After waking up shortly after midnight Marlow finds himself sleeping outside near Kurtz's camp. Marlow is disturbed by the sounds of abrupt yelling coming from the vicinity of Kurtz's location. Marlow then sees a light burning inside Kurtz's cabin, but is shocked to see that Kurtz is nowhere inside when he investigates the area. The shocking realizations that Kurtz escaped from his own cabin makes Marlow feel that he would have "raised an out cry if [he] had believed [his] eyes. But [he] didn't believe them at first...[he] was completely unnerved by a shur blank fright. "Marlow, so shaken by this feeling, by the "moral shock [he] received...had been thrust upon [him] unexpectedly... then the usual sense of commonplace, deadly danger...was positively welcome...it pacified [him] so much, in fact, that [he] did not raise an alarm. "To find Kurtz, he puts caution to the wind. The realization of seeing Kurtz absent from his cabin is a situation that terrifies Marlow in a way that he has never experienced before. Marlow detests the feeling of overwhelming fear; he would rather use a false cover to conceal the feeling of terror from himself. The viciousness of the wilderness has come over Marlow, so morals forces him to believe that he is the only one who can conquer Kurtz. He uses the sense of danger to "pacify" his fear from the brutal nature of the wilderness. Which has begun affecting Marlow mentally and emotionally, he is now willing to use whatever he can to disguise the true, overwhelming fear of the wilderness itself. Marlow doesn't want to see that he can be destroyed or driven to madness like Kurtz has so he resorts to denying his feeling and the truth of reality to make him feel somewhat better.
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