He knew the magic monotony of existence between sky and water: he had to bear the criticism of men, the exactions of the sea, and the prosaic severity of the daily task that gives bread1 – but whose only reward is in the perfect love of the work.
By an exulting and terrible cry, by the cry of inconceivable triumph and unspeakable pain.
He was too lazy even for a mere demagogue, for a workman orator, for a leader of labour. It was too much trouble. He required a more perfect form of ease; or it might have been that he was the victim of a philosophical unbelief in the effectivness of every human effort.
Ave! Old knitter of black wool. Morituri te salutant.
Watching a coast as it slips by the ship is like thinking about an enigma. There it is before you – smiling, frowning, inviting, grand, mean, insipid, or savage.
There is something peculiar in a small boat upon the wide seas. Over the lives born from under the shadow of death there seems to fall the shadow of madness.
He cried in a whisper at some image, at some vision – he cried out twice, a cry that was no more than a breath: “’The horror! The horror!
If I went out with a couple of rifles and a gun bearer, and twenty or thirty beaters, to hunt a lion, I should not feel that the lion had much chance, and so the pleasure of the hunt would be lessened in proportion to the increased safety which I felt.
The truth travels over the earth secretly; it seeks a nest among the people. To the authorities it’s like a knife in the fire. They cannot accept it. It will cut them and burn them. Truth is your good friend and a sworn enemy of the authorities – that’s why it hides itself.
Give them all of my dear love and a kiss. Tell them I think of them by day, pray for them by night, and find my best comfort in their affection at all times.
Captain MacWhirr had sailed over the surface of the oceans as some men go skimming over the years of existence to sink gently into a placid grave, ignorant of life to the last, without ever having been made to see all it may contain of perfidy, of violence, and of terror. There are on sea and land such men thus fortunate – or thus disdained by destiny or by the sea.
He became a waif and stray, austerely, from conviction, as others do through drink, from vice, from some weakness of character – with deliberation, as others do in despair. This, stripped.
Frankly, it is not my words that I mistrust, but your minds.
I did not betray Mr. Kurtz – it was ordered I should never betray him – it was written I should be loyal to the nightmare of my choice. I was anxious to deal with this shadow by myself alone, – and to this day I don’t know why I was so jealous of sharing with anyone the peculiar blackness of that experience.
Abandoned workings had for him strong fascination. Their desolation appealed to him like the sight of human misery, whose causes are varied and profound. They might have been worthless, but also they night have been misunderstood.
As in political so in literary action a man wins friends for himself mostly by the passion of his prejudices and by the consistent narrowness of his outlook. But I have never been able to love what was not lovable or hate what was not hateful out of deference for some general principle. Whether there be any courage in making this admission I know not.
I was made to look at the convention that lurks in all truth and on the essential sincerity of falsehood.
The greatest of my gifts being a consummate capacity for doing nothing, I cannot even point to boredom as a rational stimulus for taking up a pen. The pen, at any rate, was there, and there is nothing wonderful in that.
Gewiss,” he said, and stood still holding up the candelabrum, but without looking at me. “Evident! What is it that by inward pain makes him know himself? What is it that for you and me makes him – exist?
Between the five of us there was the strong bond of the sea, and also the fellowship of the craft, which no amount of enthusiasm for yatching, cruising, and so on can give, since one is only the amusement of life and the other is life itself.
My dear aunt’s endeavours to ‘nurse up my strength’ seemed altogether beside the mark. It was not my strength that wanted nursing, it was my imagination that wanted soothing.