Heart of Darkness

Heart of Darkness Were those prehistoric creatures cursing10 us, praying to us, welcoming us who could tell? We didn t understand our surroundings, we went on like ghosts, wondering and secretly worried. We couldn t understand because we were too far from our world, and we were travelling into the night of the first ages, which had left no memories in us, modern men. To us, it was all mysterious and frightening, but those savages they were not non-human. What shocked me was the thought of their humanity11, which made them more understandable. If one were honest enough, one could recognise in himself a remote echo of what they were. The mind of man is capable of anything because everything is in it. What is there after all? Joy, fear, sorrow, loyalty, courage, rage who can tell? In brief, there is man s true nature without the coat of time and culture. And a man must face the truth of what he is with his own strength; principles just won t help him. Anyway, I didn t have time for those thoughts. I had to mend the steam-pipes which were leaking12, I had to watch the steering13 and I had to keep the steamboat moving by any possible method. Moreover, I had to look after the savage who was our fireman14. A few months of training had made him capable of operating the vertical boiler15. The poor devil, who had filed teeth16 and three ornamental scars on each of his cheeks, was useful because he had been taught what to do. He knew that, if the water in the transparent thing17 disappeared, the evil spirit inside the boiler would get very thirsty and very angry, and take its revenge. So, he sweated and watched the glass fearfully, while we went on and on, towards Kurtz. Some fifty miles below the Inner Station we saw a hut; near it, 10. curse: to use special words or expressions in order to call down evil or injury on someone. 11. humanity: the condition of being human. 12. leak: (of a liquid or a gas) to escape through a hole in a pipe. 13. steering: the action of moving a vehicle, a vessel or an aircraft in a particular direction. 14. fireman: (here) the person who feeds and maintains the fire of a steam engine. 15. vertical boiler: a boiler in which the barrel is oriented vertically, instead of horizontally (the particular boiler Marlow mentions is a water-tube boiler, that is a boiler in which water circulates in tubes heated externally by a fire). 16. filed teeth: teeth which had been sharpened using a file. 17. This refers to the water sight glass, which allows the fireman to monitor the required water level in a steam boiler. 54