hat 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 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 anyone 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 advanced 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 of everything that night. I
actually left the track and ran in a wide semicircle (I verily believe
chuckling 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 vapor 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 confronting him I seemed
to come to my senses, I saw the danger in its right proportion. It was
by no mea