Heart of Darkness | Page 6

about, hindering you fellows in 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. 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 concern, 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--steamboats! 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 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 misunderstanding 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 probably