r it
was possible to meet such a phenomenon!...

"When I woke up shortly after midnight his warning came to my mind with
its hint of danger that seemed, in the starred darkness, real enough to
make me get up for the purpose of having a look round. On the hill a
big fire burned, illuminating fitfully a crooked corner of the
station-house. One of the agents with a picket of a few of our blacks,
armed for the purpose, was keeping guard over the ivory; but deep within
the forest, red gleams that wavered, that seemed to sink and rise from
the ground amongst confused columnar shapes of intense blackness, showed
the exact position of the camp where Mr. Kurtz's adorers were keeping
their uneasy vigil. The monotonous beating of a big drum filled the air
with muffled shocks and a lingering vibration. A steady droning sound of
many men chanting each to himself some weird incantation came out from
the black, flat wall of the woods as the humming of bees comes out of
a hive, and had a strange narcotic effect upon my half-awake senses.
I believe I dozed off leaning over the rail, till an abrupt burst of
yells, an overwhelming outbreak of a pent-up and mysterious frenzy, woke
me up in a bewildered wonder. It was cut short all at once, and the
low droning went on with an effect of audible and soothing silence. I
glanced casually into the little cabin. A light was burning within, but
Mr. Kurtz was not there.

"I think I would have raised an outcry if I had believed my eyes. But I
didn't believe them at first--the thing seemed so impossible. The fact
is I was completely unnerved by a sheer blank fright, pure abstract
terror, unconnected with any distinct shape of physical danger. What
made this emotion so overpowering was--how shall I define it?--the
moral shock I received, as if something altogether monstrous,
intolerable to thought and odious to the soul, had been thrust upon me
unexpectedly. This lasted of course the merest fraction of a second, and
then the usual sense of commonplace, deadly danger, the possibility of
a sudden onslaught and massacre, or something of the kind, which I saw
impending, was positively welcome and composing. It pacified me, in
fact, so much that 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