Joseph Conrad - Heart of Darkness

Heart of Darkness
First published in 1902.

ISBN 978-1-775411-56-7

2008 THE FLOATING PRESS.

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The Nellie, a cruising yawl, swung to her anchor without a flutter ofthe sails, and was at rest. The flood had made, the wind was nearlycalm, and being bound down the river, the only thing for it was to cometo and wait for the turn of the tide.

The sea-reach of the Thames stretched before us like the beginning ofan interminable waterway. In the offing the sea and the sky were weldedtogether without a joint, and in the luminous space the tanned sailsof the barges drifting up with the tide seemed to stand still in redclusters of canvas sharply peaked, with gleams of varnished sprits. Ahaze rested on the low shores that ran out to sea in vanishing flatness.The air was dark above Gravesend, and farther back still seemedcondensed into a mournful gloom, brooding motionless over the biggest,and the greatest, town on earth.

The Director of Companies was our captain and our host. We fouraffectionately watched his back as he stood in the bows looking toseaward. On the whole river there was nothing that looked half sonautical. He resembled a pilot, which to a seaman is trustworthinesspersonified. It was difficult to realize his work was not out there inthe luminous estuary, but behind him, within the brooding gloom.

Between us there was, as I have already said somewhere, the bond ofthe sea. Besides holding our hearts together through long periods ofseparation, it had the effect of making us tolerant of each other'syarnsand even convictions. The Lawyerthe best of old fellowshad,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 abox of dominoes, and was toying architecturally with the bones. Marlowsat cross-legged right aft, leaning against the mizzen-mast. He hadsunken cheeks, a yellow complexion, a straight back, an ascetic aspect,and, with his arms dropped, the palms of hands outwards, resembled anidol. The director, satisfied the anchor had good hold, made his wayaft and sat down amongst us. We exchanged a few words lazily. Afterwardsthere was silence on board the yacht. For some reason or other we didnot begin that game of dominoes. We felt meditative, and fit for nothingbut placid staring. The day was ending in a serenity of still andexquisite brilliance. The water shone pacifically; the sky, without aspeck, was a benign immensity of unstained light; the very mist on theEssex marsh was like a gauzy and radiant fabric, hung from the woodedrises inland, and draping the low shores in diaphanous folds. Only thegloom to the west, brooding over the upper reaches, became more sombreevery minute, as if angered by the approach of the sun.

And at last, in its curved and imperceptible fall, the sun sank low, andfrom 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 thatgloom brooding over a crowd of men.

Forthwith a change came over the waters, and the serenity became lessbrilliant but more profound. The old river in its broad reach restedunruffled at the decline of day, after ages of good service done to therace that peopled its banks, spread out in the tranquil dignity of awaterway leading to the uttermost ends of the earth. We looked at thevenerable stream not in the vivid flush of a short day that comes anddeparts for ever, but in the august light of abiding memories. Andindeed nothing is easier for a man who has, as the phrase goes,"followed the sea" with reverence and affection, that to evoke thegreat spirit of the past upon the lower reaches of the Thames. The tidalcurrent runs to and fro in its unceasing service, crowded with memoriesof men and ships it had borne to the rest of home or to the battlesof the sea. It had known and served all the men of whom the nation isproud, from Sir Francis Drake to Sir John Franklin, knights all, titledand untitledthe great knights-errant of the sea. It had borne all theships whose names are like jewels flashing in the night of time, fromthe Golden Hind returning with her rotund flanks full of treasure, to bevisited by the Queen's Highness and thus pass out of the gigantic tale,to the Erebus and Terror, bound on other conquestsand that neverreturned. It had known the ships and the men. They had sailed fromDeptford, from Greenwich, from Eriththe adventurers and the settlers;kings' ships and the ships of men on 'Change; captains, admirals, thedark "interlopers" of the Eastern trade, and the commissioned "generals"of East India fleets. Hunters for gold or pursuers of fame, they allhad gone out on that stream, bearing the sword, and often the torch,messengers of the might within the land, bearers of a spark from thesacred fire. What greatness had not floated on the ebb of that riverinto the mystery of an unknown earth!... The dreams of men, the seedof commonwealths, the germs of empires.

The sun set; the dusk fell on the stream, and lights began to appearalong the shore. The Chapman light-house, a three-legged thing erecton a mud-flat, shone strongly. Lights of ships moved in the fairwayagreat stir of lights going up and going down. And farther west on theupper reaches the place of the monstrous town was still marked ominouslyon the sky, a brooding gloom in sunshine, a lurid glare under the stars.

"And this also," said Marlow suddenly, "has been one of the dark placesof the earth."

He was the only man of us who still "followed the sea." The worst thatcould be said of him was that he did not represent his class. He was aseaman, but he was a wanderer, too, while most seamen lead, if one mayso express it, a sedentary life. Their minds are of the stay-at-homeorder, and their home is always with themthe ship; and so is theircountrythe sea. One ship is very much like another, and the sea isalways the same. In the immutability of their surroundings the foreignshores, the foreign faces, the changing immensity of life, glide past,veiled not by a sense of mystery but by a slightly disdainful ignorance;for there is nothing mysterious to a seaman unless it be the sea itself,which is the mistress of his existence and as inscrutable as Destiny.For the rest, after his hours of work, a casual stroll or a casual spreeon shore suffices to unfold for him the secret of a whole continent,and generally he finds the secret not worth knowing. The yarns of seamenhave a direct simplicity, the whole meaning of which lies within theshell of a cracked nut. But Marlow was not typical (if his propensityto spin yarns be excepted), and to him the meaning of an episode was notinside like a kernel but outside, enveloping the tale which brought itout only as a glow brings out a haze, in the likeness of one of thesemisty halos that sometimes are made visible by the spectral illuminationof moonshine.