By Joseph Conrad. This opening excerpt from
“Heart of Darkness” is fiction from the public domain courtesy of Project
Gutenberg,
I.
The
Thames at Sunset
The Nellie, a
cruising yawl, swung to her anchor without a flutter of the sails, and was at
rest. 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.
The
sea-reach of the Thames stretched before us like the beginning of an
interminable waterway. 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. A haze rested on the low
shores that ran out to sea in vanishing flatness.
ABOUT
THE AUTHOR
Joseph Conrad (1857-1924)
was a Polish-British writer regarded as one of the greatest novelists to write
in the English language. He was granted British nationality in 1886 but always
considered himself a Pole.
The
air was dark above Gravesend, and farther back still seemed condensed into a
mournful gloom, brooding motionless over the biggest, and the greatest, town on
earth.
The
Director of Companies was our captain and our host. We four affectionately
watched his back as he stood in the bows looking to seaward. On the whole river
there was nothing that looked half so nautical. He resembled a pilot, which to
a seaman is trustworthiness personified. It was difficult to realize his work
was not out there in the luminous estuary, but behind him, within the brooding
gloom.
Between
us there was, as I have already said somewhere, the bond of the sea. Besides
holding our hearts together through long periods of separation, it had the
effect of making us tolerant of each other's yarns—and even convictions. The
Lawyer—the best of old fellows—had, because of his many years and many virtues,
the only cushion on deck, and was lying on the only rug.
The
Accountant had brought out already a box of dominoes, and was toying
architecturally with the bones. Marlow sat cross-legged right aft, leaning
against the mizzen-mast. He had sunken cheeks, a yellow complexion, a straight
back, an ascetic aspect, and, with his arms dropped, the palms of hands
outwards, resembled an idol.
The
director, satisfied the anchor had good hold, made his way aft and sat down
amongst us. We exchanged a few words lazily.
 |
| "Nellie." |
Afterwards
there was silence on board the yacht. For some reason or other we did not begin
that game of dominoes. We felt meditative, and fit for nothing but placid
staring. The day was ending in a serenity of still and exquisite brilliance.
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. 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.
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.
Then
it came, a change over the waters, and the serenity became less brilliant but
more profound. The old river in its broad reach rested unruffled at the decline
of day, after ages of good service done to the race that peopled its banks,
spread out in the tranquil dignity of a waterway leading to the uttermost ends
of the earth.
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. And indeed
nothing is easier for a man who has, as the phrase goes, "followed the
sea" with reverence and affection, than to evoke the great spirit of the
past upon the lower reaches of the Thames.
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.
The Thames had known and served all the men of whom the nation is proud, from
Sir Francis Drake to Sir John Franklin, knights all, titled and untitled—the
great knights-errant of the sea.
It
had borne all the ships whose names are like jewels flashing in the night of
time, from the Golden Hind returning with her rotund flanks full of treasure,
to be visited by the Queen's Highness and thus pass out of the gigantic tale,
to the Erebus and Terror, bound on other conquests—and that never returned.
It
had known the ships and the men. They had sailed from Deptford, from Greenwich,
from Erith—the adventurers and the settlers; kings' ships and the ships of men
on 'Change; captains, admirals, the dark "interlopers" of the Eastern
trade, and the commissioned "generals" of East India fleets. Hunters
for gold or pursuers of fame, they all had gone out on that stream, bearing the
sword, and often the torch, messengers of the might within the land, bearers of
a spark from the sacred fire. What greatness had not floated on the ebb of that
river into the mystery of an unknown earth!... The dreams of men, the seed of
commonwealths, the germs of empires.
The
sun set; the dusk fell on the stream, and lights began to appear along the
shore. The Chapman light-house, a three-legged thing erect on a mud-flat, shone
strongly. Lights of ships moved in the fairway—a great stir of lights going up
and going down. And farther west on the upper reaches the place of the
monstrous town was still marked ominously on the sky, a brooding gloom in
sunshine, a lurid glare under the stars.
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