Joseph Conrad: Heart of Darkness

3. PART III (continued)

"`If she had offered to come aboard I really 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 one day and kicked up a row about those miserable rags I picked up in the storeroom to mend my clothes with. I wasn't decent. At least it must have been that, for she talked like a fury to Kurtz for an hour, pointing at me now and then. I don't understand the dialect of this tribe. Luckily for me, I fancy Kurtz felt too ill that day to care, or there would have been mischief. I don't understand. . . . No--it's too much for me. Ah, well, it's all over now.'

"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 honor 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 neglected to be consistently sorrowful. `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. Cautiously, 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 after a while. `Exactly,' he exulted. `I anticipated this. Shows a complete want of judgment. It is my duty to point it out in the proper quarter.' `Oh,' said I, `that fellow--what's his name?--the brickmaker, will make a readable report for you.' He appeared confounded for a moment. It seemed to me I had never breathed an atmosphere so vile, and I turned mentally to Kurtz for relief--positively for relief. `Nevertheless I think Mr. Kurtz is a remarkable man,' I said with emphasis. He started, dropped on me a cold heavy glance, said very quietly, `He WAS,' and turned his back on me. My hour of favor was over; I found myself lumped along with Kurtz as a partisan of methods for which the time was not ripe: I was unsound! Ah! but it was something to have at least a choice of nightmares.