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 sombre
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 flavour 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 pretence 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? Do
you see anything? It seems to me I am trying to tell you ya
dream--making a vain attempt, because no relation of a dream can convey
the dream-sensation, that commingling of absurdity, s