I did not want to see any more, and I made haste towards the station. When near the buildings, I met a White man, in such an unexpected elegance that I took him for a sort of visión. I shook hand with this miracle, and I learned he was the Company s chief accountant. He had been our nearly three years, he told me and I could not help asking him how he managed to spot such linen.
He said modestly...I ve been teaching one of the native women about the station. It was difficult. She had a distate for the work.
I had to wait in the station for ten days...an eternity. I lived in a hut in the yard, but to be out of the chaos I would sometimes get into the accountant s office. It was hot there too, big flies buzzed. I sat generally on the floor, while. he wrote and wrote. Sometimes he stood up for the excersise.
One day he remarked, in the interior you Will meet Mr Kurtz a first class agent. He is a very remarkable person, a very important one. Sends in as much Ivory as all the others put together…
Next day I left that station at last, with a caravan of sixty men, for a two hundred mile tramp. Paths, paths, everywhere, through the empty land, through burnt Grass, hear and solitude.
Day after day, there was a great silence around and above. Perhaps, on some quiet night, the tremor of far-off drums was Heard, a tremor vast, faint appealing, suggestive and wild and perhaps with a profound a meaning as the sound of bells in a Christian country.
I had a White companion too, not a bad chap, but annoing you know. I could not help asking him once what he meant by coming there at all. To make money, of course. What do you think? he said, scornfully.
Then he got fever, and had to be carried in a hammock. On the fifteenth day I came in sight of the big river again, and finally got to the Central Station. The manager himself was there. All quite correct. Everybody had behaved splendidly…..you must he said in agitation, go and see the general manager at once. He is waiting!
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