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illuminating fitfully a crooked corner of the station-house.
One of the agents with a picket of a few of our blacks, armed
for the purpose, was keeping guard over the ivory; but deep
within the forest, red gleams that wavered, that seemed to
sink and rise from the ground amongst confused columnar
shapes of intense blackness, showed the exact position of
the camp where Mr. Kurtz’s adorers were keeping their un-
easy vigil. The monotonous beating of a big drum filled the
air with muffled shocks and a lingering vibration. A steady
droning sound of many men chanting each to himself some
weird incantation came out from the black, flat wall of the
woods as the humming of bees comes out of a hive, and had
a strange narcotic effect upon my half-awake senses. I be-
lieve I dozed off leaning over the rail, till an abrupt burst of
yells, an overwhelming outbreak of a pent-up and mysteri-
ous frenzy, woke me up in a bewildered wonder. It was cut
short all at once, and the low droning went on with an ef-
fect of audible and soothing silence. I glanced casually into
the little cabin. A light was burning within, but Mr. Kurtz
was not there.
‘I think I would have raised an outcry if I had believed my
eyes. But I didn’t believe them at first—the thing seemed so
impossible. The fact is I was completely unnerved by a sheer
blank fright, pure abstract terror, unconnected with any
distinct shape of physical danger. What made this emotion
so overpowering was— how shall I define it?—the moral
shock I received, as if something altogether monstrous, in-
tolerable to thought and odious to the soul, had been thrust
upon me unexpectedly. This lasted of course the merest