Quotation from: Heart of Darkness

Written by: Joseph Conrad


"The earth seemed unearthly. We are accustomed to look upon the shackled
form of a conquered monster, but there--there you could look at a thing
monstrous and free. It was unearthly, and the men were--No, they were
not inhuman. Well, you know, that was the worst of it--this suspicion
of their not being inhuman. It would come slowly to one. They howled and
leaped, and spun, and made horrid faces; but what thrilled you was just
the thought of their humanity--like yours--the thought of your remote
kinship with this wild and passionate uproar. Ugly. Yes, it was ugly
enough; but if you were man enough you would admit to yourself that
there ywas in you just the faintest trace of a response to the terrible
frankness of that noise, a dim suspicion of there being a meaning in it
which you--you so remote from the night of first ages--could comprehend.
And why not? The mind of man is capable of anything--because everything
is in it, all the past as well as all the future. What was there after
all? Joy, fear, sorrow, devotion, valour, rage--who can tell?--but
truth--truth stripped of its cloak of time. Let the fool gape and
shudder--the man knows, and can look on without a wink. But he must at
least be as much of a man as these on the shore. He must meet that truth
with his own true stuff--with his own inborn strength. Principles won't
do. Acquisitions, clothes, pretty rags--rags that would fly off at the
first good shake. No; you want a deliberate belief. An appeal to me in
this fiendish row--is there? Very well; I hear; I admit, but I have
a voice, too, and for good or evil mine is the speech that cannot be
silenced. Of course, a fool, what with sheer fright and fine sentiments,
is always safe. Who's that grunting? You wonder I didn't go ashore for
a howl and a dance? Well, no--I didn't. Fine sentiments, you say?
Fine sentiments, be hanged! I had no time. I had to mess about with
white-lead and strips of woolen blanket helping to put bandages on
those leaky steam-pipes--I tell you. I had to watch the steering, and
circumvent those snags, and get the tin-pot along by hook or by crook.
There was surface-truth enough in these things to save a wiser man. And
between whiles I had to look after the savage who was fireman. He was
an improved specimen; he could fire up a vertical boiler. He was there
below me, and, upon my word, to look at him was as edifying as seeing a
dog in a parody of breeches and a feather hat, walking on his hind-legs.
A few months of training had done for that really fine chap. He squinted
at the steam-gauge and at the water-gauge with an evident effort of
intrepidity--and he had filed teeth, too, the poor devil, and the wool
of his pate shaved into queer patterns, and three ornamental scars
on each of his cheeks. He ought to have been clapping his hands and
stamping his feet on the bank, instead of which he was hard at work, a
thrall to strange witchcraft, full of improving knowledge. He was useful
because he had been instructed; and what he knew was this--that should
the water in that transparent thing disappear, the evil spirit inside
the boiler would get angry through the greatness of his thirst, and take
a terrible vengeance. So he sweated and fired up and watched the glass
fearfully (with an impromptu charm, made of rags, tied to his arm, and
a piece of polished bone, as big as a watch, stuck flatways through his
lower lip), while the wooded banks slipped past us slowly, the short
noise was left behind, the interminable miles of silence--and we crept
on, towards Kurtz. But the snags were thick, the water was treacherous
and shallow, the boiler seemed indeed to have a sulky devil in it, and
thus neither that fireman nor I had any time to peer into our creepy
thoughts.

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