Heart of Darkness | Page 3

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HEART OF DARKNESS

I
The Nellie, a cruising yawl, swung to her anchor without a flutter of the
sails, and was at rest. The flood had made, the wind was nearly calm,
and being bound down the river, the only thing for it was to come to
and wait for the turn of the tide.
The sea-reach of the Thames stretched before us like the beginning of
an interminable waterway. In the offing the sea and the sky were
welded together without a joint, and in the luminous space the tanned
sails of the barges drifting up with the tide seemed to stand still in red
clusters of canvas sharply peaked, with gleams of varnished sprits. A
haze rested on the low shores that ran out to sea in vanishing flatness.
The air was dark above Gravesend, and farther back still seemed
condensed into a mournful gloom, brooding motionless over the
biggest, and the greatest, town on earth.
The Director of Companies was our captain and our host. We four
affectionately watched his back as he stood in the bows looking to
seaward. On the whole river there was nothing that looked half so
nautical. He resembled a pilot, which to a seaman is trustworthiness
personified. It was difficult to realize his work was not out there in the
luminous estuary, but behind him, within the brooding gloom.
Between us there was, as I have already said somewhere, the bond of
the sea. Besides holding our hearts together through long periods of
separation, it had the effect of making us tolerant of each other's
yarns--and even convictions. The Lawyer--the best of old fellows--had,
because of his many years and many virtues, the only cushion on deck,
and was lying on the only rug. The Accountant had brought out already
a box of dominoes, and was toying architecturally with the bones.
Marlow sat cross-legged right aft, leaning against the 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 serenity of still and exquisite brilliance. The water shone pacifically;
the sky, without a speck, was a benign immensity of unstained light;
the very mist on the Essex 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 the west, brooding over the upper
reaches, became more somber every minute, as if angered by the
approach of the sun.
And at last, in its curved and imperceptible fall, the sun sank low, and
from glowing white changed to a dull red without rays and without heat,
as if about to go out suddenly, stricken to death by the touch of that
gloom brooding over a crowd of men.
Forthwith a change came over the waters, and the serenity became less
brilliant but more profound. The old river in its broad reach rested
unruffled at the decline of day, after ages of good service done to the
race that peopled its banks, spread out in the tranquil dignity of a
waterway leading to the uttermost ends of the earth. We looked at the
venerable stream not in the vivid flush of a short day that comes and
departs for ever, but in the august light of abiding memories. And
indeed nothing is easier for a man who has, as the phrase goes,
"followed the sea" with reverence and affection, than