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. 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 mizzenmast. 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.
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.
Forthwith a change came 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 forever, 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. It 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 round 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
lighthouse, 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.
“And this also,” said Marlow
suddenly, “has been one of the dark places of the earth.”
He was the only man of us
who still “followed the sea.” The worst that could be said of him was that he
did not represent his class. He was a seaman, but he was a wanderer, too, while
most seamen lead, if one may so express it, a sedentary life. Their minds are
of the stay-at-home order, and their home is always with them—the ship; and so
is their country—the sea. One ship is very much like another, and the sea is
always the same. In the immutability of their surroundings the foreign shores,
the foreign faces, the changing immensity of life, glide past, veiled not by a
sense of mystery but by a slightly disdainful ignorance; for there is nothing
mysterious to a seaman unless it be the sea itself, which is the mistress of
his existence and as inscrutable as Destiny. For the rest, after his hours of
work, a casual stroll or a casual spree on shore suffices to unfold for him the
secret of a whole continent, and generally he finds the secret not worth
knowing. The yarns of seamen have a direct simplicity, the whole meaning of
which lies within the shell of a cracked nut. But Marlow was not typical (if
his propensity to spin yarns be excepted), and to him the meaning of an episode
was not inside like a kernel but outside, enveloping the tale which brought it
out only as a glow brings out a haze, in the likeness of one of these misty
halos that sometimes are made visible by the spectral illumination of
moonshine.
His remark did not seem at
all surprising. It was just like Marlow. It was accepted in silence. No one
took the trouble to grunt even; and presently he said, very slow—
“I was thinking of very old
times, when the Romans first came here, nineteen hundred years ago—the other
day. . . . Light came out of this river since—you say Knights? Yes; but it is
like a running blaze on a plain, like a flash of lightning in the clouds. We
live in the flicker—may it last as long as the old earth keeps rolling! But
darkness was here yesterday. Imagine the feelings of a commander of a fine—what
d’ye call ‘em? —trireme in the Mediterranean, ordered suddenly to the north run
overland across the Gauls in a hurry; put in charge of one of these craft the
legionaries—a wonderful lot of handy men they must have been, too—used to
build, apparently by the hundred, in a month or two, if we may believe what we
read. Imagine him here—the very end of the world, a sea the colour of lead, a
sky the colour of smoke, a kind of ship about as rigid as a concertina—and
going up this river with stores, or orders, or what you like. Sandbanks,
marshes, forests, savages, —precious little to eat fit for a civilized man,
nothing but Thames water to drink. No Falernian wine here, no going ashore.
Here and there a military camp lost in a wilderness, like a needle in a bundle
of hay—cold, fog, tempests, disease, exile, and death—death skulking in the
air, in the water, in the bush. They must have been dying like flies here. Oh,
yes—he did it. Did it very well, too, no doubt, and without thinking much about
it either, except afterwards to brag of what he had gone through in his time,
perhaps. They were men enough to face the darkness. And perhaps he was cheered
by keeping his eye on a chance of promotion to the fleet at Ravenna by and by,
if he had good friends in Rome and survived the awful climate. Or think of a
decent young citizen in a toga—perhaps too much dice, you know—coming out here
in the train of some prefect, or tax-gatherer, or trader even, to mend his
fortunes. Land in a swamp, march through the woods, and in some inland post
feel the savagery, the utter savagery, had closed round him—all that mysterious
life of the wilderness that stirs in the forest, in the jungles, in the hearts
of wild men. There’s no initiation either into such mysteries. He has to live
in the midst of the incomprehensible, which is also detestable. And it has a
fascination, too, that goes to work upon him. The fascination of the
abomination—you know, imagine the growing regrets, the longing to escape, the
powerless disgust, the surrender, the hate.”
He paused.
“Mind,” he began again,
lifting one arm from the elbow, the palm of the hand outwards, so that, with
his legs folded before him, he had the pose of a Buddha preaching in European
clothes and without a lotus-flower—“Mind, none of us would feel exactly like
this. What saves us is efficiency—the devotion to efficiency. But these chaps
were not much account, really. They were no colonists; their administration was
merely a squeeze, and nothing more, I suspect. They were conquerors, and for
that you want only brute force—nothing to boast of, when you have it, since
your strength is just an accident arising from the weakness of others. They
grabbed what they could get for the sake of what was to be got. It was just
robbery with violence, aggravated murder on a great scale, and men going at it
blind—as is very proper for those who tackle a darkness. The conquest of the
earth, which mostly means the taking it away from those who have a different
complexion or slightly flatter noses than ourselves, is not a pretty thing when
you look into it too much. What redeems it is the idea only. An idea at the
back of it; not a sentimental pretence but an idea; and an unselfish belief in
the idea—something you can set up, and bow down before, and offer a sacrifice
to . . . .”
He broke off. Flames glided
in the river, small green flames, red flames, white flames, pursuing,
overtaking, joining, crossing each other—then separating slowly or hastily. The
traffic of the great city went on in the deepening night upon the sleepless
river. We looked on, waiting patiently—there was nothing else to do till the
end of the flood; but it was only after a long silence, when he said, in a
hesitating voice, “I suppose you fellows remember I did once turn fresh-water
sailor for a bit,” that we knew we were fated, before the ebb began to run, to
hear about one of Marlow’s inconclusive experiences.
“I don’t want to bother you
much with what happened to me personally,” he began, showing in this remark the
weakness of many tellers of tales who seem so often unaware of what their
audience would best like to hear; “yet to understand the effect of it on me you
ought to know how I got out there, what I saw, how I went up that river to the
place where I first met the poor chap. It was the farthest point of navigation
and the culminating point of my experience. It seemed somehow to throw a kind
of light on everything about me—and into my thoughts. It was sombre enough,
too—and pitiful—not extraordinary in any way—not very clear either. No, not
very clear. And yet it seemed to throw a kind of light.