nd 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 agitated, 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.

"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 somber,
brooding, and menacing expression. The luster 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,' murmured 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 traveled 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 never shake him by
the hand,'