alive
the memory of Dare-devil Harry Whalley in the
Eastern Seas, or of keeping an old man in pocket-
money and clothes, with, perhaps, two bill for a few
hundred first-class cigars thrown in at the end of
the year. He would have to buckle-to, and keep her


198 THE END OF THE TETHER
mention of his name, and would have thought them-
selves bound in honour to do something for Dare-
devil Harry Whalley. Departed the opportunities
which he would have known how to seize; and gone
with them the white-winged flock of clippers that
lived in the boisterous uncertain life of the winds,
skimming big fortunes out of the foam of the sea.
In a world that pared down the profits to an irre-
ducible minimum, in a world that was able to count
its disengaged tonnage twice over every day, and in
which lean charters were snapped up by cable
three months in advance, there were no chances of
fortune for an individual wandering haphazard with
a little barque—hardly indeed any room to exist.
He found it more difficult from year to year. He
suffered greatly from the smallness of remittances
he was able to send his daughter. Meantime he had
given up good cigars, and even in the matter of
inferior cheroots limited himself to six a day. He
never told her of his difficulties, and she never en-
larged upon her struggle to live. Their confidence
in each other needed no explanations, and their per-
fect understanding endured without protestations of
gratitude or regret. He would have been shocked if
she had taken it into her head to thank him in so
many words, but he found it perfectly natural that
she should tell him she needed two hundred pounds.
He had come in with the Fair Maid in ballast to
look for a freight in the Sofala's port of registry,
and her letter met him there. Its tenor was that it
was no use mincing matters. Her only resource
was in opening a boarding-house, for which the
prospects, she judged, were good. Good enough,


THE END OF THE TETHER. 199
at any rate, to make her tell him frankly that with
two hundred pounds she could make a start. He
had torn the envelope open, hastily, on deck, where
it was handed to him by the ship-chandler's runner,
who had brought his mail at the moment of anchor-
ing. For the second time in his life he was appalled,
and remained stock-still at the cabin door with the
paper trembling between his fingers. Open a board-
ing-house! Two hundred pounds for a start! The
only resource! And he did not know where to lay
his hands on two hundred pence.
All that night Captain Whalley walked the poop
of his anchored ship, as though he had been about
to close with the land in thick weather, and un-
certain of his position after a run of many grey
days without a sight of sun, moon, or stars. The
black night twinkled with the guiding lights of
seamen and the steady straight lines of lights on
shore; and all around the Fair Maid the riding
lights of ships cast trembling trails upon the water
of the roadstead. Captain Whalley saw not a
gleam anywhere till the dawn broke and he found
out that his clothing was soaked through with the
heavy dew.
His ship was awaka He stopped short, stroked
his wet beard, and descended the poop ladder back-
wards, with tired feet. At the sight of him the
chief officer, lounging about sleepily on the quarter-
deck, remained open-mouthed in the middle of a
great early-morning yawn.
"Good morning to you," pronounced Captain
Whalley solemnly, passing into the cabin. But he
checked himself in the doorway, and without looking


200 THE END OF THE TETHER.
back, "By the bye," he said, "there should be an
empty wooden case put away in the lazarette. It
has not been broken up—has it?"
The mate shut his mouth, and then asked as if
dazed, "What empty case, sir?"
"A big flat packing-case belonging to that paint-
ing in my room. Let it be taken up on deck and
tell the carpenter to look it over. I may want to
use it before long."
The chief officer did not stir a limb till he had
heard the door of the captain's state-room slam
within the cuddy. Then he beckoned aft the second
mate with his forefinger to tell him that there was
something "in the wind."
When the bell rang Captain Whalley's authorita-
tive voice boomed out through a closed door, "Sit
down and don't wait for me." And his impressed
officers took their places, exchanging looks and
whispers across the table. What! No breakfast?
And after apparently knocking about all night on
deck, too! Clearly, there was something in the
wind. In the skylight above their heads, bowed
earnestly over the plates, three wire cages rocked
and rattled to the restless jumping of the hungry
canaries; and they could detect the sounds of their
"old man's" deliberate movements within his state-
room. Captain Whalley was methodically winding
up the chronometers, dusting the portrait of his late
wife, getting a clean white shirt out of the drawers,
making himself ready in his punctilious unhurried
manner to go ashore. He could not have swallowed
a single mouthful of food that morning. He had
made up his mind to sell the Fair Maid.


202 THE END OF THE TETHER.
canter down the middle to get a Chinese shopkeeper
for supper. Captain Whalley was not dwarfed by
the solitude of the grandly planned street. He had
too fine a presence for that. He was only a lonely
figure walking purposefully, with a great white beard
like a pilgrim, and with a thick stick that resembled
a weapon. On one side the new Courts of Justice
had a low and unadorned portico of squat columns, half concealed by a few old trees left in the ap-
proach. On the other the pavilion wings of the
new Colonial Treasury came out to the line of the
street. But Captain Whalley, who had now no
ship and no home, remembered in passing that
on that very site when he first came out from
England there had stood a fishing village, a few
mat huts erected on piles between a muddy tidal
creek and a miry pathway that went writhing
into a tangled wilderness without any docks or
waterworks.
No ship — no home. And his poor Ivy away
there had no home either. A boarding-house is
no sort of home though it may get you a living.
His feelings were horribly rasped by the idea of
the boarding-house. In his rank of life he had
that truly aristocratic temperament characterised
by a scorn of vulgar gentility and by prejudiced
views as to the derogatory nature of certain occu-
pations. For his own part he had always pre-
ferred sailing merchant ships (which is a straight-
forward occupation) to buying and selling mer-
chandise, of which the essence is to get the better
of somebody in a bargain — an undignified trial
of wits at best. His father had been Colonel


THE END OF THE TETHER. 203
Whalley (retired) of the H.E.I. Company's service,
with very slender means besides his pension, but
with distinguished connections. He could remember
as a boy how frequently waiters at the inns, country
tradesmen and small people of that sort, used to
"My lord" the old warrior on the strength of his
appearance. Captain Whalley himself (he would have entered
the Navy if his father had not died before he was
fourteen) had something of a grand air which would
have suited an old and glorious admiral; but he
became lost like a straw in the eddy of a brook
amongst the swarm of brown and yellow humanity
filling a thoroughfare, that by contrast with the
vast and empty avenue he had left seemed as
narrow as a lane and absolutely riotous with life.
The walls of the houses were blue; the shops of
the Chinamen yawned like cavernous lairs; heaps
of nondescript merchandise overflowed the gloom
of the long range of arcades, and the fiery serenity
of sunset took the middle of the street from end
to end with a glow like the reflection of a fire.
It fell on the bright colours and the dark faces
of the bare-footed crowd, on the pallid yellow backs
of the half-naked jostling coolies, on the accoutre-
ments of a tall Sikh trooper with a parted beard
and fierce moustaches on sentry before the gate
of the police compound. Looming very big above
the heads in a red haze of dust, the tightly packed
oar of the cable tramway navigated cautiously
up the human stream, with the incessant blare of
its horn, in the manner of a steamer groping in
a fog.


204 THE END OF THE TETHER.
Captain Whalley emerged like a diver on the
other side, and in the desert shade between the
walls of closed warehouses removed his hat to cool
his brow. A certain disrepute attached to the call-
ing of a landlady of a boarding-house. These
women were said to be rapacious, unscrupulous,
untruthful; and though he contemned no class of
his fellow-creatures—God forbid!—these were sus-
picions to which it was unseemly that a Whalley
should lay herself open. He had not expostulated
with her, however. He was confident she shared
his feelings; he was sorry for her; he trusted her
judgment; he considered it a merciful dispensation
that he could help her once more,—but in his aris-
tocratic heart of hearts he would have found it
more easy to reconcile himself to the idea of her
turning seamstress. Vaguely he remembered read-
ing years ago a touching piece called the "Song
of the Shirt." It was all very well making songs
about poor women. The granddaughter of Colonel
Whalley, the landlady of a boarding-house! Pooh !
He replaced his hat, dived into two pockets, and
stopping a moment to apply a flaring match to
the end of a cheap cheroot, blew an embittered
cloud of smoke at a world that could hold such
surprises.
Of one thing he was certain—that she was the
own child of a clever mother. Now he had got
over the wrench of parting with his ship, he per-
ceived clearly that such a step had been unavoid-
able. Perhaps he had been growing aware of it
all along with an unconfessed knowledge. But she,
far away there, must have had an intuitive percep-


THE END OF THE TETHER. 205
tion of it, with the pluck to face that truth and
the courage to speak out—all the qualities which
had made her mother a woman of such excellent
counsel.
It would have had to come to that in the end!
It was fortunate she had forced his hand . In
another year or two it would have been an utterly
barren sale. To keep the ship going he had been
involving himself deeper every year. He was de-
fenceless before the insidious work of adversity, to
whose more open assaults he could present a firm
front; like a cliff that stands unmoved the open
battering of the sea, with a lofty ignorance of the
treacherous backwash undermining its base. As
it was, every liability satisfied, her request an-
swered, and owing no man a penny, there remained
to him from the proceeds a sum of five hundred
pounds put away safely. In addition he had upon
his person some forty odd dollars—enough to pay
his hotel bill, providing he did not linger too long
in the modest bedroom where he had taken refuge.
Scantily furnished, and with a waxed floor, it
opened into one of the side-verandahs. The stronggling building of bricks, as airy as a bird-cage,
resounded with the incessant flapping of rattan
screens worried by the wind between the white-
washed square pillars of the sea-front. The rooms
were lofty, a ripple of sunshine flowed over the
ceilings; and the periodical invasions of tourists
from some passenger steamer in the harbour flitted
through the wind-swept dusk of the apartments
with the tumult of their unfamiliar voices and im-
permanent presences, like relays of migratory shades


206 THE END OF THE TETHER.
condemned to speed headlong round the earth with-
out leaving a trace. The babble of their irrup-
tions ebbed out as suddenly as it had arisen; the
draughty corridors and the long chairs of the ver-
andahs knew their sight-seeing hurry or their pros-
trate repose no more; and Captain Whalley, sub-
stantial and dignified, left wellnigh alone in the vast
hotel by each light-hearted skurry, felt more and
more like a stranded tourist with no aim in view,
like a forlorn traveller without a home. In the
solitude of his room he smoked thoughtfully, gazing
at the two sea-chests which held all that he could
call his own in this world. A thick roll of charts
in a sheath of sailcloth leaned in a corner; the flat
packing-case containing the portrait in oils and the
three carbon photographs had been pushed under
the bed. He was tired of discussing terms, of
assisting at surveys, of all the routine of the busi-
ness. What to the other parties was merely the
sale of a ship was to him a momentous event in-
volving a radically new view of existence. He
knew that after this ship there would be no other;
and the hopes of his youth, the exercise of his abili-
ties, every feeling and achievement of his manhood,
had been indissolubly connected with ships. He
had served ships; he had owned ships; and even
the years of his actual retirement from the sea
had been made bearable by the idea that he had
only to stretch out his hand full of money to get a
ship. He had been at liberty to feel as though he
were the owner of all the ships in the world. The
selling of this one was weary work; but when she
passed from him at last, when he signed the last


THE END OF THE TETHER. 207
receipt, it was as though all the ships had gone out
of the world together, leaving him on the shore of
inaccessible oceans with seven hundred pounds in
his hands.
Striding firmly, without haste, along the quay,
Captain Whalley averted his glances from the
familiar roadstead. Two generations of seamen
born since his first day at sea stood between him and
all these ships at the anchorage. His own was sold,
and he had been asking himself, What next?
From the feeling of loneliness, of inward empti-
ness,—and of loss too, as if his very soul had been
taken out of him forcibly,—there had sprung at first
a desire to start right off and join his daughter.
"Here are the last pence," he would say to her;
"take them, my dear. And here's your old father:
you must take him too."
His soul recoiled, as if afraid of what lay hidden
at the bottom of this impulse. Give up! Never!
When one is thoroughly weary all sorts of nonsense
come into one's head. A pretty gift it would have
been for a poor woman—this seven hundred pounds
with the incumbrance of a hale old fellow more than
likely to last for years and years to come. Was he
not as fit to die in harness as any of the youngsters
in charge of these anchored ships out yonder? He
was as solid now as ever he had been. But as to
who would give him work to do, that was another
matter. Were he, with his appearance and an-
tecedents, to go about looking for a junior's berth,
people, he was afraid, would not take him seriously;
or else if he succeeded in impressing them, he would
maybe obtain their pity, which would be like strip-


208 THE END OF THE TETHER
ping yourself naked to be kicked. He was not
anxious to give himself away for less than nothing.
He had no use for anybody's pity. On the other hand,
a command—the only thing he could try for with due
regard for common decency—was not likely to be
lying in wait for him at the corner of the next
street. Commands don't go a-begging nowadays
.
Ever since he had come ashore to carry out the
business of the sale he had kept his ears open, but
had heard no hint of one being vacant in the port.
And even if there had been one, his successful past
itself stood in his way. He had been his own em-
ployer too long. The only credential he could pro-
duce was the testimony of his whole life. What
better recommendation could any one require? But
vaguely he felt that the unique document would be
looked upon as an archaic curiosity of the Eastern
waters, a screed traced in obsolete words—in a half-
forgotten language.
IV.
Revolving these thoughts, he strolled on near the
railings of the quay, broad-chested, without a stoop,
as though his big shoulders had never felt the
burden of the loads that must be carried between
the cradle and the grave. No single betraying fold
or line of care disfigured the reposeful modelling of
his face. It was full and untanned; and the upper
part emerged, massively quiet, out of the downward
flow of silvery hair, with the striking delicacy of
its clear complexion and the powerful width of the


THE END OF THE TETHER. 209
forehead. The first cast of his glance fell on you
candid and swift, like a boy's; but because of the
ragged snowy thatch of the eyebrows the affability
of his attention acquired the character of a dark
and searching scrutiny. With age he had put on
flesh a little, had increased his girth like an old
tree presenting no symptoms of decay; and even
the opulent, lustrous ripple of white hairs upon his
chest seemed an attribute of unquenchable vitality
and vigour.
Once rather proud of his great bodily strength,
and even of his personal appearance, conscious of
his worth, and firm in his rectitude, there had re-
mained to him, like the heritage of departed pros-
perity, the tranquil bearing of a man who had
proved himself fit in every sort of way for the life
of his choice. He strode on squarely under the
projecting brim of an ancient Panama hat. It had
a low crown, a crease through its whole diameter, a
narrow black ribbon. Imperishable and a little dis-
coloured, this headgear made it easy to pick him out
from afar on thronged wharves and in the busy
streets. He had never adopted the comparatively
modern fashion of pipeclayed cork helmets. He
disliked the form; and he hoped he could manage
to keep a cool head to the end of his life without all
these contrivances for hygienic ventilation. His
hair was cropped close, his linen always of immac-
ulate whiteness; a suit of thin grey flannel, worn
threadbare but scrupulously brushed, floated about
his burly limbs, adding to his bulk by the looseness
of its out. The years had mellowed the good-
humoured, imperturbable audacity of his prime into
O


210 THE END OF THE TETHER.
a temper carelessly serene; and the leisurely tapping
of his iron-shod stick accompanied his footfalls with
a self-confident sound on the flagstones. It was
impossible to connect such the fine presence and
this unruffled aspect with the belittling troubles
of poverty; the man's whole existence appeared
to pass before you, facile and large, in the
freedom of means as ample as the clothing of his
body.
The irrational dread of having to break into his
five hundred pounds for personal expenses in the
hotel disturbed the steady poise of his mind. There
was no time to lose. The bill was running up. He
nourished the hope that this five hundred would
perhaps be the means, if everything else failed,
of obtaining some work which, keeping his body
and soul together (not a matter of great outlay),
would enable him to be of use to his daughter. To
his mind it was her own money which he employed,
as it were, in backing her father and solely for her
benefit. Once at work, he would help her with the
greater part of his earnings; he was good for many
years yet, and this boarding - house business, he
argued to himself, whatever the prospects, could
not be much of a gold-mine from the first start.
But what work? He was ready to lay hold of any-
thing in an honest way so that it came quickly to
his hand; because the five hundred pounds must be
preserved intact for eventual use. That was the
great point. With the entire five hundred one felt
a substance at one's back; but it seemed to him
that should he let it dwindle to four-fifty or even
four-eighty, all the efficiency would be gone out of


THE END OF THE TETHER, 211
the money, as though there were some magic
power in the round figure. But what sort of
work?
Confronted by that haunting question as by an
uneasy ghost, for whom he had no exorcising for-
mula, Captain Whalley stopped short on the apex
of a small bridge spanning steeply the bed of a
canalised creek with granite shores. Moored be-
tween the square blocks a sea-going Malay prau
floated half hidden under the arch of masonry, with
her spars lowered down, without a sound of life on
board, and covered from stem to stern with a ridge
of palm-leaf mats. He had left behind him the
overheated pavements bordered by the stone front-
ages that, like the sheer face of cliffs, followed the
sweep of the quays; and an unconfined spaciousness
of orderly and sylvan aspect opened before him its
wide plots of rolled grass, like pieces of green carpet
smoothly pegged out, its long ranges of trees lined
up in colossal porticos of dark shafts roofed with a
vault of branches.
Some of these avenues ended at the sea. It was
a terraced shore; and beyond, upon the level ex-
panse, profound and glistening like the gaze of a
dark-blue eye, an oblique band of stippled purple
lengthened itself indefinitely through the gap be-
tween a couple of verdant twin islets. The masts
and spars of a few ships far away, hull down in the
outer roads, sprang straight from the water in a
fine maze of rosy lines pencilled on the clear shadow
of the eastern board. Captain Whalley gave them
a long glance. The ship, once his own, was anchored
out there. It was staggering to think that it was


212 THE END OF THE TETHER.
open to him no longer to take a boat at the jetty
and get himself pulled off to her when the evening
came. To no ship. Perhaps never more. Before
the sale was concluded, and till the purchase-money
had been paid, he had spent daily some time on
board the Fair Maid. The money had been paid
this very morning, and now, all at once, there was
positively no ship that he could go on board of when
he liked; no ship that would need his presence in
order to do her work — to live. It seemed an
incredible state of affairs, something too bizarre to
last. And the sea was full of craft of all sorts.
There was that prau lying so still swathed in her
shroud of sewn palm-leaves—she too had her indis-
pensable man. They lived through each other, this
Malay he had never seen, and this high-sterned
thing of no size that seemed to be resting after a
long journey. And of all the ships in sight, near
and far, each was provided with a man, the man
without whom the finest ship is a dead thing, a
floating and purposeless log.
After his one glance at the roadstead he went on,
since there was nothing to turn back for, and the
time must be got through somehow. The avenues
of big trees ran straight over the Esplanade, cutting
each other at diverse angles, columnar below and
luxuriant above. The interlaced boughs high up
there seemed to slumber; not a leaf stirred over-
head: and the reedy cast-iron lamp-posts in the
middle of the road, gilt like sceptres, diminished in
a long perspective, with their globes of white por-
celain top, resembling a barbarous decoration of
ostriches' eggs displayed in a row. The flaming sky


THE END OF THE TETHER. 213
kindled a tiny crimson spark upon the glistening
surface of each glassy shell.
With his chin sunk a little, his hands behind his
back, and the end of his stick marking the gravel
with a faint wavering line at his heels, Captain
Whalley reflected that if a ship without a man
was like a body without a soul, a sailor without
a ship was of not much more account in this world
than an aimless log adrift upon the sea. The log
might be sound enough by itself, tough of fibre, and
hard to destroy—but what of that! And a sudden
sense of irremediable idleness weighted his feet like
a great fatigue.
A succession of open carriages came bowling
along the newly opened sea-road. You could see
across the wide grass-plots the discs of vibration
made by the spokes. The bright domes of the
parasols swayed lightly outwards like full-blown
blossoms on the rim of a vase; and the quiet sheet
of dark-blue water, crossed by a bar of purple, made
a background for the spinning wheels and the high
action of the horses, whilst the turbaned heads of
the Indian servants elevated above the line of the
sea horizon glided rapidly on the paler blue of the
sky. In an open space near the little bridge each
turn-out trotted smartly in a wide curve away from
the sunset; then pulling up sharp, entered the main
alley in a long slow-moving file with the great
red stillness of the sky at the back. The trunks
of mighty trees stood all touched with red on the
same side, the air seemed aflame under the high
foliage, the very ground under the hoofs of the
horses was red. The wheels turned solemnly; one


214 THE END OF THE TETHER.
after another the sunshades drooped, folding their
colours like gorgeous flowers shutting their petals
at the end of the day. In the whole half-mile of
human beings no voice uttered a distinct word,
only a faint thudding noise went on mingled with
slight jingling sounds, and the motionless heads and
shoulders of men and women sitting in couples
emerged stolidly above the lowered hoods—as if
wooden. But one carriage and pair coming late
did not join the line.
It fled along in a noiseless roll; but on entering
the avenue one of the dark bays snorted, arching
his neck and shying against the steel-tipped pole;
a flake of foam fell from the bit upon the point
of a satiny shoulder, and the dusky face of the coach-
man leaned forward at once over the hands taking
a fresh grip of the reins. It was a long dark-green
landau, having a dignified and buoyant motion
between the sharply curved C-springs, and a sort
of strictly official majesty in its supreme elegance.
It seemed more roomy than is usual, its horses
seemed slightly bigger, the appointments a shade
more perfect, the servants perched somewhat higher
on the box. The dresses of three women—two
young and pretty, and one, handsome, large, of
mature age—seemed to fill completely the shallow
body of the carriage. The fourth face was that
of a man, heavy lidded, distinguished and sallow,
with a sombre, thick, iron-grey imperial and mous-
taches, which somehow had the air of solid appen-
dages. His Excellency
The rapid motion of that one equipage made all
the others appear utterly inferior, blighted, and


THE END OF THE TETHER. 215
reduced to crawl painfully at a snail's pace. The
landau distanced the whole file in a sort of sustained
rush; the features of the occupants whirling out
of sight left behind an impression of fixed stares
and impassive vacancy; and after it had vanished
in full flight as it were, notwithstanding the long
line of vehicles hugging the curb at a walk, the
whole lofty vista of the avenue seemed to lie open
and emptied of life in the enlarged impression of an
august solitude.
Captain Whalley had lifted his head to look,
and his mind, disturbed in its meditation, turned
with wonder (as men's minds will do) to matters
of no importance. It struck him that it was to
this port, where he had just sold his last ship, that
he had come with the very first he had ever owned,
and with his head full of a plan for opening a new
trade with a distant part of the Archipelago. The
then governor had given him no end of encourage-
ment. No Excellency he—this Mr Denham—this
governor with his jacket off; a man who tended
night and day, so to speak, the growing prosperity
of the settlement with the self-forgetful devotion
of a nurse for a child she loves; a lone bachelor
who lived as in a camp with the few servants and
his three dogs in what was called then the Govern-
ment Bungalow: a low-roofed structure on the half-
oleared slope of a hill, with a new flagstaff in
front and a police orderly on the verandah. He
remembered toiling up that hill under a heavy sun
for his audience; the unfurnished aspect of the cool
shaded room; the long table covered at one end
with piles of papers, and with two guns, a brass


216 THE END OF THE TETHER.
telescope, a small bottle of oil with a feather stuck
in the neck at the other—and the flattering atten-
tion given to him by the man in power. It was an
undertaking full of risk he had come to expound,
but a twenty minutes' talk in the Government
Bungalow on the hill had made it go smoothly
from the start. And as he was retiring Mr Denham,
already seated before the papers, called out after
him, "Next month the Dido starts for a cruise that
way, and I shall request her captain officially to
give you a look in and see how you get on." The
Dido was one of the smart frigates on the China
station—and five-and-thirty years make a big slice
of time. Five-and-thirty years ago an enterprise
like his had for the colony enough importance to be
looked after by a Queen's ship. A big slice of time.
Individuals were of some account then. Men like
himself; men, too, like poor Evans, for instance, with
his red face, his coal-black whiskers, and his restless
eyes, who had set up the first patent slip for repair-
ing small ships, on the edge of the forest, in a lonely
bay three miles up the coast. Mr Denham had
encouraged that enterprise too, and yet somehow
poor Evans had ended by dying at home deucedly
hard up. His son, they said, was squeezing oil out
of cocoa-nuts for a living on some God-forsaken islet
of the Indian Ocean; but it was from that patent
slip in a lonely wooded bay that had sprung the
workshops of the Consolidated Docks Company, with
its three graving basins carved out of solid rock, its
wharves, its jetties, its electric-light plant, its steam-
power houses—with its gigantic sheer-legs, fit to lift
the heaviest weight ever carried afloat, and whose


THE END OF THE TETHER. 217
head could be seen like the top of a queer white
monument peeping over bushy points of land and
sandy promontories, as you approached the New
Harbour from the west.
There had been a time when men counted: there
were not so many carriages in the colony then,
though Mr Denham, he fancied, had a buggy. And
Captain Whalley seemed to be swept out of the great
avenue by the swirl of a mental backwash. He
remembered muddy shores, a harbour without quays,
the one solitary wooden pier (but that was a public
work) jutting out crookedly, the first coal-sheds
erected on Monkey Point, that caught fire mysteri-
ously and smouldered for days, so that amazed
ships came into a roadstead full of sulphurous
smoke, and the sun hung blood-red at midday.
He remembered the things, the faces, and some-
thing more besides —like the faint flavour of a
cup quaffed to the bottom, like a subtle sparkle
of the air that was not to be found in the atmos-
phere of to-day.
In this evocation, swift and full of detail like a
flash of magnesium light into the niches of a dark
memorial hall, Captain Whalley contemplated things
once important, the efforts of small men, the growth
of a great place, but now robbed of all consequence
by the greatness of accomplished facts, by hopes
greater still; and they gave him for a moment such
an almost physical grip upon time, such a compre-
hension of our unchangeable feelings, that he stopped
short, struck the ground with his stick, and ejacu-
lated mentally, "What the devil am I doing here!"
He seemed lost in a sort of surprise; but he heard


THE END OF THE TETHER. 221
ment House — a many-windowed, arcaded palace
upon a hill laid out in roads and gardens. And
lately he had been taking about a duke in his
Master-Attendant's steam-launch to visit the har-
bour improvements. Before that he had "most
obligingly" gone out in person to pick out a good
berth for the ducal yacht. Afterwards he had an
invitation to lunch on board. The duchess herself
lunched with them. A big woman with a red face.
Complexion quite sunburnt. He should think ruined.
Very gracious manners. They were going on to
Japan. . . .
He ejaculated these details for Captain Whalley's
edification, pausing to blow out his cheeks as if with
a pent-up sense of importance, and repeatedly pro-
truding his thick lips till the blunt crimson end of
his nose seemed to dip into the milk of his moustache.
The place ran itself; it was fit for any lord; it gave
no trouble except in its Marine department—in its
Marine department he repeated twice, and after a
heavy snort began to relate how the other day her
Majesty's Consul-General in French Cochin-China
had cabled to him—in his official capacity—asking
for a qualified man to be sent over to take charge of
a Glasgow ship whose master had died in Saigon.
"I sent word of it to the officers' quarters in the
Sailors' Home," he continued, while the limp in his
gait seemed to grow more accentuated with the
increasing irritation of his voice, "Place's full of
them. Twice as many men as there are berths
going in the local trade. All hungry for an easy
job. Twice as many — and — What d'you think,
Whalley? ..."


222 THE END OF THE TETHER.
He stopped short; his hands clenched and thrust
deeply downwards, seemed ready to burst the pockets
of his jacket. A slight sigh escaped Captain
Whalley.
"Hey? You would think they would be falling
over each other. Not a bit of it. Frightened to
go home. Nice and warm out here to lie about a
verandah waiting for a job. I sit and wait in my
office. Nobody. What did they suppose? That I
was going to sit there like a dummy with the
Consul-General's cable before me? Not likely. So
I looked up a list of them I keep by me and sent
word for Hamilton—the worst loafer of them all—
and just made him go. Threatened to instruct the
steward of the Sailors' Home to have him turned
out neck and crop. He did not think the berth was
good enough—if—you—please. 'I've your little
records by me,' said I. 'You came ashore here
eighteen months ago, and you haven't done six
months' work since. You are in debt for your
board now at the Home, and I suppose you reckon
the Marine Office will pay in the end. Eh? So it
shall; but if you don't take this chance, away you
go to England, assisted passage, by the first home-
ward steamer that comes along. You are no better
than a pauper. We don't want any white paupers
here.' I scared him. But look at the trouble all
this gave me."
"You would not have had any trouble," Captain
Whalley said almost involuntarily, "if you had sent
for me."
Captain Eliott was immensely amused; he shook
with laughter as he walked. But suddenly he


THE END OF THE TETHER 223
stopped laughing. A vague recollection had crossed
his mind. Hadn't he heard it said at the time of
the Travancore and Deccan smash that poor Whalley
had been cleaned out completely. "Fellow's hard
up, by heavens!" he thought; and at once he cast
a sidelong upward glance at his companion. But
Captain Whalley was smiling austerely straight
before him, with a carriage of the head inconceiv-
able in a penniless man—and he became reassured.
Impossible. Could not have lost everything. That
ship had been only a hobby of his. And the reflec-
tion that a man who had confessed to receiving that
very morning a presumably large sum of money was
not likely to spring upon him a demand for a small
loan put him entirely at his ease again. There had
come the long pause in their talk, however, and not
knowing how to begin again, he growled out soberly,
"We old fellows ought to take a rest now."
"The best thing for some of us would be to die
at the oar," Captain Whalley said negligently.
"Come, now. Aren't you a bit tired by this time
of the whole show?" muttered the other sullenly.
"Are you?"
Captain Eliott was. Infernally tired. He only
hung on to his berth so long in order to get his
pension on the highest scale before he went home.
It would be no better than poverty, anyhow; still,
it was the only thing between him and the work-
house. And he had a family. Three girls, as
Whalley knew. He gave "Harry, old boy," to
understand that these three girls were a source of
the greatest anxiety and worry to him. Enough
to drive a man distracted.


224 THE END OF THE TETHER,
"Why? What have they been doing now?"
asked Captain Whalley with a sort of amused
absent-mindedness.
"Doing! Doing nothing. That's just it. Lawn-
tennis and silly novels from morning to night. . . ."
If one of them at least had been a boy. But all
three! And, as ill-luck would have it, there did not
seem to be any decent young fellows left in the
world. When he looked around in the club he saw
only a lot of conceited popinjays too selfish to think
of making a good woman happy. Extreme indig-
ence stared him in the face with all that crowd to
keep at home. He had cherished the idea of build-
ing himself a little house in the country—in Surrey
—to end his days in, but he was afraid it was out
of the question, . . . and his staring eyes rolled
upwards with such a pathetic anxiety that Captain
Whalley charitably nodded down at him, restraining
a sort of sickening desire to laugh.
"You must know what it is yourself, Harry.
Girls are the very devil for worry and anxiety."
"Ay! But mine is doing well," Captain Whalley
pronounced slowly, staring to the end of the avenue.
The Master-Attendant was glad to hear this.
Uncommonly glad. He remembered her well. A
pretty girl she was.
Captain Whalley, stepping out carelessly, assented
as if in a dream.
"She was pretty."
The procession of carriages was breaking up.
One after another they left the file to go off at a
trot, animating the vast avenue with their scattered
life and movement; but soon the aspect of dignified


THE END OF THE TETHER. 225
solitude returned and took possession of the straight
wide road. A syce in white stood at the head of the Burmah pony harnessed to a varnished two-wheel
cart; and the whole thing waiting by the curb
seemed no bigger than a child's toy forgotten under
the soaring trees. Captain Eliott waddled up to it
and made as if to clamber in, but refrained; and
keeping one hand resting easily on the shaft, he
changed the conversation from his pension, his
daughters, and his poverty back again to the only
other topic in the world—the Marine Office, the men
and the ships of the port.
He proceeded to give instances of what was ex-
pected of him; and his thick voice drowsed in the
still air like the obstinate droning of an enormous
bumble-bee. Captain Whalley did not know what
was the force or the weakness that prevented him
from saying good-night and walking away. It was
as though he had been too tired to make the effort.
How queer. More queer than any of Ned's instances.
Or was it that overpowering sense of idleness alone
that made him stand there and listen to these stories.
Nothing very real had ever troubled Ned Eliott; and
gradually he seemed to detect deep in, as if wrapped
up in the gross wheezy rumble, something of the
clear hearty voice of the young captain of the Ring-
dove. He wondered if he too had changed to the
same extent; and it seemed to him that the voice
of his old chum had not changed so very much—
that the man was the same. Not a bad fellow
the pleasant, jolly Ned Eliott, friendly, well up to
his business—and always a bit of a humbug. He
remembered how he used to amuse his poor wife.
P


226 THE END OF THE TETHER.
She could read him like an open book. When the
Condor and the Ringdove happened to be in port
together, she would frequently ask him to bring
Captain Eliott to dinner. They had not met often
since those old days. Not once in five years, per-
haps. He regarded from under his white eyebrows
this man he could not bring himself to take into
his confidence at this juncture; and the other went
on with his intimate outpourings, and as remote
from his hearer as though he had been talking on
a hill-top a mile away.
He was in a bit of a quandary now as to the
steamer Sofala. Ultimately every hitch in the port
came into his hands to undo. They would miss him
when he was gone in another eighteen months, and
most likely some retired naval officer had been pitch-
forked into the appointment—a man that would
understand nothing and care less. That steamer
was a coasting craft having a steady trade con-
nection as far north as Tenasserim; but the trouble
was she could get no captain to take her on her
regular trip. Nobody would go in her. He really
had no power, of course, to order a man to take a
job. It was all very well to stretch a point on the
demand of a consul-general, but . . .
"What's the matter with the ship?" Captain
Whalley interrupted in measured tones.
"Nothing's the matter. Sound old steamer. Her
owner has been in my office this afternoon tearing
his hair."
"Is he a white man?" asked Whalley in an
interested voice.
"He calls himself a white man," answered the


228 THE END OF THE TETHER.
from her owners, who had ordered a new steamer
from Europe. He rushed in and bought her. This
man had never given any signs of that sort of mental
intoxication the mere fact of getting hold of a large
sum of money may produce—not till he got a ship
of his own; but then he went off his balance all at
onceI came bouncing into the Marine Office on some
transfer business, with his hat hanging over his left
eye and switching a little cane in his hand, and
told each one of the clerks separately that "Nobody
could put him out now. It was his turn. There
was no one over him on earth, and there never
would be either." He swaggered and strutted
between the desks, talking at the top of his voice,
and trembling like a leaf all the while, so that the
current business of the office was suspended for the
time he was in there, and everybody in the big room
stood open-mouthed looking at his antics. After-
wards he, could be seen during the hottest hours of
the day with his face as red as fire rushing along up
and down the quays to look at his ship from different
points of view: he seemed inclined to stop every
stranger he came across just to let them know "that
there would be no longer any one over him; he had
bought a ship; nobody on earth could put him out
of his engine-room now."
Good bargain as she was, the price of the Sofala
took up pretty near all the lottery-money. He had
left himself no capital to work with. That did not
matter so much, for these were the halcyon days of
steam coasting trade, before some of the home ship-
ping firms had thought of establishing local fleets to
feed their main lines. These, when once organised,


THE END OFTHE TETHER 229
took the biggest slices out of that cake, of course;
and by-and-by a squad of confounded German
tramps turned up east of Suez Canal and swept
up all the crumbs. They prowled on the cheap to
and fro along the coast and between the islands,
like a lot of sharks in the water ready to snap
up anything you let drop. And then the high
old times were over for good; for years the Sofala
had made no more, he judged, than a fair living.
Captain Eliott looked upon it as his duty in every
way to assist an English ship to hold her own; and
it stood to reason that if for want of a captain the
Sofala began to miss her trips she would very soon
lose her trade. There was the quandary. The man
was too impracticable. "Too much of a beggar on
horseback from the first," he explained. "Seemed
to grow worse as the time went on. In the last
three years he's run through eleven skippers; he had
tried every single man here, outside of the regular
lines. I had warned him before that this would
not do. And now, of course, no one- will look at
the Sofala. I had one or two men up at my office
and talked to them; but, as they said to me, what
was the good of taking the berth to lead a regular
dog's life for a month and then get the sack at the
end of the first trip? The fellow, of course, told me
it was all nonsense; there has been a plot hatch-
ing for years against him. And now it had come.
All the horrid sailors in the port had conspired to
bring him to his knees, because he was an engineer."
Captain Eliott emitted a throaty chuckle.
"And the fact is, that if he misses a couple more
trips he need never trouble himself to start again.


230 THE END OF THE TETHER
He won't find any cargo in his old trade. There's
too much competition nowadays for people to keep
their stuff lying about for a ship that does not turn
up when she's expected. It's a bad look-out for him.
He swears he will shut himself on board and starve
to death in his cabin rather than sell her—even if he
could find a buyer. And that's not likely in the
least. Not even the Japs would give her insured
value for her. It isn't like selling sailing-ships.
Steamers do get out of date, besides getting old."
"He must have laid by a good bit of money
though," observed Captain Whalley quietly.
The Harbour-master puffed out his purple cheeks
to an amazing size.
"Not a stiver, Harry. Not—a—single server." He waited; but as Captain Whalley, stroking his
beard slowly, looked down on the ground without a
word, he tapped him on the forearm, tiptoed, and
said in a hoarse whisper—
"The Manilla lottery has been eating him up."
He frowned a little, nodding in tiny affirmative
jerks. They all were going in for it; a third of the
wages paid to ships' officers ("in my port," he
snorted) went to Manilla. It was a mania. That
fellow Massy had been bitten by it like the rest of
them from the first; but after winning once he
seemed to have persuaded himself he had only to
try again to get another big prize. He had taken
dozens and scores of tickets for every drawing since.
What with this vice, and his ignorance of affairs,
ever since he had improvidently bought that steamer
he had been more or less short of money.
This, in Captain Eliott's opinion, gave an opening


THE END OF THE TETHER. 231
for a sensible sailor-man with a few pounds to step
in and save that fool from the consequences of his
folly. It was his craze to quarrel with his captains.
He had had some really good men too, who would
have been too glad to stay if he would only let
them. But no. He seemed to think he was no
owner unless he was kicking somebody out in the
morning and having a row with the new man in the
evening. What was wanted for him was a master
with a couple of hundred or so to take an interest
in the ship on proper conditions. You don't dis-
charge a man for no fault, only because of the fun
of telling him to pack up his traps and go ashore,
when you know that in that case you are bound to
buy back his share. On the other hand, a fellow
with an interest in the ship is not likely to throw up
his job in a huff about a trifle. He had told Massy
that. He had said: "'This won't do, Mr Massy.
We are getting very sick of you here in the Marine
Office. What you must do now is to try whether
you could get a sailor to join you as partner. That
seems to be the only way.' And that was sound
advice, Harry."
Captain Whalley, leaning on his stick, was per-
fectly still all over, and his hand, arrested in the act
of stroking, grasped his whole beard. And what
did the fellow say to that?
The fellow had the audacity to fly out at the
Master-Attendant. He had received the advice in
a most impudent manner. "I didn't come here to
be laughed at," he had shrieked, "I appeal to you
as an Englishman and a shipowner brought to the
verge of ruin by an illegal conspiracy of your


232 THE END OF THE TETHER.
beggarly sailors, and all you condescend to do for
me is to tell me to go and get a partner!" . . .
The fellow had presumed to stamp with rage on
the floor of the private office. Where was he going
to get a partner? Was he being taken for a fool?
Not a single one of that contemptible lot ashore at
the "Home" had twopence in his pocket to bless
himself with. The very native curs in the bazaar
knew that much. . . . "And it's true enough,
Harry," rumbled Captain Eliott judicially. "They
are much more likely one and all to owe money to
the Chinamen in Denham Road for the clothes on
their backs. 'Well,' said I, 'you make too much
noise over it for my taste, Mr Massy. Good morn-
ing.' He banged the door after him; he dared to
bang my door, confound his cheek!"
The head of the Marine department was out of
breath with indignation; then recollecting himself
as it were, "I'll end by being late to dinner—yarn-
ing with you here . . . wife doesn't like it."
He clambered ponderously into the trap; leaned
out side-ways, and only then wondered wheezily
what on earth Captain Whalley could have been
doing with himself of late. They had had no sight
of each other for years and years till the other day
when he had seen him unexpectedly in the office.
What on earth . . .
Captain Whalley seemed to be smiling to himself
in his white beard.
"The earth is big," he said vaguely.
The other, as if to test the statement, stared all
round from his driving-seat. The Esplanade was
very quiet; only from afar, from very far, a long


THE END OF THE TETHER. 233
way from the sea-shore, across the stretches of grass,
through the long ranges of trees, came faintly the
toot—toot—toot of the cable car beginning to roll
before the empty peristyle of the Public Library on
its three-mile journey to the New Harbour Docks.
"Doesn't seem to be so much room on it," growled
the Master-Attendant, "since these Germans came
along shouldering us at every turn. It was not so
in our time."
He fell into deep thought, breathing stertorously,
as though he had been taking a nap open-eyed.
Perhaps he too, on his side, had detected in the
silent pilgrim-like figure, standing there by the
wheel, like an arrested wayfarer, the buried linea-
ments of the features belonging to the young cap-
tain of the Condor. Good fellow—Harry Whalley
—never very talkative. You never knew what he
was up to—a bit too off-hand with people of con-
sequence, and apt to take a wrong view of a fellow's
actions. Fact was, he had a too good opinion of
himself. He would have liked to tell him to get in
and drive him home to dinner. But one never knew.
Wife would not like it.
"And it's funny to think, Harry," he went on in
a big, subdued drone, "that of all the people on it
there seems only you and I left to remember this
part of the world as it used to be . . ."
He was ready to indulge in the sweetness of a
sentimental mood had it not struck him suddenly
that Captain Whalley, unstirring and without a
word, seemed to be awaiting something—perhaps
expecting . . . He gathered the reins at once and
burst out in bluff hearty growls—


234 THE END OP THE TETHER.
"Ha! My dear boy. The men we have known
—the ships we've sailed—ay! and the things we've
done ..."
The pony plunged—the syce skipped out of the
way. Captain Whalley raised his arm.
"Good-bye."
VL
The sun had set. And when, after drilling a deep
hole with his stick, he moved from that spot the
night had massed its army of shadows under the
trees. They filled the eastern ends of the avenues
as if only waiting the signal for a general advance
upon the open spaces of the world; they were gath-
ering low between the deep stone-faced banks of the
canal. The Malay prau, half-concealed under the
arch of the bridge, had not altered its position a
quarter of an inch. For a long time Captain Whalley
stared down over the parapet, till at last the float-
ing immobility of that beshrouded thing seemed to
grow upon him into something inexplicable and
alarming. The twilight abandoned the zenith; its
reflected gleams left the world below, and the water
of the canal seemed to turn into pitch. Captain
Whalley crossed it.
The turning to the right, which was his way to
his hotel, was only a very few steps farther. He
stopped again (all the houses of the sea-front were
shut up, the quayside was deserted, but for one or
two figures of natives walking in the distance) and
began to reckon the amount of his bill. So many


THE END OF THE TETHER. 235
days in the hotel at so many dollars a-day. To
count the days he used his fingers: plunging one
hand into his pocket, he jingled a few silver coins.
All right for three days more; and then, unless
something turned up, he must break into the five
hundred—Ivy's money—invested in her father. It
seemed to him that the first meal coming out of
that reserve would choke him—for certain. Reason
was of no use. It was a matter of feeling. His
feelings had never played him false
.
He did not turn to the right. He walked on, as
if there still had been the ship in the roadstead to
which he could get himself pulled off in the even-
ing. Far away, beyond the houses, on the slope of
an indigo promontory closing the view of the quays,
the slim column of a factory-chimney smoked quietly
straight up into the clear air. A Chinaman, curled
down in the stern of one of the half-dozen sampans
floating off the end of the jetty, caught sight
of a beckoning hand. He jumped up, rolled his
pigtail round his head swiftly, tucked in two rapid
movements his wide dark trousers high up his yellow
thighs, and by a single, noiseless, finlike stir of the
oars, sheered the sampan alongside the steps with
the ease and precision of a swimming fish.
"Sofala," articulated Captain Whalley from above;
and the Chinaman, a new emigrant probably, stared
upwards with a tense attention as if waiting to see
the queer word fall visibly from the white man's
lips. "Sofala," Captain Whalley repeated; and
suddenly his heart failed him. He paused. The
shores, the islets, the high ground, the low points,
were dark: the horizon had grown sombre; and


236 THE END OF THE TETHER.
across the eastern sweep of the shore the white
obelisk, marking the landing-place of the telegraph-
cable, stood like a pale ghost on the beach before the
dark spread of uneven roofs, intermingled with palms,
of the native town. Captain Whalley began again.
"Sofala. Save So-fa-la, John ?"
This time the Chinaman made out that bizarre
sound, and grunted his assent uncouthly, low down
in his bare throat. With the first yellow twinkle of
a star that appeared like the head of a pin stabbed
deep into the smooth, pale, shimmering fabric of the
sky, the edge of a keen chill seemed to cleave through
the warm air of the earth. At the moment of step-
ping into the sampan to go and try for the com-
mand of the Sofala Captain Whalley shivered a little.
When on his return he landed on the quay again,
Venus, like a choice jewel set low on the hem of the
sky, cast a faint gold trail behind him upon the
roadstead, as level as a floor made of one dark and
polished stone. The lofty vaults of the avenues
were black—all black overhead—and the porcelain
globes on the lamp - posts resembled egg - shaped
pearls, gigantic and luminous, displayed in a row
whose farther end seemed to sink in the distance,
down to the level of his knees. He put his hands
behind his back . He would now consider calmly
the discretion of it before saying the final word
to-morrow. His feet scrunched the gravel loudly
—the discretion of it. It would have been easier
to appraise had there been a workable alternative.
The honesty of it was indubitable: he meant well
by the fellow; and periodically his shadow leaped
up intense by his side on the trunks of the trees,


238 THE END OF THE TETHER.
and contempt. He almost laughed at it; and in
the unquenchable vitality of his age only thought
with a kind of exultation how little he needed to
keep body and soul together. Not a bad invest-
ment for the poor woman this solid carcass of her
father. And for the rest—in case of anything—
the agreement should be clear: the whole five hun-
dred to be paid back to her integrally within three
months. Integrally. Every penny. He was not
to lose any of her money whatever else had to go
—a little dignity—some of his self-respect. He
had never before allowed anybody to remain under
any sort of false impression as to himself. Well,
let that go—for her sake. After all, he had never
said anything misleading — and Captain Whalley
felt himself corrupt to the marrow of his bones.
He laughed to little with the intimate scorn of
his worldly prudence. Clearly, with a fellow of
that sort, and in the peculiar relation they were
to stand to each other, it would not have done to
blurt out everything. He did not like the fellow.
He did not like his spells of fawning loquacity and
bursts of resentfulness. In the end—a poor devil.
He would not have liked to stand in his shoes. Men
were not evil, after all. He did not like his sleek
hair, his queer way of standing at right angles,
with his nose in the air, and glancing along his
shoulder at you. No. On the whole, men were
not bad—they were only silly or unhappy.
Captain Whalley had finished considering the dis-
cretion of that step—and there was the whole long
night before him. In the full light his long beard
would glisten like a silver breastplate covering his


THE END OF THE TETHER. 239
heart; in the spaces between the lamps his burly
figure passed less distinct, loomed very big, wander-
ing, and mysterious. No; there was not much real
harm in men: and all the time a shadow marched
with him, slanting on his left hand—which in the
East is a presage of evil.
"Can you make out the clump of palms yet,
Serang?" asked Captain "Whalley from his chair
on the bridge of the Sofala approaching the bar
of Batu Beru.
"No, Tuan. By-and-by see." The old Malay, in
a blue dungaree suit, planted on his bony dark feet
under the bridge awning, put his hands behind his
back and stared ahead out of the innumerable
wrinkles at the corners of his eyes.
Captain Whalley sat still, without lifting his head
to look for himself. Three years—thirty-six times.
He had made these palms thirty-six times from the
southward. They would come into view at the
proper time. Thank God, the old ship made her
courses and distances trip after trip, as correct as
clockwork. At last he murmured again—
"In sight yet?"
"The sun makes a very great glare, Tuan."
"Watch well, Serang."
"Ya, Tuan."
A white man had ascended the ladder from the
deck noiselessly, and had listened quietly to this
short colloquy. Then he stepped out on the bridge
and began to walk from end to end, holding up the
long cherrywood stem of a pipe. His black hair
lay plastered in long lanky wisps across the bald


240 THE BND OF THE TETHER.
summit of his head; he had a furrowed brow, the yellow complexion, and a thick shapeless nose. A
scanty growth of whisker did not conceal the con-
tour of his jaw. His aspect was of brooding care;
and sucking at a curved black mouthpiece, he
presented such a heavy overhanging profile that
even the Serang could not help reflecting sometimes
upon the extreme unloveliness of some white men.
Captain Whalley seemed to brace himself up in
his chair, but gave no recognition whatever to his
presence. The other puffed jets of smoke; then
suddenly—
"I could never understand that new mania of
yours of having this Malay here for your shadow,
partner."
Captain Whalley got up from the chair in all
his imposing stature and walked across to the
binnacle, holding such an unswerving course that
the other had to back away hurriedly, and remained
as if intimidated, with the pipe trembling in his
hand. "Walk over me now," he muttered in a
sort of astounded and discomfited whisper. Then
slowly and distinctly he said—
"I—am—not—dirt." And then added defiantly,
"As you seem to think."
The Serang jerked out—
"See the palms now, Tuan."
Captain Whalley strode forward to the rail; but
his eyes, instead of going straight to the point, with
the assured keen glance of a sailor, wandered irres-
olutely in space, as though he, the discoverer of
new routes, had lost his way upon this narrow sea.
Another white man, the mate, came up on the


THE END OF THE TETHER. 241
bridge. He was tall, young, lean, with a moustache
like a trooper, and something malicious in the eye.
He took up a position beside the engineer. Captain
Whalley, with his back to them, inquired—
"What's on the log?"
"Eighty-five," answered the mate quickly, and
nudged the engineer with his elbow.
Captain Whalley's muscular hands squeezed the
iron rail with an extraordinary force; his eyes
glared with an enormous effort; he knitted his
eyebrows, the perspiration fell from under his
hat,—and in a faint voice he murmured, "Steady
her, Serang—when she is on the proper bearing."
The silent Malay stepped back, waited a little,
and lifted his arm warningly to the helmsman. The
wheel revolved rapidly to meet the swing of the
ship. Again the mate nudged the engineer. But
Massy turned upon him.
"Mr Sterne," he said violently, "let me tell you
—as a shipowner—that you are no better than a
confounded fool."
VTL
Sterne went down smirking and apparently not
at all disconcerted, but the engineer Massy remained
on the bridge, moving about with uneasy self-asser-
tion. Everybody on board was his inferior—every-
one without exception. He paid their wages and
found them in their food. They ate more of his
bread and pocketed more of his money than they
were worth; and they had no care in the world,
Q


242 THE END OF THE TETHER.
while he alone had to meet all the difficulties of
shipowning. When he contemplated his position
in all its menacing entirety, it seemed to him
that he had been for years the prey of a band of
parasites; and for years he had scowled at every-
body connected with the Sofala except, perhaps,
at the Chinese firemen who served to get her
along. Their use was manifest: they were an
indispensable part of the machinery of which he
was the master.
When he passed along his decks he shouldered
those he came across brutally; but the Malay deck
hands had learned to dodge out of his way. He
had to bring himself to tolerate them because of the
necessary manual labour of the ship which must be
done. He had to struggle and plan and scheme
to keep the Sofala afloat—and what did he get for
it? Not even enough respect. They could not
have given him enough of that if all their thoughts
and all their actions had been directed to that end.
The vanity of possession, the vainglory of power,
had passed away by this time, and there remained
only the material embarrassments, the fear of losing
that position which had turned out not worth
having, and an anxiety of thought which no abject
subservience of men could repay.
He walked up and down. The bridge was his
own after all. He had paid for it; and with the
stem of the pipe in his hand he would stop short at
times as if to listen with a profound and concen-
trated attention to the deadened beat of the engines
(his own engines) and the slight grinding of the
steering chains upon the continuous low wash of


THE END OF THE TETHER 243
water alongside. But for these sounds, the ship
might have been lying as still as if moored to a
bank, and as silent as if abandoned by every living
soul; only the coast, the low coast of mud and man-
groves with the three palms in a bunch at the back,
grew slowly more distinct in its long straight line,
without a single feature to arrest attention. The
native passengers of the Sofala lay about on mats
under the awnings; the smoke of her funnel seemed
the only sign of her life and connected with her
gliding motion in a mysterious manner.
Captain Whalley on his feet, with a pair of binoc-
ulars in his hand and the little Malay Serang at
his elbow, like an old giant attended by a wizened
pigmy, was taking her over the shallow water of
the bar.
This submarine ridge of mud, scoured by the
stream out of the soft bottom of the river and
heaped up far out on the hard bottom of the sea,
was difficult to get over. The alluvial coast having
no distinguishing marks, the bearings of the cross-
ing-place had to be taken from the shape of the
mountains inland. The guidance of a form flattened
and uneven at the top like a grinder tooth, and of
another smooth, saddle-backed summit, had to be
searched for within the great unclouded glare that
seemed to shift and float like a dry fiery mist, filling
the air, ascending from the water, shrouding the
distances, scorching to the eye. In this veil of light
the near edge of the shore alone stood out almost
coal-black with an opaque and motionless solidity.
Thirty miles away the serrated range of the interior
stretched across the horizon, its outlines and shades


244 THE END OF THE TETHER.
of blue, faint and tremulous like a background
painted on airy gossamer on the quivering fabric of an impalpable curtain let down to the plain of
alluvial soil; and the openings of the estuary appeared, shining white, like bits of silver let into
the square pieces snipped clean and sharp out of the
body of the land bordered with mangroves.
On the forepart of the bridge the giant and the
pigmy muttered to each other frequently in quiet
tones. Behind them Massy stood sideways with an
expression of disdain and suspense on his face. His
globular eyes were perfectly motionless, and he
seemed to have forgotten the long pipe he held in
his hand.
On the fore-deck below the bridge, steeply roofed
with the white slopes of the awnings, a young lascar
seaman had clambered outside the rail. He adjusted
quickly a broad band of sail canvas under his arm-
pits, and throwing his chest against it, leaned out
far over the water. The sleeves of his thin cotton
shirt, cut off close to the shoulder, bared his brown
arm of full rounded form and with a satiny skin like
a woman's. He swung it rigidly with the rotary
and menacing action of a slinger: the 14-lb. weight
hurtled circling in the air, then suddenly flew ahead
as far as the curve of the bow. The wet thin line
swished like scratched silk running through the dark
fingers of the man, and the plunge of the lead close
to the ship's side made a vanishing silvery scar
upon the golden glitter; then after an interval
the voice of the young Malay uplifted and long-
drawn declared the depth of the water in his own
language.


THE END OF THE TETHER. 245
"Tiga stengah," he cried after each splash and
pause, gathering the line busily for another cast.
"Tiga stengah," which means three fathom and a
half. For a mile or so from seaward there was a
uniform depth of water right up to the bar. "Half-
three. Half-three. Half-three,"—and his modul-
ated cry, returned leisurely and monotonous, like the
repeated call of a bird, seemed to float away in
sunshine and disappear in the spacious silence of the
empty sea and of a lifeless shore lying open, north
and south, east and west, without the stir of a
single cloud-shadow or the whisper of any other
voice.
The owner-engineer of the Sofala remained very
still behind the two seamen of different race, creed,
and colour; the European with the time-defying
vigour of his old frame, the little Malay, old too,
but slight and shrunken like a withered brown leaf
blown by a chance wind under the mighty shadow
of the other. Very busy looking forward at the
land, they had not a glance to spare; and Massy,
glaring at them from behind, seemed to resent their
attention to their duty like a personal slight upon
himself.
This was unreasonable; but he had lived in his
own world of unreasonable resentments for many
years. At last, passing his moist palm over the rare
lanky wisps of coarse hair on the top of his yellow
head, he began to talk slowly.
"A leadsman, you want! I suppose that's your
correct mail-boat style. Haven't you enough judg-
ment to tell where you are by looking at the land?
Why, before I had been a twelvemonth in the trade


246 THE END OF THE TETHER
I was up to that trick—and I am only an engineer.
I can point to you from here where the bar is, and
I could tell you besides that you are as likely as not
to stick her in the mud in about five minutes from
now; only you would call it interfering, I suppose.
And there's that written agreement of ours, that
says I mustn't interfere."
His voice stopped. Captain Whalley, without
relaxing the set severity of his features, moved
his lips to ask in a quick mumble—
"How near, Serang?"
"Very near now, Tuan," the Malay muttered
rapidly.
"Dead slow," said the Captain aloud in a firm
tone.
The Serang snatched at the handle of the tele-
graph. A gong clanged down below. Massy with
a scornful snigger walked off and put his head
down the engine-room skylight.
"You may expect some rare fooling with the
engines, Jack," he bellowed. The space into which
he stared was deep and full of gloom; and the
grey gleams of steel down there seemed cool after
the intense glare of the sea around the ship. The
air, however, came up clammy and hot on his
face. A short hoot on which it would have been
impossible to put any sort of interpretation came
from the bottom cavernously. This was the way
in which the second engineer answered his chief.
He was a middle-aged man with an inattentive
manner, and apparently wrapped up in such a
taciturn concern for his engines that he seemed to
have lost the use of speech. When addressed


THE END OF THE TETHER 247
directly his only answer would be a grunt or a
hoot, according to the distance. For all the years
he had been in the Sofala he had never been
known to exchange as much as a frank Good
morning with any of his shipmates. He did not
seem aware that men came and went in the world;
he did not seem to see them at all. Indeed he
never recognised his shipmates on shore. At table
(the four white men of the Sofala messed together)
he sat looking into his plate dispassionately, but
at the end of the meal would jump up and bolt
down below as if a sudden thought had impelled
him to rush and see whether somebody had not
stolen the engines while he dined. In port at the
end of the trip he went ashore regularly, but no
one knew where he spent his evenings or in what
manner. The local coasting fleet had preserved a
wild and incoherent tale of his infatuation for the
wife of a sergeant in an Irish infantry regiment.
The regiment, however, had done its turn of garri-
son duty there ages before, and was gone some-
where to the other side of the earth, out of men's
knowledge. Twice or perhaps three times in the
course of the year he would take too much to
drink. On these occasions he returned on board
at an earlier hour than usual; ran across the deck
balancing himself with his spread arms like a
tight-rope walker; and looking the door of his
cabin, he would converse and argue with himself
the livelong night in an amazing variety of tones;
storm, sneer and whine with an inexhaustible per-
sistence. Massy in his berth next door, raising
himself on his elbow, would discover that his


248 THE END OF THE TETHER.
second had remembered the name of every white
man that had passed through the Sofala for years
and years back. He remembered the names of
men that had died, that had gone home, that had
gone to America: he remembered in his cups the
names of men whose connection with the ship
had been so short that Massy had almost for-
gotten its circumstances and could barely recall
their faces. The inebriated voice on the other
side of the bulkhead commented upon them all
with an extraordinary and ingenious venom of
scandalous inventions. It seems they had all
offended him in some way, and in return he had
found them all out. He muttered darkly; he
laughed sardonically; he crushed them one after
another; but of his chief, Massy, he babbled with
an envious and naive admiration. Clever scoundrel!
Don't meet the likes of him every day. Just look
at him. Ha! Great! Ship of his own. Wouldn't
catch him going wrong. No fear—the beast! And
Massy, after listening with a gratified smile to
these artless tributes to his greatness, would begin
to shout, thumping at the bulkhead with both
fists—
"Shut up, you lunatic! Won't you let me go
to sleep, you fool!"
But a half smile of pride lingered on his lips;
outside the solitary lascar told off for night duty
in harbour, perhaps a youth fresh from a forest
village, would stand motionless in the shadows of
the deck listening to the endless drunken gabble.
TTis heart would be thumping with breathless awe
of white men: the arbitrary and obstinate men


THE END OF THE TETHER. 249
who pursue inflexibly their incomprehensible pur-
poses,—beings with weird intonations in the voice,
moved by unaccountable feelings, actuated by in-
scrutable motives.
vin.
For a while after his second's answering hoot
Massy hung over the engine-room gloomily. Cap-
tain Whalley, who, by the power of five hundred
pounds, had kept his command for three years,
might have been suspected of never having seen
that coast before. He seemed unable to put down
his glasses, as though they had been glued under
his contracted eyebrows. This settled frown gave
to his face an air of invincible and just severity;
but his raised elbow trembled slightly, and the
perspiration poured from under his hat as if a
second sun had suddenly blazed up at the zenith
by the side of the ardent still globe already there,
in whose blinding white heat the earth whirled
and shone like a mote of dust.
From time to time, still holding up his glasses, he
raised his other hand to wipe his streaming face.
The drops rolled down his cheeks, fell like rain upon
the white hairs of his beard, and brusquely, as if
guided by an uncontrollable and anxious impulse,
his arm reached out to the stand of the engine-
room telegraph.
The gong clanged down below. The balanced
vibration of the dead-slow speed ceased together
with every sound and tremor in the ship, as if the


250 THE END OF THE TETHER.
great stillness that reigned upon the coast had
stolen in through her sides of iron and taken pos-
session of her innermost recesses. The illusion of
perfect immobility seemed to fall upon her from the
luminous blue dome without a stain arching over
a flat sea without a stir. The faint breeze she
had made for herself expired, as if all at once the
air had become too thick to budge; even the slight
hiss of the water on her stem died out. The
narrow, long hull, carrying its way without a
ripple, seemed to approach the shoal water of the
bar by stealth. The plunge of the lead with the
mournful, mechanical cry of the lascar came at
longer and longer intervals; and the men on her
bridge seemed to hold their breath. The Malay
at the helm looked fixedly at the compass card,
the Captain and the Serang stared at the coast.
Massy had left the skylight, and, walking flat-
footed, had returned softly to the very spot on
the bridge he had occupied before. A slow, linger-
ing grin exposed his set of big white teeth: they
gleamed evenly in the shade of the awning like
the keyboard of a piano in a dusky room.
At last, pretending to talk to himself in excessive
astonishment, he said not very loud—
"Stop the engines now. What next, I wonder?"
He waited, stooping from the shoulders, his head
bowed, his glance oblique. Then raising his voice
a shade—
"If I dared make an absurd remark I would say
that you haven't the stomach to . . ."
But a yelling spirit of excitement, like some
frantic soul wandering unsuspected in the vast still-


THE END OF THE TETHER. 251
ness of the coast, had seized upon the body of the
laser at the lead. The languid monotony of his
sing-song changed to a swift, sharp clamour. The
weight flew after a single whirr, the line whistled,
splash followed splash in haste. The water had
shoaled, and the man, instead of the drowsy tale
of fathoms, was calling out the soundings in feet.
"Fifteen feet. Fifteen, fifteen! Fourteen, four-
teen . . ."
Captain Whalley lowered the arm holding the
glasses. It descended slowly as if by its own
weight; no other part of his towering body stirred;
and the swift cries with their eager warning note
passed him by as though he had been deaf.
Massy, very still, and turning an attentive ear,
had fastened his eyes upon the silvery, close-cropped
back of the steady old head. The ship herself
seemed to be arrested but for the gradual decrease
of depth under her keel.
"Thirteen feet . . . Thirteen! Twelve!" cried
the leadsman anxiously below the bridge. And
suddenly the barefooted Serang stepped away noise-
lessly to steal a glance over the side.
Narrow of shoulder, in a suit of faded blue cotton,
an old grey felt hat rammed down on his head,
with a hollow in the nape of his dark neck, and
with his slender limbs, he appeared from the back
no bigger than a boy of fourteen. There was a
childlike impulsiveness in the curiosity with which
he watched the spread of the voluminous, yellowish
convolutions rolling up from below to the surface
of the blue water like massive clouds driving slowly
upwards on the unfathomable sky. He was not


252 THE END OF THE TETHER.
startled at the sight in the least. It was not doubt,
but the certitude that the keel of the Sofala must
be stirring the mud now, which made him peep over
the side.
His peering eyes, set aslant in a face of the
Chinese type, a little old face, immovable, as if
carved in old brown oak, had informed him long
before that the ship was not headed at the bar
properly. Paid off from the Fair Maid, together
with the rest of the crew, after the completion of
the sale, he had hung, in his faded blue suit and
floppy grey hat, about the doors of the Harbour
Office, till one day, seeing Captain Whalley coming
along to get a crew for the Sofala, he had put
himself quietly in the way, with his bare feet in
the dust and an upward mute glance. The eyes
of his old commander had fallen on him favourably
—it must have been an auspicious day—and in less
than half an hour the white men in the "Ofiss"
had written his name on a document as Serang of
the fire-ship Sofala. Since that time he had re-
peatedly looked at that estuary, upon that coast,
from this bridge and from this side of the bar.
The record of the visual world fell through his
eyes upon his unspeculating mind as on a sensitized plate through the lens of a camera. His knowledge
was absolute and precise; nevertheless, had he been
asked his opinion, and especially if questioned in the
downright, alarming manner of white men, he would
have displayed the hesitation of ignorance. He was
certain of his facts—but such a certitude counted
for little against the doubt what answer would be
pleasing. Fifty years ago, in a jungle village, and


THE END OF THE TETHER 253
before he was a day old, his father (who died with-
out ever seeing a white face) had had his nativity
cast by a man of skill and wisdom in astrology,
because in the arrangement of the stars may be
read the last word of human destiny. His destiny
had been to thrive by the favour of various white
men on the sea. He had swept the decks of ships,
had tended their helms, had minded their stores, had
risen at last to be a Serang; and his placid mind
had remained as incapable of penetrating the
simplest motives of those he served as they them-
selves were incapable of detecting through the crust
of the earth the secret nature of its heart, which
may be fire or may be stone. But he had no
doubt whatever that the Sofala was out of the
proper track for crossing the bar at Batu Beru.
It was a slight error. The ship could not have
been more than twice her own length too far to the
northward; and a white man at a loss for a cause
(since it was impossible to suspect Captain Whalley
of blundering ignorance, of want of skill, or of neglect)
would have been inclined to doubt the testimony
of his senses. It was some such feeling that kept
Massy motionless, with his teeth laid bare by an
anxious grin. Not so the Serang. He was not
troubled by any intellectual mistrust of his senses.
If his captain choose to stir the mud it was well.
He had known in his life white men indulge in
outbreaks equally strange. He was only genuinely
interested to see what would come of it. At last,
apparently satisfied, he stepped back from the rail.
He had made no sound: Captain Whalley, how-
ever, seemed to have observed the movements of


254 THE END OF THE TETHER.
his Serang. Holding his head rigidly, he asked
with a mere stir of his lips—
"Going ahead still, Serang?"
"Still going a little, Tuan," answered the Malay.
Then added casually, "She is over."
The lead confirmed his words; the depth of water
increased at every cast, and the soul of excitement
departed suddenly from the lascar swung in the
canvas belt over the Sofala's side. Captain Whalley
ordered the lead in, set the engines ahead without
haste, and averting his eyes from the coast directed
the Serang to keep a course for the middle of the
entrance.
Massy brought the palm of his hand with a
loud smack against his thigh.
"You grazed on the bar. Just look astern and see
if you didn't. Look at the track she left. You can
see it plainly. Upon my soul, I thought you would!
What made you do that? What on earth made you
do that? I believe you are trying to scare me."
He talked slowly, as it were circumspectly, keep-
ing his prominent black eyes on his captain. There
was also a slight plaintive note in his rising choler,
for, primarily, it was the clear sense of a wrong
suffered undeservedly that made him hate the man
who, for a beggarly five hundred pounds, claimed
a sixth part of the profits under the three years'
agreement. Whenever his resentment got the
better of the awe the person of Captain Whalley
inspired he would positively whimper with fury.
"You don't know what to invent to plague my
life out of me. I would not have thought that
a man of your sort would condescend . . ."


256 THEEND OF THE TETHER.He paused, without apparent exasperation, then
continued evenly,—
"... With the boilers worn out and the survey
hanging over my head, Captain Whalley Cap-
tain Whalley, I say, what do you do with your
money? You must have stacks of money some-
where—a man like you must. It stands to reason.
I am not a fool, you know, Captain Whalley—
partner."
Again he paused, as though he had done for good.
He passed his tongue over his lips, gave a backward
glance at the Serang conning the ship with quiet
whispers and slight signs of the hand. The wash
of the propeller sent a swift ripple, crested with
dark froth, upon a long flat spit of black slime.
The Sofala had entered the river; the trail she
had stirred up over the bar was a mile astern of her
now, out of sight, had disappeared utterly; and the
smooth, empty sea along the coast was left behind
in the glittering desolation of sunshine. On each
side of her, low down, the growth of sombre
twisted mangroves covered the semi-liquid banks;
and Massy continued in his old tone, with an abrupt
start, as if his speech had been ground out of him,
like the tune of a music-box, by turning a handle.
"Though if anybody ever got the best of me, it is
you. I don't mind saying this. I've said it—there!
What more can you want? Isn't that enough for
your pride, Captain Whalley. You got over me
from the first. It's all of a piece, when I look back
at it. You allowed me to insert that clause about
intemperance without saying anything, only looking
very sick when I made a point of it going in black


THE END OF THE TETHER. 257
on white. How could I tell what was wrong about
you. There's generally something wrong somewhere.
And, lo and behold! when you come on board it
turns out that you've been in the habit of drinking
nothing but water for years and years."
His dogmatic reproachful whine stopped. He
brooded profoundly, after the manner of crafty and
unintelligent men. It seemed inconceivable that
Captain Whalley should not laugh at the expres-
sion of disgust that overspread the heavy, yellow
countenance. But Captain Whalley never raised
his eyes—sitting in his arm-chair, outraged, digni-
fied, and motionless
.
"Much good it was to me," Massy remonstrated
monotonously, "to insert a clause of dismissal for
intemperance against a man who drinks nothing
but water. And you looked so upset, too, when I
read my draft in the lawyer's office that morning,
Captain Whalley,—you looked so crestfallen, that I
made sure I had gone home on your weak spot.
A shipowner can't be too careful as to the sort of
skipper he gets. You must have been laughing at
me in your sleeve all the blessed time. . . . Eh?
What are you going to say?"
Captain Whalley had only shuffled his feet slight-
ly. A dull animosity became apparent in Massy's
sideways stare.
"But recollect that there are other grounds of
dismissal . There's habitual carelessness, amounting
to incompetence—there's gross and persistent neg-
lect of duty. I am not quite as big a fool as you
try to make me out to be. You have been careless
of late—leaving everything to that Serang. Why!


THE END OF THE TETHER. 259
it from between his teeth and wrung bis bands
slightly.
"Don't you believe me?" He thrust the pipe
bowl into the pocket of his shiny black jacket.
"It's like dealing with the devil," he said, "Why
don't you speak? At first you were so high and
mighty with me I hardly dared to creep about my
own deck . Now I can't get a word from you.
You don't seem to see me at all. What does it
mean? Upon my soul, you terrify me with this
deaf and dumb trick. What's going on in that
head of yours? What are you plotting against
me there so hard that you can't say a word?
You will never make me believe that you—you—
don't know where to lay your hands on a couple of
hundred. You have made me curse the day I was
born. ..."
"Mr Massy," said Captain Whalley suddenly,
without stirring.
The engineer started violently.
"If that is so I can only beg you to forgive me."
"Starboard," muttered the Serang to the helms-
man; and the Sofala began to swing round the
bend into the second reach.
"Ough!" Massy shuddered. "You make my
blood run cold. What made you come here?
What made you come aboard that evening all of
a sudden, with your high talk and your money—
tempting me? I always wondered what was your
motive? You fastened yourself on me to have easy
times and grow fat on my life blood, I tell you.
Was that it? I believe you are the greatest miser
in the world, or else why ..."


260 THE END OF THE TETHER.
"No. I am only poor," interrupted Captain
Whalley, stonily.
"Steady," murmured the Serang. Massy turned
away with his chin on his shoulder.
"I don't believe it," he said in his dogmatic tone.
Captain Whalley made no movement. "There you
sit like a gorged vulture—exactly like a vulture."
He embraced the middle of the reach and both the
banks in one blank unseeing circular glance, and left
the bridge slowly.
IX.
On turning to descend Massy perceived the head
of Sterne the mate loitering, with his sly confident
smile, his red moustaches and blinking eyes, at the
foot of the ladder.
Sterne had been a junior in one of the larger ship-
ping concerns before joining the Sofala. He had
thrown up his berth, he said, "on general prin-
ciples." The promotion in the employ was very slow,
he complained, and he thought it was time for him
to try and get on a bit in the world. It seemed as
though nobody would ever die or leave the firm;
they all stuck fast in their berths till they got
mildewed; he was tired of waiting; and he feared
that when a vacancy did occur the best servants
were by no means sure of being treated fairly.
Besides, the captain he had to serve under—Captain
Provost—was an unaccountable sort of man, and, he
fancied, had taken a dislike to him for some reason
or other. For doing rather more than his bare duty


THE END OF THE TETHER. 261
as likely as not. When he had done anything
wrong he could take a talking to, like a man; but
he expected to be treated like a man too, and not to
be addressed invariably as though he were a dog.
He had asked Captain Provost plump and plain to
tell him where he was at fault, and Captain Provost,
in a most scornful way, had told him that he was
a perfect officer, and that if he disliked the way he
was being spoken to there was the gangway—he
could take himself off ashore at once. But every-
body knew what sort of man Captain Provost
was. It was no use appealing to the office.
Captain Provost had too much influence in the
employ. All the same, they had to give him a good
character. He made bold to say there was nothing
in the world against him, and, as he had happened
to hear that the mate of the Sofala had been taken
to the hospital that morning with a sunstroke, he
thought there would be no harm in seeing whether
he would not do. . . .
He had come to Captain Whalley freshly shaved,
red-faced, thin-flanked, throwing out his lean chest;
and had recited his little tale with an open and
manly assurance. Now and then his eyelids
quivered slightly, his hand would steal up to the
end of the flaming moustache; his eyebrows were
straight, furry, of a chestnut colour, and the
directness of his frank gaze seemed to tremble on
the verge of impudence. Captain Whalley had en-
gaged him temporarily; then, the other man having
been ordered home by the doctors, he had remained
for the next trip, and then the next. He had now
attained permanency, and the performance of his


262 THE END OF THE TETHER.
duties was marked by an air of serious, single-
minded application. Directly he was spoken to, he
began to smile attentively, with a great deference
expressed in his whole attitude; but there was in
the rapid winking which went on all the time some-
thing quizzical, as though he had possessed the
secret of some universal joke cheating all creation
and impenetrable to other mortals.
Grave and smiling he watched Massy come down
step by step; when the chief engineer had reached
the deck he swung about, and they found them-
selves face to face. Matched as to height and
utterly dissimilar, they confronted each other as
if there had been something between them—some-
thing else than the bright strip of sunlight that,
falling through the wide lacing of two awnings,
cut crosswise the narrow planking of the deck and
separated their feet as it were a stream; something
profound and subtle and incalculable, like an un-
expressed understanding, a secret mistrust, or some
sort of fear.
At last Sterne, blinking his deep-set eyes and
sticking forward his scraped, clean - cut chin, as
crimson as the rest of his face, murmured—
"You've seen? He grazed! You've seen?"
Massy, contemptuous, and without raising his yel-
low, fleshy countenance, replied in the same pitch—
"Maybe. But if it had been you we would have
been stuck fast in the mud."
"Pardon me, Mr Massy. I beg to deny it. Of
course a shipowner may say what he jolly well
pleases on his own deck. That's all right; but I
beg to . . ."


THE END OF THE TETHER.263
"Get out of my way!"
The other had a slight start, the impulse of sup-
pressed indignation perhaps, but held his ground.
Massy's downward glance wandered right and left,
as though the deck all round Sterne had been be-
strewn with eggs that must not be broken, and
he had looked irritably for places where he could
set his feet in flight. In the end he too did not
move, though there was plenty of room to pass on.
"I heard you say up there," went on the mate—
"and a very just remark it was, too—that there's
always something wrong. ..."
"Eavesdropping is what's wrong with you, Mr
Sterne."
"Now, if you would only listen to me for a
moment, Mr Massy, sir, I could . . ."
"You are a sneak," interrupted Massy in a great
hurry, and even managed to get so far as to repeat,
"a common sneak," before the mate had broken in
argumentatively—
"Now, sir, what is it you want? You want . . ."
"I want—I want," stammered Massy, infuriated
and astonished—" I want. How do you know that
I want anything? How dare you? . . . What do
you mean? . . . What are you after—you . . ."
"Promotion." Sterne silenced him with a sort
of candid bravado. The engineer's round soft cheeks
quivered still, but he said quietly enough—
"You are only worrying my head off," and Sterne
met him with a confident little smile.
"A chap in business I know (well up in the world
he is now) used to tell me that this was the proper
way. 'Always push on to the front,' he would say.


264 THE END OF THE TETHER.
'Keep yourself well before your boss. Interfere
whenever you get a chance. Show him what you
know. Worry him into seeing you' That was his
advice. Now I know no other boss than you here.
You are the owner, and no one else counts for that
much in my eyes. See, Mr Massy? I want to get
on. I make no secret of it that I am one of the
sort that means to get on. These are the men to
make use of, sir. You haven't arrived at the top of
the tree, sir, without finding that out—I daresay."
"Worry your boss in order to get on," mumbled
Massy, as if awestruck by the irreverent originality
of the idea. "I shouldn't wonder if this was just
what the Blue Anchor people kicked you out of
the employ for. Is that what you call getting on?
You shall get on in the same way here if you aren't
careful—I can promise you."
At this Sterne hung his head, thoughtful, per-
plexed, winking hard at the deck. All his attempts
to enter into confidential relations with his owner
had led of late to nothing better than these dark
threats of dismissal; and a threat of dismissal would
check him at once into a hesitating silence as
though he were not sure that the proper time for
defying it had come. On this occasion he seemed
to have lost his tongue for a moment, and Massy,
getting in motion heavily passed him by with an
abortive attempt at shouldering. Sterne defeated it
by stepping aside. He turned then swiftly, opening
his mouth very wide as if to shout something after
the engineer, but seemed to think better of it.
Always—as he was ready to confess—on the look-
out for an opening to get on, it had become an


THE END OF THE TETHER. 266
instinct with him to watch the conduct of his
immediate superiors for something "that one could
lay hold of." It was his belief that no skipper in
the world would keep his command for a day if
only the owners could be "made to know." This
romantic and naive theory had led him into trouble
more than once, but he remained incorrigible; and
his character was so instinctively disloyal that
whenever he joined a ship the intention of ousting
his commander out of the berth and taking his
place was always present at the back of his head,
as a matter of course. It filled the leisure of his
waking hours with the reveries of careful plans and
compromising discoveries—the dreams of his sleep
with images of lucky turns and favourable accidents
.
Skippers had been known to sicken and die at sea,
than which nothing could be better to give a smart
mate a chance of showing what he's made of. They
also would tumble overboard sometimes: he had
heard of one or two such cases. Others again . . .
But, as it were constitutionally, he was faithful to
the belief that the conduct of no single one of them
would stand the test of careful watching by a man
who "knew what's what" and who kept his eyes
"skinned pretty well" all the time.
After he had gained a permanent footing on
board the Sofala he allowed his perennial hope to
rise high. To begin with, it was a great advantage
to have an old man for captain: the sort of man
besides who in the nature of things was likely to
give up the job before long from one cause or
another. Sterne was greatly chagrined, however,
to notice that he did not seem anyway near being


266 THE END OF THE TETHER.
past his work yet. Still, these old men go to pieces
all at once sometimes. Then there was the owner-
engineer close at hand to be impressed by his zeal
and steadiness. Sterne never for a moment doubted
the obvious nature of his own merits (he was really
an excellent officer); only, nowadays, professional
merit alone does not take a man along fast enough.
A chap must have some push in him, and must
keep his wits at work too to help him forward.
He made up his mind to inherit the charge of this
steamer if it was to be done at all; not indeed
estimating the command of the Sofala as a very
great catch, but for the reason that, out East
especially, to make a start is everything, and one
command leads to another.
He began by promising himself to behave with
great circumspection; Massy's sombre and fantastic
humours intimidated him as being outside one's
usual sea experience; but he was quite intelligent
enough to realise almost from the first that he
was there in the presence of an exceptional situa-
tion. His peculiar prying imagination penetrated
it quickly; the feeling that there was in it an
element which eluded his grasp exasperated his
impatience to get on. And so one trip came to an
end, then another, and he had begun his third
before he saw an opening by which he could step
in with any sort of effect. It had all been very
queer and very obscure; something had been going
on near him, as if separated by a chasm from the
common life and the working routine of the ship,
which was exactly like the life and the routine of
any other coasting steamer of that class.


THE END OF THE TETHER.267
Then one day he made his discovery.
It came to him after all these weeks of watchful
observation and puzzled surmises, suddenly, like the
long-sought solution of a riddle that suggests itself
to the mind in a flash. Not with the same author-
ity, however. Great heavens! Could it be that?
And after remaining thunderstruck for a few sec-
onds he tried to shake it off with self-contumely,
as though it had been the product of an unhealthy
bias towards the Incredible, the Inexplicable, the
Unheard-of—the Mad!
This—the illuminating moment—had occurred the
trip before, on the return passage. They had just
left a place of call on the mainland called Pangu;
they were steaming straight out of a bay. To the
east a massive headland closed the view, with the
tilted edges of the rocky strata showing through
its ragged clothing of rank bushes and thorny
creepers. The wind had begun to sing in the
rigging; the sea along the coast, green and as if
swollen a little above the line of the horizon, seemed
to pour itself over, time after time, with a slow and
thundering fall, into the shadow of the leeward
cape; and across the wide opening the nearest of
a group of small islands stood enveloped in the
hazy yellow light of a breezy sunrise; still farther
out the hummocky tops of other islets peeped out
motionless above the water of the channels be-
tween, scoured tumultuously by the breeze.
The usual track of the Sofala both going and
returning on every trip led her for a few miles
along this reef - infested region. She followed a
broad lane of water, dropping astern, one after


268 THE END OF THE TETHER.
another, these crumbs of the earth's crust resem-
bling a squadron of dismasted hulks run in dis-
order upon a foul ground of rocks and shoals.
Some of these fragments of land appeared, indeed,
no bigger than a stranded ship; others, quite flat,
lay awash like anchored rafts, like ponderous, black
rafts of stone; several, heavily timbered and round
at the base, emerged in squat domes of deep green
foliage that shuddered darkly all over to the flying
touch of cloud shadows driven by the sudden gusts
of the squally season. The thunderstorms of the
coast broke frequently over that cluster; it turned
then shadowy in its whole extent; it turned more
dark, and as if more still in the play of fire; as
if more impenetrably silent in the peals of thunder;
its blurred shapes vanished—dissolving utterly at
times in the thick rain—to reappear clear-cut and
black in the stormy light against the grey sheet
of the cloud—scattered on the slaty round table
of the sea. Unscathed by storms, resisting the
work of years, unfretted by the strife of the
world, there it lay unchanged as on that day,
four hundred years ago, when first beheld by
Western eyes from the deck of a high - pooped
caravel.
It was one of these secluded spots that may be
found on the busy sea, as on land you come some-
times upon the clustered houses of a hamlet un-
touched by men's restlessness, untouched by their
need, by their thought, and as if forgotten by time
itself. The lives of uncounted generations had
passed it by, and the multitudes of seafowl, urg-
ing their way from all the points of the horizon


THE END OF THE TETHER. 269
to sleep on the outer rocks of the group, un-
rolled the converging evolutions of their flight in
long sombre streamers upon the glow of the sky.
The palpitating cloud of their wings soared and
stooped over the pinnacles of the rocks, over the
rocks slender like spires, squat like martello towers;
over the pyramidal heaps like fallen ruins, over
the lines of bald boulders showing like a wall of
stones battered to pieces and scorched by lightning
—with the sleepy, clear glimmer of water in every
breach. The noise of their continuous and violent
screaming filled the air.
This great noise would meet the Sofala coming
up from Batu Beru; it would meet her on quiet
evenings, a pitiless and savage clamour enfeebled
by distance, the clamour of seabirds settling to rest,
and struggling for a footing at the end of the day.
No one noticed it especially on board; it was the
voice of their ship's unerring landfall, ending the
steady stretch of a hundred miles. She had made
good her course, she had run her distance till the
punctual islets began to emerge one by one, the
points of rocks, the hummocks of earth . . . and
the cloud of birds hovered — the restless cloud
emitting a strident and cruel uproar, the sound
of the familiar scene, the living part of the broken
land beneath, of the outspread sea, and of the
high sky without a flaw.
But when the Sofala happened to close with the
land after sunset she would find everything very
still there under the mantle of the night. All would
be still, dumb, almost invisible—but for the blotting
out of the low constellations occulted in turns behind


270 THE END OF THE TETHER
the vague masses of the islets whose true outlines
eluded the eye amongst the dark spaces of the
heaven: and the ship's three lights, resembling
three stars—the red and the green with the white
above—her three lights, like three companion stars
wandering on the earth, held their unswerving
course for the passage at the southern end of the
group. Sometimes there were human eyes open
to watch them come nearer, travelling smoothly
in the sombre void; the eyes of a naked fisher-
man in his canoe floating over a reef. He thought
drowsily: "Ha! The fire-ship that once in every
moon goes in and comes out of Pangu bay." More
he did not know of her. And just as he had
detected the faint rhythm of the propeller beating
the calm water a mile and a half away, the time
would come for the Sofala to alter her course, the
lights would swing off him their triple beam—and
disappear.
A few miserable, half-naked families, a sort of
outcast tribe of long - haired, lean, and wild - eyed
people, strove for their living in this lonely wilder-
ness of islets, lying like an abandoned outwork of
the land at the gates of the bay. Within the
knots and loops of the rocks the water rested more
transparent than crystal under their crooked and
leaky canoes, scooped out of the trunk of a tree:
the forms of the bottom undulated slightly to the
dip of a paddle; and the men seemed to hang in
the air, they seemed to hang enclosed within the
fibres of a dark, sodden log, fishing patiently in a
strange, unsteady, pellucid, green air above the
shoals.


THE END OF THE TETHER. 271
Their bodies stalked brown and emaciated as if
dried up in the sunshine; their lives ran out silently;
the homes where they were born, went to rest, and
died—flimsy sheds of rushes and coarse grass eked
out with a few ragged mats — were hidden out of
sight from the open sea. No glow of their house-
hold fires ever kindled for a seaman a red spark
upon the blind night of the group: and the calms
of the coast, the flaming long calms of the equator,
the unbreathing, concentrated calms like the deep
introspection of a passionate nature, brooded awfully
for days and weeks together over the unchangeable
inheritance of their children; till at last the stones,
hot like live embers, scorched the naked sole, till the
water clung warm, and sickly, and as if thickened,
about the legs of lean men with girded loins, wading
thigh-deep in the pale blaze of the shallows. And
it would happen now and then that the Sofala,
through some delay in one of the ports of call,
would heave in sight making for Pangu bay as
late as noonday.
Only a blurring cloud at first, the thin mist of
her smoke would arise mysteriously from an empty
point on the clear line of sea and sky. The taciturn
fishermen within the reefs would extend their lean
arms towards the offing; and the brown figures
stooping on the tiny beaches, the brown figures
of men, women, and children grubbing in the sand
in search of turtles' eggs, would rise up, crooked
elbow aloft and hand over the eyes, to watch
this monthly apparition glide straight on, swerve
off—and go by. Their ears caught the panting
of that ship; their eyes followed her till she passed


272 THE END OF THE TETHER,
between the two capes of the mainland going at full
speed as though she hoped to make her way upchecked into the very bosom of the earth.
On such days the luminous sea would give no
sign of the dangers lurking on both sides of her
path. Everything remained still, crushed by the
overwhelming power of the light; and the whole
group, opaque in the sunshine, — the rooks resem-
bling pinnacles, the rocks resembling spires, the
rocks resembling ruins; the forms of islets re-
sembling beehives, resembling mole-hills; the islets
recalling the shapes of haystacks, the contours of
ivy-clad towers,—would stand reflected together
upside down in the unwrinkled water, like carved
toys of ebony disposed on the silvered plate-glass
of a mirror.
The first touch of blowing weather would envelop
the whole at once in the spume of the windward
breakers, as if in a sudden cloudlike burst of steam;
and the clear water seemed fairly to boil in all the
passages. The provoked sea outlined exactly in
a design of angry foam the wide base of the
group; the submerged level of broken waste and
refuse left over from the building of the coast
near by, projecting its dangerous spurs, all awash,
far into the channel, and bristling with wicked
long spits often a mile long: with deadly spits
made of froth and stones.
And even nothing more than a brisk breeze—as
on that morning, the voyage before, when the Sofala
left Pangu bay early, and Mr Sterne's discovery was
to blossom out like a flower of incredible and evil
aspect from the tiny seed of instinctive suspicion,—


274 THE END OF THE TETHER
with purpose and intolerable with perplexity. No
more idle, random thoughts; the discovery would
put them on the rack, till sometimes he wished to
goodness he had been fool enough not to make it at
all. And yet, if his chance to get on rested on the
discovery of "something wrong," he could not have
hoped for a greater stroke of luck.
The knowledge was too disturbing, really. There
was " something wrong" with a vengeance, and the
moral certitude of it was at first simply frightful
to contemplate. Sterne had been looking aft in a
mood so idle, that for once he was thinking no harm
of any one. His captain on the bridge presented
himself naturally to his sight. How insignificant,
how casual was the thought that had started the
train of discovery — like an accidental spark that
suffices to ignite the charge of a tremendous mine!
Caught under by the breeze, the awnings of the
foredeck bellied upwards and collapsed slowly, and
above their heavy flapping the grey stuff of Captain
Whalley's roomy coat fluttered incessantly around
his arms and trunk. He faced the wind in full
light, with his great silvery beard blown forcibly
against his chest; the eyebrows overhung heavily
the shadows whence his glance appeared to be star-
ing ahead piercingly. Sterne could just detect the
twin gleam of the whites shifting under the shaggy
arches of the brow. At short range these eyes, for


THE END OF THE TETHER 275
all the man's affable manner, seemed to look you
through and through. Sterne never could defend
himself from that feeling when he had occasion to
speak with his captain. He did not like it. What
a big heavy man he appeared up there, with that
little shrimp of a Serang in close attendance — as
was usual in this extraordinary steamer! Con-
founded absurd custom that. He resented it.
Surely the old fellow could have looked after his
ship without that loafing native at his elbow.
Sterne wriggled his shoulders with disgust. What
was it? Indolence or what?
That old skipper must have been growing lazy
for years. They all grew lazy out East here (Sterne
was very conscious of his own unimpaired activity);
they got slack all over. But he towered very erect
on the bridge; and quite low by his side, as you see
a small child looking over the edge of a table, the
battered soft hat and the brown face of the Serang
peeped over the white canvas screen of the rail.
No doubt the Malay was standing back, nearer
to the wheel; but the great disparity of size in close
association amused Sterne like the observation of a
bizarre fact in nature. There were as queer fish out
of the sea as any in it.
He saw Captain Whalley turn his head quickly to
speak to his Serang; the wind whipped the whole
white mass of the beard sideways. He would be
directing the chap to look at the compass for him,
or what not. Of course. Too much trouble to step
over and see for himself. Sterne's scorn for that
bodily indolence which overtakes white men in the
East increased on reflection. Some of them would


276 THE END OF THE TETHER.
be utterly lost if they hadn't all these natives at
their beck and call; they grew perfectly shameless
about it too. He was not of that sort, thank God!
It wasn't in him to make himself dependent for his
work on any shrivelled - up little Malay like that.
As if one could ever trust a silly native for anything
in the world! But that fine old man thought
differently, it seems. There they were together,
never far apart; a pair of them, recalling to the
mind an old whale attended by a little pilot - fish.
The fancifulness of the comparison made him
smile. A whale with an inseparable pilot-fish!
That's what the old man looked like; for it could
not be said he looked like a shark, though Mr Massy
had called him that very name. But Mr Massy did
not mind what he said in his savage fits. Sterne
smiled to himself—and gradually the ideas evoked
by the sound, by the imagined shape of the word
pilot-fish; the ideas of aid, of guidance needed and
received, came uppermost in his mind: the word
pilot awakened the idea of trust, of dependence, the
idea of the welcome, clear-eyed help brought to the
seaman groping for the land in the dark: groping
blindly in fogs: feeling their way in the thick
weather of the gales that, filling the air with a salt
mist blown up from the sea, contract the range of
sight on all sides to a shrunken horizon that seems
within reach of the hand.
A pilot sees better than a stranger, because his
local knowledge, like a sharper vision, completes the
shapes of things hurriedly glimpsed; penetrates the
veils of mist spread over the land by the storms of
the sea; defines with certitude the outlines of a


THE END OF THE TETHER. 277
coast lying under the pall fog, the forms of land-
marks half buried in a starless night as in a shallow
grave. He recognises because he already knows.
It is not to his far-reaching eye but to his more
extensive knowledge that the pilot looks for certi-
tude; for this certitude of the ship's position on
which may depend a man's good fame and the peace
of his conscience, the justification of the trust de-
posited in his hands, with his own life too, which
is seldom wholly his to throw away, and the humble
lives of others rooted in distant affections, perhaps,
and made as weighty as the lives of kings by the
burden of the awaiting mystery. The pilot's know-
ledge brings relief and certitude to the commander
of a ship; the Serang, however, in hip, fanciful sug-
gestion of a pilot-fish attending a whale, could not
in any way be credited with a superior knowledge.
Why should he have it? These two men had come
on that run together—the white and the brown—on
the same day: and of course a white man would
learn more in a week than the best native would in
a month. He was made to stick to the skipper as
though he were of some use—as the pilot-fish, they
say, is to the whale. But how—it was very marked
—how? A pilot-fish—a pilot — a . . . But if not
superior knowledge then . . .
Sterne's discovery was made. It was repugnant
to his imagination, shocking to his ideas of honesty,
shocking to his conception of mankind. This errormity affected one's outlook on what was possible in
this world: it was as if for instance the sun had
turned blue, throwing a new and sinister light on
men and nature. Really in the first moment he had


278 THE END OF THE TETHER.
felt sickish, as though he had got a blow below the
belt: for a second the very colour of the sea seemed
changed — appeared queer to his wandering eye;
and he had a passing, unsteady sensation in all his
limbs as though the earth had started turning the
other way.
A very natural incredulity succeeding this sense
of upheaval brought a measure of relief. He had
gasped; it was over. But afterwards during all
that day sudden paroxysms of wonder would come
over him in the midst of his occupations. He would
stop and shake his head. The revolt of his in-
credulity had passed away almost as quick as the
first emotion of discovery, and for the next twenty-
four hours he had no sleep. That would never do.
At meal-times (he took the foot of the table set up
for the white men on the bridge) he could not help
losing himself in a fascinated contemplation of
Captain Whalley opposite. He watched the delib-
erate upward movements of the arm; the old man
put his food to his lips as though he never expected
to find any taste in his daily bread, as though he
did not know anything about it . He fed himself
like a somnambulist. "It's an awful sight," thought
Sterne; and he watched the long period of mourn-
ful, silent immobility, with a big brown hand lying
loosely closed by the side of the plate, till he noticed
the two engineers to the right and left looking at
him in astonishment. He would close his mouth in
a hurry then, and lowering his eyes, wink rapidly at
his plate. It was awful to see the old chap sitting
there; it was even awful to think that with three
words he could blow him up sky-high. All he had


280 THE END OF THE TETHER.
afraid to disturb the very air: every familiar ges-
ture, every word uttered in his hearing, every sigh
overheard, had acquired a special significance, a con-
firmatory import.
Every day that passed over the Sofala appeared
to Sterne simply crammed full with proofs — with
incontrovertible proofs. At night, when off duty,
he would steal out of his cabin in pyjamas (for more
proofs) and stand a full hour, perhaps, on his bare
feet below the bridge, as absolutely motionless as the
awning stanchion in its deck socket near by. On
the stretches of easy navigation it is not usual for a
coasting captain to remain on deck all the time of
his watch. The Serang keeps it for him as a matter
of custom; in open water, on a straight course, he
is usually trusted to look after the ship by himself.
But this old man seemed incapable of remaining
quietly down below. No doubt he could not sleep.
And no wonder. This was also a proof. Suddenly
in the silence of the ship panting upon the still, dark
sea, Sterne would hear a low voice above him ex-
claiming nervously—
"Serang!"
"Tuan!"
"You are watching the compass well?"
"Yes, I am watching, Tuan."
"The ship is making her course?"
"She is, Tuan. Very straight."
"It is well; and remember, Serang, that the order
is that you are to mind the helmsmen and keep a
look-out with care, the same as if I were not on
deck."
Then, when the Serang had made his answer, the


THE END OF THE TETHER 281
low tones on the bridge would cease, and everything
round Sterne seemed to become more still and more
profoundly silent. Slightly chilled and with his back
aching a little from long immobility, he would steal
away to his room on the port side of the deck. He
had long since parted with the last vestige of in-
credulity; of the original emotions, set into a tumult
by the discovery, some trace of the first awe alone
remained. Not the awe of the man himself—he
could blow him up sky-high with six words—rather
it was an awestruck indignation at the reckless per-
versity of avarice (what else could it be?), at the
mad and sombre resolution that for the sake of a
few dollars more seemed to set at nought the com-
mon rule of conscience and pretended to struggle
against the very decree of Providence.
You could not find another man like this one in
the whole round world—thank God. There was
something devilishly dauntless in the character of
such a deception which made you pause.
Other considerations occurring to his prudence
had kept him tongue - tied from day to day. It
seemed to him now that it would yet have been
easier to speak out in the first hour of discovery.
He almost regretted not having made a row at
once. But then the very monstrosity of the dis-
closure . . . Why! He could hardly face it him-
self, let alone, pointing it out to somebody else.
Moreover, with a desperado of that sort one never
knew. The object was not to get him out (that
was as well as done already), but to step into his
place. Bizarre as the thought seemed he might
have shown fight. A fellow up to working such


282 THE END OF THE TETHER.
a fraud would have enough cheek for anything;
a fellow that, as it were, stood up against God
Almighty Himself. He was a horrid marvel—that's
what he was: he was perfectly capable of brazening
out the affair scandalously till he got him (Sterne)
kicked out of the ship and everlastingly damaged his
prospects in this part of the East. Yet if you want
to get on something must be risked. At times
Sterne thought he had been unduly timid of taking
action in the past; and what was worse, it had
come to this, that in the present he did not seem
to know what action to take.
Massy's savage moroseness was too disconcerting.
It was an incalculable factor of the situation. You
could not tell what there was behind that insulting
ferocity. How could one trust such a temper; it
did not put Sterne in bodily fear for himself, but
it frightened him exceedingly as to his prospects.
Though of course inclined to credit himself with
exceptional powers of observation, he had by now
lived too long with his discovery. He had gone
on looking at nothing else, till at last one day it
occurred to him that the thing was so obvious that
no one could miss seeing it. There were four white
men in all on board the Sofala. Jack, the second
engineer, was too dull to notice anything that took
place out of his engine-room. Remained Massy—
the owner — the interested person — nearly going
mad with worry. Sterne had heard and seen more
than enough on board to know what ailed him;
but his exasperation seemed to make him deaf to
cautious overtures. If he had only known it, there
was the very thing he wanted. But how could you


284 THE END OF THE TETHER.
in this part of the world; inexplicably enough, for
he had done nothing to them. Envy, he supposed.
People were always down on a clever chap who
made no bones about his determination to get on.
To do your duty and count on the gratitude of that
brute Massy would be sheer folly. He was a bad
lot. Unmanly! A vicious man! Bad! Bad! A
brute! A brute without a spark of anything
human about him; without so much as simple
curiosity even, or else surely he would have re-
sponded in some way to all these hints he had been
given. . . . Such insensibility was almost mys-
terious. Massy's state of exasperation seemed to
Sterne to have made him stupid beyond the
ordinary silliness of shipowners.
Sterne, meditating on the embarrassments of that
stupidity, forgot himself completely. His stony, un-
winking stare was fixed on the planks of the deck.
The slight quiver agitating the whole fabric of
the ship was more perceptible in the silent river,
shaded and still like a forest path. The Sofala,
gliding with an even motion, had passed beyond the
coast-belt of mud and mangroves. The shores rose
higher, in firm sloping banks, and the forest of big
trees came down to the brink. Where the earth
had been crumbled by the floods it showed a steep
brown out, denuding a mass of roots intertwined
as if wrestling underground; and in the air, the
interlaced boughs, bound and loaded with creepers,
carried on the struggle for life, mingled their foliage
in one solid wall of leaves, with here and there the
shape of an enormous dark pillar soaring, or a
ragged opening, as if torn by the flight of the cannon-


286 THE END OF THE TETHER.
their bronze shoulders, squatted on their hams on
the hatch, chewing betel with bright red mouths
as if they had been tasting blood. Their spears,
lying piled up together within the circle of their
bare toes, resembled a casual bundle of dry bam-
boos; a thin, livid Chinaman, with a bulky package
wrapped up in leaves already thrust under his arm,
gazed ahead eagerly; a wandering Kling rubbed his
teeth with a bit of wood, pouring over the side a
bright stream of water out of his lips; the fat Rajah
dozed in a shabby deck-chair,—and at the turn of
every bend the two walls of leaves reappeared run-
ning parallel along the banks, with their impene-
trable solidity fading at the top to a vapourous
mistiness of countless slender twigs growing free, of
young delicate branches shooting from the topmost
limbs of hoary trunks, of feathery heads of climbers
like delicate silver sprays standing up without a
quiver. There was not a sign of a clearing any-
where; not a trace of human habitation, except
when in one place, on the bare end of a low point
under an isolated group of slender tree-ferns, the
jagged, tangled remnants of an old hut on piles
appeared with that peculiar aspect of ruined bam-
boo walls that look as if smashed with a club.
Farther on, half hidden under the drooping bushes,
a canoe containing a man and a woman together
with a dozen green cocoanuts in a heap, rocked
helplessly after the Sofala had passed, like a navi-
gating contrivance of venturesome insects, of travel-
ling ants ; while two glassy folds of water stream-
ing away from each bow of the steamer across the
whole width of the river ran with her up stream


THE END OF THE TETHER. 287
smoothly, fretting their outer ends into a brown
whispering tumble of froth against the miry foot
of each bank.
"I must," thought Sterne, "bring that brute
Massy to his bearings. It's getting too absurd in
the end. Here's the old man up there buried in his
chair—he may just as well be in his grave for all
the use he'll ever be in the world—and the Serang's
in charge. Because that's what he is. In charge.
In the place that's mine by rights. I must bring
that savage brute to his bearings. I'll do it at
once, too . . ."
When the mate made an abrupt start, a little
brown half-naked boy, with large black eyes, and
the string of a written charm round his neck, be-
came panic-struck at once. He dropped the banana
he had been munching, and ran to the knee of a
grave dark Arab in flowing robes, sitting like a
Biblical figure, incongruously, on a yellow tin trunk
corded with a rope of twisted rattan. The father,
unmoved, put out his hand to pat the little shaven
poll protectingly.
XL
Sterne crossed the deck upon the track of the
chief engineer. Jack, the second, retreating back-
wards down the engine-room ladder, and still wiping
his hands, treated him to an incomprehensible grin
of white teeth out of his grimy hard face; Massy
was nowhere to be seen. He must have gone
straight into his berth. Sterne scratched at the


THE END OF THE TETHER. 289
hermetically closed, and so was the lid of the writ-
ing-desk, which protruded from the partition at the
foot of the bed-place, containing a mattress as thin
as a pancake under a threadbare blanket with a
faded red stripe, and a folded mosquito-net against
the nights spent in harbour. There was not a scrap
of paper anywhere in sight, no boots on the floor,
no litter of any sort, not a speck of dust anywhere;
no traces of pipe-ash even, which, in a heavy smoker,
was morally revolting, like a manifestation of ex-
treme hypocrisy; and the bottom of the old wooden
arm-chair (the only seat there), polished with much
use, shone as if its shabbiness had been waxed. The
screen of leaves on the bank, passing as if unrolled
endlessly in the round opening of the port, sent
a wavering network of light and shade into the
place.
Sterne, holding the door open with one hand, had
thrust in his head and shoulders. At this amazing
intrusion Massy, who was doing absolutely nothing,
jumped up speechless.
"Don't call names," murmured Sterne hurriedly.
"I won't be called names. I think of nothing but
your good, Mr Massy."
A pause as of extreme astonishment followed.
They both seemed to have lost their tongues. Then
the mate went on with a discreet glibness.
"You simply couldn't conceive what's going on
on board your ship. It wouldn't enter your head
for a moment. You are too good—too-- too upright,
Mr Massy, to suspect anybody of such a . . . It's
enough to make your hair stand on end."
He watched for the effect: Massy seemed dazed,
I 


290 THE END OF THE TETHER
uncomprehending. He only passed the palm of his
hand on the coal-black wisps plastered across the
top of his head. In a tone suddenly changed to
confidential audacity Sterne hastened on.
"Remember that there's only six weeks left to
run . . ." The other was looking at him stonily
. . . "so anyhow you shall require a captain for
the ship before long."
Then only, as if that suggestion had scarified his
flesh in the manner of red-hot iron, Massy gave a
start and seemed ready to shriek. He contained
himself by a great effort.
"Require—a—captain," he repeated with scath-
ing slowness. "Who requires a captain? You dare
to tell me that I need any of you humbugging
sailors to run my ship. You and your likes have
been fattening on me for years. It would have
hurt me less to throw my money overboard. Pam
— pe—red us — e — less ffffrauds. The old ship
knows as much as the best of you." He snapped
his teeth audibly and growled through them. "The
silly law requires a captain."
Sterne had taken heart of grace meantime.
"And the silly insurance people too, as well," he
said lightly. "But never mind that. What I want
to ask is: Why shouldn't I do, sir? I don't say
but you could take a steamer about the world as
well as any of us sailors. I don't pretend to tell
you that it is a very great trick . . ." He emitted
a short, hollow guffaw, familiarly ... "I didn't
make the law—but there it is; and I am an active
young fellow; I quite hold with your ideas; I know
your ways by this time, Mr Massy. I wouldn't try


THE END OF THE TETHER. 291
to give myself airs like that—that—er—lazy speci-
men of an old man up there."
He put a marked emphasis on the last sentence,
to lead Massy away from the track in case . . .
but he did not doubt of now holding his success.
The chief engineer seemed nonplussed, like a slow
man invited to catch hold of a whirligig of some
sort.
"What you want, sir, is a chap with no non-
sense about him, who would be content to be your
sailing-master. Quite right, too. Well, I am fit for
the work as much as that Serang. Because that's
what it amounts to. Do you know, sir, that a dam'
Malay like a monkey is in charge of your ship—
and no one else. Just listen to his feet pit-patting
above us on the bridge—real officer in charge. He's
taking her up the river while the great man is
wallowing in the chair—perhaps asleep; and if he
is, that would not make it much worse either—
take my word for it."
He tried to thrust himself farther in. Massy, with
lowered forehead, one hand grasping the back of the
arm-chair, did not budge.
"You think, sir, that the man has got you tight
in his agreement . . ." Massy raised a heavy snar-
ling face at this ..." Well, sir, one can't help
hearing of it on board, it's no secret. And it has
been the talk on shore for years; fellows have been
making bets about it. No, sir! It's you who have
got him at your mercy. You will say that you
can't dismiss him for indolence. Difficult to prove
in court, and so on. Why, yes. But if you say
the word, sir, I can tell you something about his


292 THE END OF THE TETHER.
indolence that will give you the clear right to fire
him out on the spot and put me in charge for the
rest of this very trip—yes, sir, before we leave Batu
Beru—and make him pay a dollar a day for his keep
till we get back, if you like. Now, what do you
think of that? Come, sir. Say the word. It's
really well worth your while, and I am quite ready
to take your bare word. A definite statement from
you would be as good as a bond."
His eyes began to shine. He insisted. A simple
statement,—and he thought to himself that he would
manage somehow to stick in his berth as long as
it suited him. He would make himself indispens-
able; the ship had a bad name in her port; it
would be easy to scare the fellows off. Massy would
have to keep him.
"A definite statement from me would be enough,"
Massy repeated slowly.
"Yes, sir. It would." Sterne stuck out his chin
cheerily and blinked at close quarters with that un-
oonscious impudence which had the power to enrage
Massy beyond anything.
The engineer spoke very distinctly.
"Listen well to me, then, Mr Sterne: I wouldn't
—d'ye hear ?—I wouldn't promise you the value of
two pence for anything you can tell me."
He struck Sterne's arm away with a smart blow,
and catching hold of the handle pulled the door to.
The terrific slam darkened the cabin instantaneously
to his eyes as if after the flash of an explosion. At
once he dropped into the chair. "Oh no! You
don't!" he whispered faintly.
The ship had in that place to shave the bank so


THE END OF THE TETHER. 293
close that the gigantic wall of leaves came gliding
like a shutter against the port; the darkness of the
primeval forest seemed to flow into that bare cabin
with the odour of rotting leaves of sodden soil—
the strong muddy smell of the living earth steam-
ing uncovered after the passing of a deluge. The
bushes swished loudly alongside; above there was
a series of crackling sounds, with a sharp rain of
small broken branches falling on the bridge; a
creeper with a great rustle snapped on the head
of a boat davit, and a long, luxuriant green twig
actually whipped in and out of the open port,
leaving behind a few torn leaves that remained
suddenly at rest on Mr Massy's blanket. Then,
the ship sheering out in the stream, the light
began to return but did not augment beyond a
subdued clearness: for the sun was very low
already, and the river, wending its sinuous course
through a multitude of secular trees as if at the
bottom of a precipitous gorge, had been already
invaded by a deepening gloom — the swift pre-
cursor of the night.
"Oh no, you don't!" murmured the engineer
again. His lips trembled almost imperceptibly;
his hands too, a little: and to calm himself he
opened the writing-desk, spread out a sheet of
thin greyish paper covered with a mass of printed
figures and began to scan them attentively for the
twentieth time this trip at least.
With his elbows propped, his head between his
hands, he seemed to lose himself in the study of an
abstruse problem in mathematics. It was the list
of the winning numbers from the last drawing of


294 THE END OF THE TETHER
the great lottery which had been the one inspiring
fact of so many years of his existence. The concep-
tion of a life deprived of that periodical sheet of
paper had slipped away from him entirely, as an-
other man, according to his nature, would not have
been able to conceive a world without fresh air,
without activity, or without affection. A great pile
of flimsy sheets had been growing for years in his
desk, while the Sofala, driven by the faithful Jack,
wore out her boilers in tramping up and down the
Straits, from cape to cape, from river to river, from
bay to bay; accumulating by that hard labour of
an overworked, starved ship the blackened mass of
these documents. Massy kept them under lock and
key like a treasure. There was in them, as in the
experience of life, the fascination of hope, the excite-
ment of a half-penetrated mystery, the longing of a
half-satisfied desire.
For days together, on a trip, he would shut him-
self up in his berth with them: the thump of the
toiling engines pulsated in his ear; and he would
weary his brain poring over the rows of discon-
nected figures, bewildering by their senseless sequence,
resembling the hazards of destiny itself. He nour-
ished a conviction that there must be some logic
lurking somewhere in the results of chance. He
thought he had seen its very form. His head swam;
his limbs ached; he puffed at his pipe mechanically;
a contemplative stupor would soothe the fretfulness
of his temper, like the passive bodily quietude pro-
cured by a drug, while the intellect remains tensely
on the stretch. Nine, nine, ought, four, two. He
made a note. The next winning number of the


THE END OF THE TETHER. 295
great prize was forty - seven thousand and five.
These numbers of course would have to be avoided
in the future when writing to Manilla for the
tickets. He mumbled, pencil in hand . . . "and
five. Hm . . . hm." He wetted his finger: the
papers rustled. Ha! But what's this? Three years
ago, in the September drawing, it was number
nine, ought, four, two that took the first prize.
Most remarkable. There was a hint there of a
definite rule! He was afraid of missing some re-
condite principle in the overwhelming wealth of his
material. What could it be? and for half an hour
he would remain dead still, bent low over the desk,
without twitching a muscle. At his back the whole
berth would be thick with a heavy body of smoke,
as if a bomb had burst in there, unnoticed, unheard.
At last he would look up the desk with the de-
cision of unshaken confidence, jump up and go out.
He would walk swiftly back and forth on that part
of the foredeck which was kept clear of the lumber
and of the bodies of the native passengers. They
were a great nuisance, but they were also a source of
profit that could not be disdained. He needed every
penny of profit the Sofala could make. Little enough
it was, in all conscience! The incertitude of chance
gave him no concern, since he had somehow arrived
at the conviction that, in the course of years, every
number was bound to have his winning turn. It
was simply a matter of time and of taking as many
tickets as he could afford for every drawing. He
generally took rather more; all the earnings of the
ship went that way, and also the wages he allowed
himself as chief engineer. It was the wages he paid


296 THE END OS" THE TETHER.
to others that he begrudged with a reasoned and at
the same time a passionate regret. He scowled at
the lascars with their deck brooms, at the quarter-
masters rubbing the brass rails with greasy rags;
he was eager to shake his fist and roar abuse in bad
Malay at the poor carpenter—a timid, sickly, opium-
fuddled Chinaman, in loose blue drawers for all cos-
tume, who invariably dropped his tools and fled
below, with streaming tail and shaking all over,
before the fury of that "devil." But it was when
he raised up his eyes to the bridge where one of
these sailor frauds was always planted by law in
charge of his ship that he felt almost dizzy with rage.
He abominated them all; it was an old feud, from
the time he first went to sea, an unlicked cub with
a great opinion of himself, in the engine-room. The
slights that had been put upon him. The persecu-
tions he had suffered at the hands of skippers—of
absolute nobodies in a steamship after all. And
now that he had risen to be a shipowner they were
still a plague to him: he had absolutely to pay
away precious money to the conceited useless loaf-
ers :—As if a fully qualified engineer—who was the
owner as well—were not fit to be trusted with the
whole charge of a ship. Well! he made it pretty
warm for them; but it was a poor consolation.
He had come in time to hate the ship too for the
repairs she required, for the coal-bills he had to
pay, for the poor beggarly freights she earned. He
would clench his hand as he walked and hit the
rail a sudden blow, viciously, as though she could
be made to feel pain. And yet he could not do
without her; he needed her; he must hang on to


THE END OF THE TETHER. 297
her tooth and nail to keep his head above water till
the expected flood of fortune came sweeping up and
landed him safely on the high shore of his ambition.
It was now to do nothing, nothing whatever, and
have plenty of money to do it on. He had tasted
of power, the highest form of it his limited experi-
ence was aware of—the power of shipowning. What
a deception! Vanity of vanities! He wondered at
his folly. He had thrown away the substance for
the shadow. Of the gratification of wealth he did
not know enough to excite his imagination with
any visions of luxury. How could he—the child
of a drunken boiler-maker—going straight from the
workshop into the engine-room of a north country
collier! But the notion of the absolute idleness of
wealth he could very well conceive. He revelled in
it, to forget his present troubles; he imagined him-
self walking about the streets of Hull (he knew their
gutters well as a boy) with his pockets full of sov-
ereigns. He would buy himself a house; his married
sisters, their husbands, his old workshop chums,
would render him infinite homage. There would
be nothing to think of. His word would be law.
He had been out of work for a long time before he
won his prize, and he remembered how Carlo Mariani
(commonly known as Paunchy Charley), the Maltese
hotel-keeper at the slummy end of Denham Street,
had cringed joyfully before him in the evening, when
the news had come. Poor Charley, though he made
his living by ministering to various abject vices,
gave credit for their food to many a piece of white
wreckage. He was naively overjoyed at the idea of
his old bills being paid, and he reckoned confidently


298 THE END OF THE TETHER.
on a spell of festivities in the cavernous grog-shop
downstairs. Massy remembered the curious, respect-
ful looks of the "trashy" white men in the place.
His heart had swelled within him. Massy had left
Charley's infamous den directly he had realised the
possibilities open to him, and with his nose in the
air. Afterwards the memory of these adulations
was a great sadness.
This was the true power of money, — and no
trouble with it, nor any thinking required either.
He thought with difficulty and felt vividly; to his
blunt brain the problems offered by any ordered
scheme of life seemed in their cruel toughness to
have been put in his way by the obvious malevolence
of men. As a shipowner every one had conspired
to make him a nobody. How could he have been
such a fool as to purchase that accursed ship. He
had been abominably swindled; there was no end
to this swindling; and as the difficulties of his im-
provident ambition gathered thicker round him, he
really came to hate everybody he had ever come in
contact with. A temper naturally irritable and an
amazing sensitiveness to the claims of his own per-
sonality had ended by making of life for him a sort
of inferno—a place where his lost soul had been
given up to the torment of savage brooding.
But he had never hated any one so much as that
old man who had turned up one evening to save him
from an utter disaster,—from the conspiracy of the
wretched sailors. He seemed to have fallen on board
from the sky. His footsteps echoed on the empty
steamer, and the strange deep-toned voice on deck
repeating interrogatively the words, "Mr Massy, Mr


300 THE END OF THE TETHER.
without being called upon at once to pay back his
share. Captain Whalley's efforts were directed to
making the money secure. Was it not Ivy's money
—a part of her fortune whose only other asset was
the time-defying body of her old father? Sure of
his forbearance in the strength of his love for her,
he accepted, with stately serenity, Massy's stupidly
cunning paragraphs against his incompetence, his
dishonesty, his drunkenness, for the sake of other
stringent stipulations. At the end of three years
he was at liberty to withdraw from the partnership,
taking his money with him. Provision was made
for forming a fund to pay him off. But if he left
the Sofala before the term, from whatever cause
(barring death), Massy was to have a whole year
for paying. "Illness?" the lawyer had suggested:
a young man fresh from Europe and not over-
burdened with business, who was rather amused.
Massy began to whine unctuously, "How could he
be expected? . . ."
"Let that go," Captain Whalley had said with a
superb confidence in his body. "Acts of God," he
added. In the midst of life we are in death, but
he trusted his Maker with a still greater fearless-
ness—his Maker who knew his thoughts, his human
affections, and his motives. His Creator knew what
use he was making of his health—how much he
wanted it . . . "I trust my first illness will be my
last. I've never been ill that I can remember," he
had remarked. "Let it go."
But at this early stage he had already awakened
Massy's hostility by refusing to make it six hundred
instead of five. "I cannot do that," was all he had


THE END OF THE TETHER. 301
said, simply, but with so much decision that Massy
desisted at once from pressing the point, but had
thought to himself, "Can't! Old curmudgeon.
Won't! He must have lots of money, but he
would like to get hold of a soft berth and the
sixth part of my profits for nothing if he only
could."
And during these years Massy's dislike grew
under the restraint of something resembling fear.
The simplicity of that man appeared dangerous.
Of late he had changed, however, had appeared
less formidable and with a lessened vigour of life,
as though he had received a secret wound. But
still he remained incomprehensible in his simplicity,
fearlessness, and rectitude. And when Massy learned
that he meant to leave him at the end of the time, to
leave him confronted with the problem of the boilers,
his dislike blazed up secretly into hate.
It had made him so clear-eyed that for a long
time now Mr Sterne could have told him nothing
he did not know. He had much ado in trying to
terrorise that mean sneak into silence; he wanted
to deal alone with the situation; and—incredible
as it might have appeared to Mr Sterne—he had
not yet given up the desire and the hope of in-
ducing that hated old man to stay. Why! there
was nothing else to do, unless he were to abandon
his chances of fortune. But now, suddenly, since
the crossing of the bar at Batu Beru things seemed
to be coming rapidly to a point. It disquieted him
so much that the study of the winning numbers
failed to soothe his agitation: and the twilight in
the cabin deepened, very sombre.


302 THE END OF THE TETHER
He put the list away, muttering once more, "Oh
no, my boy, you don't. Not if I know it." He did
not mean the blinking, eavesdropping humbug to
force his action. He took his head again into his
hands; his immobility confined in the darkness of
this shut-up little place seemed to make him a
thing apart infinitely removed from the stir and
the sounds of the deck.
He heard them: the passengers were beginning
to jabber excitedly; somebody dragged a heavy box
past his door. He heard Captain Whalley's voice
above—
"Stations, Mr Sterne." And the answer from
somewhere on deck forward—
"Ay, ay, sir."
"We shall moor head up stream this time; the
ebb has made."
"Head up stream, sir."
"You will see to it, Mr Sterne."
The answer was covered by the autocratic clang
of the engine-room gong. The propeller went on
beating slowly: one, two, three; one, two, three—
with pauses as if hesitating on the turn. The gong
clanged time after time, and the water churned this
way and that by the blades was making a great
noisy commotion alongside. Mr Massy did not
move. A shore-light on the other bank, a quarter
of a mile across the river, drifted, no bigger than
a tiny star, passing slowly athwart the circle
of the port. Voices from Mr Van Wyk's jetty
answered the hails from the ship; ropes were
thrown and missed and thrown again; the sway-
ing flame of a torch carried in a large sampan


THE END OF THE TETHER. 303
coming to fetch away in state the Rajah from
down the coast cast a sudden ruddy glare into his
cabin, over his very person. Mr Massy did not
move. After a few last ponderous turns the
engines stopped, and the prolonged clanging of
the gong signified that the captain had done with
them. A great number of boats and canoes of
all sizes boarded the off-side of the Sofala. Then
after a time the tumult of splashing, of cries, of
shuffling feet, of packages dropped with a thump,
the noise of the native passengers going away, sub-
sided slowly. On the shore, a voice, cultivated,
slightly authoritative, spoke very close alongside—
"Brought any mail for me this time?"
"Yes, Mr Van Wyk." This was from Sterne,
answering over the rail in a tone of respectful
cordiality. "Shall I bring it up to you?"
But the voice asked again—
"Where's the captain?"
"Still on the bridge, I believe. He hasn't left
his chair. Shall I . . ."
The voice interrupted negligently.
"I will come on board."
"Mr Van Wyk," Sterne suddenly broke out with
an eager effort, "will you do me the favour . . ."
The mate walked away quickly towards the gang-
way. A silence fell. Mr Massy in the dark did not
move.
He did not move even when he heard slow shuf-
fling footsteps pass his cabin lazily. He contented
himself to bellow out through the closed door—
"You—Jack!"
The footsteps came back without haste; the door-


304 THE END OF THE TETHER
handle rattled, and the second engineer appeared in
the opening, shadowy in the sheen of the skylight
at his back, with his face apparently as black as
the rest of his figure.
"We have been very long coming up this time,"
Mr Massy growled, without changing his attitude.
"What do you expect with half the boiler tubes
plugged up for leaks." The second defended him-
self loquaciously.
"None of your lip," said Massy.
"None of your rotten boilers—I say," retorted
his faithful subordinate without animation, huskily.
"Go down there and carry a head of steam on them
yourself—if you dare. I don't."
"You aren't worth your salt then," Massy said.
The other made a faint noise which resembled a
laugh but might have been a snarl.
"Better go slow than stop the ship altogether,"
he admonished his admired superior. Mr Massy
moved at last. He turned in his chair, and grind-
ing his teeth—
"Dam' you and the ship! I wish she were at the
bottom of the sea. Then you would have to starve."
The trusty second engineer closed the door gently.
Massy listened. Instead of passing on to the
bathroom where he should have gone to clean him-
self, the second entered his cabin, which was next
door. Mr Massy jumped up and waited. Suddenly
he heard the lock snap in there. He rushed out
and gave a violent kick to the door.
"I believe you are locking yourself up to get
drunk," he shouted.
A muffled answer came after a while.


THE END OF THE TETHER. 305
"My own time."
"If you take to boozing on the trip I'll fire you
out," Massy cried.
An obstinate silence followed that threat. Massy
moved away perplexed. On the bank two figures
appeared, approaching the gangway. He heard a
voice tinged with contempt—
"Iwould rather doubt your word. But I shall
certainly speak to him of this."
The other voice, Sterne's, said with a sort of
regretful formality—
"Thanks. That's all I want. I must do my
duty."
Mr Massy was surprised. A short, dapper figure
leaped lightly on the deck and nearly bounded into
him where he stood beyond the circle of light from
the gangway lamp. When it had passed towards
the bridge, after exchanging a hurried "Good eve-
ning," Massy said surlily to Sterne who followed
with slow steps—
"What is it you're making up to Mr Van Wyk
for, now?"
"Far from it, Mr Massy. I am not good enough
for Mr Van Wyk. Neither are you, sir, in his
opinion, I am afraid, Captain Whalley is, it seems.
He's gone to ask him to dine up at the house this
evening."
Then he murmured to himself darkly—
"I hope he will like it."


306 THE END OF THE TETHER.
XIL
Mr Van Wyk, the white man of Batu Beru,
an ex-naval officer who, for reasons best known
to himself, had thrown away the promise of a
brilliant career to become the pioneer of tobacco-
planting on that remote part of the coast, had
learned to like Captain Whalley. The appearance
of the new skipper had attracted his attention.
Nothing more unlike all the diverse types he had
seen succeeding each other on the bridge of the
Sofala could be imagined.
At that time Batu Beru was not what it has
become since: the centre of a prosperous tobacco-
growing district, a tropically suburban-looking little
settlement of bungalows in one long street shaded
with two rows of trees, embowered by the flower-
ing and trim luxuriance of the gardens, with a
three - mile - long carriage - road for the afternoon
drives and a first-class Resident with a fat, cheery
wife to lead the society of married estate-managers
and unmarried young fellows in the service of the
big companies.
All this prosperity was not yet; and Mr Van
Wyk prospered alone on the left bank on his deep
clearing carved out of the forest, which came down
above and below to the water's edge. His lonely
bungalow faced across the river the houses of the
Sultan: a restless and melancholy old ruler who
had done with love and war, for whom life no
longer held any savour (except of evil forebodings)


308 THE END OF THE TETHER.
Whether it was fortune or seclusion from his
kind that Mr Van Wyk sought, he could not have
pitched upon a better place. Even the mail-boats
of the subsidised company calling on the veriest
clusters of palm-thatched hovels along the coast
steamed past the mouth of Batu Beru river far
away in the offing. The contract was old: perhaps
in a few years' time, when it had expired, Batu
Beru would be included in the service; meantime
all Mr Van Wyk's mail was addressed to Malacca,
whence his agent sent it across once a-month by
the Sofala. It followed that whenever Massy had
run short of money (through taking too many
lottery tickets), or got into a difficulty about a
skipper, Mr Van Wyk was deprived of his letters
and newspapers. In so far he had a personal in-
terest in the fortunes of the Sofala. Though he
considered himself a hermit (and for no passing
whim evidently, since he had stood eight years of
it already), he liked to know what went on in the
world.
Handy on the verandah upon a walnut étagère
(it had come last year by the Sofala—everything
came by the Sofala) there lay, piled up under
bronze weights, a pile of the 'Times'' weekly
edition, the large sheets of the 'Rotterdam Cour-
ant,' the 'Graphic' in its world-wide green wrap-
pers, an illustrated Dutch publication without a
cover, the numbers of a German magazine with
covers of the "Bismark malade" colour. There
were also parcels of new music—though the piano
(it had come years ago by the Sofala) in the damp
atmosphere of the forests was generally out of


THE END OF THE TETHER. 309
tune. It was vexing to be cut off from every-
thing for sixty days at a stretch sometimes, with-
out any means of knowing what was the matter.
And when the Sofala reappeared Mr Van Wyk
would descend the steps of the verandah and stroll
over the grass plot in front of his house, down
to the water-side, with a frown on his white brow.
"You've been laid up after an accident, I
presume."
He addressed the bridge, but before anybody could
answer Massy was sure to have already scrambled
ashore over the rail and pushed in, squeezing the
palms of his hands together, bowing his sleek head
as if gummed all over the top with black threads
and tapes. And he would be so enraged at the
necessity of having to offer such an explanation
that his moaning would be positively pitiful, while
all the time he tried to compose his big lips into
a smile.
"No, Mr Van Wyk . You would not believe it.
I couldn't get one of those wretches to take the
ship out. Not a single one of the lazy beasts
could be induced, and the law, you know, Mr Van
Wyk ..."
He moaned at great length apologetically; the
words conspiracy, plot, envy, came out prominently,
whined with greater energy. Mr Van Wyk, ex-
amining with a faint grimace his polished finger-
nails, would say, "H'm. Very unfortunate," and
turn his back on him.
Fastidious, clever, slightly sceptical, accustomed
to the best society (he had held a much-envied
shore appointment at the Ministry of Marine for


310 THE END OF THE TETHER.
a year preceding his retreat from his profession
and from Europe), he possessed a latent warmth
of feeling and a capacity for sympathy which were
concealed by a sort of haughty, arbitrary indiffer-
ence of manner arising from his early training;
and by a something an enemy might have called
foppish, in his aspect — like a distorted echo of
past elegancies. He managed to keep an almost
military discipline amongst the coolies of the estate
he had dragged into the light of day out of the
tangle and shadows of the jungle; and the white
shirt he put on every evening with its stiff glossy
front and high collar looked as if he had meant
to preserve the decent ceremony of evening-dress,
but had wound a thick crimson sash above his hips
as a concession to the wilderness, once his adversary,
now his vanquished companion. Moreover, it was
a hygienic precaution. Worn wide open in front, a
short jacket of some airy silken stuff floated from
his shoulders. His fluffy, fair hair, thin at the top,
curled slightly at the sides; a carefully arranged
moustache, an ungarnished forehead, the gleam of
low patent shoes peeping under the wide bottom of
trousers out straight from the same stuff as the
gossamer coat, completed a figure recalling, with
its sash, a pirate chief of romance, and at the same
time the elegance of a slightly bald dandy indulg-
ing, in seclusion, a taste for unorthodox costume.
It was his evening get-up. The proper time for
the Sofala to arrive at Batu Beru was an hour
before sunset, and he looked picturesque, and some-
how quite correct too, walking at the water's edge
on the background of grass slope crowned with a


THE END OF THE TETHER. 311
low long bungalow with an immensely steep roof
of palm thatch, and clad to the eaves in flowering
creepers. While the Sofala was being made fast
he strolled in the shade of the few trees left near
the landing-place, waiting till he could go on board.
Her white men were not of his kind. The old
Sultan (though his wistful invasions were a nuis-
ance) was really much more acceptable to his fastidi-
ous taste. But still they were white; the periodical
visits of the ship made a break in the well-filled
sameness of the days without disturbing his privacy.
Moreover, they were necessary from a business point
of view; and through a strain of preciseness in his
nature he was irritated when she failed to appear
at the appointed time.
The cause of the irregularity was too absurd, and
Massy, in his opinion, was a contemptible idiot.
The first time the Sofala reappeared under the new
agreement swinging out of the bend below, after
he had almost given up all hope of ever seeing her
again, he felt so angry that he did not go down
at once to the landing-place. His servants had
come running to him with the news, and he had
dragged a chair close against the front rail of the
verandah, spread his elbows out, rested his chin on
his hands, and went on glaring at her fixedly while
she was being made fast opposite his house. He
could make out easily all the white faces on board.
Who on earth was that kind of patriarch they had
got there on the bridge now?
At last he sprang up and walked down the gravel
path. It was a fact that the very gravel for his
paths had been imported by the Sofala. Exasper-
/.


THE END OF THE TETHER. 313
griefs. The efforts he had made for all these years
to please that man. This was the return you got
for it, eh? Pretty. Write to Schnitzler—let in
the green-funnel boats—get an old Hamburg Jew
to ruin him. No, really he could laugh, . . . He
laughed sobbingly. . . . Ha! ha! ha! And make
him carry the letter in his own ship presumably.
He stumbled across a grating and swore. He
would not hesitate to fling the Dutchman's corres-
pondence overboard—the whole confounded bundle.
He had never, never made any charge for that
accommodation. But Captain "Whalley, his new
partner, would not let him probably; besides, it
would be only putting off the evil day. For his
own part he would make a hole in the water rather
than look on tamely at the green funnels overrun-
ning his trade.
He raved aloud. The China boys hung back with
the dishes at the foot of the ladder. He yelled from
the bridge down at the deck, "Aren't we going to
have any chow this evening at all?" then turned
violently to Captain Whalley, who waited, grave
and patient, at the head of the table, smoothing
his beard in silence now and then with a forbearing
gesture.
"You don't seem to care what happens to me.
Don't you see that this affects your interests as
much as mine? It's no joking matter."
He took the foot of the table growling between
his teeth.
"Unless you have a few thousands put away
somewhere. I haven't."
Mr Van Wyk dined in his thoroughly lit - up


314 THE END OF THE TETHER.
bungalow, putting a point of splendour in the night
of his clearing above the dark bank of the river.
Afterwards he sat down to his piano, and in the pause
he became aware of slow footsteps passing on the
path along the front. A plank or two creaked
under a heavy tread; he swung half round on the
music-stool, listening with his finger-tips at rest on
the keyboard. His little terrier barked violently,
backing in from the verandah. A deep voice apolo-
gised gravely for "this intrusion." He walked out
quickly.
At the head of the steps the patriarchal figure,
who was the new captain of the Sofala apparently
(he had seen a round dozen of them, but not one of
that sort), towered without advancing. The little
dog barked unceasingly, till a flick of Mr Van
Wyk's handkerchief made him spring aside into
silence. Captain Whalley, opening the matter, was
met by a punctiliously polite but determined
opposition.
They carried on their discussion standing where
they had come face to face. Mr Van Wyk observed
his visitor with attention. Then at last, as if forced
out of his reserve—
"I am surprised that you should intercede for
such a confounded fool."
This outbreak was almost complimentary, as if
its meaning had been, "That such a man as you
should intercede!" Captain Whalley let it pass by
without flinching. One would have thought he had
heard nothing. He simply went on to state that he
was personally interested in putting things straight
between them. Personally . . .


316 THE END OF THE TETHER.
that was very interesting. What changes his guest
must have seen since.
"I can look further back even—on a whole half-
century."
Captain Whalley expanded a bit. The flavour of
a good cigar (it was a weakness) had gone straight
to his heart, also the civility of that young man.
There was something in that accidental contact of
which he had been starved in his years of struggle.
The front wall retreating made a square recess
furnished like a room. A lamp with a milky glass
shade, suspended below the slope of the high roof
at the end of a slender brass chain, threw a bright
round of light upon a little table bearing an open
book and an ivory paper-knife. And, in the trans-
lucent shadows beyond, other tables could be seen,
a number of easy-chairs of various shapes, with a
great profusion of skin rugs strewn on the teak-
wood planking all over the verandah. The flower-
ing creepers scented the air. Their foliage clipped
out between the uprights made as if several frames
of thick unstirring leaves reflecting the lamplight
in a green glow. Through the opening at his elbow
Captain Whalley could see the gangway lantern of
the Sofala burning dim by the shore, the shadowy
masses of the town beyond the open lustrous dark-
ness of the river, and, as if hung along the straight
edge of the projecting eaves, a narrow black strip of
the night sky full of stars — resplendent. The
famous cigar in hand he had a moment of com-
placency.
"A trifle. Somebody must lead the way. I just
showed that the thing could be done; but you men


818 THE END OF THE TETHER
sipate the momentary gloom that had settled on
his handsome old face, he alluded conversationally
to Mr Van Wyk's solitude.
Mr Van Wyk affirmed that sometimes he had
more company than he wanted. He mentioned
smilingly some of the peculiarities of his inter-
course with "My Sultan." He made his visits in
force. Those people damaged his grass plot in front
(it was not easy to obtain some approach to a lawn
in the tropics), and the other day had broken down
some rare bushes he had planted over there. And
Captain Whalley remembered immediately that, in
'forty-seven, the then Sultan, "this man's grand-
father," had been notorious as a great protector
of the piratical fleets of praus from farther East.
They had a safe refuge in the river at Batu Beru.
He financed more especially a Balinini chief called
Haji Daman. Captain Whalley, nodding signi-
ficantly his bushy white eyebrows, had very good
reason to know something of that. The world had
progressed since that time.
Mr Van Wyk demurred with unexpected acrimony.
Progressed in what? he wanted to know.
Why, in knowledge of truth, in decency, in jus-
tice, in order—in honesty too, since men harmed
each other mostly from ignorance. It was, Cap-
tain Whalley concluded quaintly, more pleasant to
live in.
Mr Van Wyk whimsically would not admit that
Mr Massy, for instance, was more pleasant naturally
than the Balinini pirates.
The river had not gained much by the change.
They were in their way every bit as honest. Massy


320 THE END OF THE TETHER
fidence. The disposition had to be helped up pretty
sharply sometimes, he admitted. They might be
silly, wrongheaded, unhappy; but naturally evil—
no. There was at bottom a complete harmlessness
at least . . .
"Is there?" Mr Van Wyk snapped acrimoniously.
Captain Whalley laughed at the interjection, in
the good humour of large, tolerating certitude. He
could look back at half a century, he pointed out.
The smoke oozed placidly through the white hairs
hiding his kindly lips.
"At all events," he resumed after a pause, "I am
glad that they've had no time to do you much harm
as yet."
This allusion to his comparative youthfulness did
not offend Mr Van Wyk, who got up and wriggled
his shoulders with an enigmatic half-smile. They
walked out together amicably into the starry night
towards the river-side. Their footsteps resounded
unequally on the dark path. At the shore end of
the gangway the lantern, hung low to the handrail,
threw a vivid light on the white legs and the big
black feet of Mr Massy waiting about anxiously.
From the waist upwards he remained shadowy, with
a row of buttons gleaming up to the vague outline
of his chin.
"You may thank Captain Whalley for this," Mr
Van Wyk said curtly to him before turning away.
The lamps on the verandah flung three long squares
of light between the uprights far over the grass. A
bat flitted before his face like a circling flake of
velvety blackness. Along the jasmine hedge the
night air seemed heavy with the fall of perfumed


322 THE END OF THE TETHER.
severity in the shaggy eyebrows, made up a seduc-
tive personality. Mr Van Wyk disliked littleness
of every kind, but there was nothing small about
that man, and in the exemplary regularity of many
trips an intimacy had grown up between them,
a warm feeling at bottom under a kindly stateli-
ness of forms agreeable to his fastidiousness.
They kept their respective opinions on all worldly
matters. His other convictions Captain Whalley
never intruded. The difference of their ages was
like another bond between them. Once, when
twitted with the uncharitableness of his youth,
Mr Van Wyk, running his eye over the vast pro-
portions of his interlocutor, retorted in friendly
banter—
"Oh. You'll come to my way of thinking yet.
You'll have plenty of time. Don't call yourself
old: you look good for a round hundred."
But he could not help his stinging incisiveness,
and though moderating it by an almost affectionate
smile, he added—
"And by then you will probably consent to die
from sheer disgust."
Captain Whalley, smiling too, shook his head.
"God forbid!"
He thought that perhaps on the whole he deserved
something better than to die in such sentiments.
The time of course would have to come, and he
trusted to his Maker to provide a manner of going
out of which he need not be ashamed. For the
rest he hoped he would live to a hundred if need
be: other men had been known; it would be no
miracle. He expected no miracles. 


THE END OF THE TETHER. 323
The pronounced, argumentative tone caused Mr
Van Wyk to raise his head and look at him steadily.
Captain Whalley was gazing fixedly with a rapt ex-
pression, as though he had seen his Creator's favour-
able decree written in mysterious characters on the
wall. He kept perfectly motionless for a few seconds,
then got his vast bulk on to his feet so impetuously that Mr Van Wyk was startled.
He struck first a heavy blow on his inflated chest:
and, throwing out horizontally a big arm that re-
mained steady, extended in the air like the limb of
a tree on a windless day—
"Not a pain or an ache there. Can you see this
shake in the least?"
His voice was low, in an awing, confident con-
trast with the headlong emphasis of his movements.
He sat down abruptly.
"This isn't to boast of it, you know. I am noth-
ing," he said in his effortless strong voice, that
seemed to come out as naturally as a river flows.
He picked up the stump of the cigar he had laid
aside, and added peacefully, with a slight nod, "As
it happens, my life is necessary; it isn't my own,
it isn't—God knows."
He did not say much for the rest of the evening,
but several times Mr Van Wyk detected a faint smile
of assurance flitting under the heavy moustache.
Later on Captain Whalley would now and then
consent to dine "at the house." He could even be
induced to drink a glass of wine, "Don't think I
am afraid of it, my good sir," he explained. "There
was a very good reason why I should give it up."
On another occasion, leaning back at ease, he


324 THE END OF THE TETHER.
remarked, "You have treated me most — most
humanely, my dear Mr Van Wyk, from the very
first."
"You'll admit there was some merit," Mr Van
Wyk hinted slily. "An associate of that excellent
Mass. . . . Well, well, my dear captain, I won't
Bay a word against him."
"It would be no use your saying anything against
him," Captain Whalley affirmed a little moodily.
"As I've told you before, my life — my work, is
necessary, not for myself alone. I can't choose"
. . . He paused, turned the glass before him right
round. ... "I have an only child—to daughter."
The ample downward sweep of his arm over the
table seemed to suggest a small girl at a vast
distance. "I hope to see her once more before I
die. Meantime it's enough to know that she has
me sound and solid, thank God. You can't under-
stand how one feels. Bone of my bone, flesh of
my flesh; the very image of my poor wife. Well,
she ..."
Again he paused, then pronounced stoically the
words, "She has a hard struggle."
And his head fell on his breast, his eyebrows
remained knitted, as by an effort of meditation.
But generally his mind seemed steeped in the
serenity of boundless trust in a higher power. Mr
Van Wyk wondered sometimes how much of it was
due to the splendid vitality of the man, to the
bodily vigour which seems to impart something of
its force to the soul. But he had learned to like
him very much.


THE END OF THE TETHER 325
XIII.
. This was the reason why Mr Sterne's confidential
communication, delivered hurriedly on the shore
alongside the dark silent ship, had disturbed his
equanimity. It was the most incomprehensible and
unexpected thing that could happen; and the per-
turbation of his spirit was so great that, forgetting
all about his letters, he ran rapidly up the bridge
ladder.
The portable table was being put together for
dinner to the left of the wheel by two pig-tailed
"boys," who as usual snarled at each other over
the job, while another, a doleful, burly, very yellow
Chinaman, resembling Mr Massy, waited apatheti-
cally with the cloth over his arm and a pile of
thick dinner-plates against his chest. A common
cabin lamp with its globe missing, brought up from
below, had been hooked to the wooden framework of
the awning; the side-screens had been lowered all
round; Captain Whalley filling the depths of the
wicker-chair seemed to sit benumbed in a canvas
tent crudely lighted, and used for the storing of
nautical objects ; a shabby steering-wheel, a battered
brass binnacle on a stout mahogany stand, two dingy
life-buoys, an old cork fender lying in a corner,
dilapidated deck - lookers with loops of thin rope
instead of door-handles.
He shook off the appearance of numbness to re-
turn Mr Van Wyk's unusually brisk greeting, but
relapsed directly afterwards. To accept a pressing


326 THE END OF THE TETHER.
invitation to dinner "up at the house" cost him
another very visible physical effort. Mr Van Wyk,
perplexed, folded his arms, and leaning back against
the rail, with his little, black, shiny feet well out,
examined him covertly.
"I've noticed of late that you are not quite your-
self, old friend."
He put an affectionate gentleness into the last
two words. The real intimacy of their intercourse
had never been so vividly expressed before.
"Tut, tut, tut!"
The wicker-chair creaked heavily.
"Irritable," commented Mr Van Wyk to himself;
and aloud, "I'll expect to see you in half an hour,
then," he said negligently, moving off.
"In half an hour," Captain Whalley's rigid
silvery head repeated behind him as if out of a
trance.
Amidships, below, two voices, close against the
engine-room, could be heard answering each other
—one angry and slow, the other alert.
"I tell you the beast has locked himself in to
get drunk."
"Can't help it now, Mr Massy. After all, a man
has a right to shut himself up in his cabin in his
own time."
"Not to get drunk."
"I heard him swear that the worry with the
boilers was enough to drive any man to drink,"
Sterne said maliciously.
Massy hissed out something about bursting the
door in. Mr Van Wyk, to avoid them, crossed in
the dark to the other side of the deserted deck.


THE END OF THE TETHER. 327
The planking of the little wharf rattled faintly
under his hasty feet.
"Mr Van Wyk! Mr Van Wyk!"
He walked on: somebody was running on the
path. "You've forgotten to get your mail."
Sterne, holding a bundle of papers in his hand,
caught up with him.
"Oh, thanks."
But, as the other continued at his elbow, Mr
Van Wyk stopped short. The overhanging eaves,
descending low upon the lighted front of the
bungalow, threw their black straight-edged shadow
into the great body of the night on that side.
Everything was very still. A tinkle of cutlery and
a slight jingle of glasses were heard. Mr Van
Wyk's servants were laying the table for two on
the verandah.
"I am afraid you give me no credit whatever for
my good intentions in the matter I've spoken to you
about," said Sterne.
"I simply don't understand you."
"Captain Whalley is a very audacious man, but
he will understand that his game is up. That's all
that anybody need ever know of it from me. Be-
lieve me, I am very considerate in this, but duty is
duty. I don't want to make a fuss. All I ask
you, as his friend, is to tell him from me that the
game's up. That will be sufficient."
Mr Van Wyk felt a loathsome dismay at this
queer privilege of friendship. He would not de-
mean himself by asking for the slightest explana-
tion; to drive the other away with contumely he
did not think prudent—as yet, at any rate. So


THE END OF THE TETHER. 329
to work the whole thing through that great friend
of the old man's. This was another brilliant idea.
He had an inborn preference for circuitous methods.
In this particular case he desired to remain in the
background as much as possible, to avoid exasper-
ating Massy needlessly. No fuss! Let it all happen
naturally.
Mr Van Wyk all through the dinner was con-
scious of a sense of isolation that invades some-
times the closeness of human intercourse. Captain
Whalley failed lamentably and obviously in his
attempts to eat something. He seemed overcome
by a strange absent-mindedness. His hand would
hover irresolutely, as if left without guidance by
a preoccupied mind. Mr Van Wyk had heard him
coming up from a long way off in the profound
stillness of the river-side, and had noticed the
irresolute character of the footfalls. The toe of his
boot had struck the bottom stair, as though he had
come along mooning with his head in the air right
up to the steps of the verandah. Had the captain
of the Sofala been another sort of man he would
have suspected the work of age there. But one
glance at him was enough. Time—after, indeed,
marking him for its own—had given him up to his
usefulness, in which his simple faith would see a
proof of Divine mercy. "How could I contrive to
warn him?" Mr Van Wyk wondered, as if Captain
Whalley had been miles and miles away, out of sight
and earshot of all evil. He was sickened by an
immense disgust of Sterne. To even mention his
threat to a man like Whalley would be positively
indecent. There was something more vile and in-


330 THE END OF THE TETHER.
suiting in its hint than in a definite charge of crime
—the debasing taint of blackmailing. "What could
any one bring against him?" he asked himself. This
was a limpid personality. "And for what object?"
The Power that man trusted had thought fit to
leave him nothing on earth that envy could lay
hold of, except a bare crust of bread.
"Won't you try some of this?" he asked, pushing
a dish slightly. Suddenly it seemed to Mr Van
Wyk that Sterne might possibly be coveting the
command of the Sofala. His cynicism was quite
startled by what looked like a proof that no man
may count himself safe from his kind unless in
the very abyss of misery. An intrigue of that
sort was hardly worth troubling about, he judged;
but still, with such a fool as Massy to deal with,
Whalley ought to and must be warned.
At this moment Captain Whalley, bolt upright,
the deep cavities of the eyes overhung by a bushy
frown, and one large brown hand resting on each
side of his empty plate, spoke across the table-cloth
abruptly—
"Mr Van Wyk, you've always treated me with'
the most humane consideration."
"My dear captain, you make too much of a simple
fact that I am not a savage." Mr Van Wyk,
utterly revolted by the thought of Sterne's obscure
attempt, raised his voice incisively, as if the mate
had been hiding somewhere within earshot. "Any
consideration I have been able to show was no more
than the rightful due of a character I've learned to
regard by this time with an esteem that nothing
can shake."


THE END OF THE TETHER. 331
A slight ring of glass made him lift his eyes from
the slice of pine-apple he was cutting into small
pieces on his plate. In changing his position Captain
Whalley had contrived to upset an empty tumbler.
Without looking that way, leaning sideways on
his elbow, his other hand shading his brow, he
groped shakily for it, then desisted. Van Wyk
stared blankly, as if something momentous had
happened all at once. He did not know why he
should feel so startled; but he forgot Sterne utterly
for the moment.
"Why, what's the matter?"
And Captain Whalley, half-a verted, in a deadened,
agitated voice, muttered—
"Esteem!"
"And I may add something more," Mr Van Wyk,
very steady-eyed, pronounced slowly.
"Hold! Enough!" Captain Whalley did not
change his attitude or raise his voice. "Say no
more! I can make you no return. I am too poor
even for that now. Your esteem is worth having.
You are not a man that would stoop to deceive
the poorest sort of devil on earth, or make a ship
unseaworthy every time he takes her to sea."
Mr Van Wyk, leaning forward, his face gone pink
all over, with the starched table-napkin over his
knees, was inclined to mistrust his senses, his power
of comprehension, the sanity of his guest
.
"Where? Why? In the name of Godr-- what's
this? What ship? I don't understand who . . ."
"Then, in the name of God, it is I ! A ship's
unseaworthy when her captain can't see. I am
going blind."


332 THE END OF THE TETHER
Mr Van Wyk made a slight movement, and sat
very still afterwards for a few seconds; then, with
the thought of Sterne's "The game's up," he ducked
under the table to pick up the napkin which had
slipped off his knees. This was the game that was
up. And at the same time the muffled voice of Cap-
tain Whalley passed over him—
"I've deceived them all. Nobody knows."
He emerged flushed to the eyes. Captain Whalley,
motionless under the full blaze of the lamp, shaded
his face with his hand.
"And you had that courage?"
"Call it by what name you like. But you are
a humane man—a—a—gentleman, Mr Van Wyk
.
You may have asked me what I had done with my
conscience."
He seemed to muse, profoundly silent, very still
in his mournful pose.
"I began to tamper with it in my pride. You
begin to see a lot of things when you are going
blind. I could not be frank with an old chum
even. I was not frank with Massy—no, not alto-
gether. I knew he took me for a wealthy sailor
fool, and I let him. I wanted to keep up my im-
portance—because there was poor Ivy away there
—my daughter. What did I want to trade on his
misery for? I did trade on it—for her. And now,
what mercy could I expect from him? He would
trade on mine if he knew it. He would hunt the
old fraud out, and stick to the money for a year.
Ivy's money. And I haven't kept a penny for
myself. How am I going to live for a year. A
year! In a year there will be no sun in the sky
for her father."


334 THE END OF THE TETHER.
for death since. Ha! Presumptuous man — you
wanted to live . . ."
A tremendous, shuddering upheaval of that big
frame, shaken by a gasping sob, set the glasses jing-
ling all over the table, seemed to make the whole
house tremble to the roof-tree. And Mr Van Wyk,
whose feeling of outraged love had been translated
into a form of struggle with nature, understood
very well that, for that man whose whole life
had been conditioned by action, there could exist
no other expression for all the emotions; that, to
voluntarily cease venturing, doing, enduring, for
his child's sake, would have been exactly like pluck-
ing his warm love for her out of his living heart.
Something too monstrous, too impossible, even to
conceive.
Captain Whalley had not changed his attitude,
that seemed to express something of shame, sorrow,
and defiance.
"I have even deceived you. If it had not been
for that word 'esteem.' These are not the words
for me. I would have lied to you. Haven't I
lied to you? Weren't you going to trust your pro-
perty on board this very trip?"
"I have a floating yearly policy," Mr Van Wyk
said almost unwittingly, and was amazed at the
sudden cropping up of a commercial detail
.
"The ship is unseaworthy, I tell you. The policy
would be invalid if it were known . . ."
"We shall share the guilt, then."
"Nothing could make mine less," said Captain
Whalley.
He had not dared to consult a doctor; the man


THE END OP THE TETHER. 335
would have perhaps asked who he was, what he
was doing; Massy might have heard something.
He had lived on without any help, human or divine.
The very prayers stuck in his throat. What was
there to pray for? and death seemed as far as ever.
Once he got into his cabin he dared not come out
again; when he sat down he dared not get up; he
dared not raise his eyes to anybody's face; he felt
reluctant to look upon the sea or up to the sky.
The world was fading before his great fear of giving
himself away. The old ship was his last friend; he
was not afraid of her; he knew every inch of her
deck; but at her too he hardly dared to look, for
fear of finding he could see less than the day before.
A great incertitude enveloped him. The horizon
was gone; the sky mingled darkly with the sea.
Who was this figure standing over yonder? what
was this thing lying down there? And a frightful
doubt of the reality of what he could see made even
the remnant of sight that remained to him an added
torment, a pitfall always open for his miserable pre-
tence. He was afraid to stumble inexcusably over
something—to say a fatal Yes or No to a question.
The hand of God was upon him, but it could not tear
him away from his child. And, as if in a nightmare of
humiliation, every featureless man seemed an enemy.
He let his hand fall heavily on the table. Mr
Van Wyk, arms down, chin on breast, with a
gleam of white teeth pressing on the lower lip,
meditated on Sterne's "The game's up."
"The Serang of course does not know."
"Nobody," said Captain Whalley, with assurance.
"Ah yes. Nobody. Very well. Can you keep it


336 THE END OF THE TETHER.
up to the end of the trip? That is the last under
the agreement with Massey." Captain Whalley got up and stood erect, very
stately, with the great white beard lying like a
silver breastplate over the awful secret of his heart.
Yes; that was the only hope there was for him of
ever seeing her again, of securing the money, the
last he could do for her, before he crept away some-
where—useless, a burden, a reproach to himself. His
voice faltered.
"Think of it! Never see her any more: the only
human being besides myself now on earth that can
remember my wife. She's just like her mother.
Lucky the poor woman is where there are no tears
shed over those they loved on earth and that re-
main to pray not to be led into temptation—because,
I suppose, the blessed know the secret of grace in
God's dealings with His created children."
He swayed a little, said with austere dignity—
"I don't. I know only the child He has given me."
And he began to walk. Mr Van Wyk, jumping
up, saw the full meaning of the rigid head, the
hesitating feet, the vaguely extended hand. His
heart was beating fast; he moved a chair aside,
and instinctively advanced as if to offer his arm.
But Captain Whalley passed him by, making for
the stairs quite straight.
"He could not see me at all out of his line," Van
Wyk thought, with a sort of awe. Then going to the
head of the stairs, he asked a little tremulously—
"What is it like—like a mist—like . . ."
Captain Whalley, half-way down, stopped, and
turned round undismayed to answer.


THE END OF THE TETHER. 337
"It is as if the light were ebbing out of the world.
Have you ever watched the ebbing sea on an open
stretch of sands withdrawing farther and farther
away from you? It is like this—only there will be
no flood to follow. Never. It is as if the sun were
growing smaller, the stars going out one by one.
There can't be many left that I can see by this.
But I haven't had the courage to look of late . . ."
He must have been able to make out Mr Van Wyk,
because he checked him by an authoritative gesture
and a stoical—
"I can get about alone yet."
It was as if he had taken his line, and would
accept no help from men, after having been cast
out, like a presumptuous Titan, from his heaven.
Mr Van Wyk, arrested, seemed to count the foot-
steps right out of earshot. He walked between
the tables, tapping smartly with his heels, took up
a paper-knife, dropped it after a vague glance along
the blade; then happening upon the piano, struck
a few chords again and again, vigorously, standing
up before the keyboard with an attentive poise of
the head like a piano-tuner; closing it, he pivoted
on his heels brusquely, avoided the little terrier
sleeping trustfully on crossed forepaws, came upon
the stairs next, and, as though he had lost his
balance on the top step, ran down headlong out
of the house. His servants, beginning to clear the
table, heard him mutter to himself (evil words no
doubt) down there, and then after a pause go away
with a strolling gait in the direction of the wharf.
The bulwarks of the Sofala lying alongside the
bank made a low, black wall on the undulating
y


338 THE END OF THE TETHER.
contour of the shore. Two masts and a funnel
uprose from behind it with a great rake, as if
about to fall: a solid, square elevation in the middle
bore the ghostly shapes of white boats, the curves
of davits, lines of rail and stanchions, all confused
and mingling darkly everywhere; but low down,
amidships, a single lighted port stared out on the
night, perfectly round, like a small, full moon,
whose yellow beam caught a patch of wet mud,
the edge of trodden grass, two turns of heavy
cable wound round the foot of a thick wooden
post in the ground.
Mr Van Wyk, peering alongside, heard a muzzy
boastful voice apparently jeering at a person called
Prendergast. It mouthed abuse thickly, choked;
then pronounced very distinctly the word " Murphy,"
and chuckled. Glass tinkled tremulously. All these
sounds came from the lighted port. Mr Van Wyk
hesitated, stooped; it was impossible to look through
unless he went down into the mud.
"Sterne," he said, half aloud.
The drunken voice within said gladly—
"Sterne—of course. Look at him blink. Look
at him! Sterne, Whalley, Massy. Massy, Whalley,
Sterne. But Massy's the best. You can't come
over him. He would just love to see you starve."
Mr Van Wyk moved away, made out farther
forward a shadowy head stuck out from under
the awnings as if on the watch, and spoke quietly
in Malay, "Is the mate asleep?"
"No. Here, at your service."
In a moment Sterne appeared, walking as noise-
lessly as a cat on the wharf.


THE END OF THE TETHER. 339
"It's so jolly dark, and I had no idea you would
be down to-night."
"What's this horrible raving?" asked Mr Van
Wyk, as if to explain the cause of a shudder that
ran over him audibly.
"Jack's broken out on a drunk. That's our
second. It's his way. He will be right enough
by to-morrow afternoon, only Mr Massy will keep
on worrying up and down the deck . We had better
get away."
He muttered suggestively of a talk "up at the
house." He had long desired to effect an entrance
there, but Mr Van Wyk nonchalantly demurred:
it would not, he feared, be quite prudent, perhaps;
and the opaque black shadow under one of the two
big trees left at the landing-place swallowed them
up, impenetrably dense, by the side of the wide
river, that seemed to spin into threads of glitter
the light of a few big stars dropped here and
there upon its outspread and flowing stillness.
"The situation is grave beyond doubt," Mr Van
Wyk said. Ghost-like in their white clothes they
could not distinguish each others' features, and
their feet made no sound on the soft earth. A
sort of purring was heard. Mr Sterne felt grati-
fied by such a beginning.
"I thought, Mr Van Wyk, a gentleman of your
sort would see at once how awkwardly I was
situated."
"Yes, very. Obviously his health is bad. Perhaps
he's breaking up. I see, and he himself is well aware
—I assume I am speaking to a man of sense—he is
well aware that his legs are giving out."


THE END OF THE TETHER. 343
to be seen together," Mr Van Wyk's white shape
wavered, and instantly seemed to melt away in the
black air under the roof of boughs. The mate was
startled. Yes. There was that faint thumping
clatter. He stole out silently from under the shade. The
lighted port-hole shone from afar. His head swam
with the intoxication of sudden success. What a
thing it was to have a gentleman to deal with!
He crept aboard, and there was something weird
in the shadowy stretch of empty decks, echoing with
shouts and blows proceeding from a darker part
amidships. Mr Massy was raging before the door
of the berth: the drunken voice within flowed on
undisturbed in the violent racket of kicks.
"Shut up! Put your light out and turn in, you
confounded swilling pig—you! D'you hear me, you
beast?"
The kicking stopped, and in the pause the muzzy
oracular voice announced from within—
"Ah! Massy, now—that's another thing. Massy's
deep."
"Who's that aft there? You, Sterne? He'll
drink himself into a fit of horrors." The chief
engineer appeared vague and big at the corner of
the engine-room.
"He will be good enough for duty to-morrow. I
would let him be, Mr Massy."
Sterne slipped away into his berth, and at once
had to sit down. His head swam with exultation.
He got into his bunk as if in a dream. A feeling
of profound peace, of pacific joy, came over him.
On deck all was quiet
.


THE END OF THE TETHER. 245
killed himself outright on the spot. Mr Massy held
his breath. At last a sleepy uneasy groaning sigh
was exhaled slowly on the other side of the bulkhead.
"I hope to goodness he's too drunk to wake up
now," muttered Mr Massy.
The sound of a softly knowing laugh nearly drove
him to despair. He swore violently under his breath.
The fool would keep him awake all night now for
certain. He cursed his luck. He wanted to forget
his maddening troubles in sleep sometimes. He
could detect no movements. Without apparently
making the slightest attempt to get up, Jack went
on sniggering to himself where he lay; then began
to speak, where he had left off as it were—
"Massy! I love the dirty rascal. He would like
to see his poor old Jack starve—but just you look
where he has climbed to." . . . He hiccoughed in
a superior, leisurely manner. ..." Ship-owning
it with the best. A lottery ticket you want. Ha!
ha! I will give you lottery tickets, my boy. Let
the old ship sink and the old chum starve—that's
right. He don't go wrong—Massy don't. Not he.
He's a genius—that man is. That's the way to
win your money. Ship and chum must go."
"The silly fool has taken it to heart," muttered
Massy to himself. And, listening with a softened
expression of face for any slight sign of returning
drowsiness, he was discouraged profoundly by a
burst of laughter full of joyful irony.
"Would like to see her at the bottom of the
sea! Oh, you clever, clever devil! Wish her
sunk, eh? I should think you would, my boy; the
damned old thing and all your troubles with her.


THE END OF THE TETHER. 347
coat, looking out through the round port into the
night over the river. Sometimes a breath of wind
would enter and touch his face, a cool breath charged
with the damp, fresh feel from a vast body of water.
A glimmer here and there was all he could see of it;
and once he might after all suppose he had dozed
off, since there appeared before his vision, unex-
pectedly and connected with no dream, a row of
flaming and gigantic figures — three nought seven
one two — making up a number such as you may
see on a lottery ticket. And then all at once the
port was no longer black: it was pearly grey, fram-
ing a shore crowded with houses, thatched roof be-
yond thatched roof, walls of mats and bamboo, gables
of carved teak timber. Rows of dwellings raised on
a forest of piles lined the steely band of the river,
brimful and still, with the tide at the turn. This
was Batu Beru—and the day had come.
Mr Massey shook himself, put on the tweed coat,
and, shivering nervously as if from some great shock,
made a note of the number. A fortunate, rare hint
that. Yes; but to pursue fortune one wanted money
—ready cash.
Then he went out and prepared to descend into
the engine-room. Several small jobs had to be seen
to, and Jack was lying dead drunk on the floor of
his cabin, with the door locked at that. His gorge
rose at the thought of work. Ay! But if you
wanted to do nothing you had to get first a good
bit of money. A ship won't save you. He cursed
the Sofala. True, all true. He was tired of waiting
for some chance that would rid him at last of that
ship that had turned out a curse on his life.


318 THE END OF THE TETHEB.
XIV.
The deep, interminable hoot of the steam-whistle
had, in its grave, vibrating note, something intoler-
able, which sent a slight shudder down Mr Van
Wyk's back. It was the early afternoon; the Sofala
was leaving Batu Beru for Pangu, the next place
of call . She swung in the stream, scantily at-
tended by a few canoes, and, gliding on the broad
river, became lost to view from the Van Wyk
bungalow.
Its owner had not gone this time to see her off.
Generally he came down to the wharf, exchanged a
few words with the bridge while she cast off, and
waved his hand to Captain Whalley at the last
moment. This day he did not even go as far as the
balustrade of the verandah. "He couldn't see me if
I did," he said to himself. "I wonder whether he
can make out the house at all." And this thought
somehow made him feel more alone than he had ever
felt for all these years. What was it? six or seven?
Seven. A long time.
He sat on the verandah with a closed book on
his knee, and, as it were, looked out upon his
solitude, as if the fact of Captain Whalley's blind-
ness had opened his eyes to his own. There were
many sorts of heartaches and troubles, and there
was no place where they could not find a man out.
And he felt ashamed, as though he had for six
years behaved like a peevish boy.
His thought followed the Sofala on her way. On


THE END OF THE TETHER. 349
the spur of the moment he had acted impulsively,
turning to the thing most pressing. And what else
could he have done? Later on he should see. It
seemed necessary that he should come out into the
world, for a time at least. He had money—some-
thing could be arranged; he would grudge no time,
no trouble, no loss of his solitude. It weighed on him
now—and Captain Whalley appeared to him as he
had sat shading his eyes, as if, being deceived in
the trust of his faith, he were beyond all the good
and evil that can be wrought by the hands of men.
Mr Van Wyk's thoughts followed the Sofala down
the river, winding about through the belt of the coast
forest, between the buttressed shafts of the big
trees, through the mangrove strip, and over the bar.
The ship crossed it easily in broad daylight, piloted,
as it happened, by Mr Sterne, who took the watch
from four to six, and then went below to hug
himself with delight at the prospect of being
virtually employed by a rich man—like Mr Van
Wyk . He could not see how any hitch could occur
now. He did not seem able to get over the feeling
of being "fixed up at last." From six to eight, in
the course of duty, the Serang looked alone after
the ship. She had a clear road before her now
till about three in the morning, when she would
close with the Pangu group. At eight Mr Sterne
came out cheerily to take charge again till mid-
night. At ten he was still chirruping and humming
to himself on the bridge, and about that time Mr
Van Wyk's thought abandoned the Sofala. Mr
Van Wyk had fallen asleep at last.
Massy, blocking the engine-room companion,


350 THE END OF THE TETHER.
jerked himself into his tweed jacket surlily, while
the second waited with a scowl
.
"Oh. You came out? You sot! Well, what
have you got to say for yourself?"
He had been in charge of the engines till then.
A sombre fury darkened his mind: a hot anger
against the ship, against the facts of life, against
the men for their cheating, against himself too—
because of an inward tremor in his heart.
An incomprehensible growl answered him.
"What? Can't you open your mouth now?
You yelp out your infernal rot loud enough when
you are drunk. What do you mean by abusing
people in that way? — you old useless boozer,
you!"
"Can't help it. Don't remember anything about
it, You shouldn't listen."
"You dare to tell me! What do you mean by
going on a drunk like this?"
"Don't ask me. Sick of the dam' boilers—you
would be. Sick of life."
"I wish you were dead, then. You've made me
sick of you. Don't you remember the uproar you
made last night? You miserable old soaker!"
"No; I don't. Don't want to. Drink is drink."
"I wonder what prevents me from kicking you
out. What do you want here?"
"Relieve you. You've been long enough down
there, George." "Don't you George me—you tippling old rascal,
you! If I were to die to-morrow you would
starve. Remember that. Say Mr Massy."
"Mr Massy," repeated the other stolidly.


THE END OF THE TETHER. 351
Dishevelled, with dull blood-shot eyes, a snuffy,
grimy shirt, greasy trousers, naked feet thrust into
ragged slippers, he bolted in head down directly
Massy had made way for him.
The chief engineer looked around. The deck
was empty as far as the taffrail. All the native
passengers had left in Batu Beru this time, and
no others had joined. The dial of the patent log
tinkled periodically in the dark at the end of the
ship. It was a dead calm, and, under the clouded
sky, through the still air that seemed to cling warm,
with a seaweed smell, to her slim hull, on a sea of
sombre grey and unwrinkled, the ship moved on an
even keel, as if floating detached in empty space.
But Mr Massy slapped his forehead, tottered a little,
and caught hold of a belaying-pin at the foot of the
mast.
"I shall go mad," he muttered, walking across
the deck unsteadily. A shovel was scraping loose
coal down below—a fire-door clanged. Sterne on
the bridge began whistling a new tune.
Captain Whalley, sitting on the couch, awake
and fully dressed, heard the door of his cabin open.
He did not move in the least, waiting to recognise
the voice, with an appalling strain of prudence.
A bulkhead lamp blazed on the white paint, the
crimson plush, the brown varnish of mahogany tops.
The white wood packing-case under the bed-place
had remained unopened for three years now, as
though Captain Whalley had felt that, after the
Fair Maid was gone, there could be no abiding-place
on earth for his affections. His hands rested on
his knees; his handsome head with big eyebrows


THE END OF THE TETHER. 353
now it all comes out, 'I am poor, and I can't. I
have only this five hundred in the world.'"
He contemplated the immobility of Captain
Whalley, that seemed to present an inconquerable
obstacle in his path. His face took a mournful cast.
"You are a hard man."
"Enough," said Captain Whalley, turning upon
him. "You shall get nothing from me, because I
have nothing of mine to give away now."
"Tell that to the marines!"
Mr Massy, going out, looked back once; then the
door closed, and Captain Whalley, alone, sat as still
as before. He had nothing of his own—even his
own past of honour, of truth, of just pride, was
gone. All his spotless life had fallen into the abyss.
He had said his last good-bye to it. But what
belonged to her, that he meant to save. Only a
little money. He would take it to her in his own
hands—this last gift of a man that had lasted too
long. And an immense and fierce impulse, the
very passion of paternity, flamed up with all the
unquenched vigour of his worthless life in a desire
to see her face.
Just across the deck Massy had gone straight to
his cabin, struck a light, and hunted up the note of
the dreamed number whose figures had flamed up
also with the fierceness of another passion. He
must contrive somehow not to miss a drawing.
That number meant something. But what ex-
pedient could he contrive to keep himself going?
"Wretched miser!" he mumbled.
If Mr Sterne could at no time have told him any-
thing new about his partner, he could have told Mr
z


356 THE END OF THE TETHER.
His coat was unbuttoned; he shot the bolt of the
door (there was no other opening), and, squatting
before the scrap-heap, began to pack his pockets with
pieces of iron. He packed them carefully, as if the
rusty nuts, the broken bolts, the links of cargo chain,
had been so much gold he had that one chance to
carry away. He packed his side-pockets till they
bulged, the breast-pocket, the pockets inside. He
turned over the pieces. Some he rejected. A small
mist of powdered rust began to rise about his busy
hands. Mr Massy knew something of the scientific
basis of his clever trick . If you want to deflect the
magnetic needle of a ship's compass, soft iron is the
best; likewise many small pieces in the pockets of
a jacket would have more effect than a few large
ones, because in that way you obtain a greater
amount of surface for weight in your iron, and it's
surface that tells.
He slipped out swiftly — two strides sufficed—
and in his cabin he perceived that his hands were
all red — red with rust. It disconcerted him, as
though he had found them covered with blood: he
looked himself over hastily. Why, his trousers too!
He had been rubbing his rusty palms on his legs.
He tore off the waistband button in his haste,
brushed his coat, washed his hands. Then the air
of guilt left him, and he sat down to wait.
He sat bolt upright and weighted with iron in his
chair. He had a hard, lumpy bulk against each hip,
felt the scrappy iron in his pockets touch his ribs at
every breath, the downward drag of all these pounds
hanging upon his shoulders. He looked very dull
too, sitting idle there, and his yellow face, with


THE END OF THE TETHER. 857
motionless black eyes, had something passive and
sad in its quietness.
When he heard eight bells struck above his head,
he rose and made ready to go out. His movements
seemed aimless, his lower lip had dropped a little, his
eyes roamed about the cabin, and the tremendous
tension of his will had robbed them of every vestige
of intelligence.
With the last stroke of the bell the Serang
appeared noiselessly on the bridge to relieve the
mate. Sterne overflowed with good nature, since
he had nothing more to desire.
"Got your eyes well open yet, Serang? It's
middling dark; I'll wait till you get your sight
properly."
The old Malay murmured, looked up with his
worn eyes, sidled away into the light of the binnacle,
and, crossing his hands behind his back, fixed his
eyes on the compass-card.
"You'll have to keep a good look-out ahead for
land, about half-past three. It's fairly clear, though.
You have looked in on the captain as you came
along — eh? He knows the time? Well, then, I
am off."
At the foot of the ladder he stood aside for the cap-
tain. He watched him go up with an even, certain
tread, and remained thoughtful for a moment. "It's
funny," he said to himself, "but you can never tell
whether that man has seen you or not. He might
have heard me breathe this time."
He was a wonderful man when all was said and
done. They said he had had a name in his day.
Mr Sterne could well believe it; and he concluded 


THE END OF THE TETHER. 359
he came to cling to his deception with a fierce
determination to carry it out to the end, to save
her money intact, and behold her once more with
his own eyes. Afterwards—what? The idea of
suicide was revolting to the vigour of his man-
hood. He had prayed for death till the prayers
had stuck in his throat. All the days of his life
he had prayed for daily bread, and not to be led
into temptation, in a childlike humility of spirit.
Did words mean anything? Whence did the gift
of speech come? The violent beating of his heart
reverberated in his head—seemed to shake his brain
to pieces.
He sat down heavily in the deck-chair to keep the
pretence of his watch. The night was dark. All
the nights were dark now.
"Serang," he said, half aloud.
"Ada, Tuan. I am here."
"There are clouds on the sky?"
"There are, Tuan."
"Let her be steered straight. North."
"She is going north, Tuan."
The Serang stepped back. Captain Whalley re-
cognised Massy's footfalls on the bridge.
The engineer walked over to port and returned,
passing behind the chair several times. Captain
Whalley detected an unusual character as of pru-
dent care in this prowling. The near presence
of that man brought with it always a recrudes-
cence of moral suffering for Captain Whalley. It
was not remorse. After all, he had done nothing
but good to the poor devil. There was also a sense
of danger—the necessity of a greater care.


THE END OF THE TETHER. 361
over to the wheel, made a slight stir, which at-
tracted Captain Whalley's anxious attention. He
said, "Take better care." Then everything settled
to the usual quiet on the bridge. Mr Massy had
disappeared.
But the iron in the pockets of the coat had done
its work; and the Sofala, heading north by the
compass, made untrue by this simple device, was
no longer making a safe course for Pangu Bay.
The hiss of water parted by her stem, the throb
of her engines, all the sounds of her faithful and
laborious life, went on uninterrupted in the great
calm of the sea joining on all sides the motionless
layer of cloud over the sky. A gentle stillness as
vast as the world seemed to wait upon her path,
enveloping her lovingly in a supreme caress. Mr
Massy thought there could be no better night for
an arranged shipwreck.
Run up high and dry on one of the reefs east of
Pangu—wait for daylight—hole in the bottom—
out boats—Pangu Bay same evening. That's about
it. As soon as she touched he would hasten on
the bridge, get hold of the coat (nobody would
notice in the dark), and shake it upside-down
over the side, or even fling it into the sea. A
detail. Who could guess? Coat been seen hang-
ing there from that hook hundreds of times. Never-
theless, when he sat down on the lower step of the
bridge-ladder his knees knocked together a little.
The waiting part was the worst of it. At times
he would begin to pant quickly, as though he had
been running, and then breathe largely, swelling
with the intimate sense of a mastered fate. Now


862 THE END OF THE TETHER.and then he would hear the shuffle of the Serang's
bare feet up there: quiet, low voices would ex-
change a few words, and lapse almost at once
into silence. . . .
"Tell me directly you see any land, Serang."
"Yes, Tuan. Not yet."
"No, not yet," Captain Whalley would agree.
The ship had been the best friend of his decline.
He had sent all the money he had made by and in
the Sofala to his daughter. His thought lingered
on the name. How often he and his wife had
talked over the cost of the child in the big stern-
cabin of the Condor; she would grow up, she
would marry, she would love them, they would
live near her and look at her happiness—it would
go on without end. Well, his wife was dead, to
the child he had given all he had to give; he
wished he could come near her, see her, see her
face once, live in the sound of her voice, that could
make the darkness of the living grave ready for
him supportable. He had been starved of love too
long. He imagined her tenderness.
The Serang had been peering forward, and now
and then glancing at the chair. He fidgeted rest-
lessly, and suddenly burst out close to Captain
Whalley—
"Tuan, do you see anything of the land?"
The alarmed voice brought Captain Whalley to
his feet at once. He! See! And at the question,
the curse of his blindness seemed to fall on him with
a hundredfold force.
"What's the time?" he cried.
"Half-past three, Tuan."


THE END OF THE TETHER 363
"We are close. You must see. Look, I say.
Look."
Mr Massy, awakened by the sudden sound of
talking from a short doze on the lowest step, won-
dered why he was there. Ah! A faintness came
over him. It is one thing to sow the seed of an
accident and another to see the monstrous fruit
hanging over your head ready to fall in the sound
of agitated voices.
"There's no danger," he muttered thickly.
The horror of incertitude had seized upon Captain
Whalley, the miserable mistrust of men, of things—
of the very earth. He had steered that very course
thirty-six times by the same compass—if anything
was certain in this world it was its absolute, un-
erring correctness. Then what had happened? Did
the Serang lie? Why lie? Why? Was he going
blind too?
"Is there a mist? Look low on the water. Low
down, I say."
"Tuan, there's no mist. See for yourself."
Captain Whalley steadied the trembling of his
limbs by an effort. Should he stop the engines at
once and give himself away. A gust of irresolution
swayed all sorts of bizarre notions in his mind.
The unusual had come, and he was not fit to deal
with it. In this passage of inexpressible anguish
he saw her face—the face of a young girl—with an
amazing strength of illusion. No, he must not give
himself away after having gone so far for her sake.
"You steered the course? You made it? Speak
the truth."
"Ya, Tuan. On the course now. Look."


364 THE END OF THE TETHER.
Captain Whalley strode to the binnacle, which to
him made such a dim spot of light in an infinity
of shapeless shadow. By bending his face right
down to the glass he had been able before . . .
Having to stoop so low, he put out, instinctively,
his arm to where he knew there was a stanchion
to steady himself against. His hand closed on some-
thing that was not wood but cloth. The slight
pull adding to the weight, the loop broke, and Mr
Massy's coat falling, struck the deck heavily with
a dull thump, accompanied by a lot of clicks.
"What's this?"
Captain Whalley fell on his knees, with groping
hands extended in a frank gesture of blindness.
They trembled, these hands feeling for the truth.
He saw it. Iron near the compass. Wrong course.
Wreck her! His ship. Oh no. Not that.
"Jump and stop her!" he roared out in a voice
not his own.
He ran himself—hands forward, a blind man, and
while the clanging of the gong echoed still all over
the ship, she seemed to butt full tilt into the side of
a mountain.
It was low water along the north side of the
strait. Mr Massy had not reckoned on that. In-
stead of running aground for half her length, the
Sofala butted the sheer ridge of a stone reef which
would have been awash at high water. This made
the shook absolutely terrific. Everybody in the ship
that was standing was thrown down headlong: the
shaken rigging made a great rattling to the very
trucks. All the lights went out: several chain-guys,
snapping, clattered against the funnel: there were


THE END OF THE TETHER S65
crashes, pings of parted wire-rope, splintering
sounds, loud cracks, the masthead lamp flew over
the bows, and all the doors about the deck began
to bang heavily. Then, after having hit, she re-
bounded, hit the second time the very same spot
like a battering-ram. This completed the havoc:
the funnel, with all the guys gone, fell over with
a hollow sound of thunder, smashing the wheel to
bits, crushing the frame of the awnings, break-
ing the lookers, filling the bridge with a mass of
splinters, sticks, and broken wood. Captain Whalley
picked himself up and stood knee-deep in wreckage,
torn, bleeding, knowing the nature of the danger
he had escaped mostly by the sound, and holding
Mr Massy's coat in his arms.
By this time Sterne (he had been flung out of his
bunk) had set the engines astern. They worked for
a few turns, then a voice bawled out, "Get out of
the damned engine-room, Jack!"—and they stopped;
but the ship had gone clear of the reef and lay still,
with a heavy cloud of steam issuing from the broken
deck-pipes, and vanishing in wispy shapes into the
night. Notwithstanding the suddenness of the dis-
aster there was no shouting, as if the very violence
of the shock had half-stunned the shadowy lot of
people swaying here and there about her decks.
The voice of the Serang pronounced distinctly above
the confused murmurs—
"Eight fathom." He had heaved the lead.
Mr Sterne cried out next in a strained pitch—
"Where the devil has she got to? Where are we?"
Captain Whalley replied in a calm bass—
"Amongst the reefs to the eastward."


THE END OF THE TETHER. 367
"You blind devil! It's you that drove me to it."
Captain Whalley, hugging the coat to his breast,
made no sound. The light had ebbed for ever from
the world—let everything go. But this man should
not escape scot-free.
Sterne's voice commanded—
"Lower away!"
The blocks rattled.
"Now then," he cried, "over with you. This way.
You, Jack, here. Mr Massy! Mr Massy! Captain!
Quick, sir! Let's get"
"I shall go to prison for trying to cheat the
insurance, but you'll get exposed; you, honest man,
who has been cheating me. You are poor. Aren't
you? You've nothing but the five hundred pounds.
Well, you have nothing at all now. The ship's lost,
and the insurance won't be paid."
Captain Whalley did not move. True! Ivy's
money! Gone in this wreck. Again he had a flash
of insight. He was indeed at the end of his tether.
Urgent voices cried out together alongside. Massy
did not seem able to tear himself away from the
bridge. He chattered and hissed despairingly—
"Give it up to me! Give it up!"
"No," said Captain Whalley; "I could not give it
up. You had better go. Don't wait, man, if you
want to live. She's settling down by the head fast.
No; I shall keep it, but I shall stay on board."
Massy did not seem to understand; but the love
of life, awakened suddenly, drove him away from
the bridge.
Captain Whalley laid the coat down, and stumbled
amongst the heaps of wreckage to the side.


368 THE END OF THE TETHER.
"Is Mr Massy in with you?" he called out into
the night.
Sterne from the boat shouted—
"Yes; we've got him. Come along, sir. It's
madness to stay longer."
Captain Whalley felt along the rail carefully, and,
without a word, cast off the painter. They were
expecting him still down there. They were wait-
ing, till a voice suddenly exclaimed—
"We are adrift! Shove off!"
"Captain Whalley! Leap! . . . pull up a little
. . . leap! You can swim."
In that old heart, in that vigorous body, there
was, that nothing should be wanting, a horror of
death that apparently could not be overcome by the
horror of blindness. But after all, for Ivy he had
carried his point, walking in his darkness to the
very verge of a crime. God had not listened to
his prayers. The light had finished ebbing out of
the world; not a glimmer. It was a dark waste;
but it was unseemly that a Whalley who had gone
so far to carry a point should continue to live. He
must pay the price.
"Leap as far as you can, sir; we will pick you up."
They did not hear him answer. But their shout-
ing seemed to remind him of something. He groped
his way back, and sought for Mr Massy's coat. He
could swim indeed; people sucked down by the whirl-
pool of a sinking ship do come up sometimes to the
surface, and it was unseemly that a Whalley, who
had made up his mind to die, should be beguiled by
chance into a struggle. He would put all these
pieces of iron into his own pockets.


THE END OF THE TETHER. 869
They, looking from the boat, saw the Sofala, a
black mass upon a black sea, lying still at an appealling can't. No sound came from her. Then, with a
great bizarre shuffling noise, as if the boilers had
broken through the bulkheads, and with a faint
muffled detonation, where the ship had been there
appeared for a moment something standing upright
and narrow, like a rook out of the sea. Then that
too disappeared.
When the Sofala failed to come back to Batu Beru
at the proper time, Mr Van Wyk understood at once
that he would never see her any more. But he did
not know what had happened till some months
afterwards, when, in a native craft lent him by his
Sultan, he had made his way to the Sofala's port
of registry, where already her existence and the
official inquiry into her loss were beginning to be
forgotten.
It had not been a very remarkable or interesting
case, except for the fact that the captain had gone
down with his sinking ship. It was the only life
lost; and Mr Van Wyk would not have been able
to learn any details had it not been for Sterne,
whom he met one day on the quay near the bridge
over the creek, almost on the very spot where
Captain Whalley, to preserve his daughter's five
hundred pounds intact, had turned to get a sampan
which would take him on board the Sofala.
From afar Mr Van Wyk saw Sterne blink straight
at him and raise his hand to his hat. They drew
into the shade of a building (it was a bank), and the
mate related how the boat with the crew got into
2a





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