a nearer view, and its first thing profitable in these heads result was to make me throw being there. They only showed my head back as if before a that Mr Kurtz lacked restraint blow. Then I went carefully in the gratification of his varifrom post to post with my ous lusts, that there was someglass, and I saw my mistake. thing wanting in him—some These round knobs were not small matter which, when the ornamental but symbolic; they pressing need arose, could not were symbolic of some cruel be found under his magnificent and forbidden knowledge. eloquence. Whether he knew They were expressive and of this deficiency himself I can't puzzling, striking and dis- say. I think the knowledge turbing, food for thought and came to him at last-only at also for the vultures if there the very last. But the wilderhad been any looking down ness had found him out early, from the sky; but at all events and had taken on him a terrible for such ants as were indus- vengeance for the fantastic intrious enough to ascend the vasion. It had tempted him pole. They would have been with all the sinister suggestions even more impressive, those of its loneliness. I think it had heads on the stakes, if their whispered to him things about faces had not been turned to himself which he did not know, the house. Only one, the first things of which he had no conI had made out, was facing ception till he took counsel with my way. I was not so shocked this great solitude and the as you may think. The start whisper had proved irresistibly back I had given was really fascinating. It echoed loudly nothing but a movement of within him because he was holsurprise. I had expected to low at the core. I put down see a knob of wood there, you the glass, and the head that know. I returned deliberately had appeared near enough to to the first I had seen-and be spoken to seemed at once to there it was, black, dried, have leaped away from me into sunken, with closed eyelids, the illusion of an inaccessible distance. a head that seemed to sleep at the top of that pole, and, with the shrunken dry lips showing a narrow white line of the teeth, was smiling too, smiling continuously at some endless and jocose dream of that eternal slumber. "I am not disclosing any trade secrets. In fact the manager said afterwards that Mr Kurtz had ruined that district. I have no opinion as to that, but I want you clearly to understand that there was noVOL. CLXV.-NO. MII. over abilities. There hasn't been a drop of medicine or a mouthful of invalid food for months here. He was shamefully abandoned. A man like this, with such ideas. Shamefully! Shamefully! I-I-haven't slept for the last ten nights. All "His voice lost itself in the calm of the evening. The long shadows of the forest had slipped down hill while we talked, had gone far beyond the ruined hovel, beyond the symbolic row of stakes. this was in the gloom, while we down there were yet in the sunshine, and the stretch of the river abreast of the clearing glittered in a still and dazzling splendour, with a murky and overshadowed band above and below. Not a living soul was seen on the shore. The bushes did not rustle. ceremonies used when approach- derstand,' he groaned. 'I've ing Mr Kurtz,' I shouted. been doing my best to keep him Curious, this feeling that came alive, and that's enough. I had I have no that those details no hand in all this. me would be more intolerable to hear than those heads drying on stakes under Mr Kurtz's windows were to see. 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 relief, being something that had a right to exist, obviously in the sunshine. The young man looked at me with surprise. I suppose it did not occur to him Mr Kurtz was no idol of mine. He forgot I hadn't heard any of these splendid monologues on, what was it? on love, justice, conduct of life or what not. If it had come to crawling before Mr Kurtz, he crawled as much as the veriest savage of them all. I had no idea of the conditions, he said: these heads were the heads of rebels. I shocked him excessively by laughing. Rebels! What would be the next definition I was to hear? There had been enemies, criminals, workers-and these were rebels. Those rebellious heads looked very pacific to me on their sticks. You don't know how such a life tries a man like Kurtz,' cried Kurtz's last disciple. Well, and you?' I said. I I! I am a simple I have no great thoughts. I want nothing from anybody. How can you compare me to man. 6 ?' His feelings were too much for speech, and suddenly he broke down, 'I don't un 66 Suddenly round the corner of the house a group of men appeared. It was as though they had come up from the ground. They waded waistdeep in the grass, in a compact body, bearing an improvised stretcher in their midst. Instantly, in the emptiness of the landscape, a cry arose whose shrillness pierced the still air like a sharp arrow flying straight to the very heart of the land; and, as if by enchantment, streams of human beings-of naked human beings with spears in their hands, with bows, with shields, with wild glances and savage movements, were poured into the clearing by the dark-faced and pensive forest. The bushes shook, the grass swayed for a time, and then everything stood still in attentive immobility. "Now, if he does not speak to them we are all done for,' said the Russian at my elbow. The knot of men with the stretcher had stopped too, halfway to the steamer, as if petrified. I saw the man on the stretcher sit up, lank and with an uplifted arm, above the shoulders of the bearers. 'Let us hope that the man who can talk so well of love in general will find some particular reason to spare us this time,' I said. I resented bitterly the absurd danger of our situation, as if to be at the mercy of the atrocious phantom who ruled this land had been a dishonouring necessity. I could not hear anything, but through my glasses I saw the thin arm extended commandingly, the lower jaw moving, the eyes of that apparition shining darkly far in his bony head that nodded with grotesque jerks. Kurtz Kurtz - that short in German- don't it? Well, the name was as true as everything else in his lifeand death. He looked at least seven feet long. His covering had fallen off, and his body emerged from it pitiful and appalling as from a windingsheet. I could see the cage of his ribs all astir, the bones of his arm waving. It was as though an animated image of death carved out of old ivory had been shaking its hand with menaces at a motionless crowd of men made of dark and means glittering bronze. I saw him open his mouth wide-it gave him a weirdly voracious aspect, as though he had wanted to swallow all the air, all the earth, all the men before him. A deep sound reached me faintly. He must have been shouting. He fell back suddenly. The stretcher shook as the bearers staggered forward again, and almost at the same time I noticed that the crowd of savages had already diminished, was vanishing without any perceptible movement of retreat, as if the forest that had ejected these beings so suddenly had drawn them in again as the breath is drawn in a long aspiration. "Some of the pilgrims behind the stretcher carried his arms-— two shot-guns, a heavy rifle, and a light revolver-carbinethe thunderbolts of that pitiful Jupiter. The manager bent over him murmuring as he walked beside his head. They laid him down in one of the little cabins, just a room for a bed-place and a camp-stool or two, you know. We had brought his belated correspondence, and a lot of torn envelopes and open letters littered his bed. His hand roamed feebly amongst these papers. I was struck by the fire of his eyes and the composed languor of his expression. It was not SO much the exhaustion of disease. He did not seem in pain. This shadow looked satiated and calm, as though for the moment it had had its fill of all the emotions. "He rustled one of the letters, and looking in my face. said, 'I am glad.' Somebody had been writing to him about me. These special recommendations again. The volume of tone he emitted without effort, almost without the trouble of moving his lips, amazed me. A voice! a voice! It was grave, profound, vibrating, while the man did not seem capable of a whisper. However, he had enough strength in him— factitious no doubt. -to very nearly make an end of us, as you shall hear directly. "The manager appeared in the doorway, so I stepped out at once and he drew the curtain after me. The Russian, eyed curiously by the pilgrims, was staring at the shore. I followed the direction of his glance. "Several bronze figures could be made out in the distance, moving indistinctly against the gloomy border of the forest, and near the river two were standing leaning on spears in the sunlight, under fantastic head-dresses of spotted skins, warlike, and still in statuesque repose. And from right to left along the lighted shore moved a wild and gorgeous apparition of a woman. "She walked with measured steps, draped in striped and fringed cloths, treading the earth proudly, with a slight jingle and flash of barbarous ornaments. She carried her head high; her hair was done in the shape of a helmet; she had brass leggings to the knee, brass wire gauntlets to the elbow, a crimson spot on her tawny cheek, innumerable necklaces of glass beads on her neck; was bizarre things, charms, gifts of witch - men, that hung about her, glittered and trembled at every step. She must have had the value of several elephant tusks upon her. She was savage and superb, wild-eyed and magnificent; there something ominous and stately in her deliberate progress. And in the hush that had fallen suddenly upon the whole sorrowful land, the immense wilderness, the colossal body of the fecund and mysterious life seemed to look at her as though it had been looking at the image of its own tenebrous and passionate soul. "And we men also looked at her at any rate I looked at her. She came abreast of the steamer, stood still, and faced us. Her long shadow fell to the water's edge. Her face had a tragic and fierce aspect of wild sorrow and of dumb fear mingled with the pain of a struggling, half-shaped emotion. She stood looking at at us without a stir, and like the wilderness itself with an air of brooding over an inscrutable purpose. A whole minute passed, and then she made a step forward. There was a low jingle, a glint of yellow metal, a sway of fringed draperies, and she stopped. Had her heart failed her, or had her eyes, veiled with that mournfulness that lies over all the wild things of the earth, seen the hopelessness of longing that will find out sometimes even a savage soul in the lonely darkness of its being? can tell. Perhaps she did not know herself. The young fel low by my side growled. The pilgrims murmured at my back. She looked at us all as if her life depended upon the unswerving steadiness of her glance. Suddenly she opened her bared arms and threw them up rigid above her head, as though in an uncontrollable desire to touch the sky, and at the same time the shadows of her arms darted out on the earth, swept around on the river, gathering the steamer into a shadowy embrace. Her sudden gesture seemed to demand a cry, but the unbroken silence that hung over the scene was more formidable than any sound could be. "She turned, walked on, following the bank, and passed into the bushes to the left. Once only her eyes gleamed back at us in the dusk of the thickets and she disappeared. "If she had offered to come aboard I think I would have tried to shoot her,' said the man of patches, nervously. 'I had been risking my life every day for the last fortnight to keep her out of the house. She got in once and kicked up a row about those miserable rags I picked up in the storeroom to mend my clothes with. I was not decent. At least it must have been that, for she talked to Kurtz for an hour, pointing at me now and then. I don't understand the dialect of this tribe. Luckily for me, Kurtz felt too ill that day to care, or there would have been mischief. I don't understand. for me. now.' No-it's too much Ah, well, it's all over "At this moment I heard Kurtz's deep voice behind the curtain, 'Save me!-save the ivory, you mean. Don't tell me. Save me! Why, I've had to save you. You are interrupting my plans now. Sick! Sick! Not so sick as you would like to believe. Never mind. I'll carry my ideas out yet I will return. I'll show you what can be done. You with your little peddling notions-you are interfering with me. I will return. I . . .' "The manager came out. He did me the honour to take me under the arm and lead me aside. 'He is very low, very low,' he said. He considered it necessary to sigh, but forgot to be consistently sorrowful. Cau We have done all we could for him- haven't we? But there is no disguising the fact, Mr Kurtz has done more harm than good to the Company. He did not see the time was not ripe for vigorous action. tiously, cautiously, that's my principle. We must be cautious yet. The district is closed to us for a time. Deplorable! Upon the whole, the trade will suffer. I don't deny there is a remarkable quantity of ivory-mostly fossil. We must save it, at all events-but look how precarious the position is-and why? Because the method is unsound.' 'Do you,' said I, looking at the shore, 'call it "unsound method"?" 'Without doubt,' he exclaimed, hotly. 'Don't you?' 'No method at all,' I murmured. 'Exactly,' he exulted. ticipated this. A want of judgment. 'I ancomplete It is my |