e like a
carcass of some big river animal. The smell of mud, of primeval mud,
by Jove! was in my nostrils, the high stillness of primeval forest was
before my eyes; there were shiny patches on the black creek. The moon
had spread over everything a thin layer of silver--over the rank grass,
over the mud, upon the wall of matted vegetation standing higher than
the wall of a temple, over the great river I could see through a somber
gap glittering, glittering, as it flowed broadly by without a murmur.
All this was great, expectant, mute, while the man jabbered about
himself. I wondered whether the stillness on the face of the immensity
looking at us two were meant as an appeal or as a menace. What were we
who had strayed in here? Could we handle that dumb thing, or would it
handle us? I felt how big, how confoundedly big, was that thing that
couldn't talk, and perhaps was deaf as well. What was in there? I could
see a little ivory coming out from there, and I had heard Mr. Kurtz was
in there. I had heard enough about it too--God knows! Yet somehow it
didn't bring any image with it--no more than if I had been told an angel
or a fiend was in there. I believed it in the same way one of you might
believe there are inhabitants in the planet Mars. I knew once a Scotch
sailmaker who was certain, dead sure, there were people in Mars. If you
asked him for some idea how they looked and behaved, he would get shy
and mutter something about 'walking on all-fours.' If you as much as
smiled, he would--though a man of sixty--offer to fight you. I would not
have gone so far as to fight for Kurtz, but I went for him near enough
to a lie. You know I hate, detest, and can't bear a lie, not because
I am straighter than the rest of us, but simply because it appalls me.
There is a taint of death, a flavor of mortality in lies,--which is
exactly what I hate and detest in the world--what I want to forget.
It makes me miserable and sick, like biting something rotten would do.
Temperament, I suppose. Well, I went near enough to it by letting the
young fool there believe anything he liked to imagine as to my influence
in Europe. I became in an instant as much of a pretense as the rest of
the bewitched pilgrims. This simply because I had a notion it somehow
would be of help to that Kurtz whom at the time I did not see--you
understand. He was just a word for me. I did not see the man in the name
any more than you do. Do you see him? Do you see the story?