Heart of Darkness-- partial word list

It had known and served all the men of whom the nation is


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proud, from Sir Francis Drake to Sir John Franklin, knights all, titled and untitled -- the great knights-errant of the sea.

"After this I got embraced, told to wear flannel, be sure to write often, and so on -- and I left.

Yes, two black hens.

At that time there were many blank spaces on the earth, and when I saw one that looked particularly inviting on a map (but they all look that) I would put my


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finger on it and say, 'When I grow up I will go there.'

"I came upon a boiler wallowing in the grass, then found a path leading up the hill.

Here and there a military camp lost in a wilderness, like a needle in a bundle of hay -- cold, fog, tempests, disease, exile, and death -- death skulking in the air, in the water, in the bush.

It was difficult to realize his work was not out there in the luminous estuary, but behind him, within the brooding gloom.

I wouldn't have believed it of myself; but, then -- you see -- I felt somehow I must get there by hook or by crook.

Rather surprised, I said Yes, when he produced a thing like calipers and got the dimensions back and front and every way, taking notes carefully.

Odd thing that I, who used to clear out for any part of the world at twenty-four hours' notice, with less thought than most men give to the crossing of a street, had a moment -- I won't say of hesitation, but of startled pause, before this commonplace affair.

"A slight clinking behind me made me turn my head.

The flood had made, the wind was nearly calm, and being bound down the river, the only thing for it was to come to and wait for the turn of the tide.

"Sometimes he was contemptibly childish.

Brought from all the recesses of the coast in all the legality of time contracts, lost in uncongenial surroundings, fed on unfamiliar food, they sickened, became inefficient, and were then allowed to crawl away and rest.

I've seen the devil of violence, and the devil of greed, and the devil of hot desire; but, by all the stars! these were strong, lusty, red-eyed devils, that swayed and drove men -- men, I tell you.

The Accountant had brought out already a box of dominoes, and was toying architecturally with the bones.

There was a great commotion in the bush; the shower of arrows stopped, a few dropping shots rang out sharply -- then silence, in which the languid beat of the stern-wheel came plainly to my ears.

"This devoted band called itself the Eldorado Exploring Expedition, and I believe they were sworn to secrecy.

She must have had the value of several elephant tusks upon her.

Here and there a military camp lost in a wilderness, like a needle in a bundle of hay -- cold, fog, tempests, disease, exile, and death -- death skulking in the air, in the water, in the bush.

And the lofty frontal bone of Mr. Kurtz!

He was an unshaven little man in a threadbare coat like a gaberdine, with his feet in slippers, and I thought him a harmless fool.

They grabbed what they could get for the sake of what was to be got.

Say?' He positively danced, the bloodthirsty little gingery beggar.

I couldn't let it rest, though; but when an opportunity offered at last to meet my predecessor, the grass growing through his ribs was tall enough to hide his bones.

It takes place in an impalpable greyness, with nothing underfoot, with nothing around, without spectators, without clamour, without glory, without the great desire of victory, without the great fear of defeat, in a sickly atmosphere of tepid scepticism, without much belief in your own right, and still less in that of your adversary.

The other explained that it had come with a fleet of canoes in charge of an English half-caste clerk Kurtz had with him; that Kurtz had apparently intended to return himself, the station being by that time bare of goods and stores, but after coming three hundred miles, had suddenly decided to go back, which he started to do alone in a small dugout with four paddlers, leaving the half-caste to continue down the river with the ivory.

But suddenly, as we struggled round a bend, there would be a glimpse of rush walls, of peaked grass-roofs, a burst of yells, a whirl of black limbs, a mass of hands clapping, of feet stamping, of bodies swaying, of eyes rolling, under the droop of heavy and motionless foliage.

But there was in it one river especially, a mighty big river, that you could see on the map, resembling an immense snake uncoiled, with its head in the sea, its body at rest curving afar over a vast country, and its tail lost in the depths of the land.

An athletic black belonging to some coast tribe and educated by my poor predecessor, was the helmsman.

How could you? -- with solid pavement under your feet, surrounded by kind neighbours ready to cheer you or to fall on you, stepping delicately between the butcher and the policeman, in the holy terror of scandal and gallows and lunatic asylums -- how can you imagine what particular region of the first ages a man's untrammelled feet may take him into by the way of solitude -- utter solitude without a policeman -- by the way of silence -- utter silence, where no warning voice of a kind ...

And perhaps in this is the whole difference; perhaps all the wisdom, and all truth, and all sincerity, are just compressed into that inappreciable moment of time in which we step over the threshold of the invisible.

I could see every rib, the joints of their limbs were like knots in a rope; each had an iron collar on his neck, and all were connected together with a chain whose bights swung between them, rhythmically clinking.

AVE! Old knitter of black wool.

It had known and served all the men of whom the nation is


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proud, from Sir Francis Drake to Sir John Franklin, knights all, titled and untitled -- the great knights-errant of the sea.

After all, that was only a savage sight, while I seemed at one bound to have been transported into some lightless region of subtle horrors, where pure, uncomplicated savagery was a positive


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relief, being something that had a right to exist -- obviously -- in the sunshine.

The sea-reach of the Thames stretched before us like the beginning of an interminable waterway.

We four affectionately watched his back as he stood in the bows looking to seaward.

We looked at the venerable stream not in the vivid flush of a short day that comes and departs for ever, but in the august light of abiding memories.

'It must be this miserable trader-this intruder,' exclaimed the manager, looking back malevolently at the place we had left.

And at last, in its curved and imperceptible fall, the sun sank low, and from glowing white changed to a dull red without rays and without heat, as if about to go out suddenly, stricken to death by the touch of that gloom brooding over a crowd of men.

It contained a couch, two camp-stools, a loaded Martini-Henry leaning in one corner, a tiny table, and the steering-wheel.

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.

Therefore he whacked the old nigger mercilessly, while a big crowd of his people watched him, thunderstruck, till some man -- I was told the chief's son -- in desperation at hearing the old chap yell, made a tentative jab with a spear at the white man -- and of course it went quite easy between the shoulder-blades.

It was difficult to realize his work was not out there in the luminous estuary, but behind him, within the brooding gloom.

He was stand-offish with the other agents, and they on their side said he was the manager's spy upon them.

"And this also," said Marlow suddenly, "has been one of the dark places of the earth."

A haze rested on the low shores that ran out to sea in vanishing flatness.

The water shone pacifically; the sky, without a speck, was a benign immensity of unstained light; the very mist on the Essex marsh was like a gauzy and radiant fabric, hung from the wooded rises inland, and draping the low shores in diaphanous folds.

Nowhere did we stop long enough to get a particularized impression, but the general sense of vague and oppressive wonder grew upon me.

The riverside bushes were certainly very thick; but the undergrowth behind was evidently penetrable.

Settlements some centuries old, and still no bigger than pinheads on the untouched expanse of their background.

It was evident he took me for a perfectly shameless prevaricator.

The harlequin on the bank turned


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his little pug-nose up to me.

'Good God! What is the meaning -- ' stammered at my elbow one of the pilgrims -- a little fat man, with sandy hair and red whiskers, who wore sidespring boots, and pink pyjamas tucked into his socks.

The flood had made, the wind was nearly calm, and being bound down the river, the only thing for it was to come to and wait for the turn of the tide.

"I had been dimly aware for some time of a worrying noise, and when I lifted my eyes I saw the wood-pile was gone, and the manager, aided by all the pilgrims, was shouting at me from the riverside.

The great wall of vegetation, an exuberant and entangled mass of trunks, branches, leaves, boughs, festoons, motionless in the moonlight, was like a rioting invasion of soundless life, a rolling wave of plants, piled up, crested, ready to topple over the creek, to sweep every little man of us out of his little existence.

Strings of dusty niggers with splay feet arrived and departed; a stream of manufactured goods, rubbishy cottons, beads, and brass-wire set into the


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depths of darkness, and in return came a precious trickle of ivory.

Between us there was, as I have already said somewhere, the bond of the sea.

It wasn't a quarry or a sandpit, anyhow.

Between us there was, as I have already said somewhere, the bond of the sea.

A door opened,


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a white-haired secretarial head, but wearing a compassionate expression, appeared, and a skinny forefinger beckoned me into the sanctuary.

"I don't want to bother you much with what happened to me personally," he began, showing in this remark the weakness of many tellers of tales who seem so often unaware of what their audience would like best to hear; "yet to understand the effect of it on me you ought to know how I got out there, what I saw, how I went up that river to the place where I first met the poor chap.

In the offing the sea and the sky were welded together without a joint, and in the luminous space the tanned sails of the barges drifting up with the tide seemed to stand still in red clusters of canvas sharply peaked, with gleams of varnished sprits.

After work hours he used sometimes to come over from his hut for a talk about his children and his pigeons; at work, when he had to crawl in the mud under the bottom of the steamboat, he would tie up that beard of his in a kind of white serviette he brought for the purpose.

I confess I swore shamefully.

I found nothing else to do but to offer him one of my good Swede's ship's biscuits I had in my pocket.

'No doubt about it,' said I, tugging like mad at the shoe-laces.

It was a wanton smash-up.

But there was one yet -- the biggest, the most blank, so to speak -- that I had a hankering after.

Only the gloom to the west, brooding over the upper reaches, became more sombre every minute, as if angered by the approach of the sun.

The idleness of a passenger, my isolation amongst all these men with whom I had no point of contact, the oily and languid sea, the uniform sombreness of the coast, seemed to keep me away from the truth of things, within the toil of a mournful and senseless delusion.

For some reason or other we did not begin that game of dominoes.

More than once she had to wade for a bit, with twenty cannibals splashing around and pushing.

The pilgrims had opened with their Winchesters, and were simply squirting lead into that bush.

The pilgrims had opened with their Winchesters, and were simply squirting lead into that bush.

White men with long staves in their hands appeared languidly from amongst the buildings, strolling up to take a look at me, and then retired out of sight somewhere.

The sun was fierce, the land seemed to glisten and drip with steam.

For me it crawled towards Kurtz -- exclusively; but when the steam-pipes started leaking we crawled very slow.

With one hand I felt above my head for the line of the steam whistle, and jerked out screech after screech hurriedly.

I thought to myself, they can't trade without using some kind of craft on that lot of fresh water -- steamboats!

Then the whole population cleared into the forest, expecting all kinds of calamities to happen, while, on the other hand, the steamer Fresleven commanded left also in a bad panic, in charge of the engineer, I believe.

The supernatural being had not been touched after he fell.

I have been in some of them, and . . . well, we won't talk about that.

On the deck, there were two little teakwood houses, with doors and windows.

On the whole river there was nothing that looked half so nautical.

The flood had made, the wind was nearly calm, and being bound down the river, the only thing for it was to come to and wait for the turn of the tide.

"I had then, as you remember, just returned to London after a lot of Indian Ocean, Pacific, China Seas -- a regular dose of the East -- six years or so, and I was loafing about, hindering you fellows in your work and invading your homes, just as though I had got a heavenly mission to civilize you.

It had lost its covers, and the pages had been thumbed into a state of extremely dirty softness; but the back had been lovingly stitched afresh with white cotton thread, which looked clean yet.

The tidal current runs to and fro in its unceasing service, crowded with memories of men and ships it had borne to the rest of home or to the battles of the sea.

He was a seaman, but he was a wanderer, too, while most seamen lead, if one may so express it, a sedentary life.

And several times a week a coast caravan came in with trade goods -- ghastly glazed calico that made you shudder only to look at it, glass beads value about a penny a quart, confounded spotted cotton handkerchiefs.

I believe I undertook amongst other things not to disclose any trade secrets.

I looked at them with a swift quickening of interest -- not because it occurred to me I might be eaten by them before very long, though I own to you that just then I perceived -- in a new light, as it were -- how unwholesome the pilgrims looked, and I hoped, yes, I positively hoped, that my aspect was not so -- what shall I say? -- so -- unappetizing: a touch of fantastic vanity which fitted well with the dream-sensation that pervaded all my days at that time.

Because the method is unsound.'

I wonder what becomes of that kind when it goes upcountry?'

The water shone pacifically; the sky, without a speck, was a benign immensity of unstained light; the very mist on the Essex marsh was like a gauzy and radiant fabric, hung from the wooded rises inland, and draping the low shores in diaphanous folds.

And at last, in its curved and imperceptible fall, the sun sank low, and from glowing white changed to a dull red without rays and without heat, as if about to go out suddenly, stricken to death by the touch of that gloom brooding over a crowd of men.

In a very few hours I arrived in a city that always makes me think of a whited sepulchre.

'I was on the threshold of great things,' he pleaded, in a voice of longing, with a wistfulness of tone that made my blood run cold.

Here I met Mr. Kurtz,' he said, youthfully solemn and reproachful.