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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 was very fine for
a time, but after a bit I did get tired of resting.  Then
I began to look for a ship--I should think the hardest
work on earth.  But the ships wouldn't even look at me.
And I got tired of that game too.

"Now when I was a little chap I had a passion for
maps.  I would look for hours at South America, or
Africa, or Australia, and lose myself in all the glories
of exploration.  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 finger on it and say, 'When I grow up
I will go there.'  The North Pole was one of these places,
I remember.  Well, I haven't been there yet, and shall
not try now.  The glamour's off.  Other places were
scattered about the Equator, and in every sort of lati-
tude all over the two hemispheres.  I have been in some
of them, and . . . well, we won't talk about that.  But
there was one yet--the biggest, the most blank, so to
speak--that I had a hankering after.

"True, by this time it was not a blank space any
more.  It had got filled since my boyhood with rivers
and lakes and names.  It had ceased to be a blank space
of delightful mystery--a white patch for a boy to dream
gloriously over.  It had become a place of darkness.  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.  And as I looked at the map
of it in a shop-window, it fascinated me as a snake would
a bird--a silly little bird.  Then I remembered there was
a big concern, a Company for trade on that river.  Dash
it all!  I thought to myself, they can't trade without
using some kind of craft on that lot of fresh water--
steamboats!  Why shouldn't I try to get charge of
one?  I went on along Fleet Street, but could not shake
off the idea.  The snake had charmed me.

"You understand it was a Continental concern, that
Trading society; but I have a lot of relations living
on the Continent, because it's cheap and not so nasty
as it looks, they say.

"I am sorry to own I began to worry them.  This was
already a fresh departure for me.  I was not used to
get things that way, you know.  I always went my own
road and on my own legs where I had a mind to go.  I
wouldn't have believed it of myself; but, then--you see
--I felt somehow I must get there by hook or by crook.
So I worried them.  The men said 'My dear fellow,' and
did nothing.  Then--would you believe it?--I tried the
women.  I, Charlie Marlow, set the women to work--to
get a job.  Heavens!  Well, you see, the notion drove
me.  I had an aunt, a dear enthusiastic soul.  She wrote:
'It will be delightful.  I am ready to do anything, any-
thing for you.  It is a glorious idea.  I know the wife
of a very high personage in the Administration, and
also a man who has lots of influence with,' &c., &c.  She
was determined to make no end of fuss to get me ap-
pointed skipper of a river steamboat, if such was my
fancy.

"I got my appointment--of course; and I got it very
quick.  It appears the Company had received news that
one of their captains had been killed in a scuffle with
the natives.  This was my chance, and it made me the
more anxious to go.  It was only months and months
afterwards, when I made the attempt to recover what
was left of the body, that I heard the original quarrel
arose from a misunderstanding about some hens.  Yes,
two black hens.  Fresleven--that was the fellow's name,
a Dane--thought himself wronged somehow in the bar-
gain, so he went ashore and started to hammer the chief
of the village with a stick.  Oh, it didn't surprise me
in the least to hear this, and at the same time to be told
that Fresleven was the gentlest, quietest creature that
ever walked on two legs.  No doubt he was; but he
had been a couple of years already out there engaged
in the noble cause, you know, and he probably felt the
need at last of asserting his self-respect in some way.
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 despera-
tion 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.  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.  Afterwards nobody
seemed to trouble much about Fresleven's remains, till
I got out and stepped into his shoes.  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.  They were all
there.  The supernatural being had not been touched
after he fell.  And the village was deserted, the huts
gaped black, rotting, all askew within the fallen en-
closures.  A calamity had come to it, sure enough.  The
people had vanished.  Mad terror had scattered them,
men, women, and children, through the bush, and they
had never returned.  What became of the hens I don't
know either.  I should think the cause of progress got
them, anyhow.  However, through this glorious affair I
got my appointment, before I had fairly begun to hope
for it.

"I flew around like mad to get ready, and before forty-
eight hours I was crossing the Channel to show myself
to my employers, and sign the contract.  In a very few
hours I arrived in a city that always makes me think of
a whited sepulcher.  Prejudice no doubt.  I had no
difficulty in finding the Company's offices.  It was the
biggest thing in the town, and everybody I met was
full of it.  They were going to run an over-sea empire,
and make no end of coin by trade.

"A narrow and deserted street in deep shadow, high
houses, innumerable windows with venetian blinds, a dead
silence, grass sprouting between the stones, imposing
carriage archways right and left, immense double doors
standing ponderously ajar.  I slipped through one of
these cracks, went up a swept and ungarnished staircase,
as arid as a desert, and opened the first door I came to.
Two women, one fat and the other slim, sat on straw-
bottomed chairs, knitting black wool.  The slim one got
up and walked straight at me--still knitting with down-
cast eyes--and only just as I began to think of getting
out of her way, as you would for a somnambulist, stood
still, and looked up.  Her dress was as plain as an um-
brella-cover, and she turned round without a word and
preceded me into a waiting-room.  I gave my name, and
looked about.  Deal table in the middle, plain chairs all
round the walls, on one end a large shining map, marked
with all the colors of a rainbow.  There was a vast
amount of red--good to see at any time, because one
knows that some real work is done in there, a deuce of a
lot of blue, a little green, smears of orange, and, on the
East Coast, a purple patch, to show where the jolly
pioneers of progress drink the jolly lager-beer.  How-
ever, I wasn't going into any of these.  I was going
into the yellow.  Dead in the center.  And the river
was there--fascinating--deadly--like a snake.  Ough!
A door opened, a white-haired secretarial head, but
wearing a compassionate expression, appeared, and a
skinny forefinger beckoned me into the sanctuary.  Its
light was dim, and a heavy writing-desk squatted in the
middle.  From behind that structure came out an im-
pression of pale plumpness in a frock-coat.  The great
man himself.  He was five feet six, I should judge, and
had his grip on the handle-end of ever so many millions.
He shook hands, I fancy, murmured vaguely, was satis-
fied with my French.  Bon voyage.

"In about forty-five seconds I found myself again in
the waiting-room with the compassionate secretary, who,
full of desolation and sympathy, made me sign some
document.  I believe I undertook amongst other things
not to disclose any trade secrets.  Well, I am not going
to.

"I began to feel slightly uneasy.  You know I am
not used to such ceremonies, and there was something
ominous in the atmosphere.  It was just as though I
had been let into some conspiracy--I don't know--some-
thing not quite right; and I was glad to get out.  In
the outer room the two women knitted black wool fever-
ishly.  People were arriving, and the younger one was
walking back and forth introducing them.  The old
one sat on her chair.  Her flat cloth slippers were
propped up on a foot-warmer, and a cat reposed on
her lap.  She wore a starched white affair on her head,
had a wart on one cheek, and silver-rimmed spectacles
hung on the tip of her nose.  She glanced at me above
the glasses.  The swift and indifferent placidity of that
look troubled me.  Two youths with foolish and cheery
countenances were being piloted over, and she threw at
them the same quick glance of unconcerned wisdom.  She
seemed to know all about them and about me too.  An
eerie feeling came over me.  She seemed uncanny and
fateful.  Often far away there I thought of these two,
guarding the door of Darkness, knitting black wool as
for a warm pall, one introducing, introducing continu-
ously to the unknown, the other scrutinizing the cheery
and foolish faces with unconcerned old eyes.  Ave!  Old
knitter of black wool.  Morituri te salutant.  Not many
of those she looked at ever saw her again--not half,
by a long way.

"There was yet a visit to the doctor.  'A simple for-
mality,' assured me the secretary, with an air of taking
an immense part in all my sorrows.  Accordingly a
young chap wearing his hat over the left eyebrow, some
clerk I suppose,--there must have been clerks in the busi-
ness, though the house was as still as a house in a city
of the dead,--came from somewhere up-stairs, and led
me forth.  He was shabby and careless, with ink-stains
on the sleeves of his jacket, and his cravat was large and
billowy, under a chin shaped like the toe of an old boot.
It was a little too early for the doctor, so I proposed
a drink, and thereupon he developed a vein of joviality.
As we sat over our vermouths he glorified the Company's
business, and by-and-by I expressed casually my sur-
prise at him not going out there.  He became very cool
and collected all at once.  'I am not such a fool as I
look, quoth Plato to his disciples,' he said sententiously,
emptied his glass with great resolution, and we rose.

"The old doctor felt my pulse, evidently thinking of
something else the while.  'Good, good for there,' he
mumbled, and then with a certain eagerness asked me
whether I would let him measure my head.  Rather sur-
prised, I said Yes, when he produced a thing like calipers
and got the dimensions back and front and every way,
taking notes carefully.  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.  'I always
ask leave, in the interests of science, to measure the
crania of those going out there,' he said.  'And when
they come back, too?' I asked.  'Oh, I never see them,'
he remarked; 'and, moreover, the changes take place in-
side, you know.'  He smiled, as if at some quiet joke.
'So you are going out there.  Famous.  Interesting too.'
He gave me a searching glance, and made another note.
'Ever any madness in your family?' he asked, in a
matter-of-fact tone.  I felt very annoyed.  'Is that
question in the interests of science too?'  'It would be,'
he said, without taking notice of my irritation, 'interest-
ing for science to watch the mental changes of individ-
uals, on the spot, but . . .'  'Are you an alienist?' I
interrupted.  'Every doctor should be--a little,' an-
swered that original, imperturbably.  'I have a little
theory which you Messieurs who go out there must help
me to prove.  This is my share in the advantages my
country shall reap from the possession of such a mag-
nificent dependency.  The mere wealth I leave to others.
Pardon my questions, but you are the first Englishman
coming under my observation. . . .'  I hastened to
assure him I was not in the least typical.  'If I were,'
said I, 'I wouldn't be talking like this with you.'  'What
you say is rather profound, and probably erroneous,' he
said, with a laugh.  'Avoid irritation more than expos-
ure to the sun.  Adieu.  How do you English say, eh?
Good-by.  Ah!  Good-by.  Adieu.  In the tropics one
must before everything keep calm.' . . .  He lifted a
warning forefinger. . . .  'Du calme, du calme.
Adieu.'

"One thing more remained to do--say good-by to
my excellent aunt.  I found her triumphant.  I had a
cup of tea--the last decent cup of tea for many days
--and in a room that most soothingly looked just as you