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were perhaps remarkably cold, and he certainly could
make his glance fall on one as trenchant and heavy as
an ax.  But even at these times the rest of his person
seemed to disclaim the intention.  Otherwise there was
only an indefinable, faint expression of his lips, some-
thing stealthy--a smile--not a smile--I remember it, but
I can't explain.  It was unconscious, this smile was,
though just after he had said something it got intensified
for an instant.  It came at the end of his speeches like
a seal applied on the words to make the meaning of the
commonest phrase appear absolutely inscrutable.  He
was a common trader, from his youth up employed in
these parts--nothing more.  He was obeyed, yet he in-
spired neither love nor fear, nor even respect.  He in-
spired uneasiness.  That was it!  Uneasiness.  Not a
definite mistrust--just uneasiness--nothing more.  You
have no idea how effective such a . . . a . . . fac-
ulty can be.  He had no genius for organizing, for
initiative, or for order even.  That was evident in such
things as the deplorable state of the station.  He had
no learning, and no intelligence.  His position had come
to him--why?  Perhaps because he was never ill . . .
He had served three terms of three years out there . . .
Because triumphant health in the general rout of con-
stitutions is a kind of power in itself.  When he went
home on leave he rioted on a large scale--pompously.
Jack ashore--with a difference--in externals only.  This
one could gather from his casual talk.  He originated
nothing, he could keep the routine going--that's all.
But he was great.  He was great by this little thing that
it was impossible to tell what could control such a man.
He never gave that secret away.  Perhaps there was
nothing within him.  Such a suspicion made one pause
--for out there there were no external checks.  Once
when various tropical diseases had laid low almost every
'agent' in the station, he was heard to say, 'Men who
come out here should have no entrails.'  He sealed the
utterance with that smile of his, as though it had been
a door opening into a darkness he had in his keeping.
You fancied you had seen things--but the seal was on.
When annoyed at meal-times by the constant quarrels
of the white men about precedence, he ordered an im-
mense round table to be made, for which a special house
had to be built.  This was the station's mess-room.  Where
he sat was the first place--the rest were nowhere.  One
felt this to be his unalterable conviction.  He was neither
civil nor uncivil.  He was quiet.  He allowed his 'boy'
--an overfed young negro from the coast--to treat the
white men, under his very eyes, with provoking insolence.

"He began to speak as soon as he saw me.  I had
been very long on the road.  He could not wait.  Had
to start without me.  The up-river stations had to be
relieved.  There had been so many delays already that
he did not know who was dead and who was alive, and
how they got on--and so on, and so on.  He paid no
attention to my explanations, and, playing with a stick
of sealing-wax, repeated several times that the situation
was 'very grave, very grave.'  There were rumors that
a very important station was in jeopardy, and its chief,
Mr. Kurtz, was ill.  Hoped it was not true.  Mr. Kurtz
was . . .  I felt weary and irritable.  Hang Kurtz, I
thought.  I interrupted him by saying I had heard of
Mr. Kurtz on the coast.  'Ah!  So they talk of him
down there,' he murmured to himself.  Then he began
again, assuring me Mr. Kurtz was the best agent he
had, an exceptional man, of the greatest importance to
the Company; therefore I could understand his anxiety.
He was, he said, 'very, very uneasy.'  Certainly he
fidgeted on his chair a good deal, exclaimed, 'Ah, Mr.
Kurtz!' broke the stick of sealing-wax and seemed dumb-
founded by the accident.  Next thing he wanted to know
'how long it would take to' . . .  I interrupted him
again.  Being hungry, you know, and kept on my feet
too, I was getting savage.  'How could I tell,' I said.
'I hadn't even seen the wreck yet--some months, no
doubt.'  All this talk seemed to me so futile.  'Some
months,' he said.  'Well, let us say three months before
we can make a start.  Yes.  That ought to do the affair.'
I flung out of his hut (he lived all alone in a clay hut
with a sort of veranda) muttering to myself my opinion
of him.  He was a chattering idiot.  Afterwards I took
it back when it was borne in upon me startlingly with
what extreme nicety he had estimated the time requisite
for the 'affair.'

"I went to work the next day, turning, so to speak,
my back on that station.  In that way only it seemed
to me I could keep my hold on the redeeming facts of
life.  Still, one must look about sometimes; and then I
saw this station, these men strolling aimlessly about in
the sunshine of the yard.  I asked myself sometimes what
it all meant.  They wandered here and there with their
absurd long staves in their hands, like a lot of faithless
pilgrims bewitched inside a rotten fence.  The word
'ivory' rang in the air, was whispered, was sighed.  You
would think they were praying to it.  A taint of imbecile
rapacity blew through it all, like a whiff from some
corpse.  By Jove!  I've never seen anything so unreal
in my life.  And outside, the silent wilderness surround-
ing this cleared speck on the earth struck me as some-
thing great and invincible, like evil or truth, waiting
patiently for the passing away of this fantastic in-
vasion.

"Oh, these months!  Well, cccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccc never mind.  Various things
happened.  One evening a grass shed full of calico, cotton
prints, beads, and I don't know what else, burst into a
blaze so suddenly that you would have thought the earth
had opened to let an avenging fire consume all that trash.
I was smoking my pipe quietly by my dismantled steamer,
and saw them all cutting capers in the light, with their
arms lifted high, when the stout man with mustaches
came tearing down to the river, a tin pail in his hand,
assured me that everybody was 'behaving splendidly,
splendidly,' dipped about a quart of water and tore back
again.  I noticed there was a hole in the bottom of his
pail.

"I strolled up.  There was no hurry.  You see the
thing had gone off like a box of matches.  It had been
hopeless from the very first.  The flame had leaped high,
driven everybody back, lighted up everything--and col-
lapsed.  The shed was already a heap of embers glowing
fiercely.  A nigger was being beaten near by.  They
said he had caused the fire in some way; be that as it
may, he was screeching most horribly.  I saw him, later
on, for several days, sitting in a bit of shade looking
very sick and trying to recover himself: afterwards he
arose and went out--and the wilderness without a sound
took him into its bosom again.  As I approached the
glow from the dark I found myself at the back of two
men, talking.  I heard the name of Kurtz pronounced,
then the words, 'take advantage of this unfortunate ac-
cident.'  One of the men was the manager.  I wished
him a good evening.  'Did you ever see anything like
it--eh? it is incredible,' he said, and walked off.  The
other man remained.  He was a first-class agent, young,
gentlemanly, a bit reserved, with a forked little beard
and a hooked nose.  He was stand-offish with the other
agents, and they on their side said he was the manager's
spy upon them.  As to me, I had hardly ever spoken to
him before.  We got into talk, and by-and-by we strolled
away from the hissing ruins.  Then he asked me to his
room, which was in the main building of the station.
He struck a match, and I perceived that this young
aristocrat had not only a silver-mounted dressing-case
but also a whole candle all to himself.  Just at that time
the manager was the only man supposed to have any
right to candles.  Native mats covered the clay walls;
a collection of spears, assegais, shields, knives was hung
up in trophies.  The business intrusted to this fellow
was the making of bricks--so I had been informed; but
there wasn't a fragment of a brick anywhere in the sta-
tion, and he had been there more than a year--waiting.
It seems he could not make bricks without something, I
don't know what--straw maybe.  Anyways, it could not
be found there, and as it was not likely to be sent from
Europe, it did not appear clear to me what he was wait-
ing for.  An act of special creation perhaps.  However,
they were all waiting--all the sixteen or twenty pilgrims
of them--for something; and upon my word it did not
seem an uncongenial occupation, from the way they took
it, though the only thing that ever came to them was
disease--as far as I could see.  They beguiled the time
by backbiting and intriguing against each other in a
foolish kind of way.  There was an air of plotting about
that station, but nothing came of it, of course.  It was
as unreal as everything else--as the philanthropic pre-
tense of the whole concern, as their talk, as their gov-
ernment, as their show of work.  The only real feeling
was a desire to get appointed to a trading-post where
ivory was to be had, so that they could earn percentages.
They intrigued and slandered and hated each other only
on that account,--but as to effectually lifting a little
finger--oh, no.  By heavens! there is something after
all in the world allowing one man to steal a horse while
another must not look at a halter.  Steal a horse straight
out.  Very well.  He has done it.  Perhaps he can ride.
But there is a way of looking at a halter that would
provoke the most charitable of saints into a kick.

"I had no idea why he wanted to be sociable, but as
we chatted in there it suddenly occurred to me the fel-
low was trying to get at something--in fact, pumping
me.  He alluded constantly to Europe, to the people I
was supposed to know there--putting leading questions
as to my acquaintances in the sepulchral city, and so on.
His little eyes glittered like mica discs--with curiosity,
--though he tried to keep up a bit of superciliousness.
At first I was astonished, but very soon I became awfully
curious to see what he would find out from me.  I couldn't
possibly imagine what I had in me to make it worth
his while.  It was very pretty to see how he baffled him-
self, for in truth my body was full of chills, and my
head had nothing in it but that wretched steamboat busi-
ness.  It was evident he took me for a perfectly shame-
less prevaricator.  At last he got angry, and to conceal
a movement of furious annoyance, he yawned.  I rose.
Then I noticed a small sketch in oils, on a panel, repre-
senting a woman, draped and blindfolded, carrying a
lighted torch.  The background was somber--almost
black.  The movement of the woman was stately, and
the effect of the torchlight on the face was sinister.

"It arrested me, and he stood by civilly, holding a
half-pint champagne bottle (medical comforts) with the
candle stuck in it.  To my question he said Mr. Kurtz
had painted this--in this very station more than a year
ago--while waiting for means to go to his trading-post.
'Tell me, pray,' said I, 'who is this Mr. Kurtz?'

"'The chief of the Inner Station,' he answered in a
short tone, looking away.  'Much obliged,' I said, laugh-
ing.  'And you are the brickmaker of the Central Sta-
tion.  Everyone knows that.'  He was silent for a while.
'He is a prodigy,' he said at last.  'He is an emissary of
pity, and science, and progress, and devil knows what
else.  We want,' he began to declaim suddenly, 'for
the guidance of the cause intrusted to us by Europe, so
to speak, higher intelligence, wide sympathies, a single-
ness of purpose.'  'Who says that?' I asked.  'Lots of
them,' he replied.  'Some even write that; and so HE
comes here, a special being, as you ought to know.'  'Why
ought I to know?' I interrupted, really surprised.  He
paid no attention.  'Yes.  To-day he is chief of the
best station, next year he will be assistant-manager, two
years more and . . . but I dare say you know what he
will be in two years' time.  You are of the new gang--
the gang of virtue.  The same people who sent him
specially also recommended you.  Oh, don't say no.  I've
my own eyes to trust.'  Light dawned upon me.  My
dear aunt's influential acquaintances were producing an
unexpected effect upon that young man.  I nearly burst
into a laugh.  'Do you read the Company's confidential
correspondence?' I asked.  He hadn't a word to say.  It
was great fun.  'When Mr. Kurtz,' I continued severely,
'is General Manager, you won't have the opportunity.'

"He blew the candle out suddenly, and we went out-
side.  The moon had risen.  Black figures strolled about
listlessly, pouring water on the glow, whence proceeded
a sound of hissing; steam ascended in the moonlight, the
beaten nigger groaned somewhere.  'What a row the
brute makes!' said the indefatigable man with the mus-
taches, appearing near us.  'Serve him right.  Trans-
gression--punishment--bang!  Pitiless, pitiless.  That's
the only way.  This will prevent all conflagrations for
the future.  I was just telling the manager . . .'  He
noticed my companion, and became crestfallen all at once.
'Not in bed yet,' he said, with a kind of servile hearti-
ness; 'it's so natural.  Ha!  Danger--agitation.'  He
vanished.  I went on to the river-side, and the other fol-
lowed me.  I heard a scathing murmur at my ear, 'Heap
of muffs--go to.'  The pilgrims could be seen in knots
ges