Heart of Darknesscried. ‘Oh, they meant no harm,’ he said; and as I stared he
corrected himself, ‘Not exactly.’ Then vivaciously, ‘My faith,
your pilot-house wants a clean-up!’ In the next breath he
advised me to keep enough steam on the boiler to blow the
whistle in case of any trouble. ‘One good screech will do
more for you than all your rifles. They are simple people,’
he repeated. He rattled away at such a rate he quite over-
whelmed me. He seemed to be trying to make up for lots
of silence, and actually hinted, laughing, that such was the
case. ‘Don’t you talk with Mr. Kurtz?’ I said. ‘You don’t talk
with that man—you listen to him,’ he exclaimed with severe
exaltation. ‘But now—’ He waved his arm, and in the twin-
kling of an eye was in the uttermost depths of despondency.
In a moment he came up again with a jump, possessed him-
self of both my hands, shook them continuously, while he
gabbled: ‘Brother sailor ... honour ... pleasure ... delight
... introduce myself ... Russian ... son of an arch-priest ...
Government of Tambov ... What? Tobacco! English to-
bacco; the excellent English tobacco! Now, that’s brotherly.
Smoke? Where’s a sailor that does not smoke?’
‘The pipe soothed him, and gradually I made out he had
run away from school, had gone to sea in a Russian ship;
ran away again; served some time in English ships; was
now reconciled with the arch-priest. He made a point of
that. ‘But when one is young one must see things, gather
experience, ideas; enlarge the mind.’ ‘Here!’ I interrupted.
‘You can never tell! Here I met Mr. Kurtz,’ he said, youth-
fully solemn and reproachful. I held my tongue after that.
It appears he had persuaded a Dutch trading-house on the