I The Nellie , a cruising yawl , swung to her anchor without a flutter of the sails , and was at rest .
The flood had made , the wind was nearly calm , and being bound down the river , the only thing for it was to come to and wait for the turn of the tide .
The sea-reach of the Thames stretched before us like the beginning of an interminable waterway .
In the offing the sea and the sky were welded together without a joint , and in the luminous space the tanned sails of the barges drifting up with the tide seemed to stand still in red clusters of canvas sharply peaked , with gleams of varnished sprits .
A haze rested on the low shores that ran out to sea in vanishing flatness .
The air was dark above Gravesend , and farther back still seemed condensed into a mournful gloom , brooding motionless over the biggest , and the greatest , town on earth .
The Director of Companies was our captain and our host .
We four affectionately watched his back as he stood in the bows looking to seaward .
On the whole river there was nothing that looked half so nautical .
He resembled a pilot , which to a seaman is trustworthiness personified .
It was difficult to realize his work was not out there in the luminous estuary , but behind him , within the brooding gloom .
Between us there was , as I have already said somewhere , the bond of the sea .
Besides holding our hearts together through long periods of separation , it had the effect of making us tolerant of each other 's yarns -- and even convictions .
The Lawyer -- the best of old fellows -- had , because of his many years and many virtues , the only cushion on deck , and was lying on the only rug .
The Accountant had brought out already a box of dominoes , and was toying architecturally with the bones .
Marlow sat cross-legged right aft , leaning against the mizzen-mast .
He had sunken cheeks , a yellow complexion , a straight back , an ascetic aspect , and , with his arms dropped , the palms of hands outwards , resembled an idol .
The director , satisfied the anchor had good hold , made his way aft and sat down amongst us .
We exchanged a few words lazily .
Afterwards there was silence on board the yacht .
For some reason or other we did not begin that game of dominoes .
We felt meditative , and fit for nothing but placid staring .
The day was ending in a serenity of still and exquisite brilliance .
The water shone pacifically ; the sky , without a speck , was a benign immensity of unstained light ; the very mist on the Essex marsh was like a gauzy and radiant fabric , hung from the wooded rises inland , and draping the low shores in diaphanous folds .
Only the gloom to the west , brooding over the upper reaches , became more sombre every minute , as if angered by the approach of the sun .
And at last , in its curved and imperceptible fall , the sun sank low , and from glowing white changed to a dull red without rays and without heat , as if about to go out suddenly , stricken to death by the touch of that gloom brooding over a crowd of men .
Forthwith a change came over the waters , and the serenity became less brilliant but more profound .
The old river in its broad reach rested unruffled at the decline of day , after ages of good service done to the race that peopled its banks , spread out in the tranquil dignity of a waterway leading to the uttermost ends of the earth .
We looked at the venerable stream not in the vivid flush of a short day that comes and departs for ever , but in the august light of abiding memories .
And indeed nothing is easier for a man who has , as the phrase goes , “ followed the sea ” with reverence and affection , than to evoke the great spirit of the past upon the lower reaches of the Thames .
The tidal current runs to and fro in its unceasing service , crowded with memories of men and ships it had borne to the rest of home or to the battles of the sea .
It had known and served all the men of whom the nation is proud , from Sir Francis Drake to Sir John Franklin , knights all , titled and untitled -- the great knights-errant of the sea .
It had borne all the ships whose names are like jewels flashing in the night of time , from the _ Golden Hind _ returning with her rotund flanks full of treasure , to be visited by the Queen 's Highness and thus pass out of the gigantic tale , to the _ Erebus _ and _ Terror _ , bound on other conquests -- and that never returned .
It had known the ships and the men .
They had sailed from Deptford , from Greenwich , from Erith -- the adventurers and the settlers ; kings ' ships and the ships of men on ' Change ; captains , admirals , the dark “ interlopers ” of the Eastern trade , and the commissioned “ generals ” of East India fleets .
Hunters for gold or pursuers of fame , they all had gone out on that stream , bearing the sword , and often the torch , messengers of the might within the land , bearers of a spark from the sacred fire .
What greatness had not floated on the ebb of that river into the mystery of an unknown earth !
... The dreams of men , the seed of commonwealths , the germs of empires .
The sun set ; the dusk fell on the stream , and lights began to appear along the shore .
The Chapman light-house , a three-legged thing erect on a mud-flat , shone strongly .
Lights of ships moved in the fairway -- a great stir of lights going up and going down .
And farther west on the upper reaches the place of the monstrous town was still marked ominously on the sky , a brooding gloom in sunshine , a lurid glare under the stars .
“ And this also , ” said Marlow suddenly , “ has been one of the dark places of the earth . ”
He was the only man of us who still “ followed the sea . ”
The worst that could be said of him was that he did not represent his class .
He was a seaman , but he was a wanderer , too , while most seamen lead , if one may so express it , a sedentary life .
Their minds are of the stay-at-home order , and their home is always with them -- the ship ; and so is their country -- the sea .
One ship is very much like another , and the sea is always the same .
In the immutability of their surroundings the foreign shores , the foreign faces , the changing immensity of life , glide past , veiled not by a sense of mystery but by a slightly disdainful ignorance ; for there is nothing mysterious to a seaman unless it be the sea itself , which is the mistress of his existence and as inscrutable as Destiny .
For the rest , after his hours of work , a casual stroll or a casual spree on shore suffices to unfold for him the secret of a whole continent , and generally he finds the secret not worth knowing .
The yarns of seamen have a direct simplicity , the whole meaning of which lies within the shell of a cracked nut .
But Marlow was not typical ( if his propensity to spin yarns be excepted ) , and to him the meaning of an episode was not inside like a kernel but outside , enveloping the tale which brought it out only as a glow brings out a haze , in the likeness of one of these misty halos that sometimes are made visible by the spectral illumination of moonshine .
His remark did not seem at all surprising .
It was just like Marlow .
It was accepted in silence .
No one took the trouble to grunt even ; and presently he said , very slow -- “ I was thinking of very old times , when the Romans first came here , nineteen hundred years ago -- the other day ... .
Light came out of this river since -- you say Knights ?
Yes ; but it is like a running blaze on a plain , like a flash of lightning in the clouds .
We live in the flicker -- may it last as long as the old earth keeps rolling !
But darkness was here yesterday .
Imagine the feelings of a commander of a fine -- what d'ye call 'em ?
-- trireme in the Mediterranean , ordered suddenly to the north ; run overland across the Gauls in a hurry ; put in charge of one of these craft the legionaries -- a wonderful lot of handy men they must have been , too -- used to build , apparently by the hundred , in a month or two , if we may believe what we read .
Imagine him here -- the very end of the world , a sea the colour of lead , a sky the colour of smoke , a kind of ship about as rigid as a concertina -- and going up this river with stores , or orders , or what you like .
Sand-banks , marshes , forests , savages , -- precious little to eat fit for a civilized man , nothing but Thames water to drink .
No Falernian wine here , no going ashore .
Here and there a military camp lost in a wilderness , like a needle in a bundle of hay -- cold , fog , tempests , disease , exile , and death -- death skulking in the air , in the water , in the bush .
They must have been dying like flies here .
Oh , yes -- he did it .
Did it very well , too , no doubt , and without thinking much about it either , except afterwards to brag of what he had gone through in his time , perhaps .
They were men enough to face the darkness .
And perhaps he was cheered by keeping his eye on a chance of promotion to the fleet at Ravenna by and by , if he had good friends in Rome and survived the awful climate .
Or think of a decent young citizen in a toga -- perhaps too much dice , you know -- coming out here in the train of some prefect , or tax-gatherer , or trader even , to mend his fortunes .
Land in a swamp , march through the woods , and in some inland post feel the savagery , the utter savagery , had closed round him -- all that mysterious life of the wilderness that stirs in the forest , in the jungles , in the hearts of wild men .
There 's no initiation either into such mysteries .
He has to live in the midst of the incomprehensible , which is also detestable .
And it has a fascination , too , that goes to work upon him .
The fascination of the abomination -- you know , imagine the growing regrets , the longing to escape , the powerless disgust , the surrender , the hate . ”