test.txt

使用霍夫曼huffman 編碼方式 對文件進行壓縮 程序很簡單 主要是幫助新人了解霍夫曼編碼的實現方法

would expect a lady's drawing-room to look, we had a
long quiet chat by the fireside.  In the course of these
confidences it became quite plain to me I had been repre-
sented to the wife of the high dignitary, and goodness
knows to how many more people besides, as an excep-
tional and gifted creature--a piece of good fortune for
the Company--a man you don't get hold of every day.
Good heavens! and I was going to take charge of a
two-penny-halfpenny river-steamboat with a penny
whistle attached!  It appeared, however, I was also one
of the Workers, with a capital--you know.  Something
like an emissary of light, something like a lower sort
of apostle.  There had been a lot of such rot let loose
in print and talk just about that time, and the excellent
woman, living right in the rush of all that humbug, got
carried off her feet.  She talked about 'weaning those
ignorant millions from their horrid ways,' till, upon my
word, she made me quite uncomfortable.  I ventured to
hint that the Company was run for profit.

"'You forget, dear Charlie, that the laborer is worthy
of his hire,' she said, brightly.  It's queer how out of
touch with truth women are.  They live in a world of
their own, and there had never been anything like it,
and never can be.  It is too beautiful altogether, and
if they were to set it up it would go to pieces before
the first sunset.  Some confounded fact we men have
been living contentedly with ever since the day of cre-
ation would start up and knock the whole thing over.

"After this I got embraced, told to wear flannel, be
sure to write often, and so on--and I left.  In the street
--I don't know why--a queer feeling came to me that I
was an impostor.  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 cross-
ing of a street, had a moment--I won't say of hesitation,
but of startled pause, before this commonplace affair.
The best way I can explain it to you is by saying that,
for a second or two, I felt as though, instead of going
to the center of a continent, I were about to set off for
the center of the earth.

"I left in a French steamer, and she called in every
blamed port they have out there, for, as far as I could
see, the sole purpose of landing soldiers and custom-
house officers.  I watched the coast.  Watching a coast
as it slips by the ship is like thinking about an enigma.
There it is before you--smiling, frowning, inviting,
grand, mean, insipid, or savage, and always mute with
an air of whispering, `Come and find out.'  This one was
almost featureless, as if still in the making, with an
aspect of monotonous grimness.  The edge of a colossal
jungle, so dark-green as to be almost black, fringed
with white surf, ran straight, like a ruled line, far, far
away along a blue sea whose glitter was blurred by a
creeping mist.  The sun was fierce, the land seemed to
glisten and drip with steam.  Here and there grayish-
whitish specks showed up, clustered inside the white surf,
with a flag flying above them perhaps.  Settlements some
centuries old, and still no bigger than pin-heads on the
untouched expanse of their background.  We pounded
along, stopped, landed soldiers; went on, landed custom-
house clerks to levy toll in what looked like a God-for-
saken wilderness, with a tin shed and a flag-pole lost in
it; landed more soldiers--to take care of the custom-
house clerks, presumably.  Some, I heard, got drowned
in the surf; but whether they did or not, nobody seemed
particularly to care.  They were just flung out there,
and on we went.  Every day the coast looked the same,
as though we had not moved; but we passed various
places--trading places--with names like Gran' Bassam
Little Popo, names that seemed to belong to some sordid
farce acted in front of a sinister backcloth.  The idle-
ness of a passenger, my isolation amongst all these men
with whom I had no point of contact, the oily and lan-
guid sea, the uniform somberness of the coast, seemed
to keep me away from the truth of things, within the
toil of a mournful and senseless delusion.  The voice of
the surf heard now and then was a positive pleasure,
like the speech of a brother.  It was something natural,
that had its reason, that had a meaning.  Now and then
a boat from the shore gave one a momentary contact
with reality.  It was paddled by black fellows.  You
could see from afar the white of their eyeballs glisten-
ing.  They shouted, sang; their bodies streamed with
perspiration; they had faces like grotesque masks--these
chaps; but they had bone, muscle, a wild vitality, an in-
tense energy of movement, that was as natural and true
as the surf along their coast.  They wanted no excuse
for being there.  They were a great comfort to look at.
For a time I would feel I belonged still to a world of
straightforward facts; but the feeling would not last
long.  Something would turn up to scare it away.  Once,
I remember, we came upon a man-of-war anchored off
the coast.  There wasn't even a shed there, and she
was shelling the bush.  It appears the French had one
of their wars going on thereabouts.  Her ensign dropped
limp like a rag; the muzzles of the long eight-inch guns
stuck out all over the low hull; the greasy, slimy swell
swung her up lazily and let her down, swaying her thin
masts.  In the empty immensity of earth, sky, and water,
there she was, incomprehensible, firing into a continent.
Pop, would go one of the eight-inch guns; a small flame
would dart and vanish, a little white smoke would dis-
appear, a tiny projectile would give a feeble screech--
and nothing happened.  Nothing could happen.  There
was a touch of insanity in the proceeding, a sense of
lugubrious drollery in the sight; and it was not dissi-
pated by somebody on board assuring me earnestly there
was a camp of natives--he called them enemies!--hidden
out of sight somewhere.

"We gave her her letters (I heard the men in that
lonely ship were dying of fever at the rate of three
a day) and went on.  We called at some more places with
farcical names, where the merry dance of death and
trade goes on in a still and earthy atmosphere as of an
overheated catacomb; all along the formless coast bor-
dered by dangerous surf, as if Nature herself had tried
to ward off intruders; in and out of rivers, streams of
death in life, whose banks were rotting into mud, whose
waters, thickened into slime, invaded the contorted man-
groves, that seemed to writhe at us in the extremity of
an impotent despair.  Nowhere did we stop long enough
to get a particularized impression, but the general sense
of vague and oppressive wonder grew upon me.  It was
like a weary pilgrimage amongst hints for night-
mares.

"It was upward of thirty days before I saw the mouth
of the big river.  We anchored off the seat of the gov-
ernment.  But my work would not begin till some two
hundred miles farther on.  So as soon as I could I made
a start for a place thirty miles higher up.

"I had my passage on a little sea-going steamer.  Her
captain was a Swede, and knowing me for a seaman,
invited me on the bridge.  He was a young man, lean,
fair, and morose, with lanky hair and a shuffling gait.
As we left the miserable little wharf, he tossed his head
contemptuously at the shore.  'Been living there?' he
asked.  I said, 'Yes.'  'Fine lot these government chaps
--are they not?' he went on, speaking English with
great precision and considerable bitterness.  'It is funny
what some people will do for a few francs a month.  I
wonder what becomes of that kind when it goes up coun-
try?'  I said to him I expected to see that soon.  'So-o-o!'
he exclaimed.  He shuffled athwart, keeping one eye
ahead vigilantly.  'Don't be too sure,' he continued.
'The other day I took up a man who hanged himself
on the road.  He was a Swede, too.'  'Hanged himself!
Why, in God's name?' I cried.  He kept on looking out
watchfully.  'Who knows?  The sun too much for him,
or the country perhaps.'

"At last we opened a reach.  A rocky cliff appeared,
mounds of turned-up earth by the shore, houses on a
hill, others, with iron roofs, amongst a waste of excava-
tions, or hanging to the declivity.  A continuous noise
of the rapids above hovered over this scene of inhabited
devastation.  A lot of people, mostly black and naked,
moved about like ants.  A jetty projected into the river.
A blinding sunlight drowned all this at times in a sudden
recrudescence of glare.  'There's your Company's sta-
tion,' said the Swede, pointing to three wooden barrack-
like structures on the rocky slope.  'I will send your
things up.  Four boxes did you say?  So.  Farewell.'

"I came upon a boiler wallowing in the grass, then
found a path leading up the hill.  It turned aside for
the bowlders, and also for an undersized railway-truck
lying there on its back with its wheels in the air.  One
was off.  The thing looked as dead as the carcass of
some animal.  I came upon more pieces of decaying ma-
chinery, a stack of rusty rails.  To the left a clump of
trees made a shady spot, where dark things seemed to
stir feebly.  I blinked, the path was steep.  A horn tooted
to the right, and I saw the black people run.  A heavy
and dull detonation shook the ground, a puff of smoke
came out of the cliff, and that was all.  No change ap-
peared on the face of the rock.  They were building a
railway.  The cliff was not in the way or anything; but
this objectless blasting was all the work going on.

"A slight clinking behind me made me turn my head.
Six black men advanced in a file, toiling up the path.
They walked erect and slow, balancing small baskets
full of earth on their heads, and the clink kept time with
their footsteps.  Black rags were wound round their
loins, and the short ends behind wagged to and fro like
tails.  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.
Another report from the cliff made me think suddenly
of that ship of war I had seen firing into a continent.
It was the same kind of ominous voice; but these men
could by no stretch of imagination be called enemies.
They were called criminals, and the outraged law, like
the bursting shells, had come to them, an insoluble mys-
tery from over the sea.  All their meager breasts panted
together, the violently dilated nostrils quivered, the eyes
stared stonily uphill.  They passed me within six inches,
without a glance, with that complete, deathlike indif-
ference of unhappy savages.  Behind this raw matter
one of the reclaimed, the product of the new forces at
work, strolled despondently, carrying a rifle by its
middle.  He had a uniform jacket with one button off,
and seeing a white man on the path, hoisted his weapon
to his shoulder with alacrity.  This was simple prudence,
white men being so much alike at a distance that he could
not tell who I might be.  He was speedily reassured, and
with a large, white, rascally grin, and a glance at his
charge, seemed to take me into partnership in his exalted
trust.  After all, I also was a part of the great cause
of these high and just proceedings.

"Instead of going up, I turned and descended to the
left.  My idea was to let that chain-gang get out of
sight before I climbed the hill.  You know I am not par-
ticularly tender; I've had to strike and to fend off.  I've
had to resist and to attack sometimes--that's only one
way of resisting--without counting the exact cost, ac-
cording to the demands of such sort of life as I had blun-
dered into.  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.  But as I stood
on this hillside, I foresaw that in the blinding sunshine
of that land I would become acquainted with a flabby,
pretending, weak-eyed devil of a rapacious and pitiless
folly.  How insidious he could be, too, I was only to
find out several months later and a thousand miles
farther.  For a moment I stood appalled, as though by
a warning.  Finally I descended the hill, obliquely, to-
wards the trees I had seen.

"I avoided a vast artificial hole somebody had been
digging on the slope, the purpose of which I found it
impossible to divine.  It wasn't a quarry or a sandpit,
anyhow.  It was just a hole.  It might have been con-
nected with the philanthropic desire of giving the crim-
inals something to do.  I don't know.  Then I nearly
fell into a very narrow ravine, almost no more than a
scar in the hillside.  I discovered that a lot of imported
drainage-pipes for the settlement had been tumbled in
there.  There wasn't one that was not broken.  It was
a wanton smash-up.  At last I got under the trees.  My
purpose was to stroll into the shade for a moment; but
no sooner within than it seemed to me I had stepped
into a gloomy circle of some Inferno.  The rapids were
near, and an uninterrupted, uniform, headlong, rushing
noise filled the mournful stillness of the grove, where not
a breath stirred, not a leaf moved, with a mysterious
sound--as though the tearing pace of the launched earth
had suddenly become audible.