d earnestly. 'I can do no more for Kurtz now, and they would soon
find some excuse. What's to stop them? There's a military post three
hundred miles from here.' 'Well, upon my word,' said I, 'perhaps you
had better go if you have any friends amongst the savages near by.'
'Plenty,' he said. 'They are simple people--and I want nothing, you
know.' He stood biting his lip, then: 'I don't want any harm to happen
to these whites here, but of course I was thinking of Mr. Kurtz's
reputation--but you are a brother seaman and--' 'All right,' said I,
after a time. 'Mr. Kurtz's reputation is safe with me.' I did not know
how truly I spoke.

"He informed me, lowering his voice, that it was Kurtz who had ordered
the attack to be made on the steamer. 'He hated sometimes the idea of
being taken away--and then again.... But I don't understand these
matters. I am a simple man. He thought it would scare you away--that you
would give it up, thinking him dead. I could not stop him. Oh, I had an
awful time of it this last month.' 'Very well,' I said. 'He is all right
now.' 'Ye-e-es,' he muttered, not very convinced apparently. 'Thanks,'
said I; 'I shall keep my eyes open.' 'But quiet-eh?' he urged anxiously.
'It would be awful for his reputation if anybody here--' I promised a
complete discretion with great gravity. 'I have a canoe and three
black fellows waiting not very far. I am off. Could you give me a few
Martini-Henry cartridges?' I could, and did, with proper secrecy. He
helped himself, with a wink at me, to a handful of my tobacco. 'Between
sailors--you know--good English tobacco.' At the door of the pilot-house
he turned round--'I say, haven't you a pair of shoes you could spare?'
He raised one leg. 'Look.' The soles were tied with knotted strings
sandalwise under his bare feet. I rooted out an old pair, at which he
looked with admiration before tucking it under his left arm. One of his
pockets (bright red) was bulging with cartridges, from the other (dark
blue) peeped 'Towson's Inquiry,' etc., etc. He seemed to think himself
excellently well equipped for a renewed encounter with the wilderness.
'Ah! I'll never, never meet such a man again. You ought to have heard
him recite poetry--his own, too, it was, he told me. Poetry!' He rolled
his eyes at the recollection of these delights. 'Oh, he enlarged my
mind!' 'Good-bye,' said I. He shook hands and vanished in the night.
Sometimes I ask myself whether I had ever really seen him--whethe