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diff --git a/old/11229-0.txt b/old/11229-0.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..fe4f16e --- /dev/null +++ b/old/11229-0.txt @@ -0,0 +1,10606 @@ +The Project Gutenberg eBook of The Purple Cloud, by M.P. Shiel + +This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and +most other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions +whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms +of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at +www.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the United States, you +will have to check the laws of the country where you are located before +using this eBook. + +Title: The Purple Cloud + +Author: M.P. Shiel + +Release Date: February 22, 2004 [eBook #11229] +[Most recently updated: December 1, 2023] + +Language: English + +Produced by: Suzanne Shell, Garrett Alley, Maria Khomenko and PG Distributed Proofreaders + +*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE PURPLE CLOUD *** + + + + +THE PURPLE CLOUD + +By + +M.P. Shiel + +1901 + + + + +[Greek: estai kai Samos ammos, eseitai Daelos adaelos] + +_Sibylline Prophecy_ + + + + +INTRODUCTION + + +About three months ago--that is to say, toward the end of May of this +year of 1900--the writer whose name appears on the title-page received +as noteworthy a letter, and packet of papers, as it has been his lot to +examine. They came from a very good friend of mine, whose name there is +no reason that I should now conceal--Dr. Arthur Lister Browne, M.A. +(Oxon.), F.R.C.P. It happened that for two years I had been spending +most of my time in France, and as Browne had a Norfolk practice, I had +not seen him during my visits to London. Moreover, though our friendship +was of the most intimate kind, we were both atrocious correspondents: so +that only two notes passed between us during those years. + +Till, last May, there reached me the letter--and the packet--to which I +refer. The packet consisted of four note-books, quite crowded +throughout with those giddy shapes of Pitman's shorthand, whose +_ensemble_ so resembles startled swarms hovering in flighty poses on the +wing. They were scribbled in pencil, with little distinction between +thick and thin strokes, few vowels: so that their slow deciphering, I +can assure the reader, has been no holiday. The letter also was +pencilled in shorthand; and this letter, together with the second of the +note-books which I have deciphered (it was marked 'III.'), I now +publish. + +[I must say, however, that in some five instances there will occur +sentences rather crutched by my own guess-work; and in two instances the +characters were so impossibly mystical, that I had to abandon the +passage with a head-ache. But all this will be found immaterial to the +general narrative.] + +The following is Browne's letter: + +'DEAR OLD SHIEL,--I have just been lying thinking of you, and wishing +that you were here to give one a last squeeze of the hand before +I--"_go_": for, by all appearance, "going" I am. Four days ago, I began +to feel a soreness in the throat, and passing by old Johnson's surgery +at Selbridge, went in and asked him to have a look at me. He muttered +something about membranous laryngitis which made me smile, but by the +time I reached home I was hoarse, and not smiling: before night I had +dyspnoca and laryngeal stridor. I at once telegraphed to London for +Morgan, and, between him and Johnson, they have been opening my trachea, +and burning my inside with chromic acid and the galvanic cautery. The +difficulty as to breathing has subsided, and it is wonderful how little +I suffer: but I am much too old a hand not to know what's what: the +bronchi are involved--_too far_ involved--and as a matter of absolute +fact, there isn't any hope. Morgan is still, I believe, fondly dwelling +upon the possibility of adding me to his successful-tracheotomy +statistics, but prognosis was always my strong point, and I say No. The +very small consolation of my death will be the beating of a specialist +in his own line. So we shall see. + +'I have been arranging some of my affairs this morning, and remembered +these notebooks. I intended letting you have them months ago, but my +habit of putting things off, and the fact that the lady was alive from +whom I took down the words, prevented me. Now she is dead, and as a +literary man, and a student of life, you should be interested, if you +can manage to read them. You may even find them valuable. + +'I am under a little morphia at present, propped up in a nice little +state of languor, and as I am able to write without much effort, I will +tell you in the old Pitman's something about her. Her name was Miss Mary +Wilson; she was about thirty when I met her, forty-five when she died, +and I knew her intimately all those fifteen years. Do you know anything +about the philosophy of the hypnotic trance? Well, that was the relation +between us--hypnotist and subject. She had been under another man before +my time, but no one was ever so successful with her as I. She suffered +from _tic douloureux_ of the fifth nerve. She had had most of her teeth +drawn before I saw her, and an attempt had been made to wrench out the +nerve on the left side by the external scission. But it made no +difference: all the clocks in hell tick-tacked in that poor woman's jaw, +and it was the mercy of Providence that ever she came across _me_. My +organisation was found to have almost complete, and quite easy, control +over hers, and with a few passes I could expel her Legion. + +'Well, you never saw anyone so singular in personal appearance as my +friend, Miss Wilson. Medicine-man as I am, I could never behold her +suddenly without a sensation of shock: she suggested so inevitably what +we call "the _other_ world," one detecting about her some odour of the +worm, with the feeling that here was rather ghost than woman. And yet I +can hardly convey to you the why of this, except by dry details as to +the contours of her lofty brow, meagre lips, pointed chin, and ashen +cheeks. She was tall and deplorably emaciated, her whole skeleton, +except the thigh-bones, being quite visible. Her eyes were of the bluish +hue of cigarette smoke, and had in them the strangest, feeble, unearthly +gaze; while at thirty-five her paltry wisp of hair was quite white. + +'She was well-to-do, and lived alone in old Wooding Manor-house, five +miles from Ash Thomas. As you know, I was "beginning" in these parts at +the time, and soon took up my residence at the manor. She insisted that +I should devote myself to her alone; and that one patient constituted +the most lucrative practice which I ever had. + +'Well, I quickly found that, in the state of trance, Miss Wilson +possessed very remarkable powers: remarkable, I mean, not, of course, +because peculiar to herself in _kind_, but because they were so +constant, reliable, exact, and far-reaching, in degree. The veriest +fledgling in psychical science will now sit and discourse finically to +you about the reporting powers of the mind in its trance state--just as +though it was something quite new! This simple fact, I assure you, which +the Psychical Research Society, only after endless investigation, admits +to be scientific, has been perfectly well known to every old crone since +the Middle Ages, and, I assume, long previously. What an unnecessary air +of discovery! The certainty that someone in trance in Manchester can +tell you what is going on in London, or in Pekin, was not, of course, +left to the acumen of an office in Fleet Street; and the society, in +establishing the fact beyond doubt for the general public, has not gone +one step toward explaining it. They have, in fact, revealed nothing that +many of us did not, with absolute assurance, know before. + +'But talking of poor Miss Wilson, I say that her powers were +_remarkable_, because, though not exceptional in _genre_, they were so +special in quantity,--so "constant," and "far-reaching." I believe it to +be a fact that, _in general_, the powers of trance manifest themselves +more particularly with regard to space, as distinct from time: the +spirit roams in the present--it travels over a plain--it does not +_usually_ attract the interest of observers by great ascents, or by +great descents. I fancy that is so. But Miss Wilson's gift was special +to this extent, that she travelled in every direction, and easily in all +but one, north and south, up and down, in the past, the present, and the +future. + +This I discovered, not at once, but gradually. She would emit a stream +of sounds in the trance state--I can hardly call it _speech_, so +murmurous, yet guttural, was the utterance, mixed with puffy +breath-sounds at the languid lips. This state was accompanied by an +intense contraction of the pupils, absence of the knee-jerk, +considerable rigor, and a rapt and arrant expression. I got into the +habit of sitting long hours at her bed-side, quite fascinated by her, +trying to catch the import of that opiate and visionary language which +came puffing and fluttering in deliberate monotone from her lips. +Gradually, in the course of months, my ear learned to detect the words; +"the veil was rent" for me also; and I was able to follow somewhat the +course of her musing and wandering spirit. + +At the end of six months I heard her one day repeat some words which +were familiar to me. They were these: "Such were the arts by which the +Romans extended their conquests, and attained the palm of victory; and +the concurring testimony of different authors enables us to describe +them with precision..." I was startled: they are part of Gibbon's +"Decline and Fall," which I easily guessed that she had never read. + +I said in a stern voice: "Where are you?" + +She replied, "Us are in a room, eight hundred and eleven miles above. A +man is writing. Us are reading." + +I may tell you two things: first, that in trance she never spoke of +herself as "I," nor even as "we," but, for some unknown reason, in the +_objective_ way, as "_us_": "us are," she would say--"us will," "us +went"; though, of course, she was an educated lady, and I don't think +ever lived in the West of England, where they say "us" in that way; +secondly, when wandering in the past, she always represented herself as +being "_above_" (the earth?), and higher the further back in time she +went; in describing present events she appears to have felt herself _on_ +(the earth); while, as regards the future, she invariably declared that +"_us_" were so many miles "within" (the earth). + +To her excursions in this last direction, however, there seemed to exist +certain fixed limits: I say seemed, for I cannot be sure, and only mean +that, in spite of my efforts, she never, in fact, went far in this +direction. Three, four thousand "miles" were common figures on her lips +in describing her distance "above"; but her distance "within" never got +beyond sixty-three. Usually, she would say twenty, twenty-five. She +appeared, in relation to the future, to resemble a diver in the deep +sea, who, the deeper he strives, finds a more resistant pressure, till, +at no great depth, resistance becomes prohibition, and he can no further +strive. + +'I am afraid I can't go on: though I had a good deal to tell you about +this lady. During fifteen years, off and on, I sat listening by her dim +bed-side to her murmuring trances! At last my expert ear could detect +the sense of her faintest sigh. I heard the "Decline and Fall" from +beginning to end. Some of her reports were the most frivolous nonsense: +over others I have hung in a horror of interest. Certainly, my friend, I +have heard some amazing words proceed from those wan lips of Mary +Wilson. Sometimes I could hitch her repeatedly to any scene or subject +that I chose by the mere exercise of my will; at others, the flighty +waywardness of her spirit eluded and baffled me: she resisted--she +disobeyed: otherwise I might have sent you, not four note-books, but +twenty, or forty. About the fifth year it struck me that it would be +well to jot down her more connected utterances, since I knew shorthand. + +The note-book marked "I.," [1] which seems to me the most curious, +belongs to the seventh year. Its history, like those of the other three, +is this: I heard her one afternoon murmuring in the intonation used when +_reading_; the matter interested me; I asked her where she was. She +replied: "Us are forty-five miles within: us read, and another writes"; +from which I concluded that she was some fifteen to thirty years in the +future, perusing an as yet unpublished work. After that, during some +weeks, I managed to keep her to the same subject, and finally, I fancy, +won pretty well the whole work. I believe you would find it striking, +and hope you will be able to read my notes. + +'But no more of Mary Wilson now. Rather let us think a little of A.L. +Browne, F.R.C.P.!--with a breathing-tube in his trachea, and Eternity +under his pillow...' [Dr. Browne's letter then continues on a subject of +no interest here.] + +[The present writer may add that Dr. Browne's prognosis of his own case +proved correct, for he passed away two days after writing the above. My +transcription of the shorthand book marked 'III.' I now proceed to give +without comment, merely reminding the reader that the words form the +substance of a book or document to be written, or to be motived +(according to Miss Wilson) in that Future, which, no less than the Past, +substantively exists in the Present--though, like the Past, we see it +not. I need only add that the title, division into paragraphs, &c., have +been arbitrarily contrived by myself for the sake of form and +convenience.] + + +[Footnote 1: This I intend to publish under the title of 'The Last +Miracle; 'II.' will bear that of 'The Lord of the Sea'; the present book +is marked 'III.' The perusal of 'IV.' I have yet finished, but so far do +not consider it suitable for publication.] + + + + +(_Here begins the note-book marked 'III.'_) + + + + +THE PURPLE CLOUD + + +Well, the memory seems to be getting rather impaired now, rather weak. +What, for instance, was the name of that parson who preached, just +before the _Boreal_ set out, about the wickedness of any further attempt +to reach the North Pole? I have forgotten! Yet four years ago it was +familiar to me as my own name. + +Things which took place before the voyage seem to be getting a little +cloudy in the memory now. I have sat here, in the loggia of this Cornish +villa, to write down some sort of account of what has happened--God +knows why, since no eye can ever read it--and at the very beginning I +cannot remember the parson's name. + +He was a strange sort of man surely, a Scotchman from Ayrshire, big and +gaunt, with tawny hair. He used to go about London streets in shough +and rough-spun clothes, a plaid flung from one shoulder. Once I saw him +in Holborn with his rather wild stalk, frowning and muttering to +himself. He had no sooner come to London, and opened chapel (I think in +Fetter Lane), than the little room began to be crowded; and when, some +years afterwards, he moved to a big establishment in Kensington, all +sorts of men, even from America and Australia, flocked to hear the +thunderstorms that he talked, though certainly it was not an age apt to +fly into enthusiasms over that species of pulpit prophets and +prophecies. But this particular man undoubtedly did wake the strong dark +feelings that sleep in the heart; his eyes were very singular and +powerful; his voice from a whisper ran gathering, like snow-balls, and +crashed, as I have heard the pack-ice in commotion far yonder in the +North; while his gestures were as uncouth and gawky as some wild man's +of the primitive ages. + +Well, this man--what _was_ his name?--Macintosh? Mackay? I think--yes, +that was it! _Mackay_. Mackay saw fit to take offence at the new attempt +to reach the Pole in the _Boreal_; and for three Sundays, when the +preparations were nearing completion, stormed against it at Kensington. + +The excitement of the world with regard to the North Pole had at this +date reached a pitch which can only be described as _fevered_, though +that word hardly expresses the strange ecstasy and unrest which +prevailed: for the abstract interest which mankind, in mere desire for +knowledge, had always felt in this unknown region, was now, suddenly, a +thousand and a thousand times intensified by a new, concrete interest--a +tremendous _money_ interest. + +And the new zeal had ceased to be healthy in its tone as the old zeal +was: for now the fierce demon Mammon was making his voice heard in this +matter. + +Within the ten years preceding the _Boreal_ expedition, no less than +twenty-seven expeditions had set out, and failed. + +The secret of this new rage lay in the last will and testament of Mr. +Charles P. Stickney of Chicago, that king of faddists, supposed to be +the richest individual who ever lived: he, just ten years before the +_Boreal_ undertaking, had died, bequeathing 175 million dollars to the +man, of whatever nationality, who first reached the Pole. + +Such was the actual wording of the will--_'the man who first reached'_: +and from this loose method of designating the person intended had +immediately burst forth a prolonged heat of controversy in Europe and +America as to whether or no the testator meant _the Chief_ of the first +expedition which reached: but it was finally decided, on the highest +legal authority, that, in any case, the actual wording of the document +held good: and that it was the individual, whatever his station in the +expedition, whose foot first reached the 90th degree of north latitude, +who would have title to the fortune. + +At all events, the public ferment had risen, as I say, to a pitch of +positive fever; and as to the _Boreal_ in particular, the daily progress +of her preparations was minutely discussed in the newspapers, everyone +was an authority on her fitting, and she was in every mouth a bet, a +hope, a jest, or a sneer: for now, at last, it was felt that success was +probable. So this Mackay had an acutely interested audience, if a +somewhat startled, and a somewhat cynical, one. + +A truly lion-hearted man this must have been, after all, to dare +proclaim a point-of-view so at variance with the spirit of his age! One +against four hundred millions, they bent one way, he the opposite, +saying that they were wrong, all wrong! People used to call him 'John +the Baptist Redivivus': and without doubt he did suggest something of +that sort. I suppose that at the time when he had the face to denounce +the _Boreal_ there was not a sovereign on any throne in Europe who, but +for shame, would have been glad of a subordinate post on board. + +On the third Sunday night of his denunciation I was there in that +Kensington chapel, and I heard him. And the wild talk he talked! He +seemed like a man delirious with inspiration. + +The people sat quite spell-bound, while Mackay's prophesying voice +ranged up and down through all the modulations of thunder, from the +hurrying mutter to the reverberant shock and climax: and those who came +to scoff remained to wonder. + +Put simply, what he said was this: That there was undoubtedly some sort +of Fate, or Doom, connected with the Poles of the earth in reference to +the human race: that man's continued failure, in spite of continual +efforts, to reach them, abundantly and super-abundantly proved this; and +that this failure constituted a lesson--_and a warning_--which the race +disregarded at its peril. + +The North Pole, he said, was not so very far away, and the difficulties +in the way of reaching it were not, on the face of them, so very great: +human ingenuity had achieved a thousand things a thousand times more +difficult; yet in spite of over half-a-dozen well-planned efforts in +the nineteenth century, and thirty-one in the twentieth, man had never +reached: always he had been baulked, baulked, by some seeming +chance--some restraining Hand: and herein lay the lesson--_herein the +warning_. Wonderfully--really _wonderfully_--like the Tree of +Knowledge in Eden, he said, was that Pole: all the rest of earth lying +open and offered to man--but _That_ persistently veiled and 'forbidden.' +It was as when a father lays a hand upon his son, with: 'Not here, my +child; wheresoever you will--but not here.' + +But human beings, he said, were free agents, with power to stop their +ears, and turn a callous consciousness to the whispers and warning +indications of Heaven; and he believed, he said, that the time was now +come when man would find it absolutely in his power to stand on that +90th of latitude, and plant an impious right foot on the head of the +earth--just as it had been given into the absolute power of Adam to +stretch an impious right hand, and pluck of the Fruit of Knowledge; but, +said he--his voice pealing now into one long proclamation of awful +augury--just as the abuse of that power had been followed in the one +case by catastrophe swift and universal, so, in the other, he warned the +entire race to look out thenceforth for nothing from God but a lowering +sky, and thundery weather. + +The man's frantic earnestness, authoritative voice, and savage gestures, +could not but have their effect upon all; as for me, I declare, I sat as +though a messenger from Heaven addressed me. But I believe that I had +not yet reached home, when the whole impression of the discourse had +passed from me like water from a duck's back. The Prophet in the +twentieth century was not a success. John Baptist himself, camel-skin +and all, would have met with only tolerant shrugs. I dismissed Mackay +from my mind with the thought: 'He is behind his age, I suppose.' + +But haven't I thought differently of Mackay since, my God...? + + * * * * * + +Three weeks--it was about that--before that Sunday night discourse, I +was visited by Clark, the chief of the coming expedition--a mere visit +of friendship. I had then been established about a year at No. II, +Harley Street, and, though under twenty-five, had, I suppose, as _élite_ +a practice as any doctor in Europe. + +_Élite_--but small. I was able to maintain my state, and move among the +great: but now and again I would feel the secret pinch of +moneylessness. Just about that time, in fact, I was only saved from +considerable embarrassment by the success of my book, 'Applications of +Science to the Arts.' + +In the course of conversation that afternoon, Clark said to me in his +light hap-hazard way: + +'Do you know what I dreamed about you last night, Adam Jeffson? I +dreamed that you were with us on the expedition.' + +I think he must have seen my start: on the same night I had myself +dreamed the same thing; but not a word said I about it now. There was a +stammer in my tongue when I answered: + +'Who? I?--on the expedition?--I would not go, if I were asked.' + +'Oh, you would.' + +'I wouldn't. You forget that I am about to be married.' + +'Well, we need not discuss the point, as Peters is not going to die,' +said he. 'Still, if anything did happen to him, you know, it is you I +should come straight to, Adam Jeffson.' + +'Clark, you jest,' I said: 'I know really very little of astronomy, or +magnetic phenomena. Besides, I am about to be married....' + +'But what about your botany, my friend? _There's_ what we should be +wanting from you: and as for nautical astronomy, poh, a man with your +scientific habit would pick all that up in no time.' + +'You discuss the matter as gravely as though it were a possibility, +Clark,' I said, smiling. 'Such a thought would never enter my head: +there is, first of all, my _fiancée_----' + +'Ah, the all-important Countess, eh?--Well, but she, as far as I know +the lady, would be the first to force you to go. The chance of stamping +one's foot on the North Pole does not occur to a man every day, my son.' + +'Do talk of something else!' I said. 'There is Peters....' + +'Well, of course, there is Peters. But believe me, the dream I had was +so clear----' + +'Let me alone with your dreams, and your Poles!' I laughed. + +Yes, I remember: I pretended to laugh loud! But my secret heart knew, +even _then_, that one of those crises was occurring in my life which, +from my youth, has made it the most extraordinary which any creature of +earth ever lived. And I knew that this was so, firstly, because of the +two dreams, and secondly, because, when Clark was gone, and I was +drawing on my gloves to go to see my _fiancée_, I heard distinctly the +old two Voices talk within me: and One said: 'Go not to see her now!' +and the Other: 'Yes, go, go!' + +The two Voices of my life! An ordinary person reading my words would +undoubtedly imagine that I mean only two ordinary contradictory +impulses--or else that I rave: for what modern man could comprehend how +real-seeming were those voices, how loud, and how, ever and again, I +heard them contend within me, with a nearness 'nearer than breathing,' +as it says in the poem, and 'closer than hands and feet.' + +About the age of seven it happened first to me. I was playing one summer +evening in a pine-wood of my father's; half a mile away was a +quarry-cliff; and as I played, it suddenly seemed as if someone said to +me, inside of me: 'Just take a walk toward the cliff'; and as if someone +else said: 'Don't go that way at all'--mere whispers then, which +gradually, as I grew up, seemed to swell into cries of wrathful +contention! I did go toward the cliff: it was steep, thirty feet high, +and I fell. Some weeks later, on recovering speech, I told my astonished +mother that 'someone had pushed me' over the edge, and that someone else +'had caught me' at the bottom! + +One night, soon after my eleventh birthday, lying in bed, the thought +struck me that my life must be of great importance to some thing or +things which I could not see; that two Powers, which hated each other, +must be continually after me, one wishing for some reason to kill me, +and the other for some reason to keep me alive, one wishing me to do so +and so, and the other to do the opposite; that I was not a boy like +other boys, but a creature separate, special, marked for--something. +Already I had notions, touches of mood, passing instincts, as occult and +primitive, I verily believe, as those of the first man that stepped; so +that such Biblical expressions as 'The Lord spake to So-and-so, saying' +have hardly ever suggested any question in my mind as to how the Voice +was heard: I did not find it so very difficult to comprehend that +originally man had more ears than two; nor should have been surprised to +know that I, in these latter days, more or less resembled those primeval +ones. + +But not a creature, except perhaps my mother, has ever dreamed me what I +here state that I was. I seemed the ordinary youth of my time, bow in my +'Varsity eight, cramming for exams., dawdling in clubs. When I had to +decide as to a profession, who could have suspected the conflict that +transacted itself in my soul, while my brain was indifferent to the +matter--that agony of strife with which the brawling voices shouted, the +one: 'Be a scientist--a doctor,' and the other: 'Be a lawyer, an +engineer, an artist--be _anything_ but a doctor!' + +A doctor I became, and went to what had grown into the greatest of +medical schools--Cambridge; and there it was that I came across a man, +named Scotland, who had a rather odd view of the world. He had rooms, I +remember, in the New Court at Trinity, and a set of us were generally +there. He was always talking about certain 'Black' and 'White Powers, +till it became absurd, and the men used to call him +'black-and-white-mystery-man,' because, one day, when someone said +something about 'the black mystery of the universe,' Scotland +interrupted him with the words: 'the black-and-white mystery.' + +Quite well I remember Scotland now--the sweetest, gentle soul he was, +with a passion for cats, and Sappho, and the Anthology, very short in +stature, with a Roman nose, continually making the effort to keep his +neck straight, and draw his paunch in. He used to say that the universe +was being frantically contended for by two Powers: a White and a Black; +that the White was the stronger, but did not find the conditions on our +particular planet very favourable to his success; that he had got the +best of it up to the Middle Ages in Europe, but since then had been +slowly and stubbornly giving way before the Black; and that finally the +Black would win--not everywhere perhaps, but _here_--and would carry +off, if no other earth, at least _this_ one, for his prize. + +This was Scotland's doctrine, which he never tired of repeating; and +while others heard him with mere toleration, little could they divine +with what agony of inward interest, I, cynically smiling there, drank in +his words. Most profound, most profound, was the impression they made +upon me. + + * * * * * + +But I was saying that when Clark left me, I was drawing on my gloves to +go to see my _fiancée_, the Countess Clodagh, when I heard the two +voices most clearly. + +Sometimes the urgency of one or other impulse is so overpowering, that +there is no resisting it: and it was so then with the one that bid me +go. + +I had to traverse the distance between Harley Street and Hanover Square, +and all the time it was as though something shouted at my physical ear: +'Since you go, breathe no word of the _Boreal_, and Clark's visit'; and +another shout: 'Tell, tell, hide nothing!' + +It seemed to last a month: yet it was only some minutes before I was in +Hanover Square, and Clodagh in my arms. + +She was, in my opinion, the most superb of creatures, Clodagh--that +haughty neck which seemed always scorning something just behind her left +shoulder. Superb! but ah--I know it now--a godless woman, Clodagh, a +bitter heart. + +Clodagh once confessed to me that her favourite character in history was +Lucrezia Borgia, and when she saw my horror, immediately added: 'Well, +no, I am only joking!' Such was her duplicity: for I see now that she +lived in the constant effort to hide her heinous heart from me. Yet, now +I think of it, how completely did Clodagh enthral me! + +Our proposed marriage was opposed by both my family and hers: by mine, +because her father and grandfather had died in lunatic asylums; and by +hers, because, forsooth, I was neither a rich nor a noble match. A +sister of hers, much older than herself, had married a common country +doctor, Peters of Taunton, and this so-called _mésalliance_ made the +so-called _mésalliance_ with me doubly detestable in the eyes of her +relatives. But Clodagh's extraordinary passion for me was to be stemmed +neither by their threats nor prayers. What a flame, after all, was +Clodagh! Sometimes she frightened me. + +She was at this date no longer young, being by five years my senior, as +also, by five years, the senior of her nephew, born from the marriage of +her sister with Peters of Taunton. This nephew was Peter Peters, who was +to accompany the _Boreal_ expedition as doctor, botanist, and +meteorological assistant. + +On that day of Clark's visit to me I had not been seated five minutes +with Clodagh, when I said: + +'Dr. Clark--ha! ha! ha!--has been talking to me about the Expedition. He +says that if anything happened to Peters, I should be the first man he +would run to. He has had an absurd dream...' + +The consciousness that filled me as I uttered these words was the +_wickedness_ of me--the crooked wickedness. But I could no more help it +than I could fly. + +Clodagh was standing at a window holding a rose at her face. For quite a +minute she made no reply. I saw her sharp-cut, florid face in profile, +steadily bent and smelling. She said presently in her cold, rapid way: + +'The man who first plants his foot on the North Pole will certainly be +ennobled. I say nothing of the many millions... I only wish that I was +a man!' + +'I don't know that I have any special ambition that way,' I rejoined. 'I +am very happy in my warm Eden with my Clodagh. I don't like the outer +Cold.' + +'Don't let me think little of you!' she answered pettishly. + +'Why should you, Clodagh? I am not bound to desire to go to the North +Pole, am I?' + +'But you _would_ go, I suppose, if you could?' + +'I might--I--doubt it. There is our marriage....' + +'Marriage indeed! It is the one thing to transform our marriage from a +sneaking difficulty to a ten times triumphant event.' + +'You mean if _I_ personally were the first to stand at the Pole. But +there are many in an expedition. It is very unlikely that _I_, +personally--' + +'For _me_ you will, Adam--' she began. + +'"_Will_," Clodagh?' I cried. 'You say "_will_"? there is not even the +slightest shadow of a probability--!' + +'But why? There are still three weeks before the start. They say...' + +She stopped, she stopped. + +'They say what?' + +Her voice dropped: + +'That Peter takes atropine.' + +Ah, I started then. She moved from the window, sat in a rocking-chair, +and turned the leaves of a book, without reading. We were silent, she +and I; I standing, looking at her, she drawing the thumb across the +leaf-edges, and beginning again, contemplatively. Then she laughed dryly +a little--a dry, mad laugh. + +'Why did you start when I said that?' she asked, reading now at random. + +'_I_! I did not start, Clodagh! What made you think that I started? I +did not start! Who told you, Clodagh, that Peters takes atropine?' + +'He is my nephew: I should know. But don't look dumbfoundered in that +absurd fashion: I have no intention of poisoning him in order to see you +a multimillionaire, and a Peer of the Realm....' + +'My dearest Clodagh!' + +'I easily might, however. He will be here presently. He is bringing Mr. +Wilson for the evening.' (Wilson was going as electrician of the +expedition.) + +'Clodagh.' I said, 'believe me, you jest in a manner which does not +please me.' + +'Do I really?' she answered with that haughty, stiff half-turn of her +throat: 'then I must be more exquisite. But, thank Heaven, it is only a +jest. Women are no longer admired for doing such things.' + +'Ha! ha! ha!--no--no longer admired, Clodagh! Oh, my good Lord! let us +change this talk....' + +But now she could talk of nothing else. She got from me that afternoon +the history of all the Polar expeditions of late years, how far they +reached, by what aids, and why they failed. Her eyes shone; she listened +eagerly. Before this time, indeed, she had been interested in the +_Boreal_, knew the details of her outfitting, and was acquainted with +several members of the expedition. But now, suddenly, her mind seemed +wholly possessed, my mention of Clark's visit apparently setting her +well a-burn with the Pole-fever. + +The passion of her kiss as I tore myself from her embrace that day I +shall not forget. I went home with a pretty heavy heart. + +The house of Dr. Peter Peters was three doors from mine, on the opposite +side of the street. Toward one that night, his footman ran to knock me +up with the news that Peters was very ill. I hurried to his bed-side, +and knew by the first glance at his deliriums and his staring pupils +that he was poisoned with atropine. Wilson, the electrician, who had +passed the evening with him at Clodagh's in Hanover Square, was there. + +'What on earth is the matter?' he said to me. + +'Poisoned,' I answered. + +'Good God! what with?' + +'Atropine.' + +'Good Heavens!' + +'Don't be frightened: I think he will recover.' + +'Is that certain?' + +'Yes, I think--that is, if he leaves off taking the drug, Wilson.' + +'What! it is he who has poisoned himself?' + +I hesitated, I hesitated. But I said: + +'He is in the habit of taking atropine, Wilson.' + +Three hours I remained there, and, God knows, toiled hard for his life: +and when I left him in the dark of the fore-day, my mind was at rest: he +would recover. + +I slept till 11 A.M., and then hurried over again to Peters. In the room +were my two nurses, and Clodagh. + +My beloved put her forefinger to her lips, whispering: + +'Sh-h-h! he is asleep....' + +She came closer to my ear, saying: + +'I heard the news early. I am come to stay with him, till--the last....' + +We looked at each other some time--eye to eye, steadily, she and I: but +mine dropped before Clodagh's. A word was on my mouth to say, but I said +nothing. + +The recovery of Peters was not so steady as I had expected. At the end +of the first week he was still prostrate. It was then that I said to +Clodagh: + +'Clodagh, your presence at the bed-side here somehow does not please me. +It is so unnecessary.' + +'Unnecessary certainly,' she replied: 'but I always had a genius for +nursing, and a passion for watching the battles of the body. Since no +one objects, why should you?' + +'Ah!... I don't know. This is a case that I dislike. I have half a mind +to throw it to the devil.' + +'Then do so.' + +'And you, too--go home, go home, Clodagh!' + +'But _why_?--if one does no harm. In these days of "the corruption of +the upper classes," and Roman decadence of everything, shouldn't every +innocent whim be encouraged by you upright ones who strive against the +tide? Whims are the brakes of crimes: and this is mine. I find a +sensuous pleasure, almost a sensual, in dabbling in delicate drugs--like +Helen, for that matter, and Medea, and Calypso, and the great antique +women, who were all excellent chymists. To study the human ship in a +gale, and the slow drama of its foundering--isn't that a quite thrilling +distraction? And I want you to get into the habit at once of letting me +have my little way----' + +Now she touched my hair with a lofty playfulness that soothed me: but +even then I looked upon the rumpled bed, and saw that the man there was +really very sick. + +I have still a nausea to write about it! Lucrezia Borgia in her own age +may have been heroic: but Lucrezia in this late century! One could retch +up the heart... + +The man grew sick on that bed, I say. The second week passed, and only +ten days remained before the start of the expedition. + +At the end of that second week, Wilson, the electrician, was one evening +sitting by Peter's bedside when I entered. + +At the moment, Clodagh was about to administer a dose to Peters; but +seeing me, she put down the medicine-glass on the night table, and came +toward me; and as she came, I saw a sight which stabbed me: for Wilson +took up the deposited medicine-glass, elevated it, looked at it, +smelled into it: and he did it with a kind of hurried, light-fingered +stealth; and he did it with an under-look, and a meaningness of +expression which, I thought, proved mistrust.... + +Meantime, Clark came each day. He had himself a medical degree, and +about this time I called him in professionally, together with Alleyne of +Cavendish Square, to consultation over Peters. The patient lay in a +semi-coma broken by passionate vomitings, and his condition puzzled us +all. I formally stated that he took atropine--had been originally +poisoned by atropine: but we saw that his present symptoms were not +atropine symptoms, but, it almost seemed, of some other vegetable +poison, which we could not precisely name. + +'Mysterious thing,' said Clark to me, when we were alone. + +'_I_ don't understand it,' I said. + +'Who are the two nurses?' + +'Oh, highly recommended people of my own.' + +'At any rate, my dream about you comes true, Jeffson. It is clear that +Peters is out of the running now.' + +I shrugged. + +'I now formally invite you to join the expedition,' said Clark: 'do you +consent?' + +I shrugged again. + +'Well, if that means consent,' he said, 'let me remind you that you have +only eight days, and all the world to do in them.' + +This conversation occurred in the dining-room of Peters' house: and as +we passed through the door, I saw Clodagh gliding down the passage +outside--rapidly--away from us. + +Not a word I said to her that day about Clark's invitation. Yet I asked +myself repeatedly: Did she not know of it? Had she not _listened_, and +heard? + +However that was, about midnight, to my great surprise, Peters opened +his eyes, and smiled. By noon the next day, his fine vitality, which so +fitted him for an Arctic expedition, had re-asserted itself. He was then +leaning on an elbow, talking to Wilson, and except his pallor, and +strong stomach-pains, there was now hardly a trace of his late approach +to death. For the pains I prescribed some quarter-grain tablets of +sulphate of morphia, and went away. + +Now, David Wilson and I never greatly loved each other, and that very +day he brought about a painful situation as between Peters and me, by +telling Peters that I had taken his place in the expedition. Peters, a +touchy fellow, at once dictated a letter of protest to Clark; and Clark +sent Peters' letter to me, marked with a big note of interrogation in +blue pencil. + +Now, all Peters' preparations were made, mine not; and he had six days +in which to recover himself. I therefore wrote to Clark, saying that the +changed circumstances of course annulled my acceptance of his offer, +though I had already incurred the inconvenience of negotiating with a +_locum tenens_. + +This decided it: Peters was to go, I stay. The fifth day before the +departure dawned. It was a Friday, the 15th June. Peters was now in an +arm-chair. He was cheerful, but with a fevered pulse, and still the +stomach-pains. I was giving him three quarter-grains of morphia a day. +That Friday night, at 11 P.M., I visited him, and found Clodagh there, +talking to him. Peters was smoking a cigar. + +'Ah,' Clodagh said, 'I was waiting for you, Adam. I didn't know whether +I was to inject anything to-night. Is it Yes or No?' + +'What do you think, Peters?' I said: 'any more pains?' + +'Well, perhaps you had better give us another quarter,' he answered: +'there's still some trouble in the tummy off and on.' + +'A quarter-grain, then, Clodagh, 'I said. + +As she opened the syringe-box, she remarked with a pout: + +'Our patient has been naughty! He has taken some more atropine.' + +I became angry at once. + +'Peters,' I cried, 'you know you have no right to be doing things like +that without consulting me! Do that once more, and I swear I have +nothing further to do with you!' + +'Rubbish,' said Peters: 'why all this unnecessary heat? It was a mere +flea-bite. I felt that I needed it.' + +'He injected it with his own hand...' remarked Clodagh. + +She was now standing at the mantel-piece, having lifted the syringe-box +from the night-table, taken from its velvet lining both the syringe and +the vial containing the morphia tablets, and gone to the mantel-piece to +melt one of the tablets in a little of the distilled water there. Her +back was turned upon us, and she was a long time. I was standing; Peters +in his arm-chair, smoking. Clodagh then began to talk about a Charity +Bazaar which she had visited that afternoon. + +She was long, she was long. The crazy thought passed through some dim +region of my soul: 'Why is she so _long_?' + +'Ah, that was a pain!' went Peters: 'never mind the bazaar, aunt--think +of the morphia.' + +Suddenly an irresistible impulse seized me--to rush upon her, to dash +syringe, tabloids, glass, and all, from her hands. I _must_ have obeyed +it--I was on the tip-top point of obeying--my body already leant prone: +but at that instant a voice at the opened door behind me said: + +'Well, how is everything?' + +It was Wilson, the electrician, who stood there. With lightning +swiftness I remembered an under-look of mistrust which I had once seen +on his face. Oh, well, I would not, and could not!--she was my love--I +stood like marble... + +Clodagh went to meet Wilson with frank right hand, in the left being the +fragile glass containing the injection. My eyes were fastened on her +face: it was full of reassurance, of free innocence. I said to myself: +'I must surely be mad!' + +An ordinary chat began, while Clodagh turned up Peters' sleeve, and, +kneeling there, injected his fore-arm. As she rose, laughing at +something said by Wilson, the drug-glass dropped from her hand, and her +heel, by an apparent accident, trod on it. She put the syringe among a +number of others on the mantel-piece. + +'Your friend has been naughty, Mr. Wilson,' she said again with that +same pout: 'he has been taking more atropine.' + +'Not really?' said Wilson. + +'Let me alone, the whole of you,' answered Peters: 'I ain't a child.' + +These were the last intelligible words he ever spoke. He died shortly +before 1 A.M. He had been poisoned by a powerful dose of atropine. + +From that moment to the moment when the _Boreal_ bore me down the +Thames, all the world was a mere tumbling nightmare to me, of which +hardly any detail remains in my memory. Only I remember the inquest, and +how I was called upon to prove that Peters had himself injected himself +with atropine. This was corroborated by Wilson, and by Clodagh: and the +verdict was in accordance. + +And in all that chaotic hurry of preparation, three other things only, +but those with clear distinctness now, I remember. + +The first--and chief--is that tempest of words which I heard at +Kensington from that big-mouthed Mackay on the Sunday night. What was it +that led me, busy as I was, to that chapel that night? Well, perhaps I +know. + +There I sat, and heard him: and most strangely have those words of his +peroration planted themselves in my brain, when, rising to a passion of +prophecy, he shouted: 'And as in the one case, transgression was +followed by catastrophe swift and universal, so, in the other, I warn +the entire race to look out thenceforth for nothing from God but a +lowering sky, and thundery weather.' + +And this second thing I remember: that on reaching home, I walked into +my disordered library (for I had had to hunt out some books), where I +met my housekeeper in the act of rearranging things. She had apparently +lifted an old Bible by the front cover to fling it on the table, for as +I threw myself into a chair my eye fell upon the open print near the +beginning. The print was very large, and a shaded lamp cast a light upon +it. I had been hearing Mackay's wild comparison of the Pole with the +tree of Eden, and that no doubt was the reason why such a start +convulsed me: for my listless eyes had chanced to rest upon some words. + +'The woman gave me of the tree, and I did eat....' + +And a third thing I remember in all that turmoil of doubt and flurry: +that as the ship moved down with the afternoon tide a telegram was put +into my hand; it was a last word from Clodagh; and she said only this: + +'Be first--for Me.' + + * * * * * + +The _Boreal_ left St. Katherine's Docks in beautiful weather on the +afternoon of the 19th June, full of good hope, bound for the Pole. + +All about the docks was one region of heads stretched far in innumerable +vagueness, and down the river to Woolwich a continuous dull roar and +murmur of bees droned from both banks to cheer our departure. + +The expedition was partly a national affair, subvented by Government: +and if ever ship was well-found it was the _Boreal_. She had a frame +tougher far than any battle-ship's, capable of ramming some ten yards of +drift-ice; and she was stuffed with sufficient pemmican, codroe, +fish-meal, and so on, to last us not less than six years. + +We were seventeen, all told, the five Heads (so to speak) of the +undertaking being Clark (our Chief), John Mew (commander), Aubrey +Maitland (meteorologist), Wilson (electrician), and myself (doctor, +botanist, and assistant meteorologist). + +The idea was to get as far east as the 100°, or the 120°, of longitude; +to catch there the northern current; to push and drift our way +northward; and when the ship could no further penetrate, to leave her +(either three, or else four, of us, on ski), and with sledges drawn by +dogs and reindeer make a dash for the Pole. + +This had also been the plan of the last expedition--that of the +_Nix_--and of several others. The _Boreal_ only differed from the _Nix_, +and others, in that she was a thing of nicer design, and of more +exquisite forethought. + +Our voyage was without incident up to the end of July, when we +encountered a drift of ice-floes. On the 1st August we were at Kabarova, +where we met our coal-ship, and took in a little coal for emergency, +liquid air being our proper motor; also forty-three dogs, four reindeer, +and a quantity of reindeer-moss; and two days later we turned our bows +finally northward and eastward, passing through heavy 'slack' ice under +sail and liquid air in crisp weather, till, on the 27th August, we lay +moored to a floe off the desolate island of Taimur. + +The first thing which we saw here was a bear on the shore, watching for +young white-fish: and promptly Clark, Mew, and Lamburn (engineer) went +on shore in the launch, I and Maitland following in the pram, each party +with three dogs. + +It was while climbing away inland that Maitland said to me: + +'When Clark leaves the ship for the dash to the Pole, it is three, not +two, of us, after all, that he is going to take with him, making a party +of four.' + +_I_: 'Is that so? Who knows?' + +_Maitland_: 'Wilson does. Clark has let it out in conversation with +Wilson.' + +_I_: 'Well, the more the merrier. Who will be the three?' + +_Maitland_: 'Wilson is sure to be in it, and there may be Mew, making +the third. As to the fourth, I suppose _I_ shall get left out in the +cold.' + +_I_: 'More likely I.' + +_Maitland_: 'Well, the race is between us four: Wilson, Mew, you and I. +It is a question of physical fitness combined with special knowledge. +You are too lucky a dog to get left out, Jeffson.' + +_I_: 'Well, what does it matter, so long as the expedition as a whole is +successful? That is the main thing.' + +_Maitland_: 'Oh yes, that's all very fine talk, Jeffson! But is it quite +sincere? Isn't it rather a pose to affect to despise $175,000,000? _I_ +want to be in at the death, and I mean to be, if I can. We are all more +or less self-interested.' + +'Look,' I whispered--'a bear.' + +It was a mother and cub: and with determined trudge she came wagging her +low head, having no doubt smelled the dogs. We separated on the +instant, doubling different ways behind ice-boulders, wanting her to go +on nearer the shore, before killing; but, passing close, she spied, and +bore down at a trot upon me. I fired into her neck, and at once, with a +roar, she turned tail, making now straight in Maitland's direction. I +saw him run out from cover some hundred yards away, aiming his long-gun: +but no report followed: and in half a minute he was under her fore-paws, +she striking out slaps at the barking, shrinking dogs. Maitland roared +for my help: and at that moment, I, poor wretch, in far worse plight +than he, stood shivering in ague: for suddenly one of those wrangles of +the voices of my destiny was filling my bosom with loud commotion, one +urging me to fly to Maitland's aid, one passionately commanding me be +still. But it lasted, I believe, some seconds only: I ran and got a shot +into the bear's brain, and Maitland leapt up with a rent down his face. + +But singular destiny! Whatever I did--if I did evil, if I did good--the +result was the same: tragedy dark and sinister! Poor Maitland was doomed +that voyage, and my rescue of his life was the means employed to make +his death the more certain. + +I think that I have already written, some pages back, about a man +called Scotland, whom I met at Cambridge. He was always talking about +certain 'Black' and 'White' beings, and their contention for the earth. +We others used to call him the black-and-white mystery-man, because, one +day--but that is no matter now. Well, with regard to all that, I have a +fancy, a whim of the mind--quite wide of the truth, no doubt--but I have +it here in my brain, and I will write it down now. It is this: that +there may have been some sort of arrangement, or understanding, between +Black and White, as in the case of Adam and the fruit, that, should +mankind force his way to the Pole and the old forbidden secret biding +there, then some mishap should not fail to overtake the race of man; +that the White, being kindly disposed to mankind, did not wish this to +occur, and intended, for the sake of the race, to destroy our entire +expedition before it reached; and that the Black, knowing that the White +meant to do this, and by what means, used me--_me_!--to outwit this +design, first of all working that I should be one of the party of four +to leave the ship on ski. + +But the childish attempt, my God, to read the immense riddle of the +world! I could laugh loud at myself, and at poor Black-and-White +Scotland, too. The thing can't be so simple. + +Well, we left Taimur the same day, and good-bye now to both land and +open sea. Till we passed the latitude of Cape Chelyuskin (which we did +not sight), it was one succession of ice-belts, with Mew in the +crow's-nest tormenting the electric bell to the engine-room, the anchor +hanging ready to drop, and Clark taking soundings. Progress was slow, +and the Polar night gathered round us apace, as we stole still onward +and onward into that blue and glimmering land of eternal frore. We now +left off bed-coverings of reindeer-skin and took to sleeping-bags. Eight +of the dogs had died by the 25th September, when we were experiencing +19° of frost. In the darkest part of our night, the Northern Light +spread its silent solemn banner over us, quivering round the heavens in +a million fickle gauds. + +The relations between the members of our little crew were +excellent--with one exception: David Wilson and I were not good friends. + +There was a something--a tone--in the evidence which he had given at the +inquest on Peters, which made me mad every time I thought of it. He had +heard Peters admit just before death that he, Peters, had administered +atropine to himself: and he had had to give evidence of that fact. But +he had given it in a most half-hearted way, so much so, that the coroner +had asked him: 'What, sir, are you hiding from me?' Wilson had replied: +'Nothing. I have nothing to tell.' + +And from that day he and I had hardly exchanged ten words, in spite of +our constant companionship in the vessel; and one day, standing alone on +a floe, I found myself hissing with clenched fist: 'If he dared suspect +Clodagh of poisoning Peters, I could _kill_ him!' + +Up to 78° of latitude the weather had been superb, but on the night of +the 7th October--well I remember it--we experienced a great storm. Our +tub of a ship rolled like a swing, drenching the whimpering dogs at +every lurch, and hurling everything on board into confusion. The +petroleum-launch was washed from the davits; down at one time to 40° +below zero sank the thermometer; while a high aurora was whiffed into a +dishevelled chaos of hues, resembling the smeared palette of some +turbulent painter of the skies, or mixed battle of long-robed seraphim, +and looking the very symbol of tribulation, tempest, wreck, and +distraction. I, for the first time, was sick. + +It was with a dizzy brain, therefore, that I went off watch to my bunk. +Soon, indeed, I fell asleep: but the rolls and shocks of the ship, +combined with the heavy Greenland anorak which I had on, and the state +of my body, together produced a fearful nightmare, in which I was +conscious of a vain struggle to move, a vain fight for breath, for the +sleeping-bag turned to an iceberg on my bosom. Of Clodagh was my gasping +dream. I dreamed that she let fall, drop by drop, a liquid, coloured +like pomegranate-seeds, into a glass of water; and she presented the +glass to Peters. The draught, I knew, was poisonous as death: and in a +last effort to break the bands of that dark slumber, I was conscious, as +I jerked myself upright, of screaming aloud: + +'Clodagh! Clodagh! _Spare the man...!_' + +My eyes, starting with horror, opened to waking; the electric light was +shining in the cabin; and there stood David Wilson looking at me. + +Wilson was a big man, with a massively-built, long face, made longer by +a beard, and he had little nervous contractions of the flesh at the +cheek-bones, and plenty of big freckles. His clinging pose, his smile of +disgust, his whole air, as he stood crouching and lurching there, I can +shut my eyes, and see now. + +What he was doing in my cabin I did not know. To think, my good God, +that he should have been led there just then! This was one of the +four-men starboard berths: _his_ was a-port: yet there he was! But he +explained at once. + +'Sorry to interrupt your innocent dreams, says he: 'the mercury in +Maitland's thermometer is frozen, and he asked me to hand him his +spirits-of-wine one from his bunk...' + +I did not answer. A hatred was in my heart against this man. + +The next day the storm died away, and either three or four days later +the slush-ice between the floes froze definitely. The _Boreal's_ way was +thus blocked. We warped her with ice-anchors and the capstan into the +position in which she should lay up for her winter's drift. This was in +about 79° 20' N. The sun had now totally vanished from our bleak sky, +not to reappear till the following year. + +Well, there was sledging with the dogs, and bear-hunting among the +hummocks, as the months, one by one, went by. One day Wilson, by far our +best shot, got a walrus-bull; Clark followed the traditional pursuit of +a Chief, examining Crustacea; Maitland and I were in a relation of close +friendship, and I assisted his meteorological observations in a snow-hut +built near the ship. Often, through the twenty-four hours, a clear blue +moon, very spectral, very fair, suffused all our dim and livid clime. + +It was five days before Christmas that Clark made the great +announcement: he had determined, he said, if our splendid northward +drift continued, to leave the ship about the middle of next March for +the dash to the Pole. He would take with him the four reindeer, all the +dogs, four sledges, four kayaks, and three companions. The companions +whom he had decided to invite were: Wilson, Mew, and Maitland. + +He said it at dinner; and as he said it, David Wilson glanced at my wan +face with a smile of pleased malice: for _I_ was left out. + +I remember well: the aurora that night was in the sky, and at its edge +floated a moon surrounded by a ring, with two mock-moons. But all shone +very vaguely and far, and a fog, which had already lasted some days, +made the ship's bows indistinct to me, as I paced the bridge on my +watch, two hours after Clark's announcement. + +For a long time all was very still, save for the occasional whine of a +dog. I was alone, and it grew toward the end of my watch, when Maitland +would succeed me. My slow tread tolled like a passing-bell, and the +mountainous ice lay vague and white around me, its sheeted ghastliness +not less dreadfully silent than eternity itself. + +Presently, several of the dogs began barking together, left off, and +began again. + +I said to myself; 'There is a bear about somewhere.' + +And after some five minutes I saw--I thought that I saw--it. The fog +had, if anything thickened; and it was now very near the end of my +watch. + +It had entered the ship, I concluded, by the boards which slanted from +an opening in the port bulwarks down to the ice. Once before, in +November, a bear, having smelled the dogs, had ventured on board at +midnight: but _then_ there had resulted a perfect hubbub among the dogs. +_Now_, even in the midst of my excitement, I wondered at their +quietness, though some whimpered--with fear, I thought. I saw the +creature steal forward from the hatchway toward the kennels a-port; and +I ran noiselessly, and seized the watch-gun which stood always loaded by +the companionway. + +By this time, the form had passed the kennels, reached the bows, and now +was making toward me on the starboard side. I took aim. Never, I +thought, had I seen so huge a bear--though I made allowance for the +magnifying effect of the fog. + +My finger was on the trigger: and at that moment a deathly shivering +sickness took me, the wrangling voices shouted at me, with 'Shoot!' +'Shoot not!' 'Shoot!' Ah well, that latter shout was irresistible. I +drew the trigger. The report hooted through the Polar night. + +The creature dropped; both Wilson and Clark were up at once: and we +three hurried to the spot. + +But the very first near glance showed a singular kind of bear. Wilson +put his hand to the head, and a lax skin came away at his touch.... It +was Aubrey Maitland who was underneath it, and I had shot him dead. + +For the past few days he had been cleaning skins, among them the skin of +the bear from which I had saved him at Taimur. Now, Maitland was a born +pantomimist, continually inventing practical jokes; and perhaps to +startle me with a false alarm in the very skin of the old Bruin which +had so nearly done for him, he had thrown it round him on finishing its +cleaning, and so, in mere wanton fun, had crept on deck at the hour of +his watch. The head of the bear-skin, and the fog, must have prevented +him from seeing me taking aim. + +This tragedy made me ill for weeks. I saw that the hand of Fate was upon +me. When I rose from bed, poor Maitland was lying in the ice behind the +great camel-shaped hummock near us. + +By the end of January we had drifted to 80° 55'; and it was then that +Clark, in the presence of Wilson, asked me if I would make the fourth +man, in the place of poor Maitland, for the dash in the spring. As I +said 'Yes, I am willing,' David Wilson spat with a disgusted emphasis. A +minute later he sighed, with 'Ah, poor Maitland...' and drew in his +breath with a _tut! tut!_ + +God knows, I had an impulse to spring then and there at his throat, and +strangle him: but I curbed myself. + +There remained now hardly a month before the dash, and all hands set to +work with a will, measuring the dogs, making harness and seal-skin shoes +for them, overhauling sledges and kayaks, and cutting every possible +ounce of weight. But we were not destined, after all, to set out that +year. About the 20th February, the ice began to pack, and the ship was +subjected to an appalling pressure. We found it necessary to make +trumpets of our hands to shout into one another's ears, for the whole +ice-continent was crashing, popping, thundering everywhere in terrific +upheaval. Expecting every moment to see the _Boreal_ crushed to +splinters, we had to set about unpacking provisions, and placing +sledges, kayaks, dogs and everything in a position for instant flight. +It lasted five days, and was accompanied by a tempest from the north, +which, by the end of February, had driven us back south into latitude +79° 40'. Clark, of course, then abandoned the thought of the Pole for +that summer. + +And immediately afterwards we made a startling discovery: our stock of +reindeer-moss was found to be somehow ridiculously small. Egan, our +second mate, was blamed; but that did not help matters: the sad fact +remained. Clark was advised to kill one or two of the deer, but he +pig-headedly refused: and by the beginning of summer they were all dead. + +Well, our northward drift recommenced. Toward the middle of February we +saw a mirage of the coming sun above the horizon; there were flights of +Arctic petrels and snow-buntings; and spring was with us. In an ice-pack +of big hummocks and narrow lanes we made good progress all the summer. + +When the last of the deer died, my heart sank; and when the dogs killed +two of their number, and a bear crushed a third, I was fully expecting +what actually came; it was this: Clark announced that he could now take +only two companions with him in the spring: and they were Wilson and +Mew. So once more I saw David Wilson's pleased smile of malice. + +We settled into our second winter-quarters. Again came December, and all +our drear sunless gloom, made worse by the fact that the windmill would +not work, leaving us without the electric light. + +Ah me, none but those who have felt it could dream of one half the +mental depression of that long Arctic night; how the soul takes on the +hue of the world; and without and within is nothing but gloom, gloom, +and the reign of the Power of Darkness. + +Not one of us but was in a melancholic, dismal and dire mood; and on the +13th December Lamburn, the engineer, stabbed Cartwright, the old +harpooner, in the arm. + +Three days before Christmas a bear came close to the ship, and then +turned tail. Mew, Wilson, I and Meredith (a general hand) set out in +pursuit. After a pretty long chase we lost him, and then scattered +different ways. It was very dim, and after yet an hour's search, I was +returning weary and disgusted to the ship, when I saw some shadow like a +bear sailing away on my left, and at the same time sighted a man--I did +not know whom--running like a handicapped ghost some little distance to +the right. So I shouted out: + +'There he is--come on! This way!' + +The man quickly joined me, but as soon as ever he recognised me, stopped +dead. The devil must have suddenly got into him, for he said: + +'No, thanks, Jeffson: alone with you I am in danger of my life....' + +It was Wilson. And I, too, forgetting at once all about the bear, +stopped and faced him. + +'I see,' said I. 'But, Wilson, you are going to explain to me _now_ what +you mean, you hear? What _do_ you mean, Wilson?' + +'What I say,' he answered deliberately, eyeing me up and down: 'alone +with you I am in danger of my life. Just as poor Maitland was, and just +as poor Peters was. Certainly, you are a deadly beast.' + +Fury leapt, my God, in my heart. Black as the tenebrous Arctic night was +my soul. + +'Do you mean,' said I, 'that I want to put you out of the way in order +to go in your place to the Pole? Is that your meaning, man?' + +'That's about my meaning, Jeffson,' says he: 'you are a deadly beast, +you know.' + +'Stop!' I said, with blazing eye. 'I am going to kill _you_, Wilson--as +sure as God lives: but I want to hear first. Who _told_ you that I +killed Peters?' + +'Your lover killed him--with _your_ collusion. Why, I heard you, man, in +your beastly sleep, calling the whole thing out. And I was pretty sure +of it before, only I had no proofs. By God, I should enjoy putting a +bullet into you, Jeffson!' + +'You wrong me--you, you wrong me!' I shrieked, my eyes staring with +ravenous lust for his blood; 'and now I am going to pay you well for it. +_Look out, you!_' + +I aimed my gun for his heart, and I touched the trigger. He held up his +left hand. + +'Stop,' he said, 'stop.' (He was one of the coolest of men ordinarily.) +'There is no gallows on the _Boreal_, but Clark could easily rig one for +you. I want to kill you, too, because there are no criminal courts up +here, and it would be doing a good action for my country. But not +here--not now. Listen to me--don't shoot. Later we can meet, when all is +ready, so that no one may be the wiser, and fight it all out.' + +As he spoke I let the gun drop. It was better so. I knew that he was +much the best shot on the ship, and I an indifferent one: but I did not +care, I did not care, if I was killed. + +It is a dim, inclement land, God knows: and the spirit of darkness and +distraction is there. + +Twenty hours later we met behind the great saddle-shaped hummock, some +six miles to the S.E. of the ship. We had set out at different times, so +that no one might suspect. And each brought a ship's-lantern. + +Wilson had dug an ice-grave near the hummock, leaving at its edge a +heap of brash-ice and snow to fill it. We stood separated by an interval +of perhaps seventy yards, the grave between us, each with a lantern at +his feet. + +Even so we were mere shadowy apparitions one to the other. The air +glowered very drearily, and present in my inmost soul were the frills of +cold. A chill moon, a mere abstraction of light, seemed to hang far +outside the universe. The temperature was at 55° below zero, so that we +had on wind-clothes over our anoraks, and heavy foot-bandages under our +Lap boots. Nothing but a weird morgue seemed the world, haunted with +despondent madness; and exactly like that world about us were the minds +of us two poor men, full of macabre, bleak, and funereal feelings. + +Between us yawned an early grave for one or other of our bodies. + +I heard Wilson cry out: + +'Are you ready, Jeffson?' + +'Aye, Wilson!' cried I. + +'_Then here goes!_' cries he. + +Even as he spoke, he fired. Surely, the man was in deadly earnest to +kill me. + +But his shot passed harmlessly by me: as indeed was only likely: we +were mere shadows one to the other. + +I fired perhaps ten seconds later than he: but in those ten seconds he +stood perfectly revealed to me in clear, lavender light. + +An Arctic fire-ball had traversed the sky, showering abroad, a +sulphurous glamour over the snow-landscape. Before the intenser blue of +its momentary shine had passed away, I saw Wilson stagger forward, and +drop. And him and his lantern I buried deep there under the rubble ice. + + * * * * * + +On the 13th March, nearly three months later, Clark, Mew and I left the +Boreal in latitude 85° 15'. + +We had with us thirty-two dogs, three sledges, three kayaks, human +provisions for 112 days, and dog provisions for 40. Being now about 340 +miles from the Pole, we hoped to reach it in 43 days, then, turning +south, and feeding living dogs with dead, make either Franz Josef Land +or Spitzbergen, at which latter place we should very likely come up with +a whaler. + +Well, during the first days, progress was very slow, the ice being rough +and laney, and the dogs behaving most badly, stopping dead at every +difficulty, and leaping over the traces. Clark had had the excellent +idea of attaching a gold-beater's-skin balloon, with a lifting power of +35 pounds, to each sledge, and we had with us a supply of zinc and +sulphuric-acid to repair the hydrogen-waste from the bags; but on the +third day Mew over-filled and burst his balloon, and I and Clark had to +cut ours loose in order to equalise weights, for we could neither leave +him behind, turn back to the ship, nor mend the bag. So it happened that +at the end of the fourth day out, we had made only nineteen miles, and +could still from a hummock discern afar the leaning masts of the old +Boreal. Clark led on ski, captaining a sledge with 400 lbs. of +instruments, ammunition, pemmican, aleuronate bread; Mew followed, his +sledge containing provisions only; and last came I, with a mixed +freight. But on the third day Clark had an attack of snow-blindness, and +Mew took his place. + +Pretty soon our sufferings commenced, and they were bitter enough. The +sun, though constantly visible day and night, gave no heat. Our +sleeping-bags (Clark and Mew slept together in one, I in another) were +soaking wet all the night, being thawed by our warmth; and our fingers, +under wrappings of senne-grass and wolf-skin, were always bleeding. +Sometimes our frail bamboo-cane kayaks, lying across the sledges, would +crash perilously against an ice-ridge--and they were our one hope of +reaching land. But the dogs were the great difficulty: we lost six +mortal hours a day in harnessing and tending them. On the twelfth day +Clark took a single-altitude observation, and found that we were only in +latitude 86° 45'; but the next day we passed beyond the furthest point +yet reached by man, viz. 86° 53', attained by the _Nix_ explorers four +years previously. + + * * * * * + +Our one secret thought now was food, food--our day-long lust for the +eating-time. Mew suffered from 'Arctic thirst. + + * * * * * + +Under these conditions, man becomes in a few days, not a savage only, +but a mere beast, hardly a grade above the bear and walrus. Ah, the ice! +A long and sordid nightmare was that, God knows. + +On we pressed, crawling our little way across the Vast, upon whose hoar +silence, from Eternity until then, Bootes only, and that Great Bear, had +watched. + + * * * * * + +After the eleventh day our rate of march improved: all lanes +disappeared, and ridges became much less frequent. By the fifteenth day +I was leaving behind the ice-grave of David Wilson at the rate of ten to +thirteen miles a day. + +Yet, as it were, his arm reached out and touched me, even there. + +His disappearance had been explained by a hundred different guesses on +the ship--all plausible enough. I had no idea that anyone connected me +in any way with his death. + +But on our twenty-second day of march, 140 miles from our goal, he +caused a conflagration of rage and hate to break out among us three. + +It was at the end of a march, when our stomachs were hollow, our frames +ready to drop, and our mood ravenous and inflamed. One of Mew's dogs was +sick: it was necessary to kill it: he asked me to do it. + +'Oh,' said I, 'you kill your own dog, of course.' + +'Well, I don't know,' he replied, catching fire at once, 'you ought to +be used to killing, Jeffson.' + +'How do you mean, Mew?' said I with a mad start, for madness and the +flames of Hell were instant and uppermost in us all: 'you mean because +my profession----' + +'Profession! damn it, no,' he snarled like a dog: 'go and dig up David +Wilson--I dare say you know where to find him--and he will tell you my +meaning, right enough.' + +I rushed at once to Clark, who was stooping among the dogs, +unharnessing: and savagely pushing his shoulder, I exclaimed: + +'That beast accuses me of murdering David Wilson!' + +'Well?' said Clark. + +'I'd split his skull as clean----!' + +'Go away, Adam Jeffson, and let me be!' snarled Clark. + +'Is that all you've got to say about it, then--you?' + +'To the devil with you, man, say I, and let me be!' cried he: 'you know +your own conscience best, I suppose.' + +Before this insult I stood with grinding teeth, but impotent. However, +from that moment a deeper mood of brooding malice occupied my spirit. +Indeed the humour of us all was one of dangerous, even murderous, +fierceness. In that pursuit of riches into that region of cold, we had +become almost like the beasts that perish. + + * * * * * + +On the 10th April we passed the 89th parallel of latitude, and though +sick to death, both in spirit and body, pressed still on. Like the lower +animals, we were stricken now with dumbness, and hardly once in a week +spoke a word one to the other, but in selfish brutishness on through a +real hell of cold we moved. It is a cursed region--beyond doubt +cursed--not meant to be penetrated by man: and rapid and awful was the +degeneration of our souls. As for me, never could I have conceived that +savagery so heinous could brood in a human bosom as now I felt it brood +in mine. If men could enter into a country specially set apart for the +habitation of devils, and there become possessed of evil, as we were so +would they be. + + * * * * * + +As we advanced, the ice every day became smoother; so that, from four +miles a day, our rate increased to fifteen, and finally (as the sledges +lightened) to twenty. + +It was now that we began to encounter a succession of strange-looking +objects lying scattered over the ice, whose number continually +increased as we proceeded. They had the appearance of rocks, or pieces +of iron, incrusted with glass-fragments of various colours, and they +were of every size. Their incrustations we soon determined to be +diamonds, and other precious stones. On our first twenty-mile day Mew +picked up a diamond-crystal as large as a child's foot, and such objects +soon became common. We thus found the riches which we sought, beyond all +dream; but as the bear and the walrus find them: for ourselves we had +lost; and it was a loss of riches barren as ashes, for all those +millions we would not have given an ounce of fish-meal. Clark grumbled +something about their being meteor-stones, whose ferruginous substance +had been lured by the magnetic Pole, and kept from frictional burning in +their fall by the frigidity of the air: and they quickly ceased to +interest our sluggish minds, except in so far as they obstructed our +way. + + * * * * * + +We had all along had good weather: till, suddenly, on the morning of the +13th April, we were overtaken by a tempest from the S.W., of such mighty +and solemn volume that the heart quailed beneath it. It lasted in its +full power only an hour, but during that time snatched two of our +sledges long distances, and compelled us to lie face-downward. We had +travelled all the sun-lit night, and were gasping with fatigue; so as +soon as the wind allowed us to huddle together our scattered things, we +crawled into the sleeping-bags, and instantly slept. + +We knew that the ice was in awful upheaval around us; we heard, as our +eyelids sweetly closed, the slow booming of distant guns, and brittle +cracklings of artillery. This may have been a result of the tempest +stirring up the ocean beneath the ice. Whatever it was, we did not care: +we slept deep. + +We were within ten miles of the Pole. + + * * * * * + +In my sleep it was as though someone suddenly shook my shoulder with +urgent '_Up! up_!' It was neither Clark nor Mew, but a dream merely: for +Clark and Mew, when I started up, I saw lying still in their +sleeping-bag. + +I suppose it must have been about noon. I sat staring a minute, and my +first numb thought was somehow this: that the Countess Clodagh had +prayed me 'Be first'--for her. Wondrous little now cared I for the +Countess Clodagh in her far unreal world of warmth--precious little for +the fortune which she coveted: millions on millions of fortunes lay +unregarded around me. But that thought, _Be first!_ was deeply suggested +in my brain, as if whispered there. Instinctively, brutishly, as the +Gadarean swine rushed down a steep place, I, rubbing my daft eyes, +arose. + +The first thing which my mind opened to perceive was that, while the +tempest was less strong, the ice was now in extraordinary agitation. I +looked abroad upon a vast plain, stretched out to a circular, but waving +horizon, and varied by many hillocks, boulders, and sparkling +meteor-stones that everywhere tinselled the blinding white, some big as +houses, most small as limbs. And this great plain was now rearranging +itself in a widespread drama of havoc, withdrawing in ravines like +mutual backing curtsies, then surging to clap together in passionate +mountain-peaks, else jostling like the Symplegades, fluent and +inconstant as billows of the sea, grinding itself, piling itself, +pouring itself in cataracts of powdered ice, while here and there I saw +the meteor-stones leap spasmodically, in dusts and heaps, like geysers +or spurting froths in a steamer's wake, a tremendous uproar, meantime, +filling all the air. As I stood, I plunged and staggered, and I found +the dogs sprawling, with whimperings, on the heaving floor. + +I did not care. Instinctively, daftly, brutishly, I harnessed ten of +them to my sledge; put on Canadian snow-shoes: and was away +northward--alone. + +The sun shone with a clear, benign, but heatless shining: a ghostly, +remote, yet quite limpid light, which seemed designed for the lighting +of other planets and systems, and to strike here by happy chance. A +great wind from the S.W., meantime, sent thin snow-sweepings flying +northward past me. + +The odometer which I had with me had not yet measured four miles, when I +began to notice two things: first that the jewelled meteor-stones were +now accumulating beyond all limit, filling my range of vision to the +northern horizon with a dazzling glister: in mounds, and parterres, and +scattered disconnection they lay, like largesse of autumn leaves, spread +out over those Elysian fields and fairy uplands of wealth, trillions of +billions, so that I had need to steer my twining way among them. Now, +too, I noticed that, but for these stones, all roughness had +disappeared, not a trace of the upheaval going on a little further south +being here, for the ice lay positively as smooth as a table before me. +It is my belief that this stretch of smooth ice has never, never felt +one shock, or stir, or throe, and reaches right down to the bottom of +the deep. + + * * * * * + +And now with a wild hilarity I flew. Gradually, a dizziness, a lunacy, +had seized upon me, till finally, up-buoyed on air, and dancing mad, I +sped, I spun, with grinning teeth that chattered and gibbered, and +eyeballs of distraction: for a Fear, too--most cold and dreadful--had +its hand of ice upon my heart, I being so alone in that place, face to +face with the Ineffable: but still with a giddy levity, and a fatal joy, +and a blind hilarity, on I sped, I spun. + + * * * * * + +The odometer measured nine miles from my start. I was in the immediate +neighbourhood of the Pole. + +I cannot say when it began, but now I was conscious of a sound in my +ears, distinct and near, a steady sound of splashing, or fluttering, +resembling the noising of a cascade or brook: and it grew. Forty more +steps I took (slide I could not now for the meteorites)--perhaps +sixty--perhaps eighty: and now, to my sudden horror, I stood by a +circular clean-cut lake. + +One minute only, swaying and nodding there, I stood: and then I dropped +down flat in swoon. + + * * * * * + +In a hundred years, I suppose, I should never succeed in analysing +_why_ I swooned: but my consciousness still retains the impression of +that horrid thrill. I saw nothing distinctly, for my whole being reeled +and toppled drunken, like a spinning-top in desperate death-struggle at +the moment when it flags, and wobbles dissolutely to fall; but the very +instant that my eyes met what was before me, I knew, I knew, that here +was the Sanctity of Sanctities, the old eternal inner secret of the Life +of this Earth, which it was a most burning shame for a man to see. The +lake, I fancy, must be a mile across, and in its middle is a pillar of +ice, very low and broad; and I had the clear impression, or dream, or +notion, that there was a name, or word, graven all round in the ice of +the pillar in characters which I could never read; and under the name a +long date; and the fluid of the lake seemed to me to be wheeling with a +shivering ecstasy, splashing and fluttering, round the pillar, always +from west to east, in the direction of the spinning of the earth; and it +was borne in upon me--I can't at all say how--that this fluid was the +substance of a living creature; and I had the distinct fancy, as my +senses failed, that it was a creature with many dull and anguished eyes, +and that, as it wheeled for ever round in fluttering lust, it kept its +eyes always turned upon the name and the date graven in the pillar. But +this must be my madness.... + + * * * * * + +It must have been not less than an hour before a sense of life returned +to me; and when the thought stabbed my brain that a long, long time I +had lain there in the presence of those gloomy orbs, my spirit seemed to +groan and die within me. + +In some minutes, however, I had scrambled to my feet, clutched at a +dog's harness, and without one backward glance, was flying from that +place. + +Half-way to the halting-place, I waited Clark and Mew, being very sick +and doddering, and unable to advance. But they did not come. + +Later on, when I gathered force to go further, I found that they had +perished in the upheaval of the ice. One only of the sledges, half +buried, I saw near the spot of our bivouac. + + * * * * * + +Alone that same day I began my way southward, and for five days made +good progress. On the eighth day I noticed, stretched right across the +south-eastern horizon, a region of purple vapour which luridly obscured +the face of the sun: and day after day I saw it steadily brooding +there. But what it could be I did not understand. + + * * * * * + +Well, onward through the desert ice I continued my lonely way, with a +baleful shrinking terror in my heart; for very stupendous, alas! is the +burden of that Arctic solitude upon one poor human soul. + +Sometimes on a halt I have lain and listened long to the hollow silence, +recoiling, crushed by it, hoping that at least one of the dogs might +whine. I have even crept shivering from the thawed sleeping-bag to flog +a dog, so that I might hear a sound. + +I had started from the Pole with a well-filled sledge, and the sixteen +dogs left alive from the ice-packing which buried my comrades. This was +on the evening of the 13th April. I had saved from the wreck of our +things most of the whey-powder, pemmican, &c., as well as the +theodolite, compass, chronometer, train-oil lamp for cooking, and other +implements: I was therefore in no doubt as to my course, and I had +provisions for ninety days. But ten days from the start my supply of +dog-food failed, and I had to begin to slaughter my only companions, one +by one. + +Well, in the third week the ice became horribly rough, and with moil +and toil enough to wear a bear to death, I did only five miles a day. +After the day's work I would crawl with a dying sigh into the +sleeping-bag, clad still in the load of skins which stuck to me a mere +filth of grease, to sleep the sleep of a swine, indifferent if I never +woke. + +Always--day after day--on the south-eastern horizon, brooded sullenly +that curious stretched-out region of purple vapour, like the smoke of +the conflagration of the world. And I noticed that its length constantly +reached out and out, and silently grew. + + * * * * * + +Once I had a very pleasant dream. I dreamed that I was in a garden--an +Arabian paradise--so sweet was the perfume. All the time, however, I had +a sub-consciousness of the gale which was actually blowing from the S.E. +over the ice, and, at the moment when I awoke, was half-wittedly droning +to myself; 'It is a Garden of Peaches; but I am not really in the +garden: I am really on the ice; only, the S.E. storm is wafting to me +the aroma of this Garden of Peaches.' + +I opened my eyes--I started--I sprang to my feet! For, of all the +miracles!--I could not doubt--an actual aroma like peach-blossom was in +the algid air about me! + +Before I could collect my astonished senses, I began to vomit pretty +violently, and at the same time saw some of the dogs, mere skeletons as +they were, vomiting, too. For a long time I lay very sick in a kind of +daze, and, on rising, found two of the dogs dead, and all very queer. +The wind had now changed to the north. + +Well, on I staggered, fighting every inch of my deplorably weary way. +This odour of peach-blossom, my sickness, and the death of the two dogs, +remained a wonder to me. + +Two days later, to my extreme mystification (and joy), I came across a +bear and its cub lying dead at the foot of a hummock. I could not +believe my eyes. There she lay on her right side, a spot of dirty-white +in a disordered patch of snow, with one little eye open, and her +fierce-looking mouth also; and the cub lay across her haunch, biting +into her rough fur. I set to work upon her, and allowed the dogs a +glorious feed on the blubber, while I myself had a great banquet on the +fresh meat. I had to leave the greater part of the two carcasses, and I +can feel again now the hankering reluctance--quite unnecessary, as it +turned out--with which I trudged onwards. Again and again I found +myself asking: 'Now, what could have killed those two bears?' + +With brutish stolidness I plodded ever on, almost like a walking +machine, sometimes nodding in sleep while I helped the dogs, or +manouvred the sledge over an ice-ridge, pushing or pulling. On the 3rd +June, a month and a half from my start, I took an observation with the +theodolite, and found that I was not yet 400 miles from the Pole, in +latitude 84° 50'. It was just as though some Will, some Will, was +obstructing and retarding me. + +However, the intolerable cold was over, and soon my clothes no longer +hung stark on me like armour. Pools began to appear in the ice, and +presently, what was worse, my God, long lanes, across which, somehow, I +had to get the sledge. But about the same time all fear of starvation +passed away: for on the 6th June I came across another dead bear, on the +7th three, and thenceforth, in rapidly growing numbers, I met not bears +only, but fulmars, guillemots, snipes, Ross's gulls, little awks--all, +all, lying dead on the ice. And never anywhere a living thing, save me, +and the two remaining dogs. + +If ever a poor man stood shocked before a mystery, it was I now. I had a +big fear on my heart. + +On the 2nd July the ice began packing dangerously, and soon another +storm broke loose upon me from the S.W. I left off my trek, and put up +the silk tent on a five-acre square of ice surrounded by lanes: and +_again_--for the second time--as I lay down, I smelled that delightful +strange odour of peach-blossom, a mere whiff of it, and presently +afterwards was taken sick. However, it passed off this time in a couple +of hours. + +Now it was all lanes, lanes, alas! yet no open water, and such was the +difficulty and woe of my life, that sometimes I would drop flat on the +ice, and sob: 'Oh, no more, no more, my God: here let me die.' The +crossing of a lane might occupy ten or twelve entire hours, and then, on +the other side I might find another one opening right before me. +Moreover, on the 8th July, one of the dogs, after a feed on blubber, +suddenly died; and there was left me only 'Reinhardt,' a white-haired +Siberian dog, with little pert up-sticking ears, like a cat's. Him, too, +I had to kill on coming to open water. + +This did not happen till the 3rd August, nearly four months from the +Pole. + +I can't think, my God, that any heart of man ever tholed the appalling +nightmare and black abysm of sensations in which, during those four +long desert months, I weltered: for though I was as a brute, I had a +man's heart to feel. What I had seen, or dreamed, at the Pole followed +and followed me; and if I shut my poor weary eyes to sleep, those others +yonder seemed to watch me still with their distraught and gloomy gaze, +and in my spinning dark dreams spun that eternal ecstasy of the lake. + +However, by the 28th July I knew from the look of the sky, and the +absence of fresh-water ice, that the sea could not be far; so I set to +work, and spent two days in putting to rights the now battered kayak. +This done, I had no sooner resumed my way than I sighted far off a +streaky haze, which I knew to be the basalt cliffs of Franz Josef Land; +and in a craziness of joy I stood there, waving my ski-staff about my +head, with the senile cheers of a very old man. + +In four days this land was visibly nearer, sheer basaltic cliffs mixed +with glacier, forming apparently a great bay, with two small islands in +the mid-distance; and at fore-day of the 3rd August I arrived at the +definite edge of the pack-ice in moderate weather at about the +freezing-point. + +I at once, but with great reluctance, shot Reinhardt, and set to work to +get the last of the provisions, and the most necessary of the +implements, into the kayak, making haste to put out to the toilless +luxury of being borne on the water, after all the weary trudge. Within +fourteen hours I was coasting, with my little lug-sail spread, along the +shore-ice of that land. It was midnight of a calm Sabbath, and low on +the horizon smoked the drowsing red sun-ball, as my canvas skiff lightly +chopped her little way through this silent sea. Silent, silent: for +neither snort of walrus, nor yelp of fox, nor cry of startled kittiwake, +did I hear: but all was still as the jet-black shadow of the cliffs and +glacier on the tranquil sea: and many bodies of dead things strewed the +surface of the water. + + * * * * * + +When I found a little fjord, I went up it to the end where stood a +stretch of basalt columns, looking like a shattered temple of +Antediluvians; and when my foot at last touched land, I sat down there a +long, long time in the rubbly snow, and silently wept. My eyes that +night were like a fountain of tears. For the firm land is health and +sanity, and dear to the life of man; but I say that the great ungenial +ice is a nightmare, and a blasphemy, and a madness, and the realm of the +Power of Darkness. + + * * * * * + +I knew that I was at Franz Josef Land, somewhere or other in the +neighbourhood of C. Fligely (about 82° N.), and though it was so late, +and getting cold, I still had the hope of reaching Spitzbergen that +year, by alternately sailing all open water, and dragging the kayak over +the slack drift-ice. All the ice which I saw was good flat fjord-ice, +and the plan seemed feasible enough; so after coasting about a little, +and then three days' good rest in the tent at the bottom of a ravine of +columnar basalt opening upon the shore, I packed some bear and walrus +flesh, with what artificial food was left, into the kayak, and I set out +early in the morning, coasting the shore-ice with sail and paddle. In +the afternoon I managed to climb a little way up an iceberg, and made +out that I was in a bay whose terminating headlands were invisible. I +accordingly decided to make S.W. by W. to cross it, but, in doing so, I +was hardly out of sight of land, when a northern storm overtook me +toward midnight; before I could think, the little sail was all but +whiffed away, and the kayak upset. I only saved it by the happy chance +of being near a floe with an ice-foot, which, projecting under the +water, gave me foot-hold; and I lay on the floe in a mooning state the +whole night under the storm, for I was half drowned. + +And at once, on recovering myself, I abandoned all thought of whalers +and of Europe for that year. Happily, my instruments, &c., had been +saved by the kayak-deck when she capsized. + + * * * * * + +A hundred yards inland from the shore-rim, in a circular place where +there was some moss and soil, I built myself a semi-subterranean Eskimo +den for the long Polar night. The spot was quite surrounded by high +sloping walls of basalt, except to the west, where they opened in a +three-foot cleft to the shore, and the ground was strewn with slabs and +boulders of granite and basalt. I found there a dead she-bear, two +well-grown cubs, and a fox, the latter having evidently fallen from the +cliffs; in three places the snow was quite red, overgrown with a red +lichen, which at first I took for blood. I did not even yet feel secure +from possible bears, and took care to make my den fairly tight, a work +which occupied me nearly four weeks, for I had no tools, save a hatchet, +knife, and metal-shod ski-staff. I dug a passage in the ground two feet +wide, two deep, and ten long, with perpendicular sides, and at its north +end a circular space, twelve feet across, also with perpendicular sides, +which I lined with stones; the whole excavation I covered with +inch-thick walrus-hide, skinned during a whole bitter week from four of +a number that lay about the shore-ice; for ridge-pole I used a thin +pointed rock which I found near, though, even so, the roof remained +nearly flat. This, when it was finished, I stocked well, putting in +everything, except the kayak, blubber to serve both for fuel and +occasional light, and foods of several sorts, which I procured by merely +stretching out the hand. The roof of both circular part and passage was +soon buried under snow and ice, and hardly distinguishable from the +general level of the white-clad ground. Through the passage, if I passed +in or out, I crawled flat, on hands and knees: but that was rare: and in +the little round interior, mostly sitting in a cowering attitude, I +wintered, harkening to the large and windy ravings of darkling December +storms above me. + + * * * * * + +All those months the burden of a thought bowed me; and an unanswered +question, like the slow turning of a mechanism, revolved in my gloomy +spirit: for everywhere around me lay bears, walruses, foxes, thousands +upon thousands of little awks, kittiwakes, snow-owls, eider-ducks, +gulls-dead, dead. Almost the only living things which I saw were some +walruses on the drift-floes: but very few compared with the number +which I expected. It was clear to me that some inconceivable catastrophe +had overtaken the island during the summer, destroying all life about +it, except some few of the amphibia, cetacea, and crustacea. + +On the 5th December, having crept out from the den during a southern +storm, I had, for the third time, a distant whiff of that self-same +odour of peach-blossom: but now without any after-effects. + + * * * * * + +Well, again came Christmas, the New Year--Spring: and on the 22nd May I +set out with a well-stocked kayak. The water was fairly open, and the +ice so good, that at one place I could sail the kayak over it, the wind +sending me sliding at a fine pace. Being on the west coast of Franz +Josef Land, I was in as favourable a situation as possible, and I turned +my bow southward with much hope, keeping a good many days just in sight +of land. Toward the evening of my third day out I noticed a large flat +floe, presenting far-off a singular and lovely sight, for it seemed +freighted thick with a profusion of pink and white roses, showing in its +clear crystal the empurpled reflection. On getting near I saw that it +was covered with millions of Ross's gulls, all dead, whose pretty rosy +bosoms had given it that appearance. + +Up to the 29th June I made good progress southward and westward (the +weather being mostly excellent), sometimes meeting dead bears, floating +away on floes, sometimes dead or living walrus-herds, with troop after +troop of dead kittiwakes, glaucus and ivory gulls, skuas, and every kind +of Arctic fowl. On that last day--the 29th June--I was about to encamp +on a floe soon after midnight, when, happening to look toward the sun, +my eye fell, far away south across the ocean of floes, upon +something--_the masts of a ship_. + +A phantom ship, or a real ship: it was all one; real, I must have +instantly felt, it could not be: but at a sight so incredible my heart +set to beating in my bosom as though I must surely die, and feebly +waving the cane oar about my head, I staggered to my knees, and thence +with wry mouth toppled flat. + +So overpoweringly sweet was the thought of springing once more, like the +beasts of Circe, from a walrus into a man. At this time I was tearing my +bear's-meat just like a bear; I was washing my hands in walrus-blood to +produce a glairy sort of pink cleanliness, in place of the black grease +which chronically coated them. + +Worn as I was, I made little delay to set out for that ship; and I had +not travelled over water and ice four hours when, to my in-describable +joy, I made out from the top of a steep floe that she was the _Boreal_. +It seemed most strange that she should be anywhere hereabouts: I could +only conclude that she must have forced and drifted her way thus far +westward out of the ice-block in which our party had left her, and +perhaps now was loitering here in the hope of picking us up on our way +to Spitzbergen. + +In any case, wild was the haste with which I fought my way to be at her, +my gasping mouth all the time drawn back in a _rictus_ of laughter at +the anticipation of their gladness to see me, their excitement to hear +the grand tidings of the Pole attained. Anon I waved the paddle, though +I knew that they could not yet see me, and then I dug deep at the +whitish water. What astonished me was her main-sail and fore-mast +square-sail--set that calm morning; and her screws were still, for she +moved not at all. The sun was abroad like a cold spirit of light, +touching the great ocean-room of floes with dazzling spots, and a tint +almost of rose was on the world, as it were of a just-dead bride in her +spangles and white array. The _Boreal_ was the one little distant +jet-black spot in all this purity: and upon her, as though she were +Heaven, I paddled, I panted. But she was in a queerish state: by 9 A.M. +I could see that. Two of the windmill arms were not there, and half +lowered down her starboard beam a boat hung askew; moreover, soon after +10 I could clearly see that her main-sail had a long rent down the +middle. + +I could not at all make her out. She was not anchored, though a +sheet-anchor hung over at the starboard cathead; she was not moored; and +two small ice-floes, one on each side, were sluggishly bombarding her +bows. + +I began now to wave the paddle, battling for my breath, ecstatic, crazy +with excitement, each second like a year to me. Very soon I could make +out someone at the bows, leaning well over, looking my way. Something +put it into my head that it was Sallitt, and I began an impassioned +shouting. 'Hi! Sallitt! Hallo! Hi!' I called. + +I did not see him move: I was still a good way off: but there he stood, +leaning steadily over, looking my way. Between me and the ship now was +all navigable water among the floes, and the sight of him so visibly +near put into me such a shivering eagerness, that I was nothing else but +a madman for the time, sending the kayak flying with venomous digs in +quick-repeated spurts, and mixing with the diggings my crazy wavings, +and with both the daft shoutings of 'Hallo! Hi! Bravo! I have _been to +the Pole!_' + +Well, vanity, vanity. Nearer still I drew: it was broad morning, going +on toward noon: I was half a mile away, I was fifty yards. But on board +the _Boreal_, though now they _must_ have heard me, seen me, I observed +no movement of welcome, but all, all was still as death that still +Arctic morning, my God. Only, the ragged sail flapped a little, and--one +on each side--two ice-floes sluggishly bombarded the bows, with hollow +sounds. + +I was certain now that Sallitt it was who looked across the ice: but +when the ship swung a little round, I noticed that the direction of his +gaze was carried with her movement, he no longer looking my way. + +'Why, Sallitt!' I shouted reproachfully: 'why, Sallitt, man...!' I +whined. + +But even as I shouted and whined, a perfect wild certainty was in my +heart: for an aroma like peach, my God, had been suddenly wafted from +the ship upon me, and I must have very well known then that that +watchful outlook of Sallitt saw nothing, and on the _Boreal_ were dead +men all; indeed, very soon I saw one of his eyes looking like a glass +eye which has slid askew, and glares distraught. And now again my +wretched body failed, and my head dropped forward, where I sat, upon +the kayak-deck. + + * * * * * + +Well, after a long time, I lifted myself to look again at that forlorn +and wandering craft. There she lay, quiet, tragic, as it were culpable +of the dark secret she bore; and Sallitt, who had been such good friends +with me, would not cease his stare. I knew quite well why he was there: +he had leant over to vomit, and had leant ever since, his forearms +pressed on the bulwark-beam, his left knee against the boards, and his +left shoulder propped on the cathead. When I came quite near, I saw that +with every bump of the two floes against the bows, his face shook in +response, and nodded a little; strange to say, he had no covering on his +head, and I noted the play of the faint breezes in his uncut hair. After +a time I would approach no more, for I was afraid; I did not dare, the +silence of the ship seemed so sacred and awful; and till late afternoon +I sat there, watching the black and massive hull. Above her water-line +emerged all round a half-floating fringe of fresh-green sea-weed, +proving old neglect; an abortive attempt had apparently been made to +lower, or take in, the larch-wood pram, for there she hung by a jammed +davit-rope, stern up, bow in the water; the only two arms of the +windmill moved this way and that, through some three degrees, with an +_andante_ creaking sing-song; some washed clothes, tied on the bow-sprit +rigging to dry, were still there; the iron casing all round the bluff +bows was red and rough with rust; at several points the rigging was in +considerable tangle; occasionally the boom moved a little with a +tortured skirling cadence; and the sail, rotten, I presume, from +exposure--for she had certainly encountered no bad weather--gave out +anon a heavy languid flap at a rent down the middle. Besides Sallitt, +looking out there where he had jammed himself, I saw no one. + +By a paddle-stroke now, and another presently, I had closely approached +her about four in the afternoon, though my awe of the ship was +complicated by that perfume of hers, whose fearful effects I knew. My +tentative approach, however, proved to me, when I remained unaffected, +that, here and now, whatever danger there had been was past; and +finally, by a hanging rope, with a thumping desperation of heart, I +clambered up her beam. + + * * * * * + +They had died, it seemed, very suddenly, for nearly all the twelve were +in poses of activity. Egan was in the very act of ascending the +companion-way; Lamburn was sitting against the chart-room door, +apparently cleaning two carbines; Odling at the bottom of the +engine-room stair seemed to be drawing on a pair of reindeer komagar; +and Cartwright, who was often in liquor, had his arms frozen tight round +the neck of Martin, whom he seemed to be kissing, they two lying stark +at the foot of the mizzen-mast. + +Over all--over men, decks, rope-coils--in the cabin, in the +engine-room--between skylight leaves--on every shelf, in every +cranny--lay a purplish ash or dust, very impalpably fine. And steadily +reigning throughout the ship, like the very spirit of death, was that +aroma of peach-blossom. + + * * * * * + +Here it had reigned, as I could see from the log-dates, from the rust on +the machinery, from the look of the bodies, from a hundred indications, +during something over a year. It was, therefore, mainly by the random +workings of winds and currents that this fragrant ship of death had been +brought hither to me. + +And this was the first direct intimation which I had that the Unseen +Powers (whoever and whatever they may be), who through the history of +the world had been so very, very careful to conceal their Hand from the +eyes of men, hardly any longer intended to be at the pains to conceal +their Hand from me. It was just as though the Boreal had been openly +presented to me by a spiritual agency, which, though I could not see it, +I could readily apprehend. + + * * * * * + +The dust, though very thin and flighty above-decks, lay thickly +deposited below, and after having made a tour of investigation +throughout the ship, the first thing which I did was to examine +that--though I had tasted nothing all day, and was exhausted to death. I +found my own microscope where I had left it in the box in my berth to +starboard, though I had to lift up Egan to get at it, and to step over +Lamburn to enter the chart-room; but there, toward evening, I sat at the +table and bent to see if I could make anything of the dust, while it +seemed to me as if all the myriad spirits of men that have sojourned on +the earth, and angel and devil, and all Time and all Eternity, hung +silent round for my decision; and such an ague had me, that for a long +time my wandering finger-tips, all ataxic with agitation, eluded every +delicate effort which I made, and I could nothing do. Of course, I know +that an odour of peach-blossom in the air, resulting in death, could +only be associated with some vaporous effluvium of cyanogen, or of +hydrocyanic ('prussic') acid, or of both; and when I at last managed to +examine some of the dust under the microscope, I was not therefore +surprised to find, among the general mass of purplish ash, a number of +bright-yellow particles, which could only be minute crystals of potassic +ferrocyanide. What potassic ferrocyanide was doing on board the _Boreal_ +I did not know, and I had neither the means, nor the force of mind, +alas! to dive then further into the mystery; I understood only that by +some extraordinary means the air of the region just south of the Polar +environ had been impregnated with a vapour which was either cyanogen, or +some product of cyanogen; also, that this deadly vapour, which is very +soluble, had by now either been dissolved by the sea, or else dispersed +into space (probably the latter), leaving only its faint after-perfume; +and seeing this, I let my poor abandoned head drop again on the table, +and long hours I sat there staring mad, for I had a suspicion, my God, +and a fear, in my breast. + + * * * * * + +The _Boreal,_ I found, contained sufficient provisions, untouched by +the dust, in cases, casks, &c., to last me, probably, fifty years. After +two days, when I had partially scrubbed and boiled the filth of fifteen +months from my skin, and solaced myself with better food, I overhauled +her thoroughly, and spent three more days in oiling and cleaning the +engine. Then, all being ready, I dragged my twelve dead and laid them +together in two rows on the chart-room floor; and I hoisted for love the +poor little kayak which had served me through so many tribulations. At +nine in the morning of the 6th July, a week from my first sighting of +the _Boreal_, I descended to the engine-room to set out. + +The screws, like those of most quite modern ships, were driven by the +simple contrivance of a constant stream of liquid air, contained in very +powerful tanks, exploding through capillary tubes into non-expansion +slide-valve chests, much as in the ordinary way with steam: a motor +which gave her, in spite of her bluff hulk, a speed of sixteen knots. It +is, therefore, the simplest thing for one man to take these ships round +the world, since their movement, or stopping, depend upon nothing but +the depressing or raising of a steel handle, provided that one does not +get blown to the sky meantime, as liquid air, in spite of its thousand +advantages, occasionally blows people. At any rate, I had tanks of air +sufficient to last me through twelve years' voyaging; and there was the +ordinary machine on board for making it, with forty tons of coal, in +case of need, in the bunkers, and two excellent Belleville boilers: so I +was well supplied with motors at least. + +The ice here was quite slack, and I do not think I ever saw Arctic +weather so bright and gay, the temperature at 41°. I found that I was +midway between Franz Josef and Spitzbergen, in latitude 79° 23' N. and +longitude 39° E.; my way was perfectly clear; and something almost like +a mournful hopefulness was in me as the engines slid into their clanking +turmoil, and those long-silent screws began to churn the Arctic sea. I +ran up with alacrity and took my stand at the wheel; and the bows of my +eventful Argo turned southward and westward. + + * * * * * + +When I needed food or sleep, the ship slept, too: when I awoke, she +continued her way. + +Sixteen hours a day sometimes I stood sentinel at that wheel, +overlooking the varied monotony of the ice-sea, till my knees would +give, and I wondered why a wheel at which one might sit was not +contrived, rather delicate steering being often required among the floes +and bergs. By now, however, I was less weighted with my ball of Polar +clothes, and stood almost slim in a Lap great-coat, a round Siberian fur +cap on my head. + +At midnight when I threw myself into my old berth, it was just as though +the engines, subsided now into silence, were a dead thing, and had a +ghost which haunted me; for I heard them still, and yet not them, but +the silence of their ghost. + +Sometimes I would startle from sleep, horrified to the heart at some +sound of exploding iceberg, or bumping floe, noising far through that +white mystery of quietude, where the floes and bergs were as floating +tombs, and the world a liquid cemetery. Never could I describe the +strange Doom's-day shock with which such a sound would recall me from +far depths of chaos to recollection of myself: for often-times, both +waking and in nightmare, I did not know on which planet I was, nor in +which Age, but felt myself adrift in the great gulf of time and space +and circumstance, without bottom for my consciousness to stand upon; and +the world was all mirage and a new show to me; and the boundaries of +dream and waking lost. + +Well, the weather was most fair all the time, and the sea like a pond. +During the morning of the fifth day, the 11th July, I entered, and went +moving down, an extraordinary long avenue of snow-bergs and floes, most +regularly placed, half a mile across and miles long, like a Titanic +double-procession of statues, or the Ming Tombs, but rising and sinking +on the cadenced swell; many towering high, throwing placid shadows on +the aisle between; some being of a lucid emerald tint; and three or four +pouring down cascades that gave a far and chaunting sound. The sea +between was of a strange thick bluishness, almost like raw egg-white; +while, as always here, some snow-clouds, white and woolly, floated in +the pale sky. Down this avenue, which produced a mysterious impression +of Cyclopean cathedrals and odd sequesteredness, I had not passed a +mile, when I sighted a black object at the end. + +I rushed to the shrouds, and very soon made out a whaler. + +Again the same panting agitations, mad rage to be at her, at once +possessed me; I flew to the indicator, turned the lever to full, then +back to give the wheel a spin, then up the main-mast ratlins, waving a +long foot-bandage of vadmel tweed picked up at random, and by the time I +was within five hundred yards of her, had worked myself to such a pitch, +that I was again shouting that futile madness: 'Hullo! Hi! Bravo! _I +have been to the Pole!_' + +And those twelve dead that I had in the chart-room there must have heard +me, and the men on the whaler must have heard me, and smiled their +smile. + +For, as to that whaler, I should have known better at once, if I had not +been crazy, since she _looked_ like a ship of death, her boom slamming +to port and starboard on the gentle heave of the sea, and her fore-sail +reefed that serene morning. Only when I was quite near her, and hurrying +down to stop the engines, did the real truth, with perfect suddenness, +drench my heated brain; and I almost ran into her, I was so stunned. + +However, I stopped the _Boreal_ in time, and later on lowered the kayak, +and boarded the other. + +This ship had evidently been stricken silent in the midst of a perfect +drama of activity, for I saw not one of her crew of sixty-two who was +not busy, except one boy. I found her a good-sized thing of 500 odd +tons, ship-rigged, with auxiliary engine of seventy horse-power, and +pretty heavily armour-plated round the bows. There was no part of her +which I did not over-haul, and I could see that they had had a great +time with whales, for a mighty carcass, attached to the outside of the +ship by the powerful cant-purchase tackle, had been in process of +flensing and cutting-in, and on the deck two great blankets of blubber, +looking each a ton-weight, surrounded by twenty-seven men in many +attitudes, some terrifying to see, some disgusting, several grotesque, +all so unhuman, the whale dead, and the men dead, too, and death was +there, and the rank-flourishing germs of Inanity, and a mesmerism, and a +silence, whose dominion was established, and its reign was growing old. +Four of them, who had been removing the gums from a mass of stratified +whalebone at the mizzen-mast foot, were quite imbedded in whale-flesh; +also, in a barrel lashed to the top of the main top-gallant masthead was +visible the head of a man with a long pointed beard, looking steadily +out over the sea to the S.W., which made me notice that five only of the +probable eight or nine boats were on board; and after visiting the +'tween-decks, where I saw considerable quantities of stowed whalebone +plates, and about fifty or sixty iron oil-tanks, and cut-up blubber; and +after visiting cabin, engine-room, fo'cas'le, where I saw a lonely boy +of fourteen with his hand grasping a bottle of rum under all the +turned-up clothes in a chest, he, at the moment of death, being +evidently intent upon hiding it; and after two hours' search of the +ship, I got back to my own, and half an hour later came upon all the +three missing whale-boats about a mile apart, and steered zig-zag near +to each. They contained five men each and a steerer, and one had the +harpoon-gun fired, with the loose line coiled round and round the head +and upper part of the stroke line-manager; and in the others hundreds of +fathoms of coiled rope, with toggle-irons, whale-lances, hand-harpoons, +and dropped heads, and grins, and lazy _abandon_, and eyes that stared, +and eyes that dozed, and eyes that winked. + +After this I began to sight ships not infrequently, and used regularly +to have the three lights burning all night. On the 12th July I met one, +on the 15th two, on the 16th one, on the 17th three, on the 18th +two--all Greenlanders, I think: but, of the nine, I boarded only three, +the glass quite clearly showing me, when yet far off, that on the others +was no life; and on the three which I boarded were dead men; so that +that suspicion which I had, and that fear, grew very heavy upon me. + +I went on southward, day after day southward, sentinel there at my +wheel; clear sunshine by day, when the calm pale sea sometimes seemed +mixed with regions of milk, and at night the immense desolation of a +world lit by a sun that was long dead, and by a light that was gloom. It +was like Night blanched in death then; and wan as the very kingdom of +death and Hades I have seen it, most terrifying, that neuter state and +limbo of nothingness, when unreal sea and spectral sky, all boundaries +lost, mingled in a vast shadowy void of ghastly phantasmagoria, pale to +utter huelessness, at whose centre I, as if annihilated, seemed to swoon +in immensity of space. Into this disembodied world would come anon +waftures of that peachy scent which I knew: and their frequency rapidly +grew. But still the _Boreal_ moved, traversing, as it were, bottomless +Eternity: and I reached latitude 72°, not far now from Northern Europe. + +And now, as to that blossomy peach-scent--even while some floes were yet +around me--I was just like some fantastic mariner, who, having set out +to search for Eden and the Blessed Islands, finds them, and balmy gales +from their gardens come out, while he is yet afar, to meet him with +their perfumes of almond and champac, cornel and jasmin and lotus. For I +had now reached a zone where the peach-aroma was constant; all the world +seemed embalmed in its spicy fragrance; and I could easily imagine +myself voyaging beyond the world toward some clime of perpetual and +enchanting Spring. + + * * * * * + +Well, I saw at last what whalers used to call 'the blink of the ice'; +that is to say, its bright apparition or reflection in the sky when it +is left behind, or not yet come-to. By this time I was in a region where +a good many craft of various sorts were to be seen; I was continually +meeting them; and not one did I omit to investigate, while many I +boarded in the kayak or the larch-wood pram. Just below latitude 70° I +came upon a good large fleet of what I supposed to be Lafoden cod and +herring fishers, which must have drifted somewhat on a northward +current. They had had a great season, for the boats were well laden with +curing fish. I went from one to the other on a zig-zag course, they +being widely scattered, some mere dots to the glass on the horizon. The +evening was still and clear with that astral Arctic clearness, the sun +just beginning his low-couched nightly drowse. These sturdy-looking +brown boats stood rocking gently there with slow-creaking noises, as of +things whining in slumber, without the least damage, awaiting the +appalling storms of the winter months on that tenebrous sea, when a +dark doom, and a deep grave, would not fail them. The fishers were braw +carles, wearing, many of them, fringes of beard well back from the +chin-point, with hanging woollen caps. In every case I found below-decks +a number of cruses of corn-brandy, marked _aquavit_, two of which I took +into the pram. In one of the smacks an elderly fisher was kneeling in a +forward sprawling pose, clasping the lug-mast with his arms, the two +knees wide apart, head thrown back, and the yellow eye-balls with their +islands of grey iris staring straight up the mast-pole. At another of +them, instead of boarding in the pram, I shut off the _Boreal's_ liquid +air at such a point that, by delicate steering, she slackened down to a +stoppage just a-beam of the smack, upon whose deck I was thus able to +jump down. After looking around I descended the three steps aft into the +dark and garrety below-decks, and with stooping back went calling in an +awful whisper: '_Anyone? Anyone?_' Nothing answered me: and when I went +up again, the _Boreal_ had drifted three yards beyond my reach. There +being a dead calm, I had to plunge into the water, and in that +half-minute there a sudden cold throng of unaccountable terrors beset +me, and I can feel again now that abysmal desolation of loneliness, and +sense of a hostile and malign universe bent upon eating me up: for the +ocean seemed to me nothing but a great ghost. + +Two mornings later I came upon another school, rather larger boats +these, which I found to be Brittany cod-fishers. Most of these, too, I +boarded. In every below-decks was a wooden or earthenware image of the +Virgin, painted in gaudy faded colours; and in one case I found a boy +who had been kneeling before the statue, but was toppled sideways now, +his knees still bent, and the cross of Christ in his hand. These +stalwart blue woollen blouses and tarpaulin sou'-westers lay in every +pose of death, every detail of feature and expression still perfectly +preserved. The sloops were all the same, all, all: with sing-song creaks +they rocked a little, nonchalantly: each, as it were, with a certain +sub-consciousness of its own personality, and callous unconsciousness of +all the others round it: yet each a copy of the others: the same hooks +and lines, disembowelling-knives, barrels of salt and pickle, piles and +casks of opened cod, kegs of biscuit, and low-creaking rockings, and a +bilgy smell, and dead men. The next day, about eighty miles south of the +latitude of Mount Hekla, I sighted a big ship, which turned out to be +the French cruiser _Lazare Tréport_. I boarded and overhauled her +during three hours, her upper, main, and armoured deck, deck by deck, to +her lowest black depths, even childishly spying up the tubes of her two +big, rusted turret-guns. Three men in the engine-room had been much +mangled, after death, I presume, by a burst boiler; floating about 800 +yards to the north-east lay a long-boat of hers, low in the water, +crammed with marines, one oar still there, jammed between the row-lock +and the rower's forced-back chin; on the ship's starboard deck, in the +long stretch of space between the two masts, the blue-jackets had +evidently been piped up, for they lay there in a sort of serried +disorder, to the number of two hundred and seventy-five. Nothing could +be of suggestion more tragic than the wasted and helpless power of this +poor wandering vessel, around whose stolid mass myriads of wavelets, +busy as aspen-leaves, bickered with a continual weltering splash that +was quite loud to hear. I sat a good time that afternoon in one of her +steely port main-deck casemates on a gun-carriage, my head sunken on my +breast, furtively eyeing the bluish turned-up feet, all shrunk, +exsanguined, of a sailor who lay on his back before me; his soles were +all that I could see, the rest of him lying head-downwards beyond the +steel door-sill. + +Drenched in seas of lugubrious reverie I sat, till, with a shuddering +start, I awoke, paddled back to the _Boreal_, and, till sleep conquered +me, went on my way. At ten the next morning, coming on deck, I spied to +the west a group of craft, and turned my course upon them. They turned +out to be eight Shetland sixerns, which must have drifted north-eastward +hither. I examined them well, but they were as the long list of the +others: for all the men, and all the boys, and all the dogs on them were +dead. + + * * * * * + +I could have come to land a long time before I did: but I would not: I +was so afraid. For I was used to the silence of the ice: and I was used +to the silence of the sea: but, God knows it, I was afraid of the +silence of the land. + + * * * * * + +Once, on the 15th July, I had seen a whale, or thought I did, spouting +very remotely afar on the S.E. horizon; and on the 19th I distinctly saw +a shoal of porpoises vaulting the sea-surface, in their swift-successive +manner, northward: and seeing them, I had said pitifully to myself: +'Well, I am not quite alone in the world, then, my good God--not quite +alone.' + +Moreover, some days later, the _Boreal_ had found herself in a bank of +cod making away northward, millions of fish, for I saw them, and one +afternoon caught three, hand-running, with the hook. + +So the sea, at least, had its tribes to be my mates. + +But if I should find the land as still as the sea, without even the +spouting whale, or school of tumbling sea-hogs--_if Paris were dumber +than the eternal ice_--what then, I asked myself, should I do? + + * * * * * + +I could have made short work, and landed at Shetland, for I found myself +as far westward as longitude 11° 23' W.: but I would not: I was so +afraid. The shrinking within me to face that vague suspicion which I +had, turned me first to a foreign land. + +I made for Norway, and on the first night of this definite intention, at +about nine o'clock, the weather being gusty, the sky lowering, the air +sombrous, and the sea hard-looking, dark, and ridged, I was steaming +along at a good rate, holding the wheel, my poor port and starboard +lights still burning there, when, without the least notice, I received +the roughest physical shock of my life, being shot bodily right over +the wheel, thence, as from a cannon, twenty feet to the cabin-door, +through it head-foremost down the companion-way, and still beyond some +six yards along the passage. I had crashed into some dark and dead ship, +probably of large size, though I never saw her, nor any sign of her; and +all that night, and the next day till four in the afternoon, the +_Boreal_ went driving alone over the sea, whither she would: for I lay +unconscious. When I woke, I found that I had received really very small +injuries, considering: but I sat there on the floor a long time in a +sulky, morose, disgusted, and bitter mood; and when I rose, pettishly +stopped the ship's engines, seeing my twelve dead all huddled and +disfigured. Now I was afraid to steam by night, and even in the daytime +I would not go on for three days: for I was childishly angry with I know +not what, and inclined to quarrel with Those whom I could not see. + +However, on the fourth day, a rough swell which knocked the ship about, +and made me very uncomfortable, coaxed me into moving; and I did so with +bows turned eastward and southward. + +I sighted the Norway coast four days later, in latitude 63° 19', at noon +of the 11th August, and pricked off my course to follow it; but it was +with a slow and dawdling reluctance that I went, at much less than +half-speed. In some eight hours, as I knew from the chart, I ought to +sight the lighthouse light on Smoelen Island; and when quiet night came, +the black water being branded with trails of still moonlight, I passed +quite close to it, between ten and twelve, almost under the shadow of +the mighty hills: but, oh my God, no light was there. And all the way +down I marked the rugged sea-board slumber darkling, afar or near, with +never, alas! one friendly light. + + * * * * * + +Well, on the 15th August I had another of those maniac raptures, whose +passing away would have left an elephant racked and prostrate. During +four days I had seen not one sign of present life on the Norway coast, +only hills, hills, dead and dark, and floating craft, all dead and dark; +and my eyes now, I found, had acquired a crazy fixity of stare into the +very bottom of the vacant abyss of nothingness, while I remained +unconscious of being, save of one point, rainbow-blue, far down in the +infinite, which passed slowly from left to right before my consciousness +a little way, then vanished, came back, and passed slowly again, from +left to right continually; till some prick, or voice, in my brain would +startle me into the consciousness that I was staring, whispering the +profound confidential warning: _You must not stare so, or it is over +with you!_' Well, lost in a blank trance of this sort, I was leaning +over the wheel during the afternoon of the 15th, when it was as if some +instinct or premonition in my soul leapt up, and said aloud: 'If you +look just yonder, _you will see...!_' I started, and in one instant had +surged up from all that depth of reverie to reality: I glanced to the +right: and there, at last, my God, I saw something human which moved, +rapidly moved: at last!--and it came to me. + +That sense of recovery, of waking, of new solidity, of the comfortable +usual, a million-fold too intense for words--how sweetly consoling it +was! Again now, as I write, I can fancy and feel it--the rocky solidity, +the adamant ordinary, on which to base the feet, and live. From the day +when I stood at the Pole, and saw there the dizzy thing that made me +swoon, there had come into my way not one sign or trace that other +beings like myself were alive on the earth with me: till now, suddenly, +I had the sweet indubitable proof: for on the south-western sea, not +four knots away, I saw a large, swift ship: and her bows, which were +sharp as a hatchet, were steadily chipping through the smooth sea at a +pretty high pace, throwing out profuse ribbony foams that went +wide-vawering, with outward undulations, far behind her length, as she +ran the sea in haste, straight northward. + +At the moment, I was steering about S.E. by S., fifteen miles out from a +shadowy-blue series of Norway mountains; and just giving the wheel one +frantic spin to starboard to bring me down upon her, I flew to the +bridge, leant my back on the main-mast, which passed through it, put a +foot on the white iron rail before me, and there at once felt all the +mocking devils of distracted revelry possess me, as I caught the cap +from my long hairs, and commenced to wave and wave and wave, red-faced +maniac that I was: for at the second nearer glance, I saw that she was +flying an ensign at the main, and a long pennant at the main-top, and I +did not know what she was flying those flags there for: and I was +embittered and driven mad. + +With distinct minuteness did she print herself upon my consciousness in +that five minutes' interval: she was painted a dull and cholera yellow, +like many Russian ships, and there was a faded pink space at her bows +under the line where the yellow ceased: the ensign at her main I made +out to be the blue-and-white saltire, and she was clearly a Russian +passenger-liner, two-masted, two-funnelled, though from her funnels came +no trace of smoke, and the position of her steam-cones was anywhere. All +about her course the sea was spotted with wobbling splendours of the low +sun, large coarse blots of glory near the eye, but lessening to a +smaller pattern in the distance, and at the horizon refined to a +homogeneous band of livid silver. + +The double speed of the _Boreal_ and the other, hastening opposite ways, +must have been thirty-eight or forty knots, and the meeting was +accomplished in certainly less than five minutes: yet into that time I +crowded years of life. I was shouting passionately at her, my eyes +starting from my head, my face all inflamed with rage the most prone, +loud and urgent. For she did not stop, nor signal, nor make sign of +seeing me, but came furrowing down upon me like Juggernaut, with +steadfast run. I lost reason, thought, memory, purpose, sense of +relation, in that access of delirium which transported me, and can only +remember now that in the midst of my shouting, a word, uttered by the +fiends who used my throat to express their frenzy, set me laughing high +and madly: for I was crying: 'Hi! Bravo! Why don't you stop? _Madmen! I +have been to the Pole!'_ + +That instant an odour arose, and came, and struck upon my brain, most +detestable, most execrable; and while one might count ten, I was aware +of her near-sounding engines, and that cursed charnel went tearing past +me on her maenad way, not fifteen yards from my eyes and nostrils. She +was a thing, my God, from which the vulture and the jackal, prowling for +offal, would fly with shrieks of loathing. I had a glimpse of decks +piled thick with her festered dead. + +In big black letters on the round retreating yellow stern my eye-corner +caught the word _Yaroslav_, as I bent over the rail to retch and cough +and vomit at her. She was a horrid thing. + +This ship had certainly been pretty far south in tropical or +sub-tropical latitudes with her great crowd of dead: for all the bodies +which I had seen till then, so far from smelling ill, seemed to give out +a certain perfume of the peach. She was evidently one of those many +ships of late years which have substituted liquid air for steam, yet +retained their old steam-funnels, &c., in case of emergency: for air, I +believe, was still looked at askance by several builders, on account of +the terrible accidents which it sometimes caused. The _Boreal_ herself +is a similar instance of both motors. This vessel, the _Yaroslav_, must +have been left with working engines when her crew were overtaken by +death, and, her air-tanks being still unexhausted, must have been +ranging the ocean with impunity ever since, during I knew not how many +months, or, it might be, years. + +Well, I coasted Norway for nearly a hundred and sixty miles without once +going nearer land than two or three miles: for something held me back. +But passing the fjord-mouth where I knew that Aadheim was, I suddenly +turned the helm to port, almost before I knew that I was doing it, and +made for land. + +In half an hour I was moving up an opening in the land with mountains on +either hand, streaky crags at their summit, umbrageous boscage below; +and the whole softened, as it were, by veils woven of the rainbow. + +This arm of water lies curved about like a thread which one drops, only +the curves are much more pointed, so that every few minutes the scene +was changed, though the vessel just crawled her way up, and I could see +behind me nothing of what was passed, or only a land-locked gleam like a +lake. + +I never saw water so polished and glassy, like clarid polished marble, +reflecting everything quite clean-cut in its lucid abysm, over which +hardly the faintest zephyr breathed that still sun-down; it wimpled +about the bluff _Boreal_, which seemed to move as if careful not to +bruise it, in rich wrinkles and creases, like glycerine, or +dewy-trickling lotus-oil; yet it was only the sea: and the spectacle +yonder was only crags, and autumn-foliage and mountain-slope: yet all +seemed caught-up and chaste, rapt in a trance of rose and purple, and +made of the stuff of dreams and bubbles, of pollen-of-flowers, and rinds +of the peach. + +I saw it not only with delight, but with complete astonishment: having +forgotten, as was too natural in all that long barrenness of ice and +sea, that anything could be so ethereally fair: yet homely, too, human, +familiar, and consoling. The air here was richly spiced with that peachy +scent, and there was a Sabbath and a nepenthe and a charm in that place +at that hour, as it were of those gardens of Hesperus, and fields of +asphodel, reserved for the spirits of the just. + +Alas! but I had the glass at my side, and for me nepenthe was mixed with +a despair immense as the vault of heaven, my good God: for anon I would +take it up to spy some perched hut of the peasant, or burg of the +'bonder,' on the peaks: and I saw no one there; and to the left, at the +third marked bend of the fjord, where there is one of those watch-towers +that these people used for watching in-coming fish, I spied, lying on a +craggy slope just before the tower, a body which looked as if it must +surely tumble head-long, but did not. And when I saw that, I felt +definitely, for the first time, that shoreless despair which I alone of +men have felt, high beyond the stars, and deep as hell; and I fell to +staring again that blank stare of Nirvana and the lunacy of Nothingness, +wherein Time merges in Eternity, and all being, like one drop of water, +flies scattered to fill the bottomless void of space, and is lost. + +The _Boreal's_ bow walking over a little empty fishing-boat roused me, +and a minute later, just before I came to a new promontory and bend, I +saw two people. The shore there is some three feet above the water, and +edged with boulders of rock, about which grows a fringe of shrubs and +small trees: behind this fringe is a path, curving upward through a +sombre wooded little gorge; and on the path, near the water, I saw a +driver of one of those Norwegian sulkies that were called karjolers: he, +on the high front seat, was dead, lying sideways and backwards, with low +head resting on the wheel; and on a trunk strapped to a frame on the +axle behind was a boy, his head, too, resting sideways on the wheel, +near the other's; and the little pony was dead, pitched forward on its +head and fore-knees, tilting the shafts downward; and some distance from +them on the water floated an empty skiff. + + * * * * * + +When I turned the next fore-land, I all at once began to see a number of +craft, which increased as I advanced, most of them small boats, with +some schooners, sloops, and larger craft, the majority a-ground: and +suddenly now I was conscious that, mingling with that delicious odour of +spring-blossoms--profoundly modifying, yet not destroying it--was +another odour, wafted to me on the wings of the very faint land-breeze: +and 'Man,' I said, 'is decomposing': for I knew it well: it was the +odour of human corruption. + + * * * * * + +The fjord opened finally in a somewhat wider basin, shut-in by quite +steep, high-towering mountains, which reflected themselves in the water +to their last cloudy crag: and, at the end of this I saw ships, a quay, +and a modest, homely old town. + +Not a sound, not one: only the languidly-working engines of the +_Boreal_. Here, it was clear, the Angel of Silence had passed, and his +scythe mown. + +I ran and stopped the engines, and, without anchoring, got down into an +empty boat that lay at the ship's side when she stopped; and I paddled +twenty yards toward the little quay. There was a brigantine with all her +courses set, three jibs, stay-sails, square-sails, main and fore-sails, +and gaff-top-sail, looking hanging and listless in that calm place, and +wedded to a still copy of herself, mast-downward, in the water; there +were three lumber-schooners, a forty-ton steam-boat, a tiny barque, five +Norway herring-fishers, and ten or twelve shallops: and the +sailing-craft had all fore-and-aft sails set, and about each, as I +passed among them, brooded an odour that was both sweet and abhorrent, +an odour more suggestive of the very genius of mortality--the inner mind +and meaning of Azrael--than aught that I could have conceived: for all, +as I soon saw, were crowded with dead. + +Well, I went up the old mossed steps, in that strange dazed state in +which one notices frivolous things: I remember, for instance, feeling +the lightness of my new clothes: for the weather was quite mild, and the +day before I had changed to Summer things, having on now only a common +undyed woollen shirt, the sleeves rolled up, and cord trousers, with a +belt, and a cloth cap over my long hair, and an old pair of yellow +shoes, without laces, and without socks. And I stood on the unhewn +stones of the edge of the quay, and looked abroad over a largish piece +of unpaved ground, which lay between the first house-row and the quay. + +What I saw was not only most woeful, but wildly startling: woeful, +because a great crowd of people had assembled, and lay dead, there; and +wildly startling, because something in their _tout ensemble_ told me in +one minute why they were there in such number. + +They were there in the hope, and with the thought, to fly westward by +boat. + +And the something which told me this was a certain _foreign_ air about +that field of the dead as the eye rested on it, something un-northern, +southern, and Oriental. + +Two yards from my feet, as I stepped to the top, lay a group of three: +one a Norway peasant-girl in skirt of olive-green, scarlet stomacher, +embroidered bodice, Scotch bonnet trimmed with silver lace, and big +silver shoe-buckles; the second was an old Norway man in knee-breeches, +and eighteenth-century small-clothes, and red worsted cap; and the third +was, I decided, an old Jew of the Polish Pale, in gaberdine and +skull-cap, with ear-locks. + +I went nearer to where they lay thick as reaped stubble between the +quay and a little stone fountain in the middle of the space, and I saw +among those northern dead two dark-skinned women in costly dress, either +Spanish or Italian, and the yellower mortality of a Mongolian, probably +a Magyar, and a big negro in zouave dress, and some twenty-five obvious +French, and two Morocco fezes, and the green turban of a shereef, and +the white of an Ulema. + +And I asked myself this question: 'How came these foreign stragglers +here in this obscure northern town?' + +And my wild heart answered: 'There has been an impassioned stampede, +northward and westward, of all the tribes of Man. And this that I, Adam +Jeffson, here see is but the far-tossed spray of that monstrous, +infuriate flood.' + + * * * * * + +Well, I passed up a street before me, careful, careful where I trod. It +was not utterly silent, nor was the quay-square, but haunted by a pretty +dense cloud of mosquitoes, and dreamy twinges of music, like the drawing +of the violin-bow in elf-land. The street was narrow, pavered, steep, +and dark; and the sensations with which I, poor bent man, passed +through that dead town, only Atlas, fabled to bear the burden of this +Earth, could divine. + + * * * * * + +I thought to myself: If now a wave from the Deep has washed over this +planetary ship of earth, and I, who alone happened to be in the extreme +bows, am the sole survivor of that crew?... What then, my God, shall I +do? + + * * * * * + +I felt, I felt, that in this townlet, save the water-gnats of Norway, +was no living thing; that the hum and the savour of Eternity filled, and +wrapped, and embalmed it. + +The houses are mostly of wood, some of them fairly large, with a +_porte-cochère_ leading into a semi-circular yard, around which the +building stands, very steep-roofed, and shingled, in view of the heavy +snow-masses of winter. Glancing into one open casement near the ground, +I saw an aged woman, stout and capped, lie on her face before a very +large porcelain stove; but I paced on without stoppage, traversed +several streets, and came out, as it became dark, upon a piece of +grass-land leading downward to a mountain-gorge. It was some distance +along this gorge that I found myself sitting the next morning: and how, +and in what trance, I passed that whole blank night is obliterated from +my consciousness. When I looked about with the return of light I saw +majestic fir-grown mountains on either hand, almost meeting overhead at +some points, deeply shading the mossy gorge. I rose, and careless of +direction, went still onward, and walked and walked for hours, +unconscious of hunger; there was a profusion of wild +mountain-strawberries, very tiny, which must grow almost into winter, a +few of which I ate; there were blue gentianellas, and +lilies-of-the-valley, and luxuriance of verdure, and a noise of waters. +Occasionally, I saw little cataracts on high, fluttering like white wild +rags, for they broke in the mid-fall, and were caught away, and +scattered; patches also of reaped hay and barley, hung up, in a singular +way, on stakes six feet high, I suppose to dry; there were perched huts, +and a seemingly inaccessible small castle or burg, but none of these did +I enter: and five bodies only I saw in the gorge, a woman with a babe, +and a man with two small oxen. + +About three in the afternoon I was startled to find myself there, and +turned back. It was dark when I again passed through those gloomy +streets of Aadheim, making for the quay, and now I felt both my hunger +and a dropping weariness. I had no thought of entering any house, but +as I passed by one open _porte-cochère_, something, I know not what, +made me turn sharply in, for my mind had become as fluff on the winds, +not working of its own action, but the sport of impulses that seemed +external. I went across the yard, and ascended a wooden spiral stair by +a twilight which just enabled me to pick my way among five or six vague +forms fallen there. In that confined place fantastic qualms beset me; I +mounted to the first landing, and tried the door, but it was locked; I +mounted to the second: the door was open, and with a chill reluctance I +took a step inward where all was pitch darkness, the window-stores being +drawn. I hesitated: it was very dark. I tried to utter that word of +mine, but it came in a whisper inaudible to my ears: I tried again, and +this time heard myself say: '_anyone_?' At the same time I had made +another step forward, and trodden upon a soft abdomen; and at that +contact terrors the most cold and ghastly thrilled me through and +through, for it was as though I saw in that darkness the sudden eyeballs +of Hell and frenzy glare upon me, and with a low gurgle of affright I +was gone, helter-skelter down the stairs, treading upon flesh, across +the yard, and down the street, with pelting feet, and open arms, and +sobbing bosom, for I thought that all Aadheim was after me; nor was my +horrid haste appeased till I was on board the _Boreal_, and moving down +the fjord. + +Out to sea, then, I went again; and within the next few days I visited +Bergen, and put in at Stavanger. And I saw that Bergen and Stavanger +were dead. + +It was then, on the 19th August, that I turned my bow toward my native +land. + + * * * * * + +From Stavanger I steered a straight course for the Humber. + +I had no sooner left behind me the Norway coast than I began to meet the +ships, the ships--ship after ship; and by the time I entered the zone +of the ordinary alternation of sunny day and sunless night, I was moving +through the midst of an incredible number of craft, a mighty and +wide-spread fleet. + +Over all that great expanse of the North Sea, where, in its most +populous days of trade, the sailor might perhaps sight a sail or two, I +had now at every moment at least ten or twelve within scope of the +glass, oftentimes as many as forty, forty-five. + +And very still they lay on a still sea, itself a dead thing, livid as +the lips of death; and there was an intensity in the calm that was +appalling: for the ocean seemed weighted, and the air drugged. + +Extremely slow was my advance, for at first I would not leave any ship, +however remotely small, without approaching sufficiently to investigate +her, at least with the spy-glass: and a strange multitudinous mixture of +species they were, trawlers in hosts, war-ships of every nation, used, +it seemed, as passenger-boats, smacks, feluccas, liners, steam-barges, +great four-masters with sails, Channel boats, luggers, a Venetian +_burchiello_, colliers, yachts, _remorqueurs_, training ships, dredgers, +two _dahabeeahs_ with curving gaffs, Marseilles fishers, a Maltese +_speronare_, American off-shore sail, Mississippi steam-boats, Sorrento +lug-schooners, Rhine punts, yawls, old frigates and three-deckers, +called to novel use, Stromboli caiques, Yarmouth tubs, xebecs, Rotterdam +flat-bottoms, floats, mere gunwaled rafts--anything from anywhere that +could bear a human freight on water had come, and was here: and all, I +knew, had been making westward, or northward, or both; and all, I knew, +were crowded; and all were tombs, listlessly wandering, my God, on the +wandering sea with their dead. + +And so fair was the world about them, too: the brightest suavest autumn +weather; all the still air aromatic with that vernal perfume of peach: +yet not so utterly still, but if I passed close to the lee of any +floating thing, the spicy stirrings of morning or evening wafted me +faint puffs of the odour of mortality over-ripe for the grave. + +So abominable and accursed did this become to me, such a plague and a +hissing, vague as was the offence, that I began to shun rather than seek +the ships, and also I now dropped my twelve, whom I had kept to be my +companions all the way from the Far North, one by one, into the sea: for +now I had definitely passed into a zone of settled warmth. + +I was convinced, however, that the poison, whatever it might be, had +some embalming, or antiseptic, effect upon the bodies: at Aadheim, +Bergen and Stavanger, for instance, where the temperature permitted me +to go without a jacket, only the merest hints and whiffs of the +processes of dissolution had troubled me. + + * * * * * + +Very benign, I say, and pleasant to see, was sky and sea during all that +voyage: but it was at sun-set that my sense of the wondrously beautiful +was roused and excited, in spite of that great burden which I carried. +Certainly, I never saw sun-sets resembling those, nor could have +conceived of aught so flamboyant, extravagant, and bewitched: for the +whole heaven seemed turned into an arena for warring Hierarchies, +warring for the universe, or it was like the wild countenance of God +defeated, and flying marred and bloody from His enemies. But many +evenings I watched with unintelligent awe, believing it but a portent of +the un-sheathed sword of the Almighty; till, one morning, a thought +pricked me like a sword, for I suddenly remembered the great sun-sets of +the later nineteenth century, witnessed in Europe, America, and, I +believe, over the world, after the eruption of the volcano of Krakatoa. + +And whereas I had before said to myself: 'If now a wave from the Deep +has washed over this planetary ship of earth...,' I said now: 'A +wave--but not from the Deep: a wave rather which she had reserved, and +has spouted, from her own un-motherly entrails...' + + * * * * * + +I had some knowledge of Morse telegraphy, and of the manipulation of +tape-machines, telegraphic typing-machines, and the ordinary wireless +transmitter and coherer, as of most little things of that sort which +came within the outskirts of the interest of a man of science; I had +collaborated with Professor Stanistreet in the production of a text-book +called 'Applications of Science to the Arts,' which had brought us some +notoriety; and, on the whole, the _minutiae_ of modern things were +still pretty fresh in my memory. I could therefore have wired from +Bergen or Stavanger, supposing the batteries not run down, to somewhere: +but I would not: I was so afraid; afraid lest for ever from nowhere +should come one answering click, or flash, or stirring.... + + * * * * * + +I could have made short work, and landed at Hull: but I would not: I was +so afraid. For I was used to the silence of the ice: and I was used to +the silence of the sea: but I was afraid of the silence of England. + + * * * * * + +I came in sight of the coast on the morning of the 26th August, +somewhere about Hornsea, but did not see any town, for I put the helm to +port, and went on further south, no longer bothering with the +instruments, but coasting at hap-hazard, now in sight of land, and now +in the centre of a circle of sea; not admitting to myself the motive of +this loitering slowness, nor thinking at all, but ignoring the +deep-buried fear of the to-morrow which I shirked, and instinctively +hiding myself in to-day. I passed the Wash, I passed Yarmouth, +Felixstowe. By now the things that floated motionless on the sea were +beyond numbering, for I could hardly lower my eyes ten minutes and lift +them, without seeing yet another there: so that soon after dusk I, too, +had to lie still among them all, till morning: for they lay dark, and to +move at any pace would have been to drown the already dead. + +Well, I came to the Thames-mouth, and lay pretty well in among the Flats +and Pan Sands towards eight one evening, not seven miles from Sheppey +and the North Kent coast: and I did not see any Nore Light, nor Girdler +Light: and all along the coast I had seen no light: but as to that I +said not one word to myself, not admitting it, nor letting my heart know +what my brain thought, nor my brain know what my heart surmised; but +with a daft and mock-mistrustful under-look I would regard the darkling +land, holding it a sentient thing that would be playing a prank upon a +poor man like me. + +And the next morning, when I moved again, my furtive eye-corners were +very well aware of the Prince's Channel light-ship, and also the Tongue +ship, for there they were: but I would not look at them at all, nor go +near them: for I did not wish to have anything to do with whatever might +have happened beyond my own ken, and it was better to look straight +before, seeing nothing, and concerning one's-self with one's-self. + +The next evening, after having gone out to sea again, I was in a little +to the E. by S. of the North Foreland: and I saw no light there, nor any +Sandhead light; but over the sea vast signs of wreckage, and the coasts +were strewn with old wrecked fleets. I turned about S.E., very slowly +moving--for anywhere hereabouts hundreds upon hundreds of craft lay dead +within a ten-mile circle of sea--and by two in the fore-day had wandered +up well in sight of the French cliffs: for I had said: 'I will go and +see the light-beam of the great revolving-drum on Calais pier that +nightly beams half-way over-sea to England.' And the moon shone clear in +the southern heaven that morning, like a great old dying queen whose +Court swarms distantly from around her, diffident, pale, and tremulous, +the paler the nearer; and I could see the mountain-shadows on her spotty +full-face, and her misty aureole, and her lights on the sea, as it were +kisses stolen in the kingdom of sleep; and all among the quiet ships +mysterious white trails and powderings of light, like palace-corridors +in some fairy-land forlorn, full of breathless wan whispers, scandals, +and runnings-to-and-fro, with leers, and agitated last embraces, and +flight of the princess, and death-bed of the king; and on the N.E. +horizon a bank of brown cloud that seemed to have no relation with the +world; and yonder, not far, the white coast-cliffs, not so low as at +Calais near, but arranged in masses separated by vales of sward, each +with its wreck: but no light of any revolving-drum I saw. + + * * * * * + +I could not sleep that night: for all the operations of my mind and body +seemed in abeyance. Mechanically I turned the ship westward again; and +when the sun came up, there, hardly two miles from me, were the cliffs +of Dover; and on the crenulated summit of the Castle I spied the Union +Jack hang motionless. + +I heard eight, nine o'clock strike in the cabin, and I was still at sea. +But some mad, audacious whisper was at my brain: and at 10.30, the 2nd +September, immediately opposite the Cross Wall Custom House, the +_Boreal's_ anchor-chain, after a voyage of three years, two months, and +fourteen days, ran thundering, thundering, through the starboard +hawse-hole. + +Ah heaven! but I must have been stark mad to let the anchor go! for the +effect upon me of that shocking obstreperous hubbub, breaking in upon +all that cemetery repose that blessed morning, and lasting it seemed a +year, was most appalling; and at the sudden racket I stood excruciated, +with shivering knees and flinching heart, God knows: for not less +terrifically uproarious than the clatter of the last Trump it raged and +raged, and I thought that all the billion dead could not fail to start, +and rise, at alarum so excessive, and question me with their eyes.... + + * * * * * + +On the top of the Cross Wall near I saw a grey crab fearlessly crawl; at +the end where the street begins, I saw a single gas-light palely burn +that broad day, and at its foot a black man lay on his face, clad only +in a shirt and one boot; the harbour was almost packed with every sort +of craft, and on a Calais-Dover boat, eight yards from my stern, which +must have left Calais crowded to suffocation, I saw the rotted dead lie +heaped, she being unmoored, and continually grinding against an anchored +green brig. + +And when I saw that, I dropped down upon my knees at the capstan, and my +poor heart sobbed out the frail cry: 'Well, Lord God, Thou hast +destroyed the work of Thy hand...' + + * * * * * + +After a time I got up, went below in a state of somnambulism, took a +packet of pemmican cakes, leapt to land, and went following the railway +that runs from the Admiralty Pier. In an enclosed passage ten yards +long, with railway masonry on one side, I saw five dead lie, and could +not believe that I was in England, for all were dark-skinned people, +three gaudily dressed, and two in flowing white robes. It was the same +when I turned into a long street, leading northward, for here were a +hundred, or more, and never saw I, except in Constantinople, where I +once lived eighteen months, so variegated a mixture of races, black, +brunette, brown, yellow, white, in all the shades, some emaciated like +people dead from hunger, and, overlooking them all, one English boy with +a clean Eton collar sitting on a bicycle, supported by a lamp-post which +his arms clasped, he proving clearly the extraordinary suddenness of the +death which had overtaken them all. + +I did not know whither, nor why, I went, nor had I the least idea +whether all this was visually seen by me in the world which I had known, +or in some other, or was all phantasy of my disembodied spirit--for I +had the thought that I, too, might be dead since old ages, and my spirit +wandering now through the universe of space, in which there is neither +north nor south, nor up nor down, nor measure nor relation, nor aught +whatever, save an uneasy consciousness of a dream about bottomlessness. +Of grief or pain, I think, I felt nothing; though I have a sort of +memory now that some sound, resembling a sob or groan, though it was +neither, came at regular clockwork intervals from my bosom during three +or four days. Meantime, my brain registered like a tape-machine details +the most frivolous, the most ludicrous--the name of a street, Strond +Street, Snargate Street; the round fur cap--black fur for the side, +white ermine for the top--of a portly Karaite priest on his back, whose +robes had been blown to his spread knees, as if lifted and neatly folded +there; a violin-bow gripped between the thick, irregular teeth of a +little Spaniard with brushed-back hair and mad-looking eyes; odd shoes +on the foot of a French girl, one black, one brown. They lay in the +street about as numerous as gunners who fall round their carriage, at +intervals of five to ten feet, the majority--as was the case also in +Norway, and on the ships--in poses of distraction, with spread arms, or +wildly distorted limbs, like men who, the instant before death, called +upon the rocks and hills to cover them. + + * * * * * + +On the left I came to an opening in the land, called, I believe, 'The +Shaft,' and into this I turned, climbing a very great number of steps, +almost covered at one point with dead: the steps I began to count, but +left off, then the dead, and left off. Finally, at the top, which must +be even higher than the Castle, I came to a great open space laid out +with gravel-walks, and saw fortifications, barracks, a citadel. I did +not know the town, except by passings-through, and was surprised at the +breadth of view. Between me and the Castle to the east lay the district +of crowding houses, brick and ragstone, mixed in the distance with vague +azure haze; and to the right the harbour, the sea, with their ships; and +visible around me on the heights seven or eight dead, biting the dust; +the sun now high and warm, with hardly a cloud in the sky; and yonder a +mist, which was the coast of France. + +It seemed too big for one poor man. + +My head nodded. I sat on a bench, black-painted and hard, the seat and +back of horizontal boards, with intervals; and as I looked, I nodded, +heavy-headed and weary: for it was too big for me. And as I nodded, with +forehead propped on my left hand, and the packet of pemmican cakes in my +right, there was in my head, somehow, an old street-song of my +childhood: and I groaned it sleepily, like coronachs and drear funereal +nenias, dirging; and the packet beat time in my right hand, falling and +raising, falling heavily and rising, in time. + + I'll buy the ring, + You'll rear the kids: + Servants to wait on our ting, ting, ting. + . . . . . + . . . . . + Ting, ting, + Won't we be happy? + Ting, ting, + That shall be it: + I'll buy the ring, + You'll rear the kids: + Servants to wait on our ting, ting, ting. + . . . . . + . . . . . + +So maundering, I fell forward upon my face, and for twenty-three hours, +the living undistinguished from the dead, I slept there. + + * * * * * + +I was awakened by drizzle, leapt up, looked at a silver chronometer +which, attached by a leather to my belt, I carried in my +breeches-pocket, and saw that it was 10 A.M. The sky was dark, and a +moaning wind--almost a new thing now to me--had arisen. + +I ate some pemmican, for I had a reluctance--needless as it turned +out--to touch any of the thousand luxuries here, sufficient no doubt, +in a town like Dover alone, to last me five or six hundred years, if I +could live so long; and, having eaten, I descended The Shaft, and spent +the whole day, though it rained and blustered continually, in wandering +about. Reasoning, in my numb way, from the number of ships on the sea, I +expected to find the town over-crowded with dead: but this was not so; +and I should say, at a venture, that not a thousand English, nor fifteen +thousand foreigners, were in it: for that westward rage and stampede +must have operated here also, leaving the town empty but for the ever +new-coming hosts. + +The first thing which I did was to go into an open grocer's shop, which +was also a post and telegraph office, with the notion, I suppose, to get +a message through to London. In the shop a single gas-light was burning +its last, and this, with that near the pier, were the only two that I +saw: and ghastly enough they looked, transparently wannish, and as it +were ashamed, like blinking night-things overtaken by the glare of day. +I conjectured that they had so burned and watched during months, or +years: for they were now blazing diminished, with streaks and rays in +the flame, as if by effort, and if these were the only two, they must +have needed time to all-but exhaust the works. Before the counter lay a +fashionably-dressed negro with a number of tied parcels scattered about +him, and on the counter an empty till, and behind it a tall thin woman +with her face resting sideways in the till, fingers clutching the outer +counter-rim, and such an expression of frantic terror as I never saw. I +got over the counter to a table behind a wire-gauze, and, like a numb +fool, went over the Morse alphabet in my mind before touching the +transmitting key, though I knew no code-words, and there, big enough to +be seen, was the ABC dial, and who was to answer my message I did not +ask myself: for habit was still strong upon me, and my mind refused to +reason from what I saw to what I did not see; but the moment I touched +the key, and peered greedily at the galvanometer-needle at my right, I +saw that it did not move, for no current was passing; and with a kind of +fright, I was up, leapt, and got away from the place, though there was a +great number of telegrams about the receiver which, if I had been in my +senses, I would have stopped and read. + +Turning the corner of the next street, I saw wide-open the door of a +substantial large house, and went in. From bottom to top there was no +one there, except one English girl, sitting back in an easy-chair in the +drawing-room, which was richly furnished with Valenciennes curtains and +azure-satin things. She was a girl of the lowest class, hardly clad in +black rags, and there she lay with hanging jaw, in a very crooked and +awkward pose, a jemmy at her feet, in her left hand a roll of +bank-notes, and in her lap three watches. In fact, the bodies which I +saw here were, in general, either those of new-come foreigners, or else +of the very poor, the very old, or the very young. + +But what made me remember this house was that I found here on one of the +sofas a newspaper: _The Kent Express_; and sitting unconscious of my +dead neighbour, I pored a long while over what was written there. + +It said in a passage which I tore out and kept: + +'Telegraphic communication with Tilsit, Insterburg, Warsaw, Cracow, +Przemysl, Gross Wardein, Karlsburg, and many smaller towns lying +immediately eastward of the 21st parallel of longitude has ceased during +the night. In some at least of them there must have been operators still +at their duty, undrawn into the great westward-rushing torrent: but as +all messages from Western Europe have been answered only by that dread +mysterious silence which, just three months and two days since, +astounded the world in the case of Eastern New Zealand, we can only +assume that these towns, too, have been added to the long and mournful +list; indeed, after last evening's Paris telegrams we might have +prophesied with some certainty, not merely their overthrow, but even the +hour of it: for the rate-uniformity of the slow-riding vapour which is +touring our globe is no longer doubtful, and has even been definitely +fixed by Professor Craven at 100-1/2 miles per day, or 4 miles 330 yards +per hour. Its nature, its origin, remains, of course, nothing but matter +of conjecture: for it leaves no living thing behind it: nor, God knows, +is that of any moment now to us who remain. The rumour that it is +associated with an odour of almonds is declared, on high authority, to +be improbable; but the morose purple of its impending gloom has been +attested by tardy fugitives from the face of its rolling and smoky +march. + +'Is this the end? We do not, and cannot, believe it. Will the pure sky +which we to-day see above us be invaded in nine days, or less, by this +smoke of the Pit of Darkness? In spite of the assurances of the +scientists, we still doubt. For, if so, to what purpose that long drama +of History, in which we seem to see the Hand of the Dramaturgist? +Surely, the end of a Fifth Act should be obvious, satisfying to one's +sense of the complete: but History, so far, long as it has been, +resembles rather a Prologue than a Fifth Act. Can it be that the +Manager, utterly dissatisfied, would sweep all off, and 'hang up' the +piece for ever? Certainly, the sins of mankind have been as scarlet: and +if the fair earth which he has turned into Hell, send forth now upon him +the smoke of Hell, little the wonder. But we cannot yet believe. There +is a sparing strain in nature, and through the world, as a thread, is +spun a silence which smiles, and on the end of events we find placarded +large the words: "Why were ye afraid?" A dignified Hope, therefore--even +now, when we cower beneath this worldwide shadow of the wings of the +Condor of Death--becomes us: and, indeed, we see such an attitude among +some of the humblest of our people, from whose heart ascends the cry: +"Though He slay me, yet will I trust in Him." Here, therefore, O Lord! O +Lord, look down, and save! + +'But even as we thus write of hope, Reason, if we would hear her, +whispers us "fool": and inclement is the sky of earth. No more ships can +New York Harbour contain, and whereas among us men die weekly of +privations by the hundred thousand, yonder across the sea they perish by +the million: for where the rich are pinched, how can the poor live? +Already 700 out of the 1000 millions of our race have perished, and the +empires of civilisation have crumbled like sand-castles in a horror of +anarchy. Thousands upon thousands of unburied dead, anticipating the +more deliberate doom that comes and smokes, and rides and comes and +comes, and does not fail, encumber the streets of London, Manchester, +Liverpool. The guides of the nation have fled; the father stabs his +child, and the wife her husband, for a morsel of food; the fields lie +waste; wanton crowds carouse in our churches, universities, palaces, +banks and hospitals; we understand that late last night three +territorial regiments, the Munster Fusiliers, and the Lotian and East +Lancashire Regiments, riotously disbanded themselves, shooting two +officers; infectious diseases, as we all know, have spread beyond limit; +in several towns the police seem to have disappeared, and, in nearly +all, every vestige of decency; the results following upon the sudden +release of the convicts appear to be monstrous in the respective +districts; and within three short months Hell seems to have acquired +this entire planet, sending forth Horror, like a rabid wolf, and +Despair, like a disastrous sky, to devour and confound her. Hear, +therefore, O Lord, and forgive our iniquities! O Lord, we beseech Thee! +Look down, O Lord, and spare!' + + * * * * * + +When I had read this, and the rest of the paper, which had one whole +sheet-side blank, I sat a long hour there, eyeing a little patch of the +purple ash on a waxed board near the corner where the girl sat with her +time-pieces, so useless in her Eternity; and there was not a feeling in +me, except a pricking of curiosity, which afterwards became morbid and +ravenous, to know something more of that cloud, or smoke, of which this +man spoke, of its dates, its origin, its nature, its minute details. +Afterwards, I went down, and entered several houses, searching for more +papers, but did not find any; then I found a paper-shop which was open, +with boards outside, but either it had been deserted, or printing must +have stopped about the date of the paper which I had read, for the only +three news-papers there were dated long prior, and I did not read them. + +Now it was raining, and a blustering autumn day it was, distributing the +odours of the world, and bringing me continual mixed whiffs of flowers +and the hateful stench of decay. But I would not mind it much. + +I wandered and wandered, till I was tired of spahi and bashi-bazouk, of +Greek and Catalan, of Russian 'pope' and Coptic abuna, of dragoman and +Calmuck, of Egyptian maulawi and Afghan mullah, Neapolitan and sheik, +and the nightmare of wild poses, colours, stuffs and garbs, the +yellow-green kefie of the Bedouin, shawl-turbans of Baghdad, the +voluminous rose-silk tob of women, and face-veils, and stark distorted +nakedness, and sashes of figured muslin, and the workman's cords, and +the red tarboosh. About four, for very weariness, I was sitting on a +door-steep, bent beneath the rain; but soon was up again, fascinated no +doubt by this changing bazaar of sameness, its chance combinations and +permutations, and novelty in monotony. About five I was at a station, +marked Harbour Station, in and about which lay a considerable crowd, but +not one train. I sat again, and rested, rose and roamed again; soon +after six I found myself at another station, called 'Priory'; and here I +saw two long trains, both crowded, one on a siding, and one at the +up-platform. + +I examined both engines, and found them of the old boiler steam-type +with manholes, heaters, autoclaves, feed-pump, &c., now rare in western +countries, except England. In one there was no water, but in that at the +platform, the float-lever, barely tilted toward the float, showed that +there was some in the boiler. Of this one I overhauled all the +machinery, and found it good, though rusted. There was plenty of fuel, +and oil, which I supplemented from a near shop: and during ninety +minutes my brain and hands worked with an intelligence as it were +automatic, of their own motion. After three journeys across the station +and street, I saw the fire blaze well, and the manometer move; when the +lever of the safety-valve, whose load I lightened by half an atmosphere, +lifted, I jumped down, and tried to disconnect the long string of +carriages from the engine: but failed, the coupling being an automatic +arrangement new to me; nor did I care. It was now very dark; but there +was still oil for bull's-eye and lantern, and I lit them. I forgot +nothing. I rolled driver and stoker--the guard was absent--one to the +platform, one upon the rails: and I took their place there. At about +8.30 I ran out from Dover, my throttle-valve pealing high a long +falsetto through the bleak and desolate night. + + * * * * * + +My aim was London. But even as I set out, my heart smote me: I knew +nothing of the metals, their junctions, facing-points, sidings, +shuntings, and complexities. Even as to whether I was going toward, or +away from, London, I was not sure. But just in proportion as my first +timorousness of the engine hardened into familiarity and self-sureness, +I quickened speed, wilfully, with an obstinacy deaf and blind. + +Finally, from a mere crawl at first, I was flying at a shocking +velocity, while something, tongue in cheek, seemed to whisper me: 'There +must be other trains blocking the lines, at stations, in yards, and +everywhere--it is a maniac's ride, a ride of death, and Flying +Dutchman's frenzy: remember your dark five-deep brigade of passengers, +who rock and bump together, and will suffer in a collision.' But with +mulish stubbornness I thought: 'They wished to go to London'; and on I +raged, not wildly exhilarated, so far as I can remember, nor lunatic, +but feeling the dull glow of a wicked and morose Unreason urge in my +bosom, while I stoked all blackened at the fire, or saw the vague mass +of dead horse or cow, running trees and fields, and dark homestead and +deep-slumbering farm, flit ghostly athwart the murky air, as the +half-blind saw 'men like trees walking.' + +Long, however, it did not last: I could not have been twenty miles from +Dover when, on a long reach of straight lines, I made out before me a +tarpaulined mass opposite a signal-point: and at once callousness +changed to terror within me. But even as I plied the brake, I felt that +it was too late: I rushed to the gangway to make a wild leap down an +embankment to the right, but was thrown backward by a quick series of +rough bumps, caused by eight or ten cattle which lay there across the +lines: and when I picked myself up, and leapt, some seconds before the +impact, the speed must have considerably slackened, for I received no +fracture, but lay in semi-coma in a patch of yellow-flowered whin on +level ground, and was even conscious of a fire on the lines forty yards +away, and, all the night, of vague thunder sounding from somewhere. + + * * * * * + +About five, or half-past, in the morning I was sitting up, rubbing my +eyes, in a dim light mixed with drizzle. I could see that the train of +my last night's debauch was a huddled-up chaos of fallen carriages and +disfigured bodies. A five-barred gate on my left opened into a hedge, +and swung with creaks: two yards from my feet lay a little shaggy pony +with swollen wan abdomen, the very picture of death, and also about me a +number of dead wet birds. + +I picked myself up, passed through the gate, and walked up a row of +trees to a house at their end. I found it to be a little country-tavern +with a barn, forming one house, the barn part much larger than the +tavern part. I went into the tavern by a small side-door--behind the +bar--into a parlour--up a little stair--into two rooms: but no one was +there. I then went round into the barn, which was paved with +cobble-stones, and there lay a dead mare and foal, some fowls, with two +cows. A ladder-stair led to a closed trap-door in the floor above. I +went up, and in the middle of a wilderness of hay saw nine +people--labourers, no doubt--five men and four women, huddled together, +and with them a tin-pail containing the last of some spirit; so that +these had died merry. + +I slept three hours among them, and afterwards went back to the tavern, +and had some biscuits of which I opened a new tin, with some ham, jam +and apples, of which I made a good meal, for my pemmican was gone. + +Afterwards I went following the rail-track on foot, for the engines of +both the collided trains were smashed. I knew northward from southward +by the position of the sun: and after a good many stoppages at houses, +and by railway-banks, I came, at about eleven in the night, to a great +and populous town. + +By the Dane John and the Cathedral, I immediately recognised it as +Canterbury, which I knew quite well. And I walked up Castle Street to +the High Street, conscious for the first time of that +regularly-repeated sound, like a sob or groan, which was proceeding from +my throat. As there was no visible moon, and these old streets very dim, +I had to pick my way, lest I should desecrate the dead with my foot, and +they all should rise with hue and cry to hunt me. However, the bodies +here were not numerous, most, as before, being foreigners: and these, +scattered about this strict old English burg that mourning dark night, +presented such a scene of the baneful wrath of God, and all abomination +of desolation, as broke me quite down at one place, where I stood in +travail with jeremiads and sore sobbings and lamentations, crying out +upon it all, God knows. + +Only when I stood at the west entrance of the Cathedral I could discern, +spreading up the dark nave, to the lantern, to the choir, a +phantasmagorical mass of forms: I went a little inward, and striking +three matches, peered nearer: the two transepts, too, seemed +crowded--the cloister-doorway was blocked--the southwest porch thronged, +so that a great congregation must have flocked hither shortly before +their fate overtook them. + +Here it was that I became definitely certain that the after-odour of the +poison was not simply lingering in the air, but was being more or less +given off by the bodies: for the blossomy odour of this church actually +overcame that other odour, the whole rather giving the scent of old +mouldy linens long embalmed in cedars. + +Well, away with stealthy trot I ran from the abysmal silence of that +place, and in Palace Street near made one of those sudden immoderate +rackets that seemed to outrage the universe, and left me so woefully +faint, decrepit, and gasping for life (the noise of the train was +different, for there I was flying, but here a captive, and which way I +ran was capture). Passing in Palace Street, I saw a little lampshop, and +wanting a lantern, tried to get in, but the door was locked; so, after +going a few steps, and kicking against a policeman's truncheon, I +returned to break the window-glass. I knew that it would make a fearful +noise, and for some fifteen or twenty minutes stood hesitating: but +never could I have dreamed, my good God, of _such_ a noise, so +passionate, so dominant, so divulgent, and, O Heaven, so long-lasting: +for I seemed to have struck upon the weak spot of some planet, which +came suddenly tumbling, with protracted bellowing and _débâcle_, about +my ears. It was a good hour before I would climb in; but then quickly +found what I wanted, and some big oil-cans; and till one or two in the +morning, the innovating flicker of my lantern went peering at random +into the gloomy nooks of the town. + +Under a deep old Gothic arch that spanned a pavered alley, I saw the +little window of a little house of rubble, and between the two +diamond-paned sashes rags tightly beaten in, the idea evidently being to +make the place air-tight against the poison. When I went in I found the +door of that room open, though it, too, apparently, had been stuffed at +the edges; and on the threshold an old man and woman lay low. I +conjectured that, thus protected, they had remained shut in, till either +hunger, or the lack of oxygen in the used-up air, drove them forth, +whereupon the poison, still active, must have instantly ended them. I +found afterwards that this expedient of making air-tight had been widely +resorted to; and it might well have proved successful, if both the +supply of inclosed air, and of food, had been anywhere commensurate with +the durability of the poisonous state. + +Weary, weary as I grew, some morbid persistence sustained me, and I +would not rest. About four in the morning I was at a station again, +industriously bending, poor wretch, at the sooty task of getting another +engine ready for travel. This time, when steam was up, I succeeded in +uncoupling the carriages from the engine, and by the time morning +broke, I was lightly gliding away over the country, whither I did not +know, but making for London. + + * * * * * + +Now I went with more intelligence and caution, and got on very well, +travelling seven days, never at night, except it was very clear, never +at more than twenty or twenty-five miles, and crawling through tunnels. +I do not know the maze into which the train took me, for very soon after +leaving Canterbury it must have gone down some branch-line, and though +the names were marked at stations, that hardly helped me, for of their +situation relatively to London I was seldom sure. Moreover, again and +again was my progress impeded by trains on the metals, when I would have +to run back to a shunting-point or a siding, and, in two instances, +these being far behind, changed from my own to the impeding engine. On +the first day I travelled unhindered till noon, when I stopped in open +country that seemed uninhabited for ages, only that half a mile to the +left, on a shaded sward, was a large stone house of artistic design, +coated with tinted harling, the roof of red Ruabon tiles, and timbered +gables. I walked to it after another row with putting out the fire and +arranging for a new one, the day being bright and mild, with great +masses of white cloud in the sky. The house had an outer and an inner +hall, three reception rooms, fine oil-paintings, a kind of museum, and a +large kitchen. In a bed-room above-stairs I found three women with +servants' caps, and a footman, arranged in a strange symmetrical way, +head to head, like rays of a star. As I stood looking at them, I could +have sworn, my good God, that I heard someone coming up the stairs. But +it was some slight creaking of the breeze in the house, augmented a +hundredfold to my inflamed and fevered hearing: for, used for years now +to this silence of Eternity, it is as though I hear all sounds through +an ear-trumpet. I went down, and after eating, and drinking some +clary-water, made of brandy, sugar, cinnamon, and rose water, which I +found in plenty, I lay down on a sofa in the inner hall, and slept a +quiet sleep until near midnight. + +I went out then, still possessed with the foolish greed to reach London, +and after getting the engine to rights, went off under a clear black sky +thronged with worlds and far-sown spawn, some of them, I thought, +perhaps like this of mine, whelmed and drowned in oceans of silence, +with one only inhabitant to see it, and hear its silence. And all the +long night I travelled, stopping twice only, once to get the coal from +an engine which had impeded me, and once to drink some water, which I +took care, as always, should be running water. When I felt my head nod, +and my eyes close about 5 A.M., I threw myself, just outside the arch of +a tunnel upon a grassy bank, pretty thick with stalks and flowers, the +workings of early dawn being then in the east: and there, till near +eleven, slept. + +On waking, I noticed that the country now seemed more like Surrey than +Kent: there was that regular swell and sinking of the land; but, in +fact, though it must have been either, it looked like neither, for +already all had an aspect of return to a state of wild nature, and I +could see that for a year at the least no hand had tended the soil. Near +before me was a stretch of lucerne of such extraordinary growth, that I +was led during that day and the succeeding one to examine the condition +of vegetation with some minuteness, and nearly everywhere I detected a +certain hypertrophie tendency in stamens, calycles, pericarps, and +pistils, in every sort of bulbiferous growth that I looked at, in the +rushes, above all, the fronds, mosses, lichens, and all cryptogamia, and +in the trefoils, clover especially, and some creepers. Many +crop-fields, it was clear, had been prepared, but not sown; some had +not been reaped: and in both cases I was struck with their appearance of +rankness, as I was also when in Norway, and was all the more surprised +that this should be the case at a time when a poison, whose action is +the arrest of oxidation, had traversed the earth; I could only conclude +that its presence in large volumes in the lower strata of the atmosphere +had been more or less temporary, and that the tendency to exuberance +which I observed was due to some principle by which Nature acts with +freer energy and larger scope in the absence of man. + +Two yards from the rails I saw, when I got up, a little rill beside a +rotten piece of fence, barely oozing itself onward under masses of foul +and stagnant fungoids: and here there was a sudden splash, and life: and +I caught sight of the hind legs of a diving young frog. I went and lay +on my belly, poring over the clear dulcet little water, and presently +saw two tiny bleaks, or ablets, go gliding low among the swaying +moss-hair of the bottom-rocks, and thought how gladly would I be one of +them, with my home so thatched and shady, and my life drowned in their +wide-eyed reverie. At any rate, these little creatures are alive, the +batrachians also, and, as I found the next day, pupae and chrysales of +one sort or another, for, to my deep emotion, I saw a little white +butterfly staggering in the air over the flower-garden of a rustic +station named Butley. + + * * * * * + +It was while I was lying there, poring upon that streamlet, that a +thought came into my head: for I said to myself: 'If now I be here +alone, alone, alone... alone, alone... one on the earth... and my girth +have a spread of 25,000 miles... what will happen to my mind? Into what +kind of creature shall I writhe and change? I may live two years so! +What will have happened then? I may live five years--ten! What will have +happened after the five? the ten? I may live twenty, thirty, forty...' + +Already, already, there are things that peep and sprout within me...! + + * * * * * + +I wanted food and fresh running water, and walked from the engine half a +mile through fields of lucerne whose luxuriance quite hid the +foot-paths, and reached my shoulder. After turning the brow of a hill, I +came to a park, passing through which I saw some dead deer and three +persons, and emerged upon a terraced lawn, at the end of which stood an +Early English house of pale brick with copings, plinths, stringcourses +of limestone, and spandrels of carved marble; and some distance from the +porch a long table, or series of tables, in the open air, still spread +with cloths that were like shrouds after a month of burial; and the +table had old foods on it, and some lamps; and all around it, and all on +the lawn, were dead peasants. I seemed to know the house, probably from +some print which I may have seen, but I could not make out the +escutcheon, though I saw from its simplicity that it must be very +ancient. Right across the façade spread still some of the letters in +evergreens of the motto: 'Many happy returns of the day,' so that +someone must have come of age, or something, for inside all was gala, +and it was clear that these people had defied a fate which they, of +course, foreknew. I went nearly throughout the whole spacious place of +thick-carpeted halls, marbles, and famous oils, antlers and arras, and +gilt saloons, and placid large bed-chambers: and it took me an hour. +There were here not less than a hundred and eighty people. In the first +of a vista of three large reception-rooms lay what could only have been +a number of quadrille parties, for to the _coup d'oeil_ they presented a +two-and-two appearance, made very repulsive by their jewels and +evening-dress. I had to steel my heart to go through this house, for I +did not know if these people were looking at me as soon as my back was +turned. Once I was on the very point of flying, for I was going up the +great central stairway, and there came a pelt of dead leaves against a +window-pane in a corridor just above on the first floor, which thrilled +me to the inmost soul. But I thought that if I once fled, they would all +be at me from behind, and I should be gibbering mad long, long before I +reached the outer hall, and so stood my ground, even defiantly +advancing. In a small dark bedroom in the north wing on the second +floor--that is to say, at the top of the house--I saw a tall young lady +and a groom, or wood-man, to judge by his clothes, horribly riveted in +an embrace on a settee, she with a light coronet on her head in +low-necked dress, and their lipless teeth still fiercely pressed +together. I collected in a bag a few delicacies from the under-regions +of this house, Lyons sausages, salami, mortadel, apples, roes, raisins, +artichokes, biscuits, a few wines, a ham, bottled fruit, pickles, +coffee, and so on, with a gold plate, tin-opener, cork-screw, fork, &c., +and dragged them all the long way back to the engine before I could eat. + + * * * * * + +My brain was in such a way, that it was several days before the +perfectly obvious means of finding my way to London, since I wished to +go there, at all occurred to me; and the engine went wandering the +intricate railway-system of the south country, I having twice to water +her with a coal-bucket from a pool, for the injector was giving no water +from the tank under the coals, and I did not know where to find any near +tank-sheds. On the fifth evening, instead of into London, I ran into +Guildford. + + * * * * * + +That night, from eleven till the next day, there was a great storm over +England: let me note it down. And ten days later, on the 17th of the +month came another; and on the 23rd another; and I should be put to it +to count the great number since. And they do not resemble English +storms, but rather Arctic ones, in a certain very suggestive something +of personalness, and a carousing malice, and a Tartarus gloom, which I +cannot quite describe. That night at Guildford, after wandering about, +and becoming very weary, I threw myself upon a cushioned pew in an old +Norman church with two east apses, called St. Mary's, using a +Bible-cushion for pillow, and placing some distance away a little tin +lamp turned low, whose ray served me for _veilleuse_ through the night. +Happily I had taken care to close up everything, or, I feel sure, the +roof must have gone. Only one dead, an old lady in a chapel on the north +side of the chancel, whom I rather mistrusted, was there with me: and +there I lay listening: for, after all, I could not sleep a wink, while +outside vogued the immense tempest. And I communed with myself, +thinking: 'I, poor man, lost in this conflux of infinitudes and vortex +of the world, what can become of me, my God? For dark, ah dark, is the +waste void into which from solid ground I am now plunged a million +fathoms deep, the sport of all the whirlwinds: and it were better for me +to have died with the dead, and never to have seen the wrath and +turbulence of the Ineffable, nor to have heard the thrilling bleakness +of the winds of Eternity, when they pine, and long, and whimper, and +when they vociferate and blaspheme, and when they expostulate and +intrigue and implore, and when they despair and die, which ear of man +should never hear. For they mean to eat me up, I know, these Titanic +darknesses: and soon like a whiff I shall pass away, and leave the world +to them.' So till next morning I lay mumping, with shivers and +cowerings: for the shocks of the storm pervaded the locked church to my +very heart; and there were thunders that night, my God, like callings +and laughs and banterings, exchanged between distant hill-tops in Hell. + + * * * * * + +Well, the next morning I went down the steep High Street, and found a +young nun at the bottom whom I had left the previous evening with a +number of girls in uniform opposite the Guildhall--half-way up the +street. She must have been spun down, arm over arm, for the wind was +westerly, and whereas I had left her completely dressed to her wimple +and beads, she was now nearly stripped, and her little flock scattered. +And branches of trees, and wrecked houses, and reeling clouds of dead +leaves were everywhere that wild morning. + +This town of Guildford appeared to be the junction of an extraordinary +number of railway-lines, and before again setting out in the afternoon, +when the wind had lulled, having got an A B C guide, and a railway-map, +I decided upon my line, and upon a new engine, feeling pretty sure now +of making London, only thirty miles away. I then set out, and about five +o'clock was at Surbiton, near my aim; I kept on, expecting every few +minutes to see the great city, till darkness fell, and still, at +considerable risk, I went, as I thought, forward: but no London was +there. I had, in fact, been on a loop-line, and at Surbiton gone wrong +again; for the next evening I found myself at Wokingham, farther away +than ever. + +I slept on a rug in the passage of an inn called The Rose, for there was +a wild, Russian-looking man, with projecting top-teeth, on a bed in the +house, whose appearance I did not like, and it was late, and I too tired +to walk further; and the next morning pretty early I set out again, and +at 10 A.M. was at Reading. + +The notion of navigating the land by precisely the same means as the +sea, simple and natural as it was, had not at all occurred to me: but at +the first accidental sight of a compass in a little shop-window near the +river at Reading, my difficulties as to getting to any desired place in +the world vanished once and for all: for a good chart or map, the +compass, a pair of compasses, and, in the case of longer distances, a +quadrant, sextant or theodolite, with a piece of paper and pencil, were +all that were necessary to turn an engine into a land-ship, one choosing +the lines that ran nearest the direction of one's course, whenever they +did not run precisely. + +Thus provided, I ran out from Reading about seven in the evening, while +there was still some light, having spent there some nine hours. This was +the town where I first observed that shocking crush of humanity, which +I afterwards met in every large town west of London. Here, I should say, +the English were quite equal in number to the foreigners: and there were +enough of both, God knows: for London must have poured many here. There +were houses, in every room of which, and on the stairs, the dead +actually overlay each other, and in the streets before them were points +where only on flesh, or under carriages, was it possible to walk. I went +into the great County Gaol, from which, as I had read, the prisoners had +been released two weeks before-hand, and there I found the same pressed +condition, cells occupied by ten or twelve, the galleries continuously +rough-paved with faces, heads, and old-clothes-shops of robes; and in +the parade-ground, against one wall, a mass of human stuff, like tough +grey clay mixed with rags and trickling black gore, where a crush as of +hydraulic power must have acted. At a corner between a gate and a wall +near the biscuit-factory of this town I saw a boy, whom I believe to +have been blind, standing jammed, at his wrist a chain-ring, and, at the +end of the chain, a dog; from his hap-hazard posture I conjectured that +he, and chain, and dog had been lifted from the street, and placed so, +by the storm of the 7th of the month; and what made it very curious was +that his right arm pointed a little outward just over the dog, so that, +at the moment when I first sighted him, he seemed a drunken fellow +setting his dog at me. In fact, all the dead I found much mauled and +stripped and huddled: and the earth seemed to be making an abortive +effort to sweep her streets. + +Well, some little distance from Reading I saw a big flower-seed farm, +looking dead in some plots, and in others quite rank: and here again, +fluttering quite near the engine, two little winged aurelians in the +quiet evening air. I went on, passing a great number of crowded trains +on the down-line, two of them in collision, and very broken up, and one +exploded engine; even the fields and cuttings on either hand of the line +had a rather populous look, as if people, when trains and vehicles +failed, had set to trudging westward in caravans and streams. When I +came to a long tunnel near Slough, I saw round the foot of the arch an +extraordinary quantity of wooden _débris_, and as I went very slowly +through, was alarmed by the continuous bumping of the train, which, I +knew, was passing over bodies; at the other end were more _débris_; and +I easily guessed that a company of desperate people had made the tunnel +air-tight at the two arches, and provisioned themselves, with the hope +to live there till the day of destiny was passed; whereupon their +barricades must have been crashed through by some up-train and +themselves crushed, or else, other crowds, mad to share their cave of +refuge, had stormed the boardings. This latter, as I afterwards found, +was a very usual event. + +I should very soon have got to London now, but, as my bad luck would +have it, I met a long up-train on the metals, with not one creature in +any part of it. There was nothing to do but to tranship, with all my +things, to its engine, which I found in good condition with plenty of +coal and water, and to set it going, a hateful labour: I being already +jet-black from hair to toes. However, by half-past ten I found myself +stopped by another train only a quarter of a mile from Paddington, and +walked the rest of the way among trains in which the standing dead still +stood, propped by their neighbours, and over metals where bodies were as +ordinary and cheap as waves on the sea, or twigs in a forest. I believe +that wild crowds had given chase on foot to moving trains, or fore-run +them in the frenzied hope of inducing them to stop. + +I came to the great shed of glass and girders which is the station, the +night being perfectly soundless, moonless, starless, and the hour about +eleven. + +I found later that all the electric generating-stations, or all that I +visited, were intact; that is to say, must have been shut down before +the arrival of the doom; also that the gas-works had almost certainly +been abandoned some time previously: so that this city of dreadful +night, in which, at the moment when Silence choked it, not less than +forty to sixty millions swarmed and droned, must have more resembled +Tartarus and the foul shades of Hell than aught to which my fancy can +liken it. + +For, coming nearer the platforms, I saw that trains, in order to move at +all, must have moved through a slough of bodies pushed from behind, and +forming a packed homogeneous mass on the metals: and I knew that they +_had_ moved. Nor could _I_ now move, unless I decided to wade: for flesh +was everywhere, on the roofs of trains, cramming the interval between +them, on the platforms, splashing the pillars like spray, piled on +trucks and lorries, a carnal quagmire; and outside, it filled the space +between a great host of vehicles, carpeting all that region of London. +And all here that odour of blossoms, which nowhere yet, save on one vile +ship, had failed, was now wholly overcome by another: and the thought +was in my head, my God, that if the soul of man had sent up to Heaven +the odour which his body gave to me, then it was not so strange that +things were as they were. + +I got out from the station, with ears, God knows, that still awaited the +accustomed noising of this accursed town, habituated as I now was to all +the dumb and absent void of Soundlessness; and I was overwhelmed in a +new awe, and lost in a wilder woesomeness, when, instead of lights and +business, I saw the long street which I knew brood darker than Babylons +long desolate, and in place of its ancient noising, heard, my God, a +shocking silence, rising higher than I had ever heard it, and blending +with the silence of the inane, eternal stars in heaven. + + * * * * * + +I could not get into any vehicle for some time, for all thereabouts was +practically a mere block; but near the Park, which I attained by +stooping among wheels, and selecting my foul steps, I overhauled a +Daimler car, found in it two cylinders of petrol, lit the ignition-lamp, +removed with averted abhorrence three bodies, mounted, and broke that +populous stillness. And through streets nowhere empty of bodies I went +urging eastward my jolting, and spattered, and humming way. + +That I should have persisted, with so much pains, to come to this +unbounded catacomb, seems now singular to me: for by that time I could +not have been sufficiently daft to expect to find another being like +myself on the earth, though I cherished, I remember, the irrational hope +of yet somewhere finding dog, or cat, or horse, to be with me, and would +anon think bitterly of Reinhardt, my Arctic dog, which my own hand had +shot. But, in reality, a morbid curiosity must have been within me all +the time to read the real truth of what had happened, so far as it was +known, or guessed, and to gloat upon all that drama, and cup of +trembling, and pouring out of the vials of the wrath of God, which must +have preceded the actual advent of the end of Time. This inquisitiveness +had, at every town which I reached, made the search for newspapers +uppermost in my mind; but, by bad luck, I had found only four, all of +them ante-dated to the one which I had read at Dover, though their dates +gave me some idea of the period when printing must have ceased, viz. +soon after the 17th July--about three months subsequent to my arrival at +the Pole--for none I found later than this date; and these contained +nothing scientific, but only orisons and despairings. On arriving, +therefore, at London, I made straight for the office of the _Times_, +only stopping at a chemist's in Oxford Street for a bottle of antiseptic +to hold near my nose, though, having once left the neighbourhood of +Paddington, I had hardly much need of this. + +I made my way to the square where the paper was printed, to find that, +even there, the ground was closely strewn with calpac and pugaree, black +abayeh and fringed praying-shawl, hob-nail and sandal, figured lungi and +striped silk, all very muddled and mauled. Through the dark square to +the twice-dark building I passed, and found open the door of an +advertisement-office; but on striking a match, saw that it had been +lighted by electricity, and had therefore to retrace my stumbling steps, +till I came to a shop of lamps in a near alley, walking meantime with +timid cares that I might hurt no one--for in this enclosed neighbourhood +I began to feel strange tremors, and kept striking matches, which, so +still was the black air, hardly flickered. + +When I returned to the building with a little lighted lamp, I at once +saw a file on a table, and since there were a number of dead there, and +I wished to be alone, I took the heavy mass of paper between my left arm +and side, and the lamp in my right hand; passed then behind a counter; +and then, to the right, up a stair which led me into a very great +building and complexity of wooden steps and corridors, where I went +peering, the lamp visibly trembling in my hand, for here also were the +dead. Finally, I entered a good-sized carpeted room with a baize-covered +table in the middle, and large smooth chairs, and on the table many +manuscripts impregnated with purple dust, and around were books in +shelves. This room had been locked upon a single man, a tall man in a +frock-coat, with a pointed grey beard, who at the last moment had +decided to fly from it, for he lay at the threshold, apparently fallen +dead the moment he opened the door. Him, by drawing his feet aside, I +removed, locked the door upon myself, sat at the table before the dusty +file, and, with the little lamp near, began to search. + +I searched and read till far into the morning. But God knows, He +alone.... + +I had not properly filled the little reservoir with oil, and at about +three in the fore-day, it began to burn sullenly lower, letting sparks, +and turning the glass grey: and in my deepest chilly heart was the +question: 'Suppose the lamp goes out before the daylight....' + +I knew the Pole, and cold, I knew them well: but to be frozen by panic, +my God! I read, I say, I searched, I would not stop: but I read that +night racked by terrors such as have never yet entered into the heart +of man to conceive. My flesh moved and crawled like a lake which, here +and there, the breeze ruffles. Sometimes for two, three, four minutes, +the profound interest of what I read would fix my mind, and then I would +peruse an entire column, or two, without consciousness of the meaning of +one single word, my brain all drawn away to the innumerable host of the +wan dead that camped about me, pierced with horror lest they should +start, and stand, and accuse me: for the grave and the worm was the +world; and in the air a sickening stirring of cerements and shrouds; and +the taste of the pale and insubstantial grey of ghosts seemed to infect +my throat, and faint odours of the loathsome tomb my nostrils, and the +toll of deep-toned passing-bells my ears; finally the lamp smouldered +very low, and my charnel fancy teemed with the screwing-down of coffins, +lych-gates and sextons, and the grating of ropes that lower down the +dead, and the first sound of the earth upon the lid of that strait and +gloomy home of the mortal; that lethal look of cold dead fingers I +seemed to see before me, the insipidness of dead tongues, the pout of +the drowned, and the vapid froths that ridge their lips, till my flesh +was moist as with the stale washing-waters of morgues and mortuaries, +and with such sweats as corpses sweat, and the mawkish tear that lies +on dead men's cheeks; for what is one poor insignificant man in his +flesh against a whole world of the disembodied, he alone with them, and +nowhere, nowhere another of his kind, to whom to appeal against them? I +read, and I searched: but God, God knows ... If a leaf of the paper, +which I slowly, warily, stealingly turned, made but one faintest rustle, +how did that _reveille_ boom in echoes through the vacant and haunted +chambers of my poor aching heart, my God! and there was a cough in my +throat which for a cruelly long time I would not cough, till it burst in +horrid clamour from my lips, sending crinkles of cold through my inmost +blood. For with the words which I read were all mixed up visions of +crawling hearses, wails, and lugubrious crapes, and piercing shrieks of +madness in strange earthy vaults, and all the mournfulness of the black +Vale of Death, and the tragedy of corruption. Twice during the ghostly +hours of that night the absolute and undeniable certainty that some +presence--some most gashly silent being--stood at my right elbow, so +thrilled me, that I leapt to my feet to confront it with clenched fists, +and hairs that bristled stiff in horror and frenzy. After that second +time I must have fainted; for when it was broad day, I found my dropped +head over the file of papers, supported on my arms. And I resolved then +never again after sunset to remain in any house: for that night was +enough to kill a horse, my good God; and that this is a haunted planet I +know. + + * * * * * + +What I read in the _Times_ was not very definite, for how could it be? +but in the main it confirmed inferences which I had myself drawn, and +fairly satisfied my mind. + +There had been a battle royal in the paper between my old collaborator +Professor Stanistreet and Dr. Martin Rogers, and never could I have +conceived such an indecorous piece of business, men like them calling +one another 'tyro,' 'dreamer,' and in one place 'block-head.' +Stanistreet denied that the perfumed odour of almonds attributed to the +advancing cloud could be due to anything but the excited fancy of the +reporting fugitives, because, said he, it was unknown that either Cn, +HCn, or K_4FeCn_6 had been given out by volcanoes, and the +destructiveness to life of the travelling cloud could only be owing to +CO and CO_2. To this Rogers, in an article characterised by +extraordinary heat, replied that he could not understand how even a +'tyro'(!) in chemical and geological phenomena would venture to rush +into print with the statement that HCn had not commonly been given out +by volcanoes: that it _had_ been, he said, was perfectly certain; though +whether it had been or not could not affect the decision of a reasoning +mind as to whether it was being: for that cyanogen, as a matter of fact, +was not rare in nature, though not directly occurring, being one of the +products of the common distillation of pit-coal, and found in roots, +peaches, almonds, and many tropical flora; also that it had been +actually pointed out as probable by more than one thinker that some salt +or salts of Cn, the potassic, or the potassic ferrocyanide, or both, +must exist in considerable stores in the earth at volcanic depths. In +reply to this, Stanistreet in a two-column article used the word +'dreamer,' and Rogers, when Berlin had been already silenced, finally +replied with his amazing 'block-head.' But, in my opinion, by far the +most learned and lucid of the scientific dicta was from the rather +unexpected source of Sloggett, of the Dublin Science and Art Department: +he, without fuss, accepted the statements of the fugitive eye-witnesses, +down to the assertion that the cloud, as it rolled travelling, seemed +mixed from its base to the clouds with languid tongues of purple flame, +rose-coloured at their edges. This, Sloggett explained, was the +characteristic flame of both cyanogen and hydrocyanic acid vapour, +which, being inflammable, may have become locally ignited in the passage +over cities, and only burned in that limited and languid way on account +of the ponderous volumes of carbonic anhydride with which they must, of +course, be mixed: the dark empurpled colour was due to the presence of +large quantities of the scoriae of the trappean rocks: basalts, +green-stone, trachytes, and the various porphyries. This article was +most remarkable for its clear divination, because written so early--not +long, in fact, after the cessation of telegraphic communication with +Australia and China; and at a date so early Sloggett stated that the +character of the devastation not only proved an eruption--another, but +far greater Krakatoa--probably in some South Sea region, but indicated +that its most active product must be, not CO, but potassic ferrocyanide +(K_4FeCn_6), which, undergoing distillation with the products of sulphur +in the heat of eruption, produced hydrocyanic acid (HCn); and this +volatile acid, he said, remaining in a vaporous state in all climates +above a temperature of 26.5° C., might involve the entire earth, if the +eruption proved sufficiently powerful, travelling chiefly in a direction +contrary to the earth's west-to-east motion, the only regions which +would certainly be exempt being the colder regions of the Arctic +circles, where the vapour of the acid would assume the liquid state, and +fall as rain. He did not anticipate that vegetation would be permanently +affected, unless the eruption were of inconceivable duration and +activity, for though the poisonous quality of hydrocyanic acid consisted +in its sudden and complete arrest of oxidation, vegetation had two +sources of life--the soil as well as the air; with this exception, all +life, down to the lowest evolutionary forms, would disappear (here was +the one point in which he was somewhat at fault), until the earth +reproduced them. For the rest, he fixed the rate of the on-coming cloud +at from 100 to 105 miles a day; and the date of eruption, either the +14th, 15th, or 16th of April--which was either one, two, or three days +after the arrival of the _Boreal_ party at the Pole; and he concluded by +saying that, if the facts were as he had stated them, then he could +suggest no hiding-place for the race of man, unless such places as mines +and tunnels could be made air-tight; nor could even they be of use to +any considerable number, except in the event of the poisonous state of +the air being of very short duration. + + * * * * * + +I had thought of mines before: but in a very languid way, till this +article, and other things that I read, as it were struck my brain a slap +with the notion. For 'there,' I said, 'if anywhere, shall I find a +man....' + + * * * * * + +I went out from that building that morning feeling like a man bowed down +with age, for the depths of unutterable horror into which I had had +glimpses during that one night made me very feeble, and my steps +tottered, and my brain reeled. + +I got out into Farringdon Street, and at the near Circus, where four +streets meet, had under my furthest range of vision nothing but four +fields of bodies, bodies, clad in a rag-shop of every faded colour, or +half-clad, or not clad at all, actually, in many cases, over-lying one +another, as I had seen at Reading, but here with a markedly more +skeleton appearance: for I saw the swollen-looking shoulders, sharp +hips, hollow abdomens, and stiff bony limbs of people dead from famine, +the whole having the grotesque air of some _macabre_ battle-field of +fallen marionettes. Mixed with these was an extraordinary number of +vehicles of all sorts, so that I saw that driving among them would be +impracticable, whereas the street which I had taken during the night +was fairly clear. I thought a minute what I should do: then went by a +parallel back-street, and came out to a shop in the Strand, where I +hoped to find all the information which I needed about the excavations +of the country. The shutters were up, and I did not wish to make any +noise among these people, though the morning was bright, it being about +ten o'clock, and it was easy to effect entrance, for I saw a crow-bar in +a big covered furniture-van near. I, therefore, went northward, till I +came to the British Museum, the cataloguing-system of which I knew well, +and passed in. There was no one at the library-door to bid me stop, and +in the great round reading-room not a soul, except one old man with a +bag of goître hung at his neck, and spectacles, he lying up a +book-ladder near the shelves, a 'reader' to the last. I got to the +printed catalogues, and for an hour was upstairs among the dim sacred +galleries of this still place, and at the sight of certain Greek and +Coptic papyri, charters, seals, had such a dream of this ancient earth, +my good God, as even an angel's pen could not half express on paper. +Afterwards, I went away loaded with a good hundred-weight of +Ordnance-maps, which I had stuffed into a bag found in the cloak-room, +with three topographical books; I then, at an instrument-maker's in +Holborn, got a sextant and theodolite, and at a grocer's near the river +put into a sack-bag provisions to last me a week or two; at Blackfriars +Bridge wharf-station I found a little sharp white steamer of a few tons, +which happily was driven by liquid air, so that I had no troublesome +fire to light: and by noon I was cutting my solitary way up the Thames, +which flowed as before the ancient Britons were born, and saw it, and +built mud-huts there amid the primaeval forest; and afterwards the +Romans came, and saw it, and called it Tamesis, or Thamesis. + + * * * * * + +That night, as I lay asleep on the cabin-cushions of my little boat +under the lee of an island at Richmond, I had a clear dream, in which +something, or someone, came to me, and asked me a question: for it said: +'Why do you go seeking another man?--that you may fall upon him, and +kiss him? or that you may fall upon him, and murder him?' And I answered +sullenly in my dream: 'I would not murder him. I do not wish to murder +anyone.' + + * * * * * + +What was essential to me was to know, with certainty, whether I was +really alone: for some instinct began to whisper me: 'Find that out: be +sure, be sure: for without the assurance you can never be--yourself.' + +I passed into the great Midland Canal, and went northward, leisurely +advancing, for I was in no hurry. The weather remained very warm, and +great part of the country was still dressed in autumn leaves. I have +written, I think, of the terrific character of the tempests witnessed in +England since my return: well, the calms were just as intense and novel. +This observation was forced upon me: and I could not but be surprised. +There seemed no middle course now: if there was a wind, it was a storm: +if there was not a storm, no leaf stirred, not a roughening zephyr ran +the water. I was reminded of maniacs that laugh now, and rave now--but +never smile, and never sigh. + +On the fourth afternoon I passed by Leicester, and the next morning left +my pleasant boat, carrying maps and compass, and at a small station took +engine, bound for Yorkshire, where I loitered and idled away two foolish +months, sometimes travelling by steam-engine, sometimes by automobile, +sometimes by bicycle, and sometimes on foot, till the autumn was quite +over. + + * * * * * + +There were two houses in London to which especially I had thought to +go: one in Harley Street, and one in Hanover Square: but when it came to +the point, I would not; and there was a little embowered home in +Yorkshire, where I was born, to which I thought to go: but I would not, +confining myself for many days to the eastern half of the county. + +One morning, while passing on foot along the coast-wall from Bridlington +to Flambro', on turning my eyes from the sea, I was confronted by a +thing which for a moment or two struck me with the most profound +astonishment. I had come to a mansion, surrounded by trees, three +hundred yards from the cliffs: and there, on a path at the bottom of the +domain, right before me, was a board marked: 'Trespassers will be +Prosecuted.' At once a mad desire--the first which I had had--to laugh, +to roar with laughter, to send wild echoes of merriment clapping among +the chalk gullies, and abroad on the morning air, seized upon me: but I +kept it under, though I could not help smiling at this poor man, with +his little delusion that a part of the earth was his. + +Here the cliffs are, I should say, seventy feet high, broken by frequent +slips in the upper stratum of clay, and, as I proceeded, climbing +always, I encountered some rather formidable gullies in the chalk, down +and then up which I had to scramble, till I came to a great mound or +barrier, stretching right across the great promontory, and backed by a +natural ravine, this, no doubt, having been raised as a rampart by some +of those old invading pirate-peoples, who had their hot life-scuffle, +and are done now, like the rest. Going on, I came to a bay in the cliff, +with a great number of boats lodged on the slopes, some quite high, +though the declivities are steep; toward the inner slopes is a lime-kiln +which I explored, but found no one there. When I came out on the other +side, I saw the village, with an old tower at one end, on a bare stretch +of land; and thence, after an hour's rest in the kitchen of a little +inn, went out to the coast-guard station, and the lighthouse. + +Looking across the sea eastward, the light-keepers here must have seen +that thick cloud of convolving browns and purples, perhaps mixed with +small tongues of fire, slowly walking the water, its roof in the clouds, +upon them: for this headland is in precisely the same longitude as +London; and, reckoning from the hour when, as recorded in the _Times_, +the cloud was seen from Dover over Calais, London and Flambro' must have +been overtaken soon after three o'clock on the Sunday afternoon, the +25th July. At sight in open daylight of a doom so gloomy--prophesied, +but perhaps hoped against to the last, and now come--the light-keepers +must have fled howling, supposing them to have so long remained faithful +to duty: for here was no one, and in the village very few. In this +lighthouse, which is a circular white tower, eighty feet high, on the +edge of the cliff, is a book for visitors to sign their names: and I +will write something down here in black and white: for the secret is +between God only, and me: After reading a few of the names, I took my +pencil, and I wrote my name there. + + * * * * * + +The reef before the Head stretches out a quarter of a mile, looking bold +in the dead low-water that then was, and showing to what extent the sea +has pushed back this coast, three wrecks impaled on them, and a big +steamer quite near, waiting for the first movements of the already +strewn sea to perish. All along the cliff-wall to the bluff crowned by +Scarborough Castle northward, and to the low vanishing coast of +Holderness southward, appeared those cracks and caves which had brought +me here, though there seemed no attempts at barricades; however, I got +down a rough slope on the south side to a rude wild beach, strewn with +wave-worn masses of chalk: and never did I feel so paltry and short a +thing as there, with far-outstretched bays of crags about me, their +bluffs encrusted at the base with stale old leprosies of shells and +barnacles, and crass algae-beards, and, higher up, the white cliff all +stained and weather-spoiled, the rock in some parts looking quite +chalky, and elsewhere gleaming hard and dull like dirty marbles, while +in the huge withdrawals of the coast yawn darksome gullies and caverns. +Here, in that morning's walk, I saw three little hermit-crabs, a limpet, +and two ninnycocks in a pool of weeds under a bearded rock. What +astonished me here, and, indeed, above, and everywhere, in London even, +and other towns, was the incredible number of birds that strewed the +ground, at some points resembling a real rain, birds of nearly every +sort, including tropic specimens: so that I had to conclude that they, +too, had fled before the cloud from country to country, till conquered +by weariness and grief, and then by death. + +By climbing over rocks thick with periwinkles, and splashing through +great sloppy stretches of crinkled sea-weed, which give a raw stench of +brine, I entered the first of the gullies: a narrow, long, winding one, +with sides polished by the sea-wash, and the floor rising inwards. In +the dark interior I struck matches, able still to hear from outside the +ponderous spasmodic rush and jostle of the sea between the crags of the +reef, but now quite faintly. Here, I knew, I could meet only dead men, +but urged by some curiosity, I searched to the end, wading in the middle +through a three-feet depth of sea-weed twine: but there was no one; and +only belemnites and fossils in the chalk. I searched several to the +south of the headland, and then went northward past it toward another +opening and place of perched boats, called in the map North Landing: +where, even now, a distinct smell of fish, left by the old crabbers and +herring-fishers, was perceptible. A number of coves and bays opened as I +proceeded; a faded green turf comes down in curves at some parts on the +cliff-brows, like wings of a young soldier's hair, parted in the middle, +and plastered on his brow; isolated chalk-masses are numerous, obelisks, +top-heavy columns, bastions; at one point no less than eight headlands +stretched to the end of the world before me, each pierced by its arch, +Norman or Gothic, in whole or in half; and here again caves, in one of +which I found a carpet-bag stuffed with a wet pulp like bread, and, +stuck to the rock, a Turkish tarboosh; also, under a limestone quarry, +five dead asses: but no man. The east coast had evidently been shunned. +Finally, in the afternoon I reached Filey, very tired, and there slept. + + * * * * * + +I went onward by train-engine all along the coast to a region of +iron-ore, alum, and jet-excavations round Whitby and Middlesborough. By +by-ways near the small place of Goldsborough I got down to the shore at +Kettleness, and reached the middle of a bay in which is a cave called +the Hob-Hole, with excavations all around, none of great depth, made by +jet-diggers and quarrymen. In the cave lay a small herd of cattle, +though for what purpose put there I cannot guess; and in the +jet-excavations I found nothing. A little further south is the chief +alum-region, as at Sandsend, but as soon as I saw a works, and the great +gap in the ground like a crater, where the lias is quarried, containing +only heaps of alum-shale, brushwood-stacks, and piles of cement-nodules +extracted from the lias, I concluded that here could have been found no +hiding; nor did I purposely visit the others, though I saw two later. +From round Whitby, and those rough moors, I went on to Darlington, not +far now from my home: but I would not continue that way, and after two +days' indecisive lounging, started for Richmond and the lead mines +about Arkengarth Dale, near Reeth. Here begins a region of mountain, +various with glens, fells, screes, scars, swards, becks, passes, +villages, river-heads, and dales. Some of the faces which I saw in it +almost seemed to speak to me in a broad dialect which I knew. But they +were not numerous in proportion: for all this country-side must have had +its population multiplied by at least some hundreds; and the villages +had rather the air of Danube, Levant, or Spanish villages. In one, named +Marrick, I saw that the street had become the scene either of a great +battle or a great massacre; and soon I was everywhere coming upon men +and women, English and foreign, dead from violence: cracked heads, +wounds, unhung jaws, broken limbs, and so on. Instead of going direct to +the mines from Reeth, that waywardness which now rules my mind, as +squalls an abandoned boat, took me somewhat further south-west to the +village of Thwaite, which I actually could not enter, so occupied with +dead was every spot on which the eye rested a hundred yards about it. +Not far from here I turned up, on foot now, a very steep, stony road to +the right, which leads over the Buttertubs Pass into Wensleydale, the +day being very warm and bright, with large clouds that looked like +lakes of molten silver giving off grey fumes in their centre, casting +moody shadows over the swardy dale, which below Thwaite expands, showing +Muker two miles off, the largest village of Upper Swaledale. Soon, +climbing, I could look down upon miles of Swaledale and the hills +beyond, a rustic panorama of glens and grass, river and cloudshadow, and +there was something of lightness in my step that fair day, for I had +left all my maps and things, except one, at Reeth, to which I meant to +return, and the earth, which is very good, was--mine. The ascent was +rough, and also long: but if I paused and looked behind--I saw, I saw. +Man's notion of a Heaven, a Paradise, reserved for the spirits of the +good, clearly arose from impressions which the earth made upon his mind: +for no Paradise can be fairer than this; just as his notion of a Hell +arose from the squalid mess into which his own foolish habits of thought +and action turned this Paradise. At least, so it struck me then: and, +thinking it, there was a hiss in my breath, as I went up into what more +and more acquired the character of a mountain pass, with points of +almost Alpine savagery: for after I had skirted the edge of a deep glen +on the left, the slopes changed in character, heather was on the +mountain-sides, a fretting beck sent up its noise, then screes, and +scars, and a considerable waterfall, and a landscape of crags; and +lastly a broad and rather desolate summit, palpably nearer the clouds. + + * * * * * + +Two days later I was at the mines: and here I first saw that wide-spread +scene of horror with which I have since become familiar. The story of +six out of ten of them all is the same, and short: selfish 'owners,' an +ousted world, an easy bombardment, and the destruction of all concerned, +before the arrival of the cloud in many cases. About some of the Durham +pit-mouths I have been given the impression that the human race lay +collected there; and that the notion of hiding himself in a mine must +have occurred to every man alive, and sent him thither. + +In these lead mines, as in most vein-mining, there are more shafts than +in collieries, and hardly any attempt at artificial ventilation, except +at rises, winzes and cul-de-sacs. I found accordingly that, though their +depth does not exceed three hundred feet, suffocation must often have +anticipated the other dreaded death. In nearly every shaft, both up-take +and down-take, was a ladder, either of the mine, or of the fugitives, +and I was able to descend without difficulty, having dressed myself in a +house at the village in a check flannel shirt, a pair of two-buttoned +trousers with circles of leather at the knees, thick boots, and a +miner's hat, having a leather socket attached to it, into which fitted a +straight handle from a cylindrical candlestick; with this light, and +also a Davy-lamp, which I carried about with me for a good many months, +I lived for the most part in the deeps of the earth, searching for the +treasure of a life, to find everywhere, in English duckies and guggs, +Pomeranian women in gaudy stiff cloaks, the Walachian, the Mameluk, the +Khirgiz, the Bonze, the Imaum, and almost every type of man. + + * * * * * + +One most brilliant Autumn day I walked by the village market-cross at +Barnard, come at last, but with a tenderness in my heart, and a +reluctance, to where I was born; for I said I would go and see my sister +Ada, and--the other old one. I leaned and loitered a long time on the +bridge, gazing up to the craggy height, which is heavy with waving wood, +and crowned by the Castle-tower, the Tees sweeping round the +mountain-base, smooth here and sunlit, but a mile down, where I wished +to go, but would not, brawling bedraggled and lacerated, like a sweet +strumpet, all shallow among rocks under reaches of shadow--the shadow of +Rokeby Woods. I climbed very leisurely up the hill-side, having in my +hand a bag with a meal, and up the stair in the wall to the top I went, +where there is no parapet, but a massiveness of wall that precludes +danger; and here in my miner's attire I sat three hours, brooding +sleepily upon the scene of lush umbrageous old wood that marks the long +way the river takes, from Marwood Chase up above, and where the rapid +Balder bickers in, down to bowery Rokeby, touched now with autumn; the +thickness of trees lessening away toward the uplands, where there are +far etherealized stretches of fields within hedgerows, and in the sunny +mirage of the farthest azure remoteness hints of lonesome moorland. It +was not till near three that I went down along the river, then, near +Rokeby, traversing the old meadow, and ascending the old hill: and +there, as of old, was the little black square with yellow letters on the +gate-wall: + + HUNT HILL HOUSE. + +No part, no house, I believe, of this country-side was empty of strange +corpses: and they were in Hunt Hill, too. I saw three in the weedy plot +to the right of the garden-path, where once the hawthorn and lilac tree +had grown from well-rollered grass, and in the little bush-wilderness to +the left, which was always a wilderness, one more: and in the +breakfast-room, to the right of the hall, three; and in the new wooden +clinker-built attachment opening upon the breakfast-room, two, half +under the billiard-table; and in her room overlooking the porch on the +first floor, the long thin form of my mother on her bed, with crushed-in +left temple, and at the foot of the bed, face-downward on the floor, +black-haired Ada in a night-dress. + +Of all the men and women who died, they two alone had burying. For I +digged a hole with the stable-spade under the front lilac; and I wound +them in the sheets, foot and form and head; and, not without throes and +qualms, I bore and buried them there. + + * * * * * + +Some time passed after this before the long, multitudinous, and +perplexing task of visiting the mine-regions again claimed me. I found +myself at a place called Ingleborough, which is a big table-mountain, +with a top of fifteen to twenty acres, from which the sea is visible +across Lancashire to the west; and in the sides of this strange hill are +a number of caves which I searched during three days, sleeping in a +garden-shed at a very rural and flower-embowered village, for every room +in it was thronged, a place marked Clapham in the chart, in Clapdale, +which latter is a dale penetrating the slopes of the mountain: and there +I found by far the greatest of the caves which I saw, having ascended a +path from the village to a hollow between two grass slopes, where there +is a beck, and so entering an arch to the left, screened by trees, into +the limestone cliff. The passage narrows pretty rapidly inwards, and I +had not proceeded two yards before I saw the clear traces of a great +battle here. All this region had, in fact, been invaded, for the cave +must have been famous, though I did not remember it myself, and for some +miles round the dead were pretty frequent, making the immediate approach +to the cave a matter for care, if the foot was to be saved from +pollution. It is clear that there had been an iron gate across the +entrance, that within this a wall had been built across, shutting in I +do not know how many, perhaps one or two, perhaps hundreds: and both +gate and wall had been stormed and broken down, for there still were the +sledges and rocks which, without doubt, had done it. I had a lamp, and +at my forehead the lighted candle, and I went on quickly, seeing it +useless now to choose my steps where there was no choice, through a +passage incrusted, roof and sides, with a scabrous petrified lichen, the +roof low for some ninety yards, covered with down-looking cones, like +an inverted forest of children's toy-trees. I then came to a round hole, +apparently artificial, opening through a curtain of stalagmitic +formation into a great cavern beyond, which was quite animated and +festal with flashes, sparkles, and diamond-lustres, hung in their +myriads upon a movement of the eye, these being produced by large +numbers of snowy wet stalagmites, very large and high, down the centre +of which ran a continuous long lane of clothes and hats and faces; with +hasty reluctant feet I somehow passed over them, the cave all the time +widening, thousands of stalactites appearing on the roof of every size, +from virgin's breast to giant's club, and now everywhere the wet drip, +drip, as it were a populous busy bazaar of perspiring brows and hurrying +feet, in which the only business is to drip. Where stalactite meets +stalagmite there are pillars: where stalactite meets stalactite in +fissures long or short there are elegances, flimsy draperies, delicate +fantasies; there were also pools of water in which hung heads and feet, +and there were vacant spots at outlying spaces, where the arched roof, +which continually heightened itself, was reflected in the chill gleam of +the floor. Suddenly, the roof came down, the floor went up, and they +seemed to meet before me; but looking, I found a low opening, through +which, drawing myself on the belly over slime for some yards in +repulsive proximity to dead personalities, I came out upon a floor of +sand and pebbles under a long dry tunnel, arched and narrow, grim and +dull, without stalactites, suggestive of monks, and catacomb-vaults, and +the route to the grave; and here the dead were much fewer, proving +either that the general mob had not had time to penetrate so far inward, +or else that those within, if they were numerous, had gone out to +defend, or to harken to, the storm of their citadel. This passage led me +into an open space, the grandest of all, loftily vaulted, full of genie +riches and buried treasures of light, the million-fold _ensemble_ of +lustres dancing schottishe with the eye, as it moved or was still: this +place, I should guess, being quite half a mile from the entrance. My +prying lantern showed me here only nineteen dead, men of various +nations, and at the far end two holes in the floor, large enough to +admit the body, through which from below came up a sound of falling +water. Both of these holes, I could see, had been filled with cement +concrete--wisely, I fancy, for a current of air from somewhere seemed to +be now passing through them: and this would have resulted in the death +of the hiders. Both, however, of the fillings had been broken through, +one partially, the other wholly, by the ignorant, I presume, who +thought to hide in a secret place yet beyond, where they may have +believed, on seeing the artificial work, that others were. I had my ear +a long time at one of these openings, listening to that mysterious chant +down below in a darkness most murky and dismal; and afterwards, spurred +by the stubborn will which I had to be thorough, I went back, took a +number of outer robes from the bodies, tied them well together, then one +end round the nearest pillar, and having put my mouth to the hole, +calling: _'Anyone? Anyone?'_ let myself down by the rope of garments, +the candle at my head: I had not, however, descended far into those +mournful shades, when my right foot plunged into water: and instantly +the feeling of terror pierced me that all the evil things in the +universe were at my leg to drag me down to Hell: and I was up quicker +than I went down: nor did my flight cease till, with a sigh of +deliverance, I found myself in open air. + + * * * * * + +After this, seeing that the autumn warmth was passing away, I set myself +with more system to my task, and within the next six months worked with +steadfast will, and strenuous assiduity, seeking, not indeed for a man +in a mine, but for some evidence of the possibility that a man might be +alive, visiting in that time Northumberland and Durham, Fife and +Kinross, South Wales and Monmouthshire, Cornwall and the Midlands, the +lead mines of Derbyshire, of Allandale and other parts of +Northumberland, of Alston Moor and other parts of Cumberland, of +Arkendale and other parts of Yorkshire, of the western part of Durham, +of Salop, of Cornwall, of the Mendip Hills of Somersetshire, of Flint, +Cardigan, and Montgomery, of Lanark and Argyll, of the Isle of Man, of +Waterford and Down; I have gone down the 360-ft. Grand Pipe iron ladder +of the abandoned graphite-mine at Barrowdale in Cumberland, half-way up +a mountain 2,000 feet high; and visited where cobalt and manganese ore +is mined in pockets at the Foel Hiraeddog mine near Rhyl in Flintshire, +and the lead and copper Newton Stewart workings in Galloway; the Bristol +coal-fields, and mines of South Staffordshire, where, as in Somerset, +Gloucester, and Shropshire, the veins are thin, and the mining-system is +the 'long-wall,' whereas in the North, and Wales, the system is the +'pillar-and stall'; I have visited the open workings for iron ores of +Northamptonshire, and the underground stone-quarries, and the +underground slate-quarries, with their alternate pillars and chambers, +in the Festiniog district of North Wales; also the rock-salt workings; +the tin, copper and cobalt workings of Cornwall; and where the minerals +were brought to the surface on the backs of men, and where they were +brought by adit-levels provided with rail-roads, and where, as in old +Cornish mines, there are two ladders in the shaft, moved up and down +alternately, see-saw, and by skipping from one to the other at right +moments you ascended or descended, and where the drawing-up is by a gin +or horse-whinn, with vertical drum; the Tisbury and Chilmark quarries in +Wiltshire, the Spinkwell and Cliffwood quarries in Yorkshire; and every +tunnel, and every recorded hole: for something urged within me, saying: +'You must be sure first, or you can never be--yourself.' + + * * * * * + +At the Farnbrook Coal-field, in the Red Colt Pit, my inexperience nearly +ended my life: for though I had a minute theoretical knowledge of all +British workings, I was, in my practical relation to them, like a man +who has learnt seamanship on shore. At this place the dead were +accumulated, I think beyond precedent, the dark plain around for at +least three miles being as strewn as a reaped field with stacks, and, +near the bank, much more strewn than stack-fields, filling the only +house within sight of the pit-mouth--the small place provided for the +company's officials--and even lying over the great mountain-heap of +wark, composed of the shale and _débris_ of the working. Here I arrived +on the morning of the 15th December, to find that, unlike the others, +there was here no rope-ladder or other contrivance fixed by the +fugitives in the ventilating-shaft, which, usually, is not very deep, +being also the pumping-shaft, containing a plug-rod at one end of the +beam-engine which works the pumps; but looking down the shaft, I +discerned a vague mass of clothes, and afterwards a thing that could +only be a rope-ladder, which a batch of the fugitives, by hanging to it +their united weight, must have dragged down upon themselves, to prevent +the descent of yet others. My only way of going down, therefore, was by +the pit-mouth, and as this was an important place, after some hesitation +I decided, very rashly. First I provided for my coming up again by +getting a great coil of half-inch rope, which I found in the bailiff's +office, probably 130 fathoms long, rope at most mines being so +plentiful, that it almost seemed as if each fugitive had provided +himself in that way. This length of rope I threw over the beam of the +beam-engine in the bite where it sustains the rod, and paid one end +down the shaft, till both were at the bottom: in this way I could come +up, by tying one rope-end to the rope-ladder, hoisting it, fastening the +other end below, and climbing the ladder; and I then set to work to +light the pit-mouth engine-fire to effect my descent. This done, I +started the engine, and brought up the cage from the bottom, the 300 +yards of wire-rope winding with a quaint deliberateness round the drum, +reminding me of a camel's nonchalant leisurely obedience. When I saw the +four meeting chains of the cage-roof emerge, the pointed roof, and +two-sided frame, I stopped the ascent, and next attached to the +knock-off gear a long piece of twine which I had provided; carried the +other end to the cage, in which I had five companions; lit my +hat-candle, which was my test for choke-damp, and the Davy; and without +the least reflection, pulled the string. That hole was 900 feet deep. +First the cage gave a little up-leap, and then began to descend--quite +normally, I thought, though the candle at once went out--nor had I the +least fear; a strong current of air, indeed, blew up the shaft: but that +happens in shafts. _This_ current, however, soon became too vehemently +boisterous for anything: I saw the lamp-light struggle, the dead cheeks +quiver, I heard the cage-shoes go singing down the wire-rope guides, +and quicker we went, and quicker, that facile descent of Avernus, +slipping lightly, then raging, with sparks at the shoes and guides, and +a hurricane in my ears and eyes and mouth. When we bumped upon the +'dogs' at the bottom, I was tossed a foot upwards with the stern-faced +others, and then lay among them in the eight-foot space without +consciousness. + +It was only when I sat, an hour later, disgustedly reflecting on this +incident, that I remembered that there was always some 'hand-working' of +the engine during the cage-descents, an engineman reversing the action +by a handle at every stroke of the piston, to prevent bumping. However, +the only permanent injury was to the lamp: and I found many others +inside. + +I got out into the coal-hole, a large black hall 70 feet square by 15 +high, the floor paved with iron sheets; there were some little holes +round the wall, dug for some purpose which I never could discover, some +waggons full of coal and shale standing about, and all among the +waggons, and on them, and under them, bodies, clothes. I got a new lamp, +pouring in my own oil, and went down a long steep ducky-road, very +rough, with numerous rollers, over which ran a rope to the pit-mouth +for drawing up the waggons; and in the sides here, at regular intervals, +man-holes, within which to rescue one's self from down-tearing waggons; +and within these man-holes, here and there, a dead, and in others every +sort of food, and at one place on the right a high dead heap, and the +air here hot at 64 or 65 degrees, and getting hotter with the descent. + +The ducky led me down into a standing--a space with a turn-table--of +unusual size, which I made my base of operations for exploring. Here was +a very considerable number of punt-shaped putts on carriages, and also +waggons, such as took the new-mined coal from putt to pit-mouth; and +raying out from this open standing, several avenues, some ascending as +guggs, some descending as dipples, and the dead here all arranged in +groups, the heads of this group pointing up this gugg, of that group +toward that twin-way, of that other down that dipple, and the central +space, where weighing was done, almost empty: and the darksome silence +of this deep place, with all these multitudes, I found extremely +gravitating and hypnotic, drawing me, too, into their great Passion of +Silence in which they lay, all, all, so fixed and veteran; and at one +time I fell a-staring, nearer perhaps to death and the empty Gulf than +I knew; but I said I would be strong, and not sink into their habit of +stillness, but let them keep to their own way, and follow their own +fashion, and I would keep to my own way, and follow my own fashion, nor +yield to them, though I was but one against many; and I roused myself +with a shudder; and setting to work, caught hold of the drum-chain of a +long gugg, and planting my feet in the chogg-holes in which rested the +wheels of the putt-carriages that used to come roaring down the gugg, I +got up, stooping under a roof only three feet high, till I came, near +the end of the ascent, upon the scene of another battle: for in this +gugg about fifteen of the mine-hands had clubbed to wall themselves in, +and had done it, and I saw them lie there all by themselves through the +broken cement, with their bare feet, trousers, naked bodies all black, +visage all fierce and wild, the grime still streaked with sweat-furrows, +the candle in their rimless hats, and, outside, their own 'getting' +mattocks and boring-irons to besiege them. From the bottom of this gugg +I went along a very undulating twin-way, into which, every thirty yards +or so, opened one of those steep putt-ways which they called topples, +the twin-ways having plates of about 2-1/2 ft. gauge for the putts from +the headings, or workings, above to come down upon, full of coal and +shale: and all about here, in twin-way and topples, were ends and +corners, and not one had been left without its walling-in, and only one +was then intact, some, I fancied, having been broken open by their own +builders at the spur of suffocation, or hunger; and the one intact I +broke into with a mattock--it was only a thin cake of plaster, but +air-tight--and in a space not seven feet long behind it I found the very +ill-smelling corpse of a carting-boy, with guss and tugger at his feet, +and the pad which protected his head in pushing the putts, and a great +heap of loaves, sardines, and bottled beer against the walls, and five +or six mice that suddenly pitched screaming through the opening which I +made, greatly startling me, there being of dead mice an extraordinary +number in all this mine-region. I went back to the standing, and at one +point in the ground, where there was a windlass and chain, lowered +myself down a 'cut'--a small pit sunk perpendicularly to a lower +coal-stratum, and here, almost thinking I could hear the perpetual +rat-tat of notice once exchanged between the putt-boys below and the +windlass-boys above, I proceeded down a dipple to another place like a +standing, for in this mine there were six, or perhaps seven, veins: and +there immediately I came upon the acme of the horrible drama of this +Tartarus, for all here was not merely crowded, but, at some points, a +packed congestion of flesh, giving out a strong smell of the peach, +curiously mixed with the stale coal-odour of the pit, for here +ventilation must have been very limited; and a large number of these +masses had been shot down by only three hands, as I found: for through +three hermetical holes in a plaster-wall, built across a large gugg, +projected a little the muzzles of three rifles, which must have glutted +themselves with slaughter; and when, after a horror of disgust, having +swum as it were through a dead sea, I got to the wall, I peeped from a +small clear space before it through a hole, and made out a man, two +youths in their teens, two women, three girls, and piles of cartridges +and provisions; the hole had no doubt been broken from within at the +spur of suffocation, when the poison must have entered; and I +conjectured that here must be the mine-owner, director, manager, or +something of that sort, with his family. In another dipple-region, when +I had re-ascended to a higher level, I nearly fainted before I could +retire from the commencement of a region of after-damp, where there had +been an explosion, the bodies lying all hairless, devastated, and +grotesque. But I did not desist from searching every other quarter, no +momentary work, for not till near six did I go up by the pumping-shaft +rope-ladder. + + * * * * * + +One day, standing in that wild region of bare rock and sea, called +Cornwall Point, whence one can see the crags and postillion wild rocks +where Land's End dashes out into the sea, and all the wild blue sea +between, and not a house in sight, save the chimney of some little +mill-like place peeping between the rocks inland--on that day I finished +what I may call my official search. + +In going away from that place, walking northward, I came upon a lonely +house by the sea, a very beautiful house, made, it was clear, by an +artist, of the bungalow type, with an exquisitely sea-side expression. I +went to it, and found its special feature a spacious loggia or verandah, +sheltered by the overhanging upper story. Up to the first floor, the +exterior is of stone in rough-hewn blocks with a distinct batter, while +extra protection from weather is afforded by green slating above. The +roofs, of low pitch, are also covered with green slates, and a feeling +of strength and repose is heightened by the very long horizontal lines. +At one end of the loggia is a hexagonal turret, opening upon the loggia, +containing a study or nook. In front, the garden slopes down to the +sea, surrounded by an architectural sea-wall; and in this place I lived +three weeks. It was the house of the poet Machen, whose name, when I saw +it, I remembered very well, and he had married a very beautiful young +girl of eighteen, obviously Spanish, who lay on the bed in the large +bright bedroom to the right of the loggia, on her left exposed breast +being a baby with an india-rubber comforter in its mouth, both mother +and child wonderfully preserved, she still quite lovely, white brow +under low curves of black hair. The poet, strange to say, had not died +with them, but sat in the sitting-room behind the bedroom in a long +loose silky-grey jacket, at his desk--actually writing a poem! writing, +I could see, furiously fast, the place all littered with the written +leaves--at three o'clock in the morning, when, as I knew, the cloud +overtook this end of Cornwall, and stopped him, and put his head to rest +on the desk; and the poor little wife must have got sleepy, waiting for +it to come, perhaps sleepless for many long nights before, and gone to +bed, he perhaps promising to follow in a minute to die with her, but +bent upon finishing that poem, and writing feverishly on, running a race +with the cloud, thinking, no doubt, 'just two couplets more,' till the +thing came, and put his head to rest on the desk, poor carle: and I do +not know that I ever encountered aught so complimentary to my race as +this dead poet Machen, and his race with the cloud: for it is clear now +that the better kind of those poet men did not write to please the vague +inferior tribes who might read them, but to deliver themselves of the +divine warmth that thronged in their bosom; and if all the readers were +dead, still they would have written; and for God to read they wrote. At +any rate, I was so pleased with these poor people, that I stayed with +them three weeks, sleeping under blankets on a couch in the +drawing-room, a place full of lovely pictures and faded flowers, like +all the house: for I would not touch the young mother to remove her. And +finding on Machen's desk a big note-book with soft covers, dappled red +and yellow, not yet written in, I took it, and a pencil, and in the +little turret-nook wrote day after day for hours this account of what +has happened, nearly as far as it has now gone. And I think that I may +continue to write it, for I find in it a strange consolation, and +companionship. + + * * * * * + +In the Severn Valley, somewhere in the plain between Gloucester and +Cheltenham, in a rather lonely spot, I at that time travelling on a +tricycle-motor, I spied a curious erection, and went to it. I found it +of considerable size, perhaps fifty feet square, and thirty high, made +of pressed bricks, the perfectly flat roof, too, of brick, and not one +window, and only one door: this door, which I found open, was rimmed all +round its slanting rims with india-rubber, and when closed must have +been perfectly air-tight. Just inside I came upon fifteen English people +of the dressed class, except two, who were evidently bricklayers: six +ladies, and nine men: and at the further end, two more, men, who had +their throats cut; along one wall, from end to end were provisions; and +I saw a chest full of mixed potassic chlorate and black oxide of +manganese, with an apparatus for heating it, and producing oxygen--a +foolish thing, for additional oxygen could not alter the quantity of +breathed carbonic anhydride, which is a direct narcotic poison. Whether +the two with cut throats had sacrificed themselves for the others when +breathing difficulties commenced, or been killed by the others, was not +clear. When they could bear it no longer, they must have finally opened +the door, hoping that by then, after the passage of many days perhaps, +the outer air would be harmless, and so met their death. I believe that +this erection must have been run up by their own hands under the +direction of the two bricklayers, for they could not, I suppose, have +got workmen, except on the condition of the workmen's admission: on +which condition they would naturally employ as few as possible. + +In general, I remarked that the rich must have been more urgent and +earnest in seeking escape than the others: for the poor realised only +the near and visible, lived in to-day, and cherished the always-false +notion that to-morrow would be just like to-day. In an out-patients' +waiting-room, for instance, in the Gloucester infirmary, I chanced to +see an astonishing thing: five bodies of poor old women in shawls, come +to have their ailments seen-to on the day of doom; and these, I +concluded, had been unable to realise that anything would really happen +to the daily old earth which they knew, and had walked with assurance +on: for if everybody was to die, they must have thought, who would +preach in the Cathedral on Sunday evenings?--so they could not have +believed. In an adjoining room sat an old doctor at a table, the +stethoscope-tips still clinging in his ears: a woman with bared chest +before him; and I thought to myself: 'Well, this old man, too, died +doing his work....' + +In this same infirmary there was one surgical ward--for in a listless +mood I went over it--where the patients had died, not of the poison, nor +of suffocation, but of hunger: for the doctors, or someone, had made the +long room air-tight, double-boarding the windows, felting the doors, and +then locking them outside; they themselves may have perished before +their precautions for the imprisoned patients were complete: for I found +a heap of maimed shapes, mere skeletons, crowded round the door within. +I knew very well that they had not died of the cloud-poison, for the +pestilence of the ward was unmixed with that odour of peach which did +not fail to have more or less embalming effects upon the bodies which it +saturated. I rushed stifling from that place; and thinking it a pity, +and a danger, that such a horror should be, I at once set to work to +gather combustibles to burn the building to the ground. + +It was while I sat in an arm-chair in the street the next afternoon, +smoking, and watching the flames of this structure, that something was +suddenly born in me, something from the lowest Hell: and I smiled a +smile that never yet man smiled. And I said: 'I will burn, I will burn: +I will return to London....' + + * * * * * + +While I was on this Eastward journey, stopping for the night at the +town of Swindon, I had a dream: for I dreamed that a little brown bald +old man, with a bent back, whose beard ran in one thin streamlet of +silver from his chin to trail along the ground, said to me: 'You think +that you are alone on the earth, its sole Despot: well, have your fling: +but as sure as God lives, as God lives, as God lives'--he repeated it +six times--'sooner or later, later or sooner, you will meet another....' + +And I started from that frightful sleep with the brow of a corpse, wet +with sweat.... + + * * * * * + +I returned to London on the 29th of March, arriving within a hundred +yards of the Northern Station one windy dark evening about eight, where +I alighted, and walked to Euston Road, then eastward along it, till I +came to a shop which I knew to be a jeweller's, though it was too dark +to see any painted words. The door, to my annoyance, was locked, like +nearly all the shop-doors in London: I therefore went looking near the +ground, and into a cart, for something heavy, very soon saw a labourer's +ponderous boots, cut one from the shrivelled foot, and set to beat at +the glass till it came raining; then knocked away the bottom splinters, +and entered. + +No horrors now at that clatter of broken glass; no sick qualms; my +pulse steady; my head high; my step royal; my eye cold and calm. + + * * * * * + +Eight months previously, I had left London a poor burdened, cowering +wight. I could scream with laughter now at that folly! But it did not +last long. I returned to it--the Sultan. + + * * * * * + +No private palace being near, I was going to that great hotel in +Bloomsbury: but though I knew that numbers of candle-sticks would be +there, I was not sure that I should find sufficient: for I had acquired +the habit within the past few months of sleeping with at least sixty +lighted about me, and their form, pattern, style, age, and material was +of no small importance I selected ten from the broken shop, eight gold +and silver, and two of old ecclesiastical brass, and having made a +bundle, went out, found a bicycle at the Metropolitan Station, pumped +it, tied my bundle to the handle-bar, and set off riding. But since I +was too lazy to walk, I should certainly have procured some other means +of travelling, for I had not gone ten jolted and creaking yards, when +something went snap--it was a front fork--and I found myself half on +the ground, and half across the bare knees of a Highland soldier. I flew +with a shower of kicks upon the foolish thing: but that booted nothing; +and this was my last attempt in that way in London, the streets being in +an unsuitable condition. + +All that dismal night it blew great guns: and during nearly three weeks, +till London was no more, there was a storm, with hardly a lull, that +seemed to behowl her destruction. + + * * * * * + +I slept in a room on the second-floor of a Bloomsbury hotel that night; +and waking the next day at ten, ate with accursed shiverings in the cold +banqueting-room; went out then, and under drear low skies walked a long +way to the West district, accompanied all the time by a sound of +flapping flags--fluttering robes and rags--and grotesquely grim glimpses +of decay. It was pretty cold, and though I was warmly clad, the base +_bizarrerie_ of the European clothes which I wore had become a perpetual +offence and mockery in my eyes: at the first moment, therefore, I set +out whither I knew that I should find such clothes as a man might wear: +to the Turkish Embassy in Bryanston Square. + +I found it open, and all the house, like most other houses, almost +carpeted with dead forms. I had been acquainted with Redouza Pasha, and +cast an eye about for him amid that invasion of veiled hanums, +fierce-looking Caucasians in skins of beasts, a Sheik-ul-Islam in green +cloak, a khalifa, three emirs in cashmere turbans, two tziganes, their +gaudy brown mortality more glaringly abominable than even the Western's. +I could recognise no Redouza here: but the stair was fairly clear, and I +soon came to one of those boudoirs which sweetly recall the deep-buried +inner seclusion and dim sanctity of the Eastern home: a door encrusted +with mother-of-pearl, sculptured ceiling, candles clustered in tulips +and roses of opal, a brazen brasero, and, all in disarray, the silken +chemise, the long winter-cafetan doubled with furs, costly cabinets, +sachets of aromas, babooshes, stuffs of silk. When, after two hours, I +went from the house, I was bathed, anointed, combed, scented, and robed. + + * * * * * + +I have said to myself: 'I will ravage and riot in my Kingdoms. I will +rage like the Caesars, and be a withering blight where I pass like +Sennacherib, and wallow in soft delights like Sardanapalus. I will build +me a palace, vast as a city, in which to strut and parade my Monarchy +before the Heavens, with stones of pure molten gold, and rough +frontispiece of diamond, and cupola of amethyst, and pillars of pearl. +For there were many men to the eye: but there was One only, really: and +I was he. And always I knew it:--some faintest secret whisper which +whispered me: "_You_ are the Arch-one, the _motif_ of the world, Adam, +and the rest of men not much." And they are gone--all! all!--as no doubt +they deserved: and I, as was meet, remain. And there are wines, and +opiums, and haschish; and there are oils, and spices, fruits and +bivalves, and soft-breathing Cyclades, and scarlet luxurious Orients. I +will be restless and turbulent in my territories: and again, I will be +languishing and fond. I will say to my soul: "Be Full."' + + * * * * * + +I watch my mind, as in the old days I would watch a new precipitate in a +test-tube, to see into what sediment it would settle. + +I am very averse to trouble of any sort, so that the necessity for the +simplest manual operations will rouse me to indignation: but if a thing +will contribute largely to my ever-growing voluptuousness, I will +undergo a considerable amount of labour to accomplish it, though +without steady effort, being liable to side-winds and whims, and +purposeless relaxations. + +In the country I became very irritable at the need which confronted me +of occasionally cooking some green vegetable--the only item of food +which it was necessary to take some trouble over: for all meats, and +many fish, some quite delicious, I find already prepared in forms which +will remain good probably a century after my death, should I ever die. +In Gloucester, however, I found peas, asparagus, olives, and other +greens, already prepared to be eaten without base cares: and these, I +now see, exist everywhere in stores so vast comparatively to the needs +of a single man, that they may be called infinite. Everything, in fact, +is infinite compared with my needs. I take my meals, therefore, without +more trouble than a man who had to carve his joint, or chicken: though +even that little I sometimes find most irksome. There remains the +detestable degradation of lighting fires for warmth, which I have +occasionally to do: for the fire at the hotel invariably goes out while +I sleep. But that is an inconvenience of this vile northern island only, +to which I shall soon bid eternal glad farewells. + +During the afternoon of my second day in London, I sought out a strong +petrol motor in Holborn, overhauled and oiled it a little, and set off +over Blackfriars Bridge, making for Woolwich through that other more +putrid London on the south river-side. One after the other, I connected, +as I came upon them, two drays, a cab, and a private carriage, to my +motor in line behind, having cut away the withered horses, and using the +reins, chain-harness, &c., as impromptu couplings. And with this novel +train, I rumbled eastward. + +Half-way I happened to look at my old silver chronometer of +_Boreal_-days, which I have kept carefully wound--and how I can be still +thrown into these sudden frantic agitations by a nothing, a nothing, my +good God! I do not know. This time it was only the simple fact that the +hands chanced to point to 3.10 P.M., the precise moment at which all the +clocks of London had stopped--for each town has its thousand weird +fore-fingers, pointing, pointing still, to the moment of doom. In London +it was 3.10 on a Sunday afternoon. I first noticed it going up the river +on the face of the 'Big Ben' of the Parliament-house, and I now find +that they all, all, have this 3.10 mania, time-keepers still, but +keepers of the end of Time, fixedly noting for ever and ever that one +moment. The cloud-mass of fine penetrating _scoriae_ must have instantly +stopped their works, and they had fallen silent with man. But in their +insistence upon this particular minute I had found something so +hideously solemn, yet mock-solemn, personal, and as it were addressed to +_me_, that when my own watch dared to point to the same moment, I was +thrown into one of those sudden, paroxysmal, panting turmoils of mind, +half rage, half horror, which have hardly once visited me since I left +the _Boreal_. On the morrow, alas, another awaited me; and again on the +second morrow after. + + * * * * * + +My train was execrably slow, and not until after five did I arrive at +the entrance-gates of the Woolwich Royal Arsenal; and seeing that it was +too late to work, I uncoupled the motor, and leaving the others there, +turned back; but overtaken by lassitude, I procured candles, stopped at +the Greenwich Observatory, and in that old dark pile, remained for the +night, listening to a furious storm. But, a-stir by eight the next +morning, I got back by ten to the Arsenal, and proceeded to analyse that +vast and multiple entity. Many parts of it seemed to have been abandoned +in undisciplined haste, and in the Cap Factory, which I first entered, I +found tools by which to effect entry into any desired part. My first +search was for time-fuses of good type, of which I needed two or three +thousand, and after a wearily long time found a great number +symmetrically arranged in rows in a range of buildings called the +Ordnance Store Department. I then descended, walked back to the wharf, +brought up my train, and began to lower the fuses in bag-fulls by ropes +through a shoot, letting go each rope as the fuses reached the cart. +However, on winding one fuse, I found that the mechanism would not go, +choked with scoriae; and I had to resign myself to the task of opening +and dusting every one: a wretched labour in which I spent that day, like +a workman. But about four I threw them to the devil, having done two +hundred odd, and then hummed back in the motor to London. + + * * * * * + +That same evening at six I paid, for the first time, a visit to my old +self in Harley Street. It was getting dark, and a bleak storm that +hooted like whooping-cough swept the world. At once I saw that even _I_ +had been invaded: for my door swung open, banging, a lowered catch +preventing it from slamming; in the passage the car-lamp shewed me a +young man who seemed a Jew, sitting as if in sleep with dropped head, a +back-tilted silk-hat pressed down upon his head to the ears; and lying +on face, or back, or side, six more, one a girl with Arlesienne +head-dress, one a negress, one a Deal lifeboat's-man, and three of +uncertain race; the first room--the waiting-room--is much more +numerously occupied, though there still, on the table, lies the volume +of _Punch_, the _Gentlewoman_, and the book of London views in +heliograph. Behind this, descending two steps, is the study and +consulting-room, and there, as ever, the revolving-cover oak +writing-desk: but on my little shabby-red sofa, a large lady much too +big for it, in shimmering brown silk, round her left wrist a _trousseau_ +of massive gold trinkets, her head dropped right back, almost severed by +an infernal gash from the throat. Here were two old silver +candle-sticks, which I lit, and went upstairs: in the drawing-room sat +my old house-keeper, placidly dead in a rocking-chair, her left hand +pressing down a batch of the open piano-keys, among many strangers. But +she was very good: she had locked my bedroom against intrusion; and as +the door stands across a corner behind a green-baize curtain, it had not +been seen, or, at least, not forced. I did not know where the key might +be, but a few thumps with my back drove it open: and there lay my bed +intact, and everything tidy. This was a strange coming-back to it, Adam. + +But what intensely interested me in that room was a big thing standing +at the maroon-and-gold wall between wardrobe and dressing-table--that +gilt frame--and that man painted within it there. It was myself in oils, +done by--I forget his name now: a towering celebrity he was, and rather +a close friend of mine at one time. In a studio in St. John's Wood, I +remember, he did it; and many people said that it was quite a great work +of art. I suppose I was standing before it quite thirty minutes that +night, holding up the bits of candle, lost in wonder, in amused contempt +at that thing there. It is I, certainly: that I must admit. There is the +high-curving brow--really a King's brow, after all, it strikes me +now--and that vacillating look about the eyes and mouth which used to +make my sister Ada say: 'Adam is weak and luxurious.' Yes, that is +wonderfully done, the eyes, that dear, vacillating look of mine; for +although it is rather a staring look, yet one can almost see the dark +pupils stir from side to side: very well done. And there is the longish +face; and the rather thin, stuck-out moustache, shewing both lips which +pout a bit; and there is the nearly black hair; and there is the rather +visible paunch; and there is, oh good Heaven, the neat pink cravat--ah, +it must have been _that--the cravat_--that made me burst out into +laughter so loud, mocking, and uncontrollable the moment my eye rested +there! 'Adam Jeffson,' I muttered reproachfully when it was over, 'could +that poor thing in the frame have been you?' + +I cannot quite state why the tendency toward Orientalism--Oriental +dress--all the manner of an Oriental monarch--has taken full possession +of me: but so it is: for surely I am hardly any longer a Western, +'modern' mind, but a primitive and Eastern one. Certainly, that cravat +in the frame has receded a million, million leagues, ten thousand +forgotten aeons, from me! Whether this is a result due to my own +personality, of old acquainted with Eastern notions, or whether, +perhaps, it is the natural accident to any mind wholly freed from +trammels, I do not know. But I seem to have gone right back to the very +beginnings, and resemblance with man in his first, simple, gaudy +conditions. My hair, as I sit here writing, already hangs a black, oiled +string down my back; my scented beard sweeps in two opening whisks to my +ribs; I have on the _izar_, a pair of drawers of yomani cloth like +cotton, but with yellow stripes; over this a soft shirt, or quamis, of +white silk, reaching to my calves; over this a short vest of +gold-embroidered crimson, the _sudeyree_; over this a khaftan of +green-striped silk, reaching to the ankles, with wide, long sleeves +divided at the wrist, and bound at the waist with a voluminous gaudy +shawl of Cashmere for girdle; over this a warm wide-flowing torrent of +white drapery, lined with ermine. On my head is the skull-cap, covered +by a high crimson cap with deep-blue tassel; and on my feet is a pair of +thin yellow-morocco shoes, covered over with thick red-morocco +babooshes. My ankles--my ten fingers--my wrists--are heavy with gold and +silver ornaments; and in my ears, which, with considerable pain, I bored +three days since, are two needle-splinters, to prepare the holes for +rings. + + * * * * * + +O Liberty! I am free.... + + * * * * * + +While I was going to visit my old home in Harley Street that night, at +the very moment when I turned from Oxford Street into Cavendish Square, +this thought, fiercely hissed into my ears, was all of a sudden seething +in me: 'If now I should lift my eyes, and see a man walking yonder--just +yonder--_at the corner there_--turning from Harewood Place into Oxford +Street--what, my good God, should I do?--I without even a knife to run +and plunge into his heart?' + +And I turned my eyes--ogling, suspicious eyes of furtive +horror--reluctantly, lingeringly turned--and I peered deeply with +lowered brows across the murky winds at that same spot: but no man was +there. + +Hideously frequent is this nonsense now become with me--in streets of +towns--in deep nooks of the country: the invincible assurance that, if I +but turn the head, and glance _there_--at a certain fixed spot--I shall +surely see--I _must_ see--a man. And glance I must, glance I must, +though I perish: and when I glance, though my hairs creep and stiffen +like stirring amobse, yet in my eyes, I know, is monarch indignation +against the intruder, and my neck stands stiff as sovereignty itself, +and on my brow sits more than all the lordship of Persepolis and Iraz. + +To what point of wantonness this arrogance of royalty may lead me, I do +not know: I will watch, and see. It is written: 'It is not good for man +to be alone!' But good or no, the arrangement of One planet, One +inhabitant, already seems to me, not merely a natural and proper, but +the _only_ natural and proper, condition; so much so, that any other +arrangement has now, to my mind, a certain improbable, wild, and +far-fetched unreality, like the Utopian schemes of dreamers and +faddists. That the whole world should have been made for _me_ +alone--that London should have been built only in order that _I_ might +enjoy the vast heroic spectacle of its burning--that all history, and +all civilisation should have existed only in order to accumulate for +_my_ pleasures its inventions and facilities, its stores of purple and +wine, of spices and gold--no more extraordinary does it all seem to me +than to some little unreflecting Duke of my former days seemed the +possessing of lands which his remote forefathers seized, and slew the +occupiers: nor, in reality, is it even so extraordinary, I being alone. +But what sometimes strikes me with some surprise is, not that the +present condition of the world, with one sole master, should seem the +common-place and natural condition, but that it should have come to seem +_so_ common-place and natural--in nine months. The mind of Adam Jeffson +is adaptable. + + * * * * * + +I sat a long time thinking such things by my bed that night, till +finally I was disposed to sleep there. But I had no considerable number +of candle-sticks, nor was even sure of candles. I remembered, however, +that Peter Peters, three doors away on the other side of the street, +had had four handsome silver candelabra in his drawing-room, each +containing six stems; and I said to myself: 'I will search for candles +in the kitchen, and if I find any, I will go and get Peter Peters' +candelabra, and sleep here.' + +I took then the two lights which I had, my good God; went down to the +passage; then down to the basement; and there had no difficulty in +finding three packets of large candles, the fact being, I suppose, that +the cessation of gas-lighting had compelled everyone to provide +themselves in this way, for there were a great many wherever I looked. +With these I re-ascended, went into a little alcove on the second-floor +where I had kept some drugs, got a bottle of carbolic oil, and for ten +minutes went dashing all the corpses in the house. I then left the two +lighted bits of candle on the waiting-room table, and, with the +car-lamp, passed along the passage to the front-door, which was very +violently banging. I stepped out to find that the storm had increased to +a mighty turbulence (though it was dry), which at once caught my +clothes, and whirled them into a flapping cloud about and above me; +also, I had not crossed the street when my lamp was out. I persisted, +however, half blinded, to Peters' door. It was locked: but immediately +near the pavement was a window, the lower sash up, into which, with +little trouble, I lifted myself and passed. My foot, as I lowered it, +stood on a body: and this made me angry and restless. I hissed a curse, +and passed on, scraping the carpet with my soles, that I might hurt no +one: for I did not wish to hurt any one. Even in the almost darkness of +the room I recognised Peters' furniture, as I expected: for the house +was his on a long lease, and I knew that his mother had had the +intention to occupy it after his death. But as I passed into the +passage, all was mere blank darkness, and I, depending upon the lamp, +had left the matches in the other house. I groped my way to the stairs, +and had my foot on the first step, when I was stopped by a vicious +shaking of the front-door, which someone seemed to be at with hustlings +and the most urgent poundings: I stood with peering stern brows two or +three minutes, for I knew that if I once yielded to the flinching at my +heart, no mercy would be shown me in this house of tragedy, and +thrilling shrieks would of themselves arise and ring through its haunted +chambers. The rattling continued an inordinate time, and so instant and +imperative, that it seemed as if it could not fail to force the door. +But, though horrified, I whispered to my heart that it could only be the +storm which was struggling at it like the grasp of a man, and after a +time went on, feeling my way by the broad rail, in my brain somehow the +thought of a dream which I had had in the _Boreal_ of the woman Clodagh, +how she let drop a fluid like pomegranate-seeds into water, and tendered +it to Peter Peters: and it was a mortal purging draught; but I would not +stop, but step by step went up, though I suffered very much, my brows +peering at the utter darkness, and my heart shocked at its own rashness. +I got to the first landing, and as I turned to ascend the second part of +the stair, my left hand touched something icily cold: I made some quick +instinctive movement of terror, and, doing so, my foot struck against +something, and I stumbled, half falling over what seemed a small table +there. Immediately a horrible row followed, for something fell to the +ground: and at that instant, ah, I heard something--a voice--a human +voice, which uttered words close to my ear--the voice of Clodagh, for I +knew it: yet not the voice of Clodagh in the flesh, but her voice +clogged with clay and worms, and full of effort, and thick-tongued: and +in that ghastly speech of the grave I distinctly heard the words: + +'_Things being as they are in the matter of the death of Peter ..._' + +And there it stopped dead, leaving me so sick, my God, so sick, that I +could hardly snatch my robes about me to fly, fly, fly, soft-footed, +murmuring in pain, down the steps, down like a sneaking thief, but +quick, snatching myself away, then wrestling with the cruel catch of the +door which she would not let me open, feeling her all the time behind +me, watching me. And when I did get out, I was away up the length of the +street, trailing my long _jubbah_, glancing backward, panting, for I +thought that she might dare to follow, with her daring evil will. And +all that night I lay on a common bench in the wind-tossed and dismal +Park. + + * * * * * + +The first thing which I did when the sun was up was to return to that +place: and I returned with hard and masterful brow. + +Approaching Peters' house I saw now, what the darkness had hidden from +me, that on his balcony was someone--quite alone there. The balcony is a +slight open-work wrought-iron structure, connected to a small roof by +three slender voluted pillars, two at the ends, one in the middle: and +at the middle one I saw someone, a woman--kneeling--her arms clasped +tight about the pillar, and her face rather upward-looking. Never did I +see aught more horrid: there were the gracious curves of the woman's +bust and hips still well preserved in a clinging dress of red cloth, +very faded now; and her reddish hair floated loose in a large flimsy +cloud about her; but her face, in that exposed position, had been quite +eaten away by the winds to a noseless skeleton, which grinned from ear +to ear, with slightly-dropped under-jaw--most horrid in contrast with +the body, and frame of hair. I meditated upon her a long time that +morning from the opposite pavement. An oval locket at her throat +contained, I knew, my likeness: for eight years previously I had given +it her. It was Clodagh, the poisoner. + +I thought that I would go into that house, and walk through it from top +to bottom, and sit in it, and spit in it, and stamp in it, in spite of +any one: for the sun was now high. I accordingly went in again, and up +the stairs to the spot where I had been frightened, and had heard the +words. And here a great rage took me, for I at once saw that I had been +made the dupe of the malign wills that beset me, and the laughing-stock +of Those for whom I care not a fig. From a little mahogany table there I +had knocked sideways to the ground, in my stumble, a small phonograph +with a great 25-inch japanned-tin horn, which, the moment that I now +noticed it, I took and flung with a great racket down the stairs: for +that this it was which had addressed me I did not doubt; it being indeed +evident that its clock-work mechanism had been stopped by the volcanic +scoriae in the midst of the delivery of a record, but had been started +into a few fresh oscillations by the shock of the fall, making it utter +those thirteen words, and stop. I was sufficiently indignant at the +moment, but have since been glad, for I was thereby put upon the notion +of collecting a number of cylinders with records, and have been touched +with indescribable sensations, sometimes thrilled, at hearing the +silence of this Eternity broken by those singing and speaking voices, so +life-like, yet most ghostly, of the old dead. + + * * * * * + +Well, the most of that same day I spent in a high chamber at Woolwich, +dusting out, and sometimes oiling, time-fuses: a work in which I +acquired such facility in some hours, that each finally occupied me no +more than ninety to a hundred seconds, so that by evening I had, with +the previous day's work, close on 600. The construction of these little +things is very simple, and, I believe, effective, so that I should have +no difficulty in making them myself in large numbers, if it were +necessary. Most contain a tiny dry battery, which sends a current along +a bell or copper wire at the running-down moment, the clocks being +contrived to be set for so many days, hours, and minutes, while others +ignite by striking. I arranged in rows in the covered van those which I +had prepared, and passed the night in an inn near the Barracks. I had +brought candle-sticks from London in the morning, and arranged the +furniture--a settee, chest-of-drawers, basin-stand, table, and a number +of chairs--in three-quarter-circle round the bed, so getting a +triple-row altar of lights, mixed with vases of the house containing +small palms and evergreens; with this I mingled a smell of ambergris +from the scattered contents of some Turkish sachets which I had; in the +bed a bottle of sweet Chypre-wine, with _bonbons_, nuts, and Havannas. +As I lay me down, I could not but reflect, with a smile which I knew to +be evil, upon that steady, strong, smouldering lust within me which was +urging me through all those pains at the Arsenal, I who shirked every +labour as unkingly. So, however, it was: and the next morning I was at +it again after an early breakfast, my fingers at first quite stiff with +cold, for it blew a keen and January gale. By nine I had 820 fuses; and +judging those sufficient to commence with, got into the motor, and took +it round to a place called the East Laboratory, a series of detached +buildings, where I knew that I should find whatever I wanted: and I +prepared my mind for a day's labour. In this place I found incredible +stores: mountains of percussion-caps, more chambers of fuses, small-arm +cartridges, shells, and all those murderous explosive mixtures, a-making +and made, with which modern savagery occupied its leisure in +exterminating itself: or, at least, savagery civilised in its top-story +only: for civilisation was apparently from the head downwards, and never +once grew below the neck in all those centuries, those people being +certainly much more mental than cordial, though I doubt if they were +genuinely mental either--reminding one rather of that composite image of +Nebuchadnezzar, head of gold, breast brazen, feet of clay--head +man-like, heart cannibal, feet bestial--like aegipeds, and mermaids, and +puzzling undeveloped births. However, it is of no importance: and +perhaps I am not much better than the rest, for I, too, after all, am of +them. At any rate, their lyddites, melanites, cordites, dynamites, +powders, jellies, oils, marls, and civilised barbarisms and obiahs, came +in very well for their own destruction: for by two o'clock I had so +worked, that I had on the first cart the phalanx of fuses; on the +second a goodly number of kegs, cartridge-cases and cartridge-boxes, +full of powder, explosive cottons and gelatines, and liquid +nitro-glycerine, and earthy dynamite, with some bombs, two reels of +cordite, two pieces of tarred cloth, a small iron ladle, a shovel, and a +crow-bar; the cab came next, containing a considerable quantity of loose +coal; and lastly, in the private carriage lay four big cans of common +oil. And first, in the Laboratory, I connected a fuse-conductor with a +huge tun of blasting-gelatine, and I set the fuse on the ground, timed +for the midnight of the twelfth day thence; and after that I visited the +Main Factory, the Carriage Department, the Ordnance Store Department, +the Royal Artillery Barracks, and the Powder Magazines in the Marshes, +traversing, as it seemed to me, miles of building; and in some I laid +heaps of oil-saturated coal with an explosive in suitable spots on the +ground-floor near wood-work, and in some an explosive alone: and all I +timed for ignition at midnight of the twelfth day. Hot now, and black as +ink, I proceeded through the town, stopping with perfect system at every +hundredth door: and I laid the faggots of a great burning: and timed +them all for ignition at midnight of the twelfth day. + + * * * * * + +Whatever door I found closed against me I drove at it with a maniac +malice. + + * * * * * + +Shall I commit the whole dark fact to paper?--that deep, deep secret of +the human organism? + +As I wrought, I waxed wicked as a demon! And with lowered neck, and +forward curve of the lower spine, and the blasphemous strut of tragic +play-actors, I went. For here was no harmless burning which I did--but +the crime of arson; and a most fiendish, though vague, malevolence, and +the rage to burn and raven and riot, was upon me like a dog-madness, and +all the mood of Nero, and Nebuchadnezzar: and from my mouth proceeded +all the obscenities of the slum and of the gutter, and I sent up such +hisses and giggles of challenge to Heaven that day as never yet has man +let out. But this way lies a spinning frenzy.... + + * * * * * + +I have taken a dead girl with wild huggings to my bosom; and I have +touched the corrupted lip, and spat upon her face, and tossed her down, +and crushed her teeth with my heel, and jumped and jumped upon her +breast, like the snake-stamping zebra, mad, mad...! + + * * * * * + +I was desolated, however, that first day of the faggot-laying, even in +the midst of my sense of omnipotence, by one thing, which made me give +some kicks to the motor: for it was only crawling, so that a good part +of the way I was stalking by its side; and when I came to that hill near +the Old Dover Road, the whole thing stopped, and refused to move, the +weight of the train being too great for my horse-power traction. I did +not know what to do, and stood there in angry impotence a full +half-hour, for the notion of setting up an electric station, with or +without automatic stoking-gear, presented so hideous a picture of labour +to me, that I would not entertain it. After a time, however, I thought +that I remembered that there was a comparatively new power station in +St. Paneras driven by turbines: and at once, I uncoupled the motor, +covered the drays with the tarpaulins, and went driving at singing +speed, choosing the emptier by-streets, and not caring whom I crushed. +After some trouble I found, in fact, the station in an obscure by-street +made of two long walls, and went in by a window, a rage upon me to have +my will quickly accomplished. I ran up some stairs, across two rooms, +into a gallery containing a switch-board, and in the room below saw the +works, all very neat-looking, but, as I soon found, very dusty. I went +down, and fixed upon a generating set--there were three--that would give +a decent load, and then saw that the switch-gear belonging to this +particular generator was in order. I then got some cloths and thoroughly +cleaned the dust off the commutators; ran next--for I was in a strange +fierce haste--and turned the water into the turbines, and away went the +engine; I hurried to set the lubricators running on the bearings, and in +a couple of minutes had adjusted the speed, and the brushes of the +generators, and switched the current on to the line. By this time, +however, I saw that it was getting dark, and feared that little could be +done that day; still, I hurried out, the station still running, got into +the car, and was off to look for a good electric one, of which there are +hosts in the streets, in order at least to clean up and adjust the motor +that night. I drove down three by-streets, till I turned into Euston +Road: but I had no sooner reached it than I pulled up--with sudden +jerk--with a shout of astonishment. + +That cursed street was all lighted up and gay! and three shimmering +electric globes, not far apart, illuminated every feature of a ghastly +battle-field of dead. + +And there was a thing there, the grinning impression of which I shall +carry to my grave: a thing which spelled and spelled at me, and ceased, +and began again, and ceased, and spelled at me. For, above a shop which +faced me was a flag, a red flag with white letters, fluttering on the +gale the words: 'Metcalfe's Stores'; and beneath the flag, stretched +right across the house, was the thing which spelled, letter by letter, +in letters of light: and it spelled two words, deliberately, coming to +the end, and going back to recommence: + + _Drink_ + ROBORAL. + +And that was the last word of civilised Man to me, Adam Jeffson--its +final counsel--its ultimate gospel and message--to _me_, my good God! +_Drink Roboral!_ + +I was put into such a passion of rage by this blatant ribaldry, which +affected me like the laughter of a skeleton, that I rushed from the car, +with the intention, I believe, of seeking stones to stone it: but no +stones were there: and I had to stand impotently enduring that rape of +my eyes, its victoriously-dogged iteration, its taunting leer, its +Drink Roboral--D, R, I, N, K R, O, B, O, R, A, L. + +It was one of those electrical spelling-advertisements, worked by a +small motor commutator driven by a works-motor, and I had now set it +going: for on some night before that Sabbath of doom the chemist must +have set it to work, but finding the works abandoned, had not troubled +to shut it down again. At any rate, this thing stopped my work for that +day, for when I went to shut down the works it was night; and I drove to +the place which I had made my home in sullen and weary mood: for I knew +that Roboral would not cure the least of all my sores. + + * * * * * + +The next morning I awoke in quite another frame of mind, disposed to +idle, and let things go. After rising, dressing, washing in cold diluted +rose-water, and descending to the _salle-à-manger_, where I had laid my +morning-meal the previous evening, I promenaded an hour the only one of +these long sombrous tufted corridors in which there were not more than +two dead, though behind the doors on either hand, all of which I had +locked, I knew that they lay in plenty. When I was warmed, I again went +down, looked into my motor, got three cylinders from one of a number of +motors standing near, lit up, and drove away--to Woolwich, as I thought +at first: but instead of crossing the river by Blackfriars, I went more +eastward; and having passed from Holborn into Cheapside, which was +impassable, unless I crawled, was about to turn, when I noticed a +phonograph-shop: into this I got by a side-door, suddenly seized by +quite a curiosity to hear what I might hear. I took a good one with +microphone diaphragm, and a number of record-cylinders in a +brass-handled box, and I put them into the car, for there was still a +very strong peach-odour in this closed shop, which displeased me. I then +proceeded southward and westward through by-streets, seeking some +probable house into which to go from the rough cold winds, when I saw +the Parliament-house, and thither, turning river-ward by Westminster +Hall to Palace Yard, I went, and with my two parcels, one weighting each +arm, walked into this old place along a line of purple-dusted busts; I +deposited my boxes on a table beside a massive brass thing lying there, +which, I suppose, must be what they called the Mace; and I sat to hear. + +Unfortunately, the phonograph was a clock-work one, and when I wound it, +it would not go: so that I got very angry at my absurdity in not +bringing an electric mechanism, as I could with much less trouble have +put in a chemical than cleaned the clock-work; and this thing put me +into such a rage, that I nearly tore it to pieces, and was half for +kicking it: but there was a man sitting in an old straight-backed chair +quite near me, which they called the Speaker's Chair, who was in such a +pose, that he had, every time I glanced suddenly at him, precisely the +air of bending forward with interest to watch what I was doing, a +Mohrgrabim kind of man, almost black, with Jewish nose, crinkled hair, +keffie, and flowing robe, probably, I should say, an Abyssinian Galla; +with him were only five or six people about the benches, mostly leaning +forward with rested head, so that this place had quite a void +sequestered mood. At all events, this Galla, or Bedouin, with his +grotesque interest in my doings, restrained my hands: and, finally, by +dint of peering, poking, dusting, and adjusting, in an hour's time I got +the phonograph to go very well. + +And all that morning, and far into late afternoon, forgetful of food, +and of the cold which gradually possessed me, I sat there listening, +musing--cylinder after cylinder: frivolous songs, orchestras, voices of +famous men whom I had spoken with, and shaken their solid hands, +speaking again to me, but thick-tongued, with hoarse effort and +gurgles, from out the vague void beyond the grave: most strange, most +strange. And the third cylinder that I put on, ah, I knew, with a +fearful start, that voice of thunder, I knew it well: it was the +preacher, Mackay's; and many, many times over I heard those words of his +that day, originally spoken, it seems, when the cloud had just passed +the longitude of Vienna; and in all that torrent of speech not one +single word of 'I told you so': but he cries: + +'...praise Him, O Earth, for He is He: and if He slay me, I will laugh +raillery at His Sword, and banter Him to His face: for His Sword is +sharp Mercy, and His poisons kill my death. Fear not, therefore, little +flock of Man! but take my comfort to your heart to-night, and my sweets +to your tongue: for though ye have sinned, and hardened yourselves as +brass, and gone far, far astray in these latter wildernesses, yet He is +infinitely greater than your sin, and will lead you back. Break not, +break not, poor broken heart of Earth: for from Him I run herald to thee +this night with the sweet and secret message, that of old He chose thee, +and once mixed conjugally with thee in an ancient sleep, O Afflicted: +and He is thou, and thou art He, flesh of His flesh, and bone of His +bone; and if thou perish utterly, it is that He has perished utterly, +too: for thou art He. Hope, therefore, most, and cheeriest smile, at +the very apsis and black nadir of Despair: for He is nimble as a weasel, +and He twists like Proteus, and His solstices and equinoxes, His tropics +and turning-points and recurrences are innate in Being, and when He +falls He falls like harlequin and shuttlecocks, shivering plumb to His +feet, and each third day, lo, He is risen again, and His defeats are but +the stepping-stones and rough scaffolding from which He builds His +Parthenons, and from the densest basalt gush His rills, and the last end +of this Earth shall be no poison-cloud, I say to you, but Carnival and +Harvest-home ... though ye have sinned, poor hearts ...' + + * * * * * + +So Mackay, with thick-tongued metallic effort. I found this brown room +of the Commons-house, with its green benches, and grilled galleries, so +agreeable to my mood, that I went again the next morning, and listened +to more records, till they tired me: for what I had was a prurient itch +to hear secret scandals, and revelations of the festering heart, but +these cylinders, gathered from a shop, divulged nothing. I then went out +to make for Woolwich, but in the car saw the poet's note-book in which I +had written: and I took it, went back, and was writing an hour, till I +was tired of that, too; and judging it too late for Woolwich that day, +wandered about the dusty committee-rooms and recesses of this +considerable place. In one room another foolishness suddenly seized upon +me, shewing how my slightest whim has become more imperious within me +than all the Jaws of the Medes and Persians: for in that room, Committee +Room No. 15, I found an apparently young policeman lying flat on his +back, who pleased me: his helmet tilted under his head, and near one +white-gloved hand a blue official envelope; the air of that stagnant +quiet room was still perceptibly peach-scented, and he gave not the +slightest odour that I could detect, though he had been corporal and +stalwart, his face now the colour of dark ashes, in each hollow cheek a +ragged hole about the size of a sixpence, the flimsy vaulted eye-lids +well embedded in their caverns, from under whose fringe of eye-lash +seemed whispered the word: '_Eternity._' His hair seemed very long for a +policeman, or perhaps it had grown since death; but what interested me +about him, was the envelope at his hand: for 'what,' I asked myself, +'was this fellow doing here with an envelope at three o'clock on a +Sunday afternoon?' This made me look closer, and then I saw by a mark at +the left temple that he had been shot, or felled; whereupon I was +thrown into quite a great rage, for I thought that this poor man was +killed in the execution of his duty, when many of his kind perhaps, and +many higher than he, had fled their post to pray or riot. So, after +looking at him a long time, I said to him: 'Well, D. 47, you sleep very +well: and you did well, dying so: I am pleased with you, and to mark my +favour, I decree that you shall neither rot in the common air, nor burn +in the common flames: for by my own hand shall you be distinguished with +burial.' And this wind so possessed me, that I at once went out: with +the crow-bar from the car I broke the window of a near iron-monger's in +Parliament Street, got a spade, and went into Westminster Abbey. I soon +prised up a grave-slab of some famous man in the north transept, and +commenced to shovel: but, I do not know how, by the time I had digged a +foot the whole impulse passed from me: I left off the work, promising to +resume it: but nothing was ever done, for the next day I was at +Woolwich, and busy enough about other matters. + + * * * * * + +During the next nine days I worked with a fever on me, and a map of +London before me. + +There were places in that city!--secrets, vastnesses, horrors! In the +wine-vaults at London Docks was a vat which must certainly have +contained between twenty and thirty thousand gallons: and with dancing +heart I laid a train there; the tobacco-warehouse must have covered +eighty acres: and there I laid a fuse. In a house near Regent's Park, +standing in a garden, and shut from the street by a high wall, I saw a +thing...! and what shapes a great city hid I now first know. + + * * * * * + +I left no quarter unremembered, taking a train, no longer of four, but +of eight, vehicles, drawn by an electric motor which I re-charged every +morning, mostly from the turbine station in St. Pancras, once from a +steam-station with very small engine and dynamo, found in the Palace +Theatre, which gave little trouble, and once from a similar little +station in a Strand hotel. With these I visited West Ham and Kew, +Finchley and Clapham, Dalston and Marylebone; I exhausted London; I +deposited piles in the Guildhall, in Holloway Gaol, in the new pillared +Justice-hall of Newgate, in the Tower, in the Parliament-house, in St. +Giles' Workhouse, in the Crypt and under the organ of St. Paul's, in the +South Kensington Museum, in the Royal Agricultural Society, in +Whiteley's place, in the Trinity House, in Liverpool Street, in the +Office of Works, in the secret recesses of the British Museum; in a +hundred inflammable warehouses, in five hundred shops, in a thousand +private dwellings. And I timed them all for ignition at midnight of the +23rd April. + +By five in the afternoon of the 22nd, when I left my train in Maida +Vale, and drove alone to the solitary house on high ground near +Hampstead Heath which I had chosen, the work was well finished. + + * * * * * + +The great morning dawned, and I was early a-stir: for I had much to do +that day. + +I intended to make for the sea-shore the next morning, and had therefore +to choose a good petrol motor, store it, and have it in a place of +safety; I had also to drag another vehicle after me, stored with trunks +of time-fuses, books, clothes, and other little things. + +My first journey was to Woolwich, whence I took all that I might ever +require in the way of mechanism; thence to the National Gallery, where I +cut from their frames the 'Vision of St. Helena,' Murillo's 'Boy +Drinking,' and 'Christ at the Column'; and thence to the Embassy to +bathe, anoint myself, and dress. + +As I had anticipated, and hoped, a blustering spring gale was blowing +from the north. + +Even as I set out from Hampstead, about 9 A.M., I had been able to guess +that some of my fuses had somehow anticipated the appointed hour: for I +saw three red hazes at various points in the air, and heard the far +vague booming of an occasional explosion; and by 11 A.M. I felt sure +that a large region of north-eastern London must be in flames. With the +solemn feelings of bridegrooms and marriage-mornings--with a flinching, +a flinching heart, God knows, yet a heart up-buoyed on thrilling joys--I +went about making preparations for the Gargantuan orgy of the night. + + * * * * * + +The house at Hampstead, which no doubt still stands, is of rather +pleasing design in quite a stone and rural style, with good breadths of +wall-surface, two plain coped gables, mullioned windows, and oversailing +slate verge roofs, but, rather spoiling it, a high square three-storied +tower at the south-east angle, on the topmost floor of which I had slept +the previous night. There I had provided myself with a jar of pale +tobacco mixed with rose-leaves and opium, found in a foreign house in +Seymour Street, also a genuine Saloniki hookah, together with the best +wines, nuts, and so on, and a gold harp of the musician Krasinski, +stamped with his name, taken from his house in Portland Street. + +But so much did I find to do that day, and so many odd things turned up +which I thought that I would take with me, that it was not till near six +that I drove finally northward through Camden Town. And now an ineffable +awe possessed my soul at the solemn noise which everywhere encompassed +me, an ineffable awe, a blissful terror. Never, never could I have +dreamed of aught so great and potent. All above my head there rushed +southward with wide-spread wing of haste a sparkling smoke; and mixed +with the immense roaring I heard mysterious hubbubs of tumblings and +rumblings, which I could not at all comprehend, like the moving-about of +furniture in the houses of Titans; while pervading all the air was a +most weird and tearful sound, as it were threnody, and a wild wail of +pain, and dying swan-songs, and all lamentations and tribulations of the +world. Yet I was aware that, at an hour so early, the flames must be far +from general; in fact, they had not well commenced. + + * * * * * + +As I had left a good semicircular region of houses, with a radius of +four hundred yards, without combustibles to the south of the isolated +house which I was to occupy, and as the wind was so strongly from the +north, I simply left my two vehicles at the door of the house, without +fear of any injury: nor did any occur. I then went up to the top of the +tower, lit the candles, and ate voraciously of the dinner which I had +left ready, for since the morning I had taken nothing; and then, with +hands and heart that quivered, I arranged the clothes of the low +spring-bed upon which to throw my frame in the morning hours. Opposite +the wall, where lay the bed, was a Gothic window, pretty large, with low +sill, hung with poppy-figured muslin, and looking directly south, so +that I could recline at ease in the red-velvet easy-chair, and see. It +had evidently been a young lady's room: for on the toilette were +cut-glass bottles, a plait of brown hair, powders, _rouge-aux-lèvres,_ +one little bronze slipper, and knick-knacks, and I loved her and hated +her, though I did not see her anywhere. About half-past eight I sat at +the window to watch, all being arranged and ready at my right hand, the +candles extinguished in the red room: for the theatre was opened, was +opened: and the atmosphere of this earth seemed turned into Hell, and +Hell was in my soul. + + * * * * * + +Soon after midnight there was a sudden and very visible increase in the +conflagration. On all hands I began to see blazing structures soar, with +grand hurrahs, on high. In fives and tens, in twenties and thirties, all +between me and the remote limit of my vision, they leapt, they lingered +long, they fell. My spirit more and more felt, and danced--deeper +mysteries of sensation, sweeter thrills. I sipped exquisitely, I drew +out enjoyment leisurely. Anon, when some more expansive angel of flame +would arise from the Pit with steady aspiration, and linger with +outspread arms, and burst, I would lift a little from the chair, leaning +forward to clap, as at some famous acting; or I would call to them in +shouts of cheer, giving them the names of Woman. For now I seemed to see +nothing but some bellowing pandemonic universe through crimson glasses, +and the air was wildly hot, and my eye-balls like theirs that walk +staring in the inner midst of burning fiery furnaces, and my skin itched +with a fierce and prickly itch. Anon I touched the chords of the harp to +the air of Wagner's 'Walküren-ritt.' + +Near three in the morning, I reached the climax of my guilty sweets. My +drunken eye-lids closed in a luxury of pleasure, and my lips lay +stretched in a smile that dribbled; a sensation of dear peace, of +almighty power, consoled me: for now the whole area which through +streaming tears I surveyed, mustering its ten thousand thunders, and +brawling beyond the stars the voice of its southward-rushing torment, +billowed to the horizon one grand Atlantic of smokeless and flushing +flame; and in it sported and washed themselves all the fiends of Hell, +with laughter, shouts, wild flights, and holiday; and I--first of my +race--had flashed a signal to the nearer planets.... + + + * * * * * + + * * * * * + +Those words: 'signal to the nearer planets' I wrote nearly fourteen +months ago, some days after the destruction of London, I being then on +board the old _Boreal_, making for the coast of France: for the night +was dark, though calm, and I was afraid of running into some ship, yet +not sleepy, so I wrote to occupy my fingers, the ship lying still. The +book in which I wrote has been near me: but no impulse to write anything +has visited me, till now I continue; not, however, that I have very much +to put down. + +I had no intention of wearing out my life in lighting fires every +morning to warm myself in the inhospitable island of Britain, and set +out to France with the view of seeking some palace in the Riviera, +Spain, or perhaps Algiers, there, for the present at least, to make my +home. + +I started from Calais toward the end of April, taking my things along, +the first two days by train, and then determining that I was in no +hurry, and a petrol motor easier, took one, and maintained a generally +southern and somewhat eastern direction, ever-anew astonished at the +wildness of the forest vegetation which, within so short a space since +the disappearance of man, chokes this pleasant land, even before the +definite advent of summer. + +After three weeks of very slow travelling--for though I know several +countries very well, France with her pavered villages, hilly character, +vines, forests, and primeval country-manner, is always new and charming +to me--after three weeks I came unexpectedly to a valley which had never +entered my head; and the moment that I saw it, I said: 'Here I will +live,' though I had no idea what it was, for the monastery which I saw +did not look at all like a monastery, according to my ideas: but when I +searched the map, I discovered that it must be La Chartreuse de +Vauclaire in Périgord. + +It is my belief that this word 'Vauclaire' is nothing else than a +corruption of the Latin _Vallis Clara,_ or Bright Valley, for _l'_s and +_u'_s did interchange about in this way, I remember: _cheval_ becoming +_chevau(x)_ in the plural, like 'fool' and 'fou,' and the rest: which +proves the dear laziness of French people, for the 'l' was too much +trouble for them to sing, and when they came to _two_ 'l's' they quite +succumbed, shying that vault, or vo_u_te, and calling it some _y_. But +at any rate, this Vauclaire, or Valclear, was well named: for here, if +anywhere, is Paradise, and if anyone knew how and where to build and +brew liqueurs, it was those good old monks, who followed their Master +with _entrain_ in that Cana miracle, and in many other things, I fancy, +but aesthetically shirked to say to any mountain: 'Be thou removed.' + + * * * * * + +The general hue of the vale is a deep cerulean, resembling that blue of +the robes of Albertinelli's Madonnas; so, at least, it strikes the eye +on a clear forenoon of spring or summer. The monastery consists of an +oblong space, or garth, around three sides of which stand sixteen small +houses, with regular intervals between, all identical, the cells of the +fathers; between the oblong space and the cells come the cloisters, with +only one opening to the exterior; in the western part of the oblong is +a little square of earth under a large cypress-shade, within which, as +in a home of peace, it sleeps: and there, straight and slanting, stand +little plain black crosses over graves.... + +To the west of the quadrangle is the church, with the hostelry, and an +asphalted court with some trees and a fountain; and beyond, the +entrance-gate. + +All this stands on a hill of gentle slope, green as grass; and it is +backed close against a steep mountain-side, of which the tree-trunks are +conjectural, for I never saw any, the trees resembling rather one +continuous leafy tree-top, run out high and far over the extent of the +mountain. + + * * * * * + +I was there four months, till something drove me away. I do not know +what had become of the fathers and brothers, for I only found five, four +of whom I took in two journeys in the motor beyond the church of Saint +Martial d'Artenset, and left them there; and the fifth remained three +weeks with me, for I would not disturb him in his prayer. He was a +bearded brother of forty years or thereabouts, who knelt in his cell +robed and hooded in all his phantom white: for in no way different from +whatever is most phantom, visionary and eerie must a procession of these +people have seemed by gloaming, or dark night This particular brother +knelt, I say, in his small chaste room, glaring upward at his Christ, +who hung long-armed in a little recess between the side of three narrow +bookshelves and a projection of the wall; and under the Christ a gilt +and blue Madonna; the books on the three shelves few, leaning different +ways. His right elbow rested on a square plain table, at which was a +wooden chair; behind him, in a corner, the bed: a bed all enclosed in +dark boards, a broad perpendicular board along the foot, reaching the +ceiling, a horizontal board at the side over which he got into bed, +another narrower one like it at the ceiling for fringe and curtain, and +another perpendicular one hiding the pillow, making the clean bed within +a very shady and cosy little den, on the wall of this den being another +smaller Christ and a little picture. On the perpendicular board at the +foot hung two white garments, and over a second chair at the bed-side +another: all very neat and holy. He was a large stern man, blond as +corn, but with some red, too, in his hairy beard; and appalling was the +significance of those eyes that prayed, and the long-drawn cavity of +those saffron cheeks. I cannot explain to myself my deep reverence for +this man; but I had it, certainly. Many of the others, it is clear, had +fled: but not he: and to the near-marching cloud he opposed the Cross, +holding one real as the other--he alone among many. For Christianity was +an _élite_ religion, in which all were called, but few chosen, differing +from Mohammedanism and Buddhism, which grasped and conquered all within +their reach: the effect of Christ rather resembling Plato's and Dante's, +it would seem: but Mahomet's more like Homer's and Shakespeare's. + +It was my way to plant at the portal the big, carved chair from the +chancel on the hot days, and rest my soul, refusing to think of +anything, drowsing and smoking for hours. All down there in the plain +waved gardens of delicious fruit about the prolonged silver thread of +the river Isle, whose course winds loitering quite near the foot of the +monastery-slope. This slope dominates a tract of distance that is not +only vast, but looks immense, although the horizon is bounded by a +semicircle of low hills, rather too stiff and uniform for perfect +beauty; the interval of plain being occupied by yellow ploughed lands +which were never sown, weedy now, and crossed and recrossed by +vividly-green ribbons of vine, with stretches of pale-green lucerne, +orchards, and the white village of Monpont near the railway, all +embowered, the Isle drawing its mercurial streams through the +village-meadow, which is dark with shades of oaks: and to have played +there a boy, and used it familiarly from birth as one's own hand or +foot, must have been very sweet and homely; after this, the river +divides, and takes the shape of a heart; and very far away are visible +the grey banks of the Gironde. On the semicircle of hills, when there +was little distance-mist, I saw the ruins of some seigneurial château, +for the seigneurs, too, knew where to build; and to my left, between a +clump of oaks and an avenue of poplars, the bell-tower of the +village--church of Saint Martial d'Artenset--a very ancient type of +tower, I believe, and common in France, rather ponderous, consisting of +a square mass with a smaller square mass stuck on, the latter having +large Gothic windows; and behind me the west face of the +monastery-church, over the door being the statue of Saint Bruno. + +Well, one morning after four months, I opened my eyes in my cell to the +piercing consciousness that I had burned Monpont over-night: and so +overcome was I with regret for this poor inoffensive little place, that +for two days, hardly eating, I paced between the oak and walnut pews of +the nave, massive stalls they are, separated by grooved Corinthian +pilasters, wondering what was to become of me, and if I was not already +mad; and there are some little angels with extraordinarily human +Greuze-like faces, supporting the nerves of the apse, which, after a +time, every time I passed them, seemed conscious of me and my existence +there; and the wood-work which ornaments the length of the nave, and of +the choir also, elaborate with carved marguerites and roses, here and +there took in my eyes significant forms from certain points of view; and +there is a partition--for the nave is divided into two chapels, one for +the brothers and one for the fathers, I conclude--and in this partition +a massive door, which yet looks quite light and graceful, carved with +oak and acanthus leaves, and every time I passed through I had the +impression that the door was a sentient thing, subconscious of me; and +the delicate Italian-Renaissance brick vault which springs from the vast +nave seemed to look upon me with a gloomy knowledge of me, and of the +heart within me; and at about four in the afternoon of the second day, +after pacing the church for hours, I fell down at one of the two altars +near that carved door of the screen, praying God to have mercy upon my +soul; and in the very midst of my praying, I was up and away, the devil +in me, and I got into the motor, and did not come back to Vauclaire for +another month, and came leaving great tracts of burned desolation behind +me, towns and forests, Bordeaux burned, Lebourne burned, Bergerac +burned. + + * * * * * + +I returned to Vauclaire, for it seemed now my home; and there I +experienced a true, a deep repentance; and I humbled myself before my +Maker. And while in this state, sitting one bright day in front of the +monastery-gate, something said to me: 'You will never be a good man, nor +permanently escape Hell and Frenzy, unless you have an aim in life, +devoting yourself heart and soul to some great work, which will exact +all your science, your thought, your ingenuity, your knowledge of modern +things, your strength of body and will, your skill of head and hand: +otherwise you are bound to succumb. Do this, therefore, beginning, not +to-morrow nor this afternoon, but now: for though no man will see your +work, there is still the Almighty God, who is also something, in His +way: and He will see how you strive, and try, and groan: and perhaps, +seeing, He may have mercy upon you.' + + * * * * * + +In this way arose the idea of the Palace--an idea, indeed, which had +entered my brain before, but merely as a bombastic and visionary outcome +of my raving moods: now, however, in a very different way, soberly, and +soon concerning itself with details, difficulties, means, limitations, +and every kind of practical matter-of-fact; and every obstruction which, +one by one, I foresaw was, one by one, as the days passed, over-borne by +the vigour with which that thought, rapidly becoming a mania, possessed +me. After a week of incessant meditation, I decided Yes: and I said: I +will build a palace, which shall be both a palace and a temple: the +first human temple worthy the King of Heaven, and the only human palace +worthy the King of Earth. + + * * * * * + +After this decision I remained at Vauclaire another week, a very +different man to the lounger it had seen, strenuous, converted, humble, +making plans of this and of that, of the detail, and of the whole, +drawing, multiplying, dividing, adding, conic sections and the +rule-of-three, totting up the period of building, which came out at a +little over twelve years, estimating the quantities of material, weight +and bulk, my nights full of nightmare as to the _sort_, deciding as to +the size and structure of the crane, forge, and work-shop, and the +necessarily-limited weights of their component parts, making a list of +over 2,400 objects, and finally, up to the third week after my departure +from Vauclaire, skimming through the topography of nearly the whole +earth, before fixing upon the island of Imbros for my site. + + * * * * * + +I returned to England, and, once more, to the hollow windows and strewn +streets of black, burned-out and desolate London: for its bank-vaults, +etc., contained the necessary complement of the gold brought from Paris, +and then lying in the _Speranza_ at Dover; nor had I sufficient +familiarity with French industries and methods to find, even with the +aid of _Bottins_, one half of the 4,000 odd objects which I had now +catalogued. My ship was the _Speranza_, which brought me from Havre, for +at Calais, to which I first went, I could find nothing suitable for all +purposes, the _Speranza_ being an American yacht, very palatially +fitted, three-masted, air-driven, with a carrying capacity of 2,000 +tons, Tobin-bronzed, in good condition, containing sixteen interacting +tanks, with a five-block pulley-arrangement amid-ships that enables me +to lift very considerable weights without the aid of the hoisting +air-engine, high in the water, sharp, handsome, containing a few tons +only of sand-ballast, and needing when I found her only three days' work +at the water-line and engines to make her decent and fit. I threw out +her dead, backed her from the Outer to the Inner Basin to my train on +the quai, took in the twenty-three hundred-weight bags of gold, and the +half-ton of amber, and with this alone went to Dover, thence to +Canterbury by motor, and thence in a long train, with a store of +dynamite from the Castle for blasting possible obstructions, to London: +meaning to make Dover my _dépôt_, and the London rails my thoroughfare +from all parts of the country. + +Instead of three months, as I had calculated, it took me nine: a +harrowing slavery. I had to blast no less than forty-three trains from +the path of my loaded wagons, several times blasting away the metals as +well, and then having to travel hundreds of yards without metals: for +the labour of kindling the obstructing engines, to shunt them down +sidings perhaps distant, was a thing which I would not undertake. +However, all's well that ends well, though if I had it to go through +again, certainly I should not. The _Speranza_ is now lying seven miles +off Cape Roca, a heavy mist on the still water, this being the 19th of +June at 10 in the night: no wind, no moon: cabin full of mist: and I +pretty listless and disappointed, wondering in my heart why I was such +a fool as to take all that trouble, nine long servile months, my good +God, and now seriously thinking of throwing the whole vile thing to the +devil; she pretty deep in the water, pregnant with the palace. When the +thirty-three ... + + * * * * * + + * * * * * + + * * * * * + + * * * * * + + * * * * * + +Those words: 'when the thirty-three' were written by me over seventeen +years since--long years--seventeen in number, nor have I now any idea to +what they refer. The book in which I wrote I had lost in the cabin of +the _Speranza_, and yesterday, returning to Imbros from an hour's +aimless cruise, discovered it there behind a chest. + +I find now considerable difficulty in guiding the pencil, and these few +lines now written have quite an odd look, like the handwriting of a man +not very proficient in the art: it is seventeen years, seventeen, +seventeen ... ah! And the expression of my ideas is not fluent either: I +have to think for the word a minute, and I should not be surprised if +the spelling of some of them is queer. My brain has been thinking +inarticulately perhaps, all these years: and the English words and +letters, as they now stand written, have rather an improbable and +foreign air to me, as a Greek or Russian book might look to a man who +has not so long been learning those languages as to forget the +impossibly foreign impression received from them on the first day of +tackling them. Or perhaps it is only my fancy: for that I have fancies I +know. + +But what to write? The history of those seventeen years could not be put +down, my good God: at least, it would take me seventeen more to do it. +If I were to detail the building of the palace alone, and how it killed +me nearly, and how I twice fled from it, and had to return, and became +its bounden slave, and dreamed of it, and grovelled before it, and +prayed, and raved, and rolled; and how I forgot to make provision on the +west side for the contraction and expansion of the gold in the colder +weather and the heats of summer, and had to break down nine months' +work, and how I cursed Thee, how I cursed Thee; and how the lake of wine +evaporated faster than the conduits replenished it, and the three +journeys which I had to take to Constantinople for shiploads of wine, +and my frothing despairs, till I had the thought of placing the +reservoir in the platform; and how I had then to break down the south +side of the platform to the very bottom, and of the month-long nightmare +of terror that I had lest the south side of the palace would undergo +subsidence; and how the petrol failed, and of the three-weeks' search +for petrol along the coast; and how, after list-rubbing all the jet, I +found that I had forgotten the necessary rouge for polishing; and how, +in the third year, I found the fluate, which I had for water-proofing +the pores of the platform-stone, nearly all leaked away in the +_Speranza's_ hold, and I had to get silicate of soda at Gallipoli; and +how, after two years' observation, I had to come to the conclusion that +the lake was leaking, and discovered that this Imbros sand was not +suitable for mixing with the skin of Portland cement which covered the +cement concrete, and had to substitute sheet-bitumen in three places; +and how I did all, all for the sake of God, thinking: 'I will work, and +be a good man, and cast Hell from me: and when I see it stand finished, +it will be an Altar and a Testimony to me, and I shall find peace, and +be well': and how I have been cheated--seventeen years, long years of my +life--for there is no God; and how my plasterers'-hair failed me, and I +had to use flock, hessian, scrym, wadding, wood-street paving-blocks, +and whatever I could find, for filling the interspaces between the +platform cross-walls; and of the espagnolette bolts, how a number of +them mysteriously disappeared, as if snatched to Hell by harpies, and I +had to make them; and how the crane-chain would not reach two of the +silver-panel castings when they were finished, and they were too heavy +for me to lift, and the wringing of the hands of my despair, and my +biting of the earth, and the transport of my fury; and how, for a whole +wild week, I searched in vain for the text-book which describes the +ambering process; and how, when all was nearly over, in the blasting +away of the forge and crane with dynamite, a long crack appeared down +the gold of the east platform-steps, and how I would not be consoled, +but mourned and mourned; and how, in spite of all my tribulations, it +was sweetly interesting to watch my power slowly grow from the first +feeble beginnings of the landing of materials and unloading them from +the motor, a hundred-weight at a time, till I could swing four tons--see +the solid metals flow--enjoy the gliding sounds of the handle, +crank-shaft, and system of levers, forcing inwards the mould-end, and +the upper and lower plungers, for pressing the material--build at ease +in a travelling-cage--and watch from my hut-door through sleepless +hours, under the electric moonlight of this land, the three piles of +gold stones, the silver panels, the two-foot squares of jet, and be +comforted; and how the putty-wash--but it is past, it is past: and not +to live over again that vulgar nightmare of means and ends have I taken +to this writing again--but to put down something else, if I dare. + +Seventeen years, my good God, of that delusion! I could write down no +sort of explanation for all those groans and griefs, at which a +reasoning being would not shriek with laughter. I should have lived at +ease in some palace of the Middle-Orient, and burned my cities: but no, +I must be 'a good man'--vain thought. The words of a wild madman, that +preaching man in England who prophesied what happened, were with me, +where he says: 'the defeat of Man is _His_ defeat'; and I said to +myself: 'Well, the last man shall not be quite a fiend, just to spite +That Other.' And I worked and groaned, saying: 'I will be a good man, +and burn nothing, nor utter aught unseemly, nor debauch myself, but +choke back the blasphemies that Those Others shriek through my throat, +and build and build, with moils and groans.' And it was Vanity: though I +do love the house, too, I love it well, for it is my home on the waste +earth. + +I had calculated to finish it in twelve years, and I should undoubtedly +have finished it in fourteen, instead of in sixteen and seven months, +but one day, when the south, north, and east platform-steps were already +finished--it was in the July of the third year, and near sunset--as I +left off work, instead of going to the tent where my dinner lay ready, I +walked down to the ship--most strangely--in a daft, mechanical sort of +way, without saying a word to myself, an evil-meaning smile of malice on +my lips; and at midnight I was lying off Mitylene, thirty miles to the +south, having bid, as I thought, a last farewell to all those toils. I +was going to burn Athens. + +I did not, however: but kept on my way westward round Cape Matapan, +intending to destroy the forests and towns of Sicily, if I found there a +suitable motor for travelling, for I had not been at the pains to take +the motor on board at Imbros; otherwise I would ravage parts of southern +Italy. But when I came thereabouts, I was confronted with an awful +horror: for no southern Italy was there, and no Sicily was there, unless +a small new island, probably not five miles long, was Sicily; and +nothing else I saw, save the still-smoking crater of Stromboli. I +cruised northward, searching for land, and for a long time would not +believe the evidence of the instruments, thinking that they wilfully +misled me, or I stark mad. But no: no Italy was there, till I came to +the latitude of Naples, it, too, having disappeared, engulfed, engulfed, +all that stretch. From this monstrous thing I received so solemn a shock +and mood of awe, that the evil mind in me was quite chilled and quelled: +for it was, and is, my belief that a wide-spread re-arrangement of the +earth's surface is being purposed, and in all that drama, O my God, how +shall _I_ be found? + +However, I went on my way, but more leisurely, not daring for a long +time to do anything, lest I might offend anyone; and, in this foolish +cowering mind, coasted all the western coast of Spain and France during +five weeks, in that prolonged intensity of calm weather which now +alternates with storms that transcend all thought, till I came again to +Calais: and there, for the first time, landed. + +Here I would no longer contain myself, but burned; and that magnificent +stretch of forest that lay between Agincourt and Abbéville, covering +five square miles, I burned; and Abbéville I burned; and Amiens I +burned; and three forests between Amiens and Paris I burned; and Paris I +burned; burning and burning during four months, leaving behind me +smoking districts, a long tract of ravage, like some being of the Pit +that blights where pass his flaming wings. + + * * * * * + +This of city-burning has now become a habit with me more enchaining--and +infinitely more debased--than ever was opium to the smoker, or alcohol +to the drunkard. I count it among the prime necessaries of my life: it +is my brandy, my bacchanal, my secret sin. I have burned Calcutta, +Pekin, and San Francisco. In spite of the restraining influence of this +palace, I have burned and burned. I have burned two hundred cities and +countrysides. Like Leviathan disporting himself in the sea, so I have +rioted in this earth. + + * * * * * + +After an absence of six months, I returned to Imbros: for I was for +looking again upon the work which I had done, that I might mock myself +for all that unkingly grovelling: and when I saw it, standing there as I +had left it, frustrate and forlorn, and waiting its maker's hand, some +pity and instinct to build took me--for something of God was in Man--and +I fell upon my knees, and spread my arms to God, and was converted, +promising to finish the palace, with prayers that as I built so He +would build my soul, and save the last man from the enemy. And I set to +work that day to list-rub the last few dalles of the jet. + + * * * * * + +I did not leave Imbros after that during four years, except for +occasional brief trips to the coast--to Kilid-Bahr, Gallipoli, Lapsaki, +Gamos, Rodosto, Erdek, Erekli, or even once to Constantinople and +Scutari--if I happened to want anything, or if I was tired of work: but +without once doing the least harm to anything, but containing my +humours, and fearing my Maker. And full of peaceful charm were those +little cruises through this Levantic world, which, truly, is rather like +a light sketch in water-colours done by an angel than like the dun real +earth; and full of self-satisfaction and pious contentment would I +return to Imbros, approved of my conscience, for that I had surmounted +temptation, and lived tame and stainless. + +I had set up the southern of the two closed-lotus pillars, and the +platform-top was already looking as lovely as heaven, with its alternate +two-foot squares of pellucid gold and pellucid jet, when I noticed one +morning that the _Speranza's_ bottom was really now too foul, and the +whim took me then and there to leave all, and clean her as far as I +could. I at once went on board, descended to the hold, took off my +sudeyrie, and began to shift the ballast over to starboard, so as to +tilt up her port bottom to the scraper. This was wearying labour, and +about noon I was sitting on a bag, resting in the almost darkness, when +something seemed to whisper to me these words: '_You dreamed last night +that there is an old Chinaman alive in Pekin._' Horridly I started: I +_had_ dreamed something of the sort, but, from the moment of waking, +till then, had forgotten it: and I leapt livid to my feet. + +I cleaned no _Speranza_ that day, nor for four days did I anything, but +sat on the cabin-house and mused, my supporting palm among the hairy +draperies of my chin: for the thought of such a thing, if it could by +any possibility be true, was detestable as death to me, changing the +colour of the sun, and the whole aspect of the world: and anon, at the +outrage of that thing, my brow would flush with wrath, and my eyes +blaze: till, on the fourth afternoon, I said to myself: 'That old +Chinaman in Pekin is likely to get burned to death, I think, or blown to +the clouds!' + +So, a second time, on the 4th March, the poor palace was left to build +itself. For, after a short trip to Gallipoli, where I got some young +lime-twigs in boxes of earth, and some preserved limes and ginger, I set +out for a long voyage to the East, passing through the Suez Canal, and +visiting Bombay, where I was three weeks, and then destroyed it. + + * * * * * + +I had the thought of going across Hindustan by engine, but did not like +to leave my ship, to which I was very attached, not sure of finding +anything so suitable and good at Calcutta; and, moreover, I was afraid +to abandon my petrol motor, which I had taken on board with the +air-windlass, since I was going to uncivilised land. I therefore coasted +down western Hindustan. + +All that northern shore of the Arabian Sea has at the present time an +odour which it wafts far over the water, resembling odours of happy +vague dream-lands, sweet to smell in the early mornings as if the earth +were nothing but a perfume, and life an inhalation. + +On that voyage, however, I had, from beginning to end, twenty-seven +fearful storms, or, if I count that one near the Carolines, then +twenty-eight. But I do not wish to write of these rages: they were too +inhuman: and how I came alive through them against all my wildest hope, +Someone, or Something, only knows. + +I will write down here a thing: it is this, my God--something which I +have observed: a definite obstreperousness in the mood of the elements +now, when once roused, which grows, which grows continually. Tempests +have become very very far more wrathful, the sea more truculent and +unbounded in its insolence; when it thunders, it thunders with a venom +new to me, cracking as though it would split the firmament, and bawling +through the heaven of heavens, as if roaring to devour all things; in +Bombay once, and in China thrice, I was shaken by earthquakes, the +second and third marked by a certain extravagance of agitation, that +might turn a man grey. Why should this be, my God? I remember reading +very long ago that on the American prairies, which from time immemorial +had been swept by great storms, the storms gradually subsided when man +went to reside permanently there. If this be true, it would seem that +the mere presence of man had a certain subduing or mesmerising effect +upon the native turbulence of Nature, and his absence now may have +removed the curb. It is my belief that within fifty years from now the +huge forces of the earth will be let fully loose to tumble as they will; +and this planet will become one of the undisputed playgrounds of Hell, +and the theatre of commotions stupendous as those witnessed on the face +of Saturn. + + * * * * * + +The Earth is all on my brain, on my brain, O dark-minded Mother, with +thy passionate cravings after the Infinite, thy regrets, and mighty +griefs, and comatose sleeps, and sinister coming doom, O Earth: and I, +poor man, though a king, sole witness of thy bleak tremendous woes. Upon +her I brood, and do not cease, but brood and brood--the habit, if I +remember right, first becoming fixed and fated during that long voyage +eastward: for what is in store for her God only knows, and I have seen +in my broodings long visions of her future, which, if a man should see +with the eye of flesh, he would spread the arms, and wheel and wheel +through the mazes of a hiccuping giggling frenzy, for the vision only is +the very verge of madness. If I might cease but for one hour that +perpetual brooding upon her! But I am her child, and my mind grows and +grows to her like the off-shoots of the banyan-tree, that take root +downward, and she sucks and draws it, as she draws my feet by +gravitation, and I cannot take wing from her: for she is greater than I, +and there is no escaping her; and at the last, I know, my soul will +dash itself to ruin, like erring sea-fowl upon pharos-lights, against +her wild and mighty bosom. Often a whole night through I lie open-eyed +in the dark, with bursting brain, thinking of that hollow Gulf of +Mexico, how identical in shape and size with the protuberance of Africa +just opposite, and how the protuberance of the Venezuelan and Brazilian +coast fits in with the in-curve of Africa: so that it is obvious to +me--it is quite _obvious_--that they once were one; and one night rushed +so far apart; and the wild Atlantic knew that thing, and ran gladly, +hasting in between: and how if eye of flesh had been there to see, and +ear to hear that cruel thundering, my God, my God--what horror! And if +now they meet again, so long apart ...but that way fury lies. Yet one +cannot help but think: I lie awake and think, for she fills my soul, and +absorbs it, with all her moods and ways. She has meanings, secrets, +plans. Strange, strange, for instance, that similarity between the +scheme of Europe and the scheme of Asia: each with three southern +peninsulas pointing south: Spain corresponding with Arabia, Italy with +India, the Morea and Greece, divided by the Gulf of Corinth, +corresponding with the Malay Peninsula and Annam, divided by the Gulf of +Siam; each with two northern peninsulas pointing south, Sweden and +Norway, and Korea and Kamschatka; each with two great islands similarly +placed, Britain and Ireland, and the Japanese Hondo and Yezo; the Old +World and the New has each a peninsula pointing north--Denmark and +Yucatan: a forefinger with long nail--and a thumb--pointing to the Pole. +What does she mean? What can she mean, O Ye that made her? Is she +herself a living being, with a will and a fate, as sailors said that +ships were living entities? And that thing that wheeled at the Pole, +wheels it still yonder, yonder, in its dark ecstasy? Strange that +volcanoes are all near the sea: I don't know why; I don't think that +anyone ever knew. This fact, in connection with submarine explosions, +used to be cited in support of the chemical theory of volcanoes, which +supposed the infiltration of the sea into ravines containing the +materials which form the fuel of eruptions: but God knows if that is +true. The lofty ones are intermittent--a century, two, ten, of silent +waiting, and then their talk silenced for ever some poor district; the +low ones are constant in action. Who could know the dark way of the +world? Sometimes they form a linear system, consisting of several vents +which extend in one direction, near together, like chimneys of some long +foundry beneath. In mountains, a series of serrated peaks denotes the +presence of dolomites; rounded heads mean calcareous rocks; and needles, +crystalline schists. The preponderance of land in the northern +hemisphere denotes the greater intensity there of the causes of +elevation at a remote geologic epoch: that is all that one can say about +it: but whence that greater intensity? I have some knowledge of the +earth for only ten miles down: but she has eight thousand miles: and +whether through all that depth she is flame or fluid, hard or soft, I do +not know, I do not know. Her method of forming coal, geysers and hot +sulphur-springs, and the jewels, and the atols and coral reefs; the +metamorphic rocks of sedimentary origin, like gneiss, the plutonic and +volcanic rocks, rocks of fusion, and the unstratified masses which +constitute the basis of the crust; and harvests, the burning flame of +flowers, and the passage from the vegetable to the animal: I do not know +them, but they are of her, and they are like me, molten in the same +furnace of her fiery heart. She is dark and moody, sudden and ill-fated, +and rends her young like a cannibal lioness; and she is old and wise, +and remembers Hur of the Chaldees which Uruk built, and that Temple of +Bel which rose in seven pyramids to symbolise the planets, and +Birs-i-Nimrud, and Haran, and she bears still, as a thing of yesterday, +old Persepolis and the tomb of Cyrus, and those cloister-like +vihârah-temples of the ancient Buddhists, cut from the Himalayan rock; +and returning from the Far East, I stopped at Ismailia, and so to Cairo, +and saw where Memphis was, and stood one bright midnight before that +great pyramid of Shafra, and that dumb Sphynx, and, seated at the well +of one of the rock-tombs, looked till tears of pity streamed down my +cheeks: for great is the earth, and her Ages, but man 'passeth away.' +These tombs have pillars extremely like the two palace-pillars, only +that these are round, and mine are square: for I chose it so: but the +same band near the top, then over this the closed lotus-flower, then the +small square plinth, which separates them from the architrave, only mine +have no architrave; the tombs consist of a little outer temple or court, +then comes a well, and inside another chamber, where, I suppose, the +dead were, a ribbon-like astragal surrounding the walls, which are +crowned with boldly-projecting cornices, surmounted by an abacus. And +here, till the pressing want of food drove me back, I remained: for more +and more the earth over-grows me, wooes me, assimilates me; so that I +ask myself this question: 'Must I not, in time, cease to be a man, and +become a small earth, precisely her copy, extravagantly weird and +fierce, half-demoniac, half-ferine, wholly mystic--morose and +turbulent--fitful, and deranged, and sad--like her?' + + * * * * * + +A whole month of that voyage, from May the 15th to June the 13th, I +wasted at the Andaman Islands near Malay: for that any old Chinaman +could be alive in Pekin began, after some time, to seem the most +quixotic notion that ever entered a human brain; and these jungled +islands, to which I came after a shocking vast orgy one night at +Calcutta, when I fired not only the city but the river, pleased my fancy +to such an extent, that at one time I intended to abide there. I was at +the one called in the chart 'Saddle Hill,' the smallest of them, I +think: and seldom have I had such sensations of peace as I lay a whole +burning day in a rising vale, deeply-shaded in palm and tropical +ranknesses, watching thence the _Speranza_ at anchor: for there was a +little offing here at the shore whence the valley arose, and I could see +one of its long peaks lined with cocoanut-trees, and all cloud burned +out of the sky except the flimsiest lawn-figments, and the sea as +absolutely calm as a lake roughened with breezes, yet making a +considerable noise in its breaking on the shore, as I have noticed in +these sorts of places: I do not know why. These poor Andaman people seem +to have been quite savage, for I met a number of them in roaming the +island, nearly skeletons, yet with limbs and vertebrae still, in +general, cohering, and in some cases dry-skinned and mummified relics of +flesh, and never anywhere a sign of clothes: a very singular thing, +considering their nearness to high old civilisations all about them. +They looked small and black, or almost; and I never found a man without +finding on or near him a spear and other weapons: so that they were +eager folk, and the wayward dark earth was in them, too, as she should +be in her children. They had in many cases some reddish discoloration, +which may have been the traces of betel-nut stains: for betel-nuts +abound there. And I was so pleased with these people, that I took on +board with the gig one of their little tree-canoes: which was my +foolishness: for gig and canoe were only three nights later washed from +the decks into the middle of the sea. + + * * * * * + +I passed down the Straits of Malacca, and in that short distance between +the Andaman Islands, and the S.W. corner of Borneo I was thrice so +mauled, that at times it seemed quite out of the question that anything +built by man could escape such unfettered cataclysms, and I resigned +myself, but with bitter reproaches, to perish darkly. The effect of the +third upon me, when it was over, was the unloosening afresh of all my +evil passion: for I said: 'Since they mean to slay me, death shall find +me rebellious'; and for weeks I could not sight some specially happy +village, or umbrageous spread of woodland, that I did not stop the ship, +and land the materials for their destruction; so that nearly all those +spicy lands about the north of Australia will bear the traces of my hand +for many a year: for more and more my voyage became dawdling and +zigzaged, as the merest whim directed it, or the movement of the pointer +on the chart; and I thought of eating the lotus of surcease and nepenthe +in some enchanted nook of this bowering summer, where from my hut-door I +could see through the pearl-hues of opium the sea-lagoon slaver lazily +upon the old coral atol, and the cocoanut-tree would droop like slumber, +and the bread-fruit tree would moan in sweet and weary dream, and I +should watch the _Speranza_ lie anchored in the pale atol-lake, year +after year, and wonder what she was, and whence, and why she dozed so +deep for ever, and after an age of melancholy peace and burdened bliss, +I should note that sun and moon had ceased revolving, and hung inert, +opening anon a heavy lid to doze and drowse again, and God would sigh +'Enough,' and nod, and Being would swoon to sleep: for that any old +Chinaman should be alive in Pekin was a thing so fantastically maniac, +as to draw from me at times sudden fits of wild red laughter that left +me faint. + +During a space of four months, from the 18th June to the 23rd October, I +visited the Fijis, where I saw skulls still surrounded with remnants of +extraordinary haloes of stiff hair, women clad in girdles made of thongs +fixed in a belt, and, in Samoa near, bodies crowned with coronets of +nautilus-shell, and traces of turmeric-paint and tattooing, and in one +townlet a great assemblage of carcasses, suggesting by their look some +festival, or dance: so that I believe that these people were overthrown +without the least fore-knowledge of anything. The women of the Maoris +wore an abundance of green-jade ornaments, and I found a peculiar kind +of shell-trumpet, one of which I have now, also a tattooing chisel, and +a nicely-carved wooden bowl. The people of New Caledonia, on the other +hand, went, I should think, naked, confining their attention to the +hair, and in this resembling the Fijians, for they seemed to wear an +artificial hair made of the fur of some creature like a bat, and also +they wore wooden masks, and great rings--for the ear, no doubt--which +must have fallen to the shoulders: for the earth was in them all, and +made them wild, perverse and various like herself. I went from one to +the other without any system whatever, searching for the ideal +resting-place, and often thinking that I had found it: but only wearying +of it at the thought that there was a yet deeper and dreamier in the +world. But in this search I received a check, my God, which chilled me +to the marrow, and set me flying from these places. + + * * * * * + +One evening, the 29th November, I dined rather late--at eight--sitting, +as was my custom in calm weather, cross-legged on the cabin-rug at the +port aft corner, a small semicircle of _Speranza_ gold-plate before me, +and near above me the red-shaded lamp with green conical reservoir, +whose creakings never cease in the stillest mid-sea, and beyond the +plates the array of preserved soups, meat-extracts, meats, fruit, +sweets, wines, nuts, liqueurs, coffee on the silver spirit-tripod, +glasses, cruet, and so on, which it was always my first care to select +from the store-room, open, and lay out once for all in the morning on +rising. I was late, seven being my hour: for on that day I had been +engaged in the occasionally necessary, but always deferred, task of +overhauling the ship, brushing here a rope with tar, there a board with +paint, there a crank with oil, rubbing a door-handle, a brass-fitting, +filling the three cabin-lamps, dusting mirrors and furniture, dashing +the great neat-joinered plains of deck with bucketfulls, or, high in +air, chopping loose with its rigging the mizzen top-mast, which since a +month was sprained at the clamps, all this in cotton drawers under loose +_quamis_, bare-footed, my beard knotted up, the sun a-blaze, the sea +smooth and pale with the smooth pallor of strong currents, the ship +still enough, no land in sight, yet great tracts of sea-weed making +eastward--I working from 11 A.M. till near 7, when sudden darkness +interrupted: for I wished to have it all over in one obnoxious day. I +was therefore very tired when I went down, lit the central chain-lever +lamp and my own two, washed and dressed in my bedroom, and sat to dinner +in the dining-hall corner. I ate voraciously, with sweat, as usual, +pouring down my eager brow, using knife or spoon in the right hand, but +never the Western fork, licking the plates clean in the Mohammedan +manner, and drinking pretty freely. Still I was tired, and went upon +deck, where I had the threadbare blue-velvet easy-chair with the broken +left arm before the wheel, and in it sat smoking cigar after cigar from +the Indian D box, half-asleep, yet conscious. The moon came up into a +pretty cloudless sky, and she was bright, but not bright enough to +out-shine the enlightened flight of the ocean, which that night was one +continuous swamp of Jack-o'-lantern phosphorescence, a wild but faint +luminosity mingled with stars and flashes of brilliance, the whole +trooping unanimously eastward, as if in haste with elfin momentous +purpose, a boundless congregation, in the sweep of a strong oceanic +current. I could hear it, in my slumbrous lassitude, struggling and +gurgling at the tied rudder, and making wet sloppy noises under the +sheer of the poop; and I was aware that the _Speranza_ was gliding along +pretty fast, drawn into that procession, probably at the rate of four to +six knots: but I did not care, knowing very well that no land was within +two hundred miles of my bows, for I was in longitude 173°, in the +latitude of Fiji and the Society Islands, between those two: and after a +time the cigar drooped and dropped from my mouth, and sleep overcame +me, and I slept there, in the lap of the Infinite. + + * * * * * + +So that something preserves me, Something, Someone: _and for what?_ ... +If I had slept in the cabin, I must most certainly have perished: for +lying there on the poop, I dreamed a dream which once I had dreamed on +the ice, far, far yonder in the forgotten hyperborean North: that I was +in an Arabian paradise, a Garden of Peaches; and I had a very long +vision of it, for I walked among the trees, and picked the fruit, and +pressed the blossoms to my nostrils with breathless inhalations of love: +till a horrible sickness woke me: and when I opened my eyes, the night +was black, the moon gone down, everything wet with dew, the sky arrayed +with most glorious stars like a thronged bazaar of tiaraed rajahs and +begums with spangled trains, and all the air fragrant with that mortal +scent; and high and wide uplifted before me--stretching from the +northern to the southern limit--a row of eight or nine inflamed smokes, +as from the chimneys of some Cyclopean foundry a-work all night, most +solemn, most great and dreadful in the solemn night: eight or nine, I +should say, or it might be seven, or it might be ten, for I did not +count them; and from those craters puffed up gusts of encrimsoned +material, here a gust and there a gust, with tinselled fumes that +convolved upon themselves, and sparks and flashes, all veiled in a +garish haze of light: for the foundry worked, though languidly; and upon +a rocky land four miles ahead, which no chart had ever marked, the +_Speranza_ drove straight with the current of the phosphorus sea. + +As I rose, I fell flat: and what I did thereafter I did in a state of +existence whose acts, to the waking mind, appear unreal as dream. I must +at once, I think, have been conscious that here was the cause of the +destruction of mankind; that it still surrounded its own neighbourhood +with poisonous fumes; and that I was approaching it. I must have somehow +crawled, or dragged myself forward. There is an impression on my mind +that it was a purple land of pure porphyry; there is some faint memory, +or dream, of hearing a long-drawn booming of waves upon its crags: I do +not know whence I have them. I think that I remember retching with +desperate jerks of the travailing intestines; also that I was on my face +as I moved the regulator in the engine-room: but any recollection of +going down the stairs, or of coming up again, I have not. Happily, the +wheel was tied, the rudder hard to port, and as the ship moved, she +must, therefore, have turned; and I must have been back to untie the +wheel in good time, for when my senses came, I was lying there, my head +against the under gimbal, one foot on a spoke of the wheel, no land in +sight, and morning breaking. + +This made me so sick, that for either two or three days I lay without +eating in the chair near the wheel, only rarely waking to sufficient +sense to see to it that she was making westward from that place; and on +the morning when I finally roused myself I did not know whether it was +the second or the third morning: so that my calendar, so scrupulously +kept, may be a day out, for to this day I have never been at the pains +to ascertain whether I am here writing now on the 5th or the 6th of +June. + + * * * * * + +Well, on the fourth, or the fifth, evening after this, just as the sun +was sinking beyond the rim of the sea, I happened to look where he hung +motionless on the starboard bow: and there I saw a clean-cut black-green +spot against his red--a most unusual sight here and now--a ship: a poor +thing, as it turned out when I got near her, without any sign of mast, +heavily water-logged, some relics of old rigging hanging over, even her +bowsprit apparently broken in the middle (though I could not see it), +and she nothing more than a hirsute green mass of old weeds and +sea-things from bowsprit-tip to poop, and from bulwarks to water-line, +stout as a hedgehog, only awaiting there the next high sea to founder. + +It being near my dinner-hour and night's rest, I stopped the _Speranza_ +some fifteen yards from her, and commenced to pace my spacious poop, as +usual, before eating; and as I paced, I would glance at her, wondering +at her destiny, and who were the human men that had lived on her, their +Christian names, and family names, their age, and thought, and way of +life, and beards; till the desire arose within me to go to her, and see; +and I threw off my outer garments, uncovered and unroped the cedar +cutter--the only boat, except the air-pinnace, left to me intact--and +got her down by the mizzen five-block pulley-system. But it was a +ridiculous nonsense, for having paddled to her, I was thrown into +paroxysms of rage by repeated failures to scale her bulwarks, low as +they were; my hands, indeed, could reach, but I found no hold upon the +slimy mass, and three rope-ends which I caught were also untenably +slippery: so that I jerked always back into the boat, my clothes a mass +of filth, and the only thought in my blazing brain a twenty-pound +charge of guncotton, of which I had plenty, to blow her to uttermost +Hell. I had to return to the _Speranza_, get a half-inch rope, then back +to the other, for I would not be baulked in such a way, though now the +dark was come, only slightly tempered by a half-moon, and I getting +hungry, and from minute to minute more fiendishly ferocious. Finally, by +dint of throwing, I got the rope-loop round a mast-stump, drew myself +up, and made fast the boat, my left hand cut by some cursed shell: and +all for what? the imperiousness of a whim. The faint moonlight shewed an +ample tract of deck, invisible in most parts under rolled beds of putrid +seaweed, and no bodies, and nothing but a concave, large esplanade of +seaweed. She was a ship of probably 1,500 tons, three-masted, and a +sailer. I got aft (for I had on thick outer babooshes), and saw that +only four of the companion-steps remained; by a small leap, however, I +could descend into that desolation, where the stale sea-stench seemed +concentrated into a very essence of rankness. Here I experienced a +singular ghostly awe and timorousness, lest she should sink with me, or +something: but striking matches, I saw an ordinary cabin, with some +fungoids, skulls, bones and rags, but not one cohering skeleton. In the +second starboard berth was a small table, and on the floor a thick +round ink-pot, whose continual rolling on its side made me look down; +and there I saw a flat square book with black covers, which curved +half-open of itself, for it had been wet and stained. This I took, and +went back to the _Speranza_: for that ship was nothing but an emptiness, +and a stench of the crude elements of life, nearly assimilated now to +the rank deep to which she was wedded, and soon to be absorbed into its +nature and being, to become a sea in little, as I, in time, my God, +shall be nothing but an earth in little. + +During dinner, and after, I read the book, with some difficulty, for it +was pen-written in French, and discoloured, and it turned out to be the +journal of someone, a passenger and voyager, I imagine, who called +himself Albert Tissu, and the ship the _Marie Meyer_. There was nothing +remarkable in the narrative that I could see--common-place descriptions +of South Sea scenes, records of weather, cargoes, and the like--till I +came to the last written page: and that was remarkable enough. It was +dated the 13th of April--strange thing, my good God, incredibly +strange--that same day, twenty long years ago, when I reached the Pole; +and the writing on that page was quite different from the neat look of +the rest, proving immoderate excitement, wildest haste; and he heads it +'_Cinq Heures_,'--I suppose in the evening, for he does not say: and he +writes: 'Monstrous event! phenomenon without likeness! the witnesses of +which must for ever live immortalised in the annals of the universe, an +event which will make even Mama, Henri and Juliette admit that I was +justified in undertaking this most eventful voyage. Talking with Captain +Tombarel on the poop, when a sudden exclamation from him--"_Mon Dieu!_" +His visage whitens! I follow the direction of his gaze to eastward! I +behold! eight kilomètres perhaps away--, _ten monstrous waterspouts_, +reaching up, up, high enough--all apparently in one straight line, with +intervals of nine hundred _mètres_, very regularly placed. They do not +wander, dance, nor waver, as waterspouts do; nor are they at all +lily-shaped, like waterspouts: but ten hewn pillars of water, with +uniform diameter from top to bottom, only a little twisted here and +there, and, as I divine, fifty _mètres_ in girth. Five, ten, stupendous +minutes we look, Captain Tombarel mechanically repeating and repeating +under his breath "_Mon Dieu!_" "_Mon Dieu!_" the whole crew now on the +poop, I agitated, but collected, watch in hand. And suddenly, all is +blotted out: the pillars of water, doubtless still there, can no more be +seen: for the ocean all about them is steaming, hissing higher than the +pillars a dense white vapour, vast in extent, whose venomous sibilation +we at this distance can quite distinctly hear. It is affrighting, it is +intolerable! the eyes can hardly bear to watch, the ears to hear! it +seems unholy travail, monstrous birth! But it lasts not long: all at +once the _Marie Meyer_ commences to pitch and roll violently, and the +sea, a moment since calm, is now rough! and at the same time, through +the white vapour, we see a dark shadow slowly rising--the shadow of a +mighty back, a new-born land, bearing upwards ten flames of fire, +slowly, steadily, out of the sea, into the clouds. At the moment when +that sublime emergence ceases, or seems to cease, the grand thought that +smites me is this: "I, Albert Tissu, am immortalised: my name shall +never perish from among men!" I rush down, I write it. The latitude is +16° 21' 13" South; the longitude 176° 58' 19" West[1]. There is a great +deal of running about on the decks--they are descending. There is surely +a strange odour of almonds--I only hope--it is so dark, _mon D_----' + +So the Frenchman, Tissu. + + +[Footnote 1: This must be French reckoning, from meridian of Paris.] + + * * * * * + +With all that region I would have no more to do: for all here, it used +to be said, lies a great sunken continent; and I thought it would be +rising and shewing itself to my eyes, and driving me stark mad: for the +earth is full of these contortions, sudden monstrous grimaces and +apparitions, which are like the face of Medusa, affrighting a man into +spinning stone; and nothing could be more appallingly insecure than +living on a planet. + +I did not stop till I had got so far northward as the Philippine +Islands, where I was two weeks--exuberant, odorous places, but so hilly +and rude, that at one place I abandoned all attempt at travelling in the +motor, and left it in a valley by a broad, shallow, noisy river, full of +mossy stones: for I said: 'Here I will live, and be at peace'; and then +I had a fright, for during three days I could not re-discover the river +and the motor, and I was in the greatest despair, thinking: 'When shall +I find my way out of these jungles and vastnesses?' For I was where no +paths were, and had lost myself in deeps where the lure of the earth is +too strong and rank for a single man, since in such places, I suppose, a +man would rapidly be transformed into a tree, or a snake, or a tiger. At +last, however, I found the place, to my great joy, but I would not shew +that I was glad, and to hide it, fell upon a front wheel of the car with +some kicks. I could not make out who the people were that lived here: +for the relics of some seemed quite black, like New Zealand races, and I +could still detect the traces of tattooing, while others suggested +Mongolian types, and some looked like pigmies, and some like whites. But +I cannot detail the two-years' incidents of that voyage: for it is past, +and like a dream: and not to write of that--of all that--have I taken +this pencil in hand after seventeen long, long years. + + * * * * * + +Singular my reluctance to put it on paper. I will write rather of the +voyage to China, and how I landed the motor on the wharf at Tientsin, +and went up the river through a maize and rice-land most charming in +spite of intense cold, I thick with clothes as an Arctic traveller; and +of the three dreadful earthquakes within two weeks; and how the only map +which I had of the city gave no indication of the whereabouts of its +military depositories, and I had to seek for them; and of the three +days' effort to enter them, for every gate was solid and closed; and how +I burned it, but had to observe its flames, without deep pleasure, from +beyond the walls to the south, the whole place being one cursed plain; +yet how, at one moment, I cried aloud with wild banterings and glad +laughters of Tophet to that old Chinaman still alive within it; and how +I coasted, and saw the hairy Ainus, man and woman hairy alike; and how, +lying one midnight awake in my cabin, the _Speranza_ being in a still +glassy water under a cliff overhung by drooping trees--it was the +harbour of Chemulpo--to me lying awake came the thought: 'Suppose now +you should hear a step walking to and fro, leisurely, on the poop above +you--_just suppose'_; and the night of horrors which I had, for I could +not help supposing, and at one time really thought that I heard it: and +how the sweat rolled and poured from my brow; and how I went to +Nagasaki, and burned it; and how I crossed over the great Pacific deep +to San Francisco, for I knew that Chinamen had been there, too, and one +of them might be alive; and how, one calm day, the 15th or the 16th +April, I, sitting by the wheel in the mid-Pacific, suddenly saw a great +white hole that ran and wheeled, and wheeled and ran, in the sea, coming +toward me, and I was aware of the hot breath of a reeling wind, and then +of the hot wind itself, which deep-groaned the sound of the letter _V_, +humming like a billion spinning-tops, and the _Speranza_ was on her +side, sea pouring over her port-bulwarks, and myself in the corner +between deck and taffrail, drowning fast, but unable to stir; but all +was soon past and the white hole in the sea, and the hot spinning-top of +wind, ran wheeling beyond, to the southern horizon, and the _Speranza_ +righted herself: so that it was clear that someone wished to destroy me, +for that a typhoon of such vehemence ever blew before I cannot think; +and how I came to San Francisco, and how I burned it, and had my sweets: +for it was mine; and how I thought to pass over the great +trans-continental railway to New York, but would not, fearing to leave +the _Speranza_, lest all the ships in the harbour there should be +wrecked, or rusted, and buried under sea-weed, and turned unto the sea; +and how I went back, my mind all given up now to musings upon the earth +and her ways, and a thought in my soul that I would return to those deep +places of the Filipinas, and become an autochthone--a tree, or a snake, +or a man with snake-limbs, like the old autochthones: but I would not: +for Heaven was in man, too: Earth and Heaven; and how as I steamed round +west again, another winter come, and I now in a mood of dismal +despondencies, on the very brink of the inane abyss and smiling idiotcy, +I saw in the island of Java the great temple of Boro Budor: and like a +tornado, or volcanic event, my soul was changed: for my recent studies +in the architecture of the human race recurred to me with interest, and +three nights I slept in the temple, examining it by day. It is vast, +with that look of solid massiveness which above all characterises the +Japanese and Chinese building, my measurement of its width being 529 +feet, and it rises terrace-like in six stories to a height of about 120 +or 130 feet: here Buddhist and Brahmin forms are combined into a most +richly-developed whole, with a voluptuousness of tracery that is simply +intoxicating, each of the five off-sets being divided up into an +innumerable series of external niches, containing each a statue of the +sitting Boodh, all surmounted by a number of cupolas, and the whole +crowned by a magnificent dagop: and when I saw this, I had the impulse +to return to my home after so long wandering, and to finish the temple +of temples, and the palace of palaces; and I said: 'I will return, and +build it as a testimony to God.' + + * * * * * + +Save for a time, near Cairo, I did not once stop on that homeward +voyage, but turned into the little harbour at Imbros at a tranquil +sunset on the 7th of March (as I reckon), and I moored the _Speranza_ to +the ring in the little quay, and I raised the battered motor from the +hold with the middle air-engine (battered by the typhoon in the +mid-Pacific, which had broken it from the rope-fastenings and tumbled it +head-over-heels to port), and I went through the windowless +village-street, and up through the plantains and cypresses which I knew, +and the Nile mimosas, and mulberries, and Trebizond palms, and pines, +and acacias, and fig-trees, till the thicket stopped me, and I had to +alight: for in those two years the path had finally disappeared; and on, +on foot, I made my way, till I came to the board-bridge, and leant +there, and looked at the rill; and thence climbed the steep path in the +sward toward that rolling table-land where I had built with many a +groan; and half-way up, I saw the tip of the crane-arm, then the blazing +top of the south pillar, then the shed-roof, then the platform, a +blinking blotch of glory to the watery eyes under the setting sun. But +the tent, and nearly all that it contained, was gone. + + * * * * * + +For four days I would do nothing, simply lying and watching, shirking a +load so huge: but on the fifth morning I languidly began something: and +I had not worked an hour, when a fever took me--to finish it, to finish +it--and it lasted upon me, with only three brief intervals, nearly seven +years; nor would the end have been so long in coming, but for the +unexpected difficulty of getting the four flat roofs water-tight, for I +had to take down half the east one. Finally, I made them of gold slabs +one-and-a-quarter inch thick, smooth on both sides, on each beam double +gutters being fixed along each side of the top flange to catch any +leakage at the joints, which are filled with slaters'-cement. The slabs +are clamped to the top flanges by steel clips, having bolts set with +plaster-of-Paris in holes drilled in the slabs. These clips are 1-1/2 +in. by 3/17 in., and are 17 in. apart. The roofs are slightly pitched to +the front edges, where they drain into gold-plated copper-gutters on +plated wrought-iron brackets, with one side flashed up over the blocks, +which raise the slabs from the beam-tops, to clear the joint gutters.... +But now I babble again of that base servitude, which I would forget, but +cannot: for every measurement, bolt, ring, is in my brain, like a +burden: but it is past, it is past--and it was vanity. + + * * * * * + +Six months ago to-day it was finished: six months more protracted, +desolate, burdened, than all those sixteen years in which I built. + +I wonder what a man--another man--some Shah, or Tsar, of that far-off +past, would say now of me, if eye could rest upon me! With what awe +would he certainly shrink before the wild majesty of these eyes; and +though I am not lunatic--for I am not, I am not--how would he fly me +with the exclamation: 'There is the very lunacy of Pride!' + +For there would seem to him--it must be so--in myself, in all about me, +something extravagantly royal, touched with terror. My body has +fattened, and my girth now fills out to a portly roundness its broad +Babylonish girdle of crimson cloth, minutely gold-embroidered, and hung +with silver, copper and gold coins of the Orient; my beard, still black, +sweeps in two divergent sheaves to my hips, flustered by every wind; as +I walk through this palace, the amber-and-silver floor reflects in its +depths my low-necked, short-armed robe of purple, blue, and scarlet, +a-glow with luminous stones. I am ten times crowned Lord and Emperor; I +sit a hundred times enthroned in confirmed, obese old Majesty. Challenge +me who will--challenge me who dare! Among those myriad worlds upon which +I nightly pore, I may have my Peers and Compeers and Fellow-denizens ... +but _here_ I am Sole; Earth acknowledges my ancient sway and hereditary +sceptre: for though she draws me, not yet, not yet, am I hers, but she +is mine. It seems to me not less than a million million aeons since +other beings, more or less resembling me, walked impudently in the open +sunlight on this planet, which is rightly mine--I can indeed no longer +picture to myself, nor even credit, that such a state of things--so +fantastic, so far-fetched, so infinitely droll--could have existed: +though, at bottom, I suppose, I know that it must have been really so. +Up to ten years ago, in fact, I used frequently to dream that there were +others. I would see them walk in the streets like ghosts, and be +troubled, and start awake: but never now could such a thing, I think, +occur to me in sleep: for the wildness of the circumstance would +certainly strike my consciousness, and immediately I should know that +the dream was a dream. For now, at least, I am sole, I am lord. The +golden walls of this palace which I have built look down, enamoured of +their reflection, into a lake of the choicest, purplest wine. + +Not that I made it of wine because wine is rare; nor the walls of gold +because gold is rare: that would have been too childish: but because I +would match for beauty a human work with the works of those Others: and +because it happens, by some persistent freak of the earth, that +precisely things most rare and costly are generally the most beautiful. + +The vision of glorious loveliness which is this palace now risen before +my eyes cannot be described by pen and paper, though there _may_ be +words in the lexicons of language which, if I sought for them with +inspired wit for sixteen years, as I have built for sixteen years, might +as vividly express my thought on paper, as the stones-of-gold, so +grouped and built, express it to the eye: but, failing such labours and +skill, I suppose I could not give, if there were another man, and I +tried to give, the faintest conception of its celestial charm. + +It is a structure positively as clear as the sun, and as fair as the +moon--the sole great human work in the making of which no restraining +thought of cost has played a part: one of its steps alone being of more +cost than all the temples, mosques and besestins, the palaces, pagodas +and cathedrals, built between the ages of the Nimrods and the Napoleons. + +The house itself is very small--only 40 ft. long, by 35 broad, by 27 +high: yet the structure as a whole is sufficiently enormous, high +uplifted: the rest of the bulk being occupied by the platform, on which +the house stands, each side of this measuring at its base 480 ft., its +height from top to bottom 130 ft, and its top 48 ft. square, the +elevation of the steps being just nearly 30 degrees, and the top reached +from each of the four points of the compass by 183 low long steps, very +massively overlaid with smooth molten gold--not forming a continuous +flight, but broken into threes and fives, sixes and nines, with landings +between the series, these from the top looking like a great terraced +parterre of gold. It is thus an Assyrian palace in scheme: only that the +platform has steps on all sides, instead of on one. The platform-top, +from its edge to the golden walls of the house, is a mosaic consisting +of squares of the glassiest clarified gold, and squares of the glassiest +jet, corner to corner, each square 2 ft. wide. Around the edge of the +platform on top run 48 square plain gold pilasters, 12 on each side, 2 +ft. high, tapering upwards, and topped by a knob of solid gold, pierced +with a hole through which passes a lax inch-and-a-half silver chain, +hung with little silver balls which strike together in the breeze. The +mansion consists of an outer court, facing east toward the sea, and the +house proper, which encloses an inner court. The outer court is a hollow +oblong 32 ft. wide by 8 ft. long, the summit of its three walls being +battlemented; they are 18-1/2 ft. in height, or 8-1/2 ft. lower than the +house; around their gold sides, on inside and outside, 3 ft. from the +top, runs a plain flat band of silver, 1 ft. wide, projecting 2/3 in., +and at the gate, which is a plain Egyptian entrance, facing eastwards, +2-1/2 ft. narrower at top than at bottom, stand the two great square +pillars of massive plain gold, tapering upwards, 45 ft. high, with their +capital of band, closed lotus, and thin plinth; in the outer court, +immediately opposite the gate, is an oblong well, 12 ft. by 3 ft, +reproducing in little the shape of the court, its sides, which are +gold-lined, tapering downward to near the bottom of the platform, where +a conduit of 1/8 in. diameter automatically replenishes the ascertained +mean evaporation of the lake during the year, the well containing +105,360 litres when nearly full, and the lake occupying a circle round +the platform of 980 ft. diameter, with a depth of 3-1/2 ft. Round the +well run pilasters connected by silver chains with little balls, and it +communicates by a 1/8 in. conduit with a pool of wine let into the inner +court, this being fed from eight tall and narrow golden tanks, tapering +upwards, which surround it, each containing a different red wine, +sufficient on the whole to last for all purposes during my lifetime. The +ground of the outer court is also a mosaic of jet and gold: but +thenceforth the jet-squares give place throughout to squares of silver, +and the gold-squares to squares of clear amber, clear as solidified oil. +The entrance is by an Egyptian doorway 7 ft. high, with folding-doors of +gold-plated cedar, opening inwards, surrounded by a very large +projecting coping of plain silver, 3-1/2 ft. wide, severe simplicity of +line throughout enormously multiplying the effect of richness of +material. The interior resembles, I believe, rather a Homeric, than an +Assyrian or Egyptian house--except for the 'galleries,' which are purely +Babylonish and Old Hebrew. The inner court, with its wine-pool and +tanks, is a small oblong of 8 ft. by 9 ft., upon which open four +silver-latticed window-oblongs in the same proportion, and two doors, +before and behind, oblongs in the same proportion. Round this run the +eight walls of the house proper, the inner 10 ft. from the outer, each +parallel two forming a single long corridor-like chamber, except the +front (east) two, which are divided into three apartments; in each side +of the house are six panels of massive plain silver, half-an-inch +thinner in their central space, where are affixed paintings, 22 or else +21 taken at the burning of Paris from a place called 'The Louvre,' and 2 +or else 3 from a place in England: so that the panels have the look of +frames, and are surrounded by oval garlands of the palest amethyst, +topaz, sapphire, and turquoise which I could find, each garland being of +only one kind of stone, a mere oval ring two feet wide at the sides and +narrowing to an inch at the top and bottom, without designs. The +galleries are five separate recesses in the outer walls under the roofs, +two in the east façade, and one in the north, south, and west, hung with +pavilions of purple, blue, rose and white silk on rings and rods of +gold, with gold pilasters and banisters, each entered by four steps from +the roof, to which lead, north and south, two spiral stairs of cedar. On +the east roof stands the kiosk, under which is the little lunar +telescope; and from that height, and from the galleries, I can watch +under the bright moonlight of this climate, which is very like +lime-light, the for-ever silent blue hills of Macedonia, and where the +islands of Samothraki, Lemnos, Tenedos slumber like purplish fairies on +the Aegean Sea: for, usually, I sleep during the day, and keep a +night-long vigil, often at midnight descending to bathe my coloured +baths in the lake, and to disport myself in that strange intoxication of +nostrils, eyes, and pores, dreaming long wide-eyed dreams at the bottom, +to return dazed, and weak, and drunken. Or again--_twice_ within these +last void and idle six months--I have suddenly run, bawling out, from +this temple of luxury, tearing off my gaudy rags, to hide in a hut by +the shore, smitten for one intense moment with realisation of the past +of this earth, and moaning: 'alone, alone ... all alone, alone, alone +... alone, alone....' For events precisely resembling eruptions take +place in my brain; and one spangled midnight--ah, how spangled!--I may +kneel on the roof with streaming, uplifted face, with outspread arms, +and awe-struck heart, adoring the Eternal: the next, I may strut like a +cock, wanton as sin, lusting to burn a city, to wallow in filth, and, +like the Babylonian maniac, calling myself the equal of Heaven. + + * * * * * + +But it was not to write of this--of all this--! + +Of the furnishing of the palace I have written nothing.... But why I +hesitate to admit to myself what I _know_, is not clear. If They speak +to me, I may surely write of Them: for I do not fear Them, but am Their +peer. + +Of the island I have written nothing: its size, climate, form, +vegetation.... There are two winds: a north and a south wind; the north +is cool, and the south is warm; and the south blows during the winter +months, so that sometimes on Christmas-day it is quite hot; and the +north, which is cool, blows from May to September, so that the summer is +hardly ever oppressive, and the climate was made for a king. The +mangal-stove in the south hall I have never once lit. + +The length, I should say, is 19 miles; the breadth 10, or thereabouts; +and the highest mountains should reach a height of some 2,000 ft., +though I have not been all over it. It is very densely wooded in most +parts, and I have seen large growths of wheat and barley, obviously +degenerate now, with currants, figs, valonia, tobacco, vines in rank +abundance, and two marble quarries. From the palace, which lies on a +sunny plateau of beautifully-sloping swards, dotted with the circular +shadows thrown by fifteen huge cedars, and seven planes, I can see on +all sides an edge of forest, with the gleam of a lake to the north, and +in the hollow to the east the rivulet with its little bridge, and a few +clumps and beds of flowers. I can also spy right through---- + + * * * * * + +It shall be written now: + +I have this day heard within me the contention of the Voices. + + * * * * * + +I thought that they were done with me! That all, all, all, was ended! I +have not heard them for twenty years! + +But to-day--distinctly--breaking in with brawling impassioned +suddenness upon my consciousness.... I heard. + +This late _far niente_ and vacuous inaction here have been undermining +my spirit; this inert brooding upon the earth; this empty life, and +bursting brain! Immediately after eating at noon to-day, I said to +myself: + +'I have been duped by the palace: for I have wasted myself in building, +hoping for peace, and there is no peace. Therefore now I shall fly from +it, to another, sweeter work--not of building, but of destroying--not of +Heaven, but of Hell--not of self-denial, but of reddest orgy. +Constantinople--beware!' I tossed the chair aside, and with a stamp was +on my feet: and as I stood--again, again--I heard: the startlingly +sudden wrangle, the fierce, vulgar outbreak and voluble controversy, +till my consciousness could not hear its ears: and one urged: 'Go! go!' +and the other: 'Not there...! where you like, ... but not there...! for +your life!' + +I did not--for I could not--go: I was so overcome. I fell upon the couch +shivering. + +These Voices, or impulses, plainly as I felt them of old, quarrel within +me now with an openness new to them. Lately, influenced by my long +scientific habit of thought, I have occasionally wondered whether what I +used to call 'the two Voices' were not in reality two strong +instinctive movements, such as most men may have felt, though with less +force. But to-day doubt is past, doubt is past: nor, unless I be very +mad, can I ever doubt again. + + * * * * * + +I have been thinking, thinking of my life: there is a something which I +cannot understand. + +There was a man whom I met once in that dark backward and abysm of time, +when I must have been very young--I fancy at some college or school in +England, and his name now is far enough beyond scope of my memory, lost +in the vast limbo of past things. But he used to talk continually about +certain 'Black' and 'White' Powers, and of their strife for this world. +He was a short man with a Roman nose, and lived in fear of growing a +paunch. His forehead a-top, in profile, was more prominent than the +nose-end, he parted his hair in the middle, and had the theory that the +male form was more beautiful than the female. I forget what his name +was--the dim clear-obscure being. Very profound was the effect of his +words upon me, though, I think, I used to make a point of slighting +them. This man always declared that 'the Black' would carry off the +victory in the end: and so he has, so he has. + +But assuming the existence of this 'Black' and this 'White' being--and +supposing it to be a fact that my reaching the Pole had any connection +with the destruction of my race, according to the notions of that +extraordinary Scotch parson--then it must have been the power of '_the +Black_' which carried me, in spite of all obstacles, to the Pole. So far +I can understand. + +But _after_ I had reached the Pole, what further use had either White or +Black for me? Which was it--White or Black--that preserved my life +through my long return on the ice--and _why_? It _could_ not have been +'the Black'! For I readily divine that from the moment when I touched +the Pole, the only desire of the Black, which had previously preserved, +must have been to destroy me, with the rest. It must have been 'the +White,' then, that led me back, retarding me long, so that I should not +enter the poison-cloud, and then openly presenting me the _Boreal_ to +bring me home to Europe. But his motive? And the significance of these +recommencing wrangles, after such a silence? This I do not understand! + +Curse Them, curse Them, with their mad tangles! I care nothing for Them! +Are there any White Idiots and Black Idiots--_at all_? Or are these +Voices that I hear nothing but the cries of my own strained nerves, and +I all mad and morbid, morbid and mad, mad, my good God? + +This inertia here is _not good_ for me! This stalking about the palace! +and long thinkings about Earth and Heaven, Black and White, White and +Black, and things beyond the stars! My brain is like bursting through +the walls of my poor head. + +To-morrow, then, to Constantinople. + + * * * * * + +Descending to go to the ship, I had almost reached the middle of the +east platform-steps, when my foot slipped on the smooth gold: and the +fall, though I was not walking carelessly, had, I swear, all the +violence of a fall caused by a push. I struck my head, and, as I rolled +downward, swooned. When I came to myself, I was lying on the very bottom +step, which is thinly washed by the wine-waves: another roll and I +suppose I must have drowned. I sat there an hour, lost in amazement, +then crossed the causeway, came down to the _Speransa_ with the motor, +went through her, spent the day in work, slept on her, worked again +to-day, till four, at both ship and time-fuses (I with only 700 fuses +left, and in Stamboul alone must be 8,000 houses, without counting +Galata, Tophana, Kassim-pacha, Scutari, and the rest), started out at +5.30, and am now at 11 P.M. lying motionless two miles off the north +coast of the island of Marmora, with moonlight gloating on the water, a +faint north breeze, and the little pale land looking immensely +stretched-out, solemn and great, as if that were the world, and there +were nothing else; and the tiny island at its end immense, and the +_Speranza_ vast, and I only little. To-morrow at 11 A.M. I will moor the +_Speranza_ in the Golden Horn at the spot where there is that low damp +nook of the bagnio behind the naval magazines and that hill where the +palace of the Capitan Pacha is. + + * * * * * + +I found that great tangle of ships in the Golden Horn wonderfully +preserved, many with hardly any moss-growths. This must be due, I +suppose, to the little Ali-Bey and Kezat-Hanah, which flow into the Horn +at the top, and made no doubt a constant current. + +Ah, I remember the place: long ago I lived here some months, or, it may +be, years. It is the fairest of cities--and the greatest. I believe that +London in England was larger: but no city, surely, ever _seemed_ so +large. But it is flimsy, and will burn like tinder. The houses are made +of light timber, with interstices filled by earth and bricks, and some +of them look ruinous already, with their lovely faded tints of green +and gold and red and blue and yellow, like the hues of withered flowers: +for it is a city of paints and trees, and all in the little winding +streets, as I write, are volatile almond-blossoms, mixed with +maple-blossoms, white with purple. Even the most splendid of the +Sultan's palaces are built in this combustible way: for I believe that +they had a notion that stone-building was presumptuous, though I have +seen some very thick stone-houses in Galata. This place, I remember, +lived in a constant state of sensation on account of nightly flares-up; +and I have come across several tracts already devastated by fires. The +ministers-of-state used to attend them, and if the fire would not go +out, the Sultan himself was obliged to be there, in order to encourage +the firemen. Now it will burn still better. + +But I have been here six weeks, and still no burning: for the place +seems to plead with me, it is so ravishing, so that I do not know why I +did not live here, and spare my toils during those sixteen nightmare +years; for two whole weeks the impulse to burn was quieted; and since +then there has been an irritating whisper at my ear which said: 'It is +not really like the great King that you are, this burning, but like a +foolish child, or a savage, who liked to see fireworks: or at least, if +you must burn, do not burn poor Constantinople, which is so charming, +and so very old, with its balsamic perfumes, and the blossomy trees of +white and light-purple peeping over the walls of the cloistered painted +houses, and all those lichened tombs--those granite menhirs and regions +of ancient marble tombs between the quarters, Greek tombs, Byzantine, +Jew, Mussulman tombs, with their strange and sacred +inscriptions--overwaved by their cypresses and vast plane-trees.' And +for weeks I would do nothing: but roamed about, with two minds in me, +under the tropic brilliance of the sky by day, and the vast dreamy +nights of this place that are like nights seen through azure-tinted +glasses, and in each of them is not one night, but the thousand-and-one +long crowded nights of glamour and fancy: for I would sit on the immense +esplanade of the Seraskierat, or the mighty grey stones of the porch of +the mosque of Sultan Mehmed-fatih, dominating from its great steps all +old Stamboul, and watch the moon for hours and hours, so passionately +bright she soared through clear and cloud, till I would be smitten with +doubt of my own identity, for whether I were she, or the earth, or +myself, or some other thing or man, I did not know, all being so silent +alike, and all, except myself, so vast, the Seraskierat, and the +Suleimanieh, and Stamboul, and the Marmora Sea, and the earth, and +those argent fields of the moon, all large alike compared with me, and +measure and space were lost, and I with them. + + * * * * * + +These proud Turks died stolidly, many of them. In streets of +Kassim-pacha, in crowded Taxim on the heights of Pera, and under the +long Moorish arcades of Sultan-Selim, I have seen the open-air barber's +razor with his bones, and with him the half-shaved skull of the +faithful, and the long two-hours' narghile with traces of burnt tembaki +and haschish still in the bowl. Ashes now are they all, and dry yellow +bone; but in the houses of Phanar and noisy old Galata, and in the Jew +quarter of Pri-pacha, the black shoe and head-dress of the Greek is +still distinguishable from the Hebrew blue. It was a mixed ritual of +colours here in boot and hat: yellow for Mussulman, red boots, black +calpac for Armenian, for the Effendi a white turban, for the Greek a +black. The Tartar skull shines from under a high taper calpac, the +Nizain-djid's from a melon-shaped head-piece; the Imam's and Dervish's +from a grey conical felt; and there is here and there a Frank in +European rags. I have seen the towering turban of the Bashi-bazouk, and +his long sword, and some softas in the domes on the great wall of +Stamboul, and the beggar, and the street-merchant with large tray of +water-melons, sweetmeats, raisins, sherbet, and the bear-shewer, and the +Barbary organ, and the night-watchman who evermore cried 'Fire!' with +his long lantern, two pistols, dirk, and wooden javelin. Strange how all +that old life has come back to my fancy now, pretty vividly, and for the +first time, though I have been here several times lately. I have gone +out to those plains beyond the walls with their view of rather barren +mountain-peaks, the city looking nothing but minarets shooting through +black cypress-tops, and I seemed to see the wild muezzin at some summit, +crying the midday prayer: '_Mohammed Resoul Allah!_'--the wild man; and +from that great avenue of cypresses which traverses the cemetery of +Scutari, the walled city of Stamboul lay spread entire up to Phanar and +Eyoub in their cypress-woods before me, the whole embowered now in +trees, all that complexity of ways and dark alleys with overhanging +balconies of old Byzantine houses, beneath which a rider had to stoop +the head, where old Turks would lose their way in mazes of the +picturesque; and on the shaded Bosphorus coast, to Foundoucli and +beyond, some peeping yali, snow-white palace, or old Armenian cot; and +the Seraglio by the sea, a town within a town; and southward the Sea of +Marmora, blue-and-white, and vast, and fresh as a sea just born, +rejoicing at its birth and at the jovial sun, all brisk, alert, to the +shadowy islands afar: and as I looked, I suddenly said aloud a wild, mad +thing, my God, a wild and maniac thing, a shrieking maniac thing for +Hell to laugh at: for something said with my tongue: '_This city is not +quite dead._' + + * * * * * + + * * * * * + +Three nights I slept in Stamboul itself at the palace of some sanjak-bey +or emir, or rather dozed, with one slumbrous eye that would open to +watch my visitors Sinbad, and Ali Baba, and old Haroun, to see how they +slumbered and dozed: for it was in the small luxurious chamber where the +bey received those speechless all-night visits of the Turks, long rosy +hours of perfumed romance, and drunkenness of the fancy, and visionary +languor, sinking toward morning into the yet deeper peace of dreamless +sleep; and there, still, were the white _yatags_ for the guests to sit +cross-legged on for the waking dream, and to fall upon for the final +swoon, and the copper brazier still scenting of essence-of-rose, and the +cushions, rugs, hangings, the monsters on the wall, the +haschish-chibouques, narghiles, hookahs, and drugged pale cigarettes, +and a secret-looking lattice beyond the door, painted with trees and +birds; and the air narcotic and grey with the pastilles which I had +burned, and the scented smokes which I had smoked; and I all drugged and +mumbling, my left eye suspicious of Ali there, and Sinbad, and old +Haroun, who dozed. And when I had slept, and rose to wash in a room near +the overhanging latticed balcony of the façade, before me to the north +lay old Galata in sunshine, and that steep large street mounting to +Pera, once full at every night-fall of divans on which grave dervishes +smoked narghiles, and there was no space for passage, for all was +divans, lounges, almond-trees, heaven-high hum, chibouques in forests, +the dervish, and the innumerable porter, the horse-hirer with his horse +from Tophana, and arsenal-men from Kassim, and traders from Galata, and +artillery-workmen from Tophana; and on the other side of the house, the +south end, a covered bridge led across a street, which consisted mostly +of two immense blind walls, into a great tangled wilderness of flowers, +which was the harem-garden, where I passed some hours; and here I might +have remained many days, many weeks perhaps, but that, dozing one +fore-day with those fancied others, it was as if there occurred a laugh +somewhere, and a thing said: 'But this city is not quite dead!' waking +me from deeps of peace to startled wakefulness. And I thought to myself: +'If it be not quite dead, it _will_ be soon--and with some suddenness!' +And the next morning I was at the Arsenal. + + * * * * * + +It is long since I have so deeply enjoyed, even to the marrow. It may be +'the White' who has the guardianship of my life: but assuredly it is +'the Black' who reigns in my soul. + +Grandly did old Stamboul, Galata, Tophana, Kassim, right out beyond the +walls to Phanar and Eyoub, blaze and burn. The whole place, except one +little region of Galata, was like so much tinder, and in the five hours +between 8 P.M. and 1 A.M. all was over. I saw the tops of those vast +masses of cemetery-cypresses round the tombs of the Osmanlis outside the +walls, and those in the cemetery of Kassim, and those round the sacred +mosque of Eyoub, shrivel away instantaneously, like flimsy hair caught +by a flame; I saw the Genoese tower of Galata go heading obliquely on an +upward curve, like Sir Roger de Coverley and wild rockets, and burst +high, high, with a report; in pairs, and threes, and fours, I saw the +blue cupolas of the twelve or fourteen great mosques give in and +subside, or soar and rain, and the great minarets nod the head, and +topple; and I saw the flames reach out and out across the empty breadth +of the Etmeidan--three hundred yards--to the six minarets of the Mosque +of Achmet, wrapping the red Egyptian-granite obelisk in the centre; and +across the breadth of the Serai-Meidani it reached to the buildings of +the Seraglio and the Sublime Porte; and across those vague barren +stretches that lie between the houses and the great wall; and across the +seventy or eighty great arcaded bazaars, all-enwrapping, it reached; and +the spirit of fire grew upon me: for the Golden Horn itself was a tongue +of fire, crowded, west of the galley-harbour, with exploding +battleships, Turkish frigates, corvettes, brigs--and east, with tens of +thousands of feluccas, caiques, gondolas and merchantmen aflame. On my +left burned all Scutari; and between six and eight in the evening I had +sent out thirty-seven vessels under low horse-powers of air, with trains +and fuses laid for 11 P.M., to light with their wandering fires the Sea +of Marmora. By midnight I was encompassed in one great furnace and fiery +gulf, all the sea and sky inflamed, and earth a-flare. Not far from me +to the left I saw the vast Tophana barracks of the Cannoniers, and the +Artillery-works, after long reluctance and delay, take wing together; +and three minutes later, down by the water, the barrack of the +Bombardiers and the Military School together, grandly, grandly; and +then, to the right, in the valley of Kassim, the Arsenal: these +occupying the sky like smoky suns, and shedding a glaring day over many +a mile of sea and land; I saw the two lines of ruddier flaring where the +barge-bridge and the raft-bridge over the Golden Horn made haste to +burn; and all that vastness burned with haste, quicker and quicker--to +fervour--to fury--to unanimous rabies: and when its red roaring stormed +the infinite, and the might of its glowing heart was Gravitation, Being, +Sensation, and I its compliant wife--then my head nodded, and with +crooked lips I sighed as it were my last sigh, and tumbled, weak and +drunken, upon my face. + + * * * * * + + * * * * * + +O wild Providence! Unfathomable madness of Heaven! that ever I should +write what now I write! I will not write it.... + + * * * * * + +The hissing of it! It is only a crazy dream! a tearing-out of the hair +by the roots to scatter upon the raving storms of Saturn! My hand will +not write it! + + * * * * * + +In God's name----! During four nights after the burning I slept in a +house--French as I saw by the books, &c., probably the Ambassador's, for +it has very large gardens and a beautiful view over the sea, situated on +the rapid east declivity of Pera; it is one of the few large houses +which, for my safety, I had left standing round the minaret whence I had +watched, this minaret being at the top of the old Mussulman quarter on +the heights of Taxim, between Pera proper and Foundoucli. At the bottom, +both at the quay of Foundoucli, and at that of Tophana, I had left under +shelter two caiques for double safety, one a Sultan's gilt craft, with +gold spur at the prow, and one a boat of those zaptias that used to +patrol the Golden Horn as water-police: by one or other of these I meant +to reach the _Speranza_, she being then safely anchored some distance up +the Bosphorus coast. So, on the fifth morning I set out for the Tophana +quay; but a light rain had fallen over-night, and this had re-excited +the thin grey smoke resembling quenched steam, which, as from some +reeking province of Abaddon, still trickled upward over many a square +mile of blackened tract, though of flame I could see no sign. I had not +accordingly advanced far over every sort of _débris_, when I found my +eyes watering, my throat choked, and my way almost blocked by roughness: +whereupon I said: 'I will turn back, cross the region of tombs and +barren waste behind Pera, descend the hill, get the zaptia boat at the +Foundoucli quay, and so reach the _Speranza_.' + +Accordingly, I made my way out of the region of smoke, passed beyond the +limits of smouldering ruin and tomb, and soon entered a rich woodland, +somewhat scorched at first, but soon green and flourishing as the +jungle. This cooled and soothed me, and being in no hurry to reach the +ship, I was led on and on, in a somewhat north-western direction, I +fancy. Somewhere hereabouts, I thought, was the place they called 'The +Sweet Waters,' and I went on with the vague notion of coming upon them, +thinking to pass the day, till afternoon, in the forest. Here nature, in +only twenty years has returned to an exuberant savagery, and all was now +the wildest vegetation, dark dells, rills wimpling through deep-brown +shade of sensitive mimosa, large pendulous fuchsia, palm, cypress, +mulberry, jonquil, narcissus, daffodil, rhododendron, acacia, fig. Once +I stumbled upon a cemetery of old gilt tombs, absolutely overgrown and +lost, and thrice caught glimpses of little trellised yalis choked in +boscage. With slow and listless foot I went, munching an almond or an +olive, though I could swear that olives were not formerly indigenous to +any soil so northern: yet here they are now, pretty plentiful, though +elementary, so that modifications whose end I cannot see are certainly +proceeding in everything, some of the cypresses which I met that day +being immense beyond anything I ever heard of: and the thought, I +remember, was in my head, that if a twig or leaf should change into a +bird, or a fish with wings, and fly before my eyes, what then should I +do? and I would eye a branch suspiciously anon. After a long time I +penetrated into a very sombre grove. The day outside the wood was +brilliant and hot, and very still, the leaves and flowers here all +motionless. I seemed, as it were, to hear the vacant silence of the +world, and my foot treading on a twig, produced the report of pistols. I +presently reached a glade in a thicket, about eight yards across, that +had a scent of lime and orange, where the just-sufficient twilight +enabled me to see some old bones, three skulls, and the edge of a +tam-tam peeping from a tuft of wild corn with corn-flowers, and here and +there some golden champac, and all about a profusion of musk-roses. I +had stopped--_why_ I do not recollect--perhaps thinking that if I was +not getting to the Sweet Waters, I should seriously set about finding my +way out. And as I stood looking about me, I remember that some cruising +insect trawled near my ear its lonely drone. + +Suddenly, God knows, I started, I started. + +I imagined--I dreamed--that I saw a pressure in a bed of moss and +violets, _recently made!_ And while I stood gloating upon that +impossible thing, I imagined--I dreamed--the lunacy of it!--that I heard +a laugh...! the laugh, my good God, of a human soul. + +Or it seemed half a laugh, and half a sob: and it passed from me in one +fleeting instant. + +Laughs, and sobs, and idiot hallucinations, I had often heard before, +feet walking, sounds behind me: and even as I had heard them, I had +known that they were nothing. But brief as was this impression, it was +yet so thrillingly _real_, that my poor heart received, as it were, the +very shock of death, and I fell backward into a mass of moss, supported +on the right palm, while the left pressed my working bosom; and there, +toiling to catch my breath, I lay still, all my soul focussed into my +ears. But now I could hear no sound, save only the vast and audible hum +of the silence of the universe. + + +There was, however, the foot-print. If my eye and ear should so +conspire against me, that, I thought, was hard. + +Still I lay, still, in that same pose, without a stir, sick and +dry-mouthed, infirm and languishing, with dying breaths: but keen, +keen--and malign. + +I would wait, I said to myself, I would be artful as snakes, though so +woefully sick and invalid: I would make no sound.... + +After some minutes I became conscious that my eyes were leering--leering +in one fixed direction: and instantly, the mere fact that I had a sense +of direction proved to me that I must, _in truth_, have heard something! +I strove--I managed--to raise myself: and as I stood upright, feebly +swaying there, not the terrors of death alone were in my breast, but the +authority of the monarch was on my brow. + +I moved: I found the strength. + +Slow step by slow step, with daintiest noiselessness, I moved to a +thread of moss that from the glade passed into the thicket, and along +its winding way I stepped, in the direction of the sound. Now my ears +caught the purling noise of a brooklet, and following the moss-path, I +was led into a mass of bush only two or three feet higher than my head. +Through this, prowling like a stealthy cat, I wheedled my painful way, +emerged upon a strip of open long-grass, and now was faced, three yards +before me, by a wall of acacia-trees, prickly-pear and pichulas, between +which and a forest beyond I spied a gleam of running water. + +On hands and knees I crept toward the acacia-thicket, entered it a +little, and leaning far forward, peered. And there--at once--ten yards +to my right--I saw. + +Singular to say, my agitation, instead of intensifying to the point of +apoplexy and death, now, at the actual sight, subsided to something very +like calmness. With malign and sullen eye askance I stood, and steadily +I watched her there. + + * * * * * + +She was on her knees, her palms lightly touching the ground, supporting +her. At the edge of the streamlet she knelt, and she was looking with a +species of startled shy astonishment at the reflexion of her face in the +limpid brown water. And I, with sullen eye askance regarded her a good +ten minutes' space. + + * * * * * + +I believe that her momentary laugh and sob, which I had heard, was the +result of surprise at seeing her own image; and I firmly believe, from +the expression of her face, that this was the first time that she had +seen it. + + * * * * * + +Never, I thought, as I stood moodily gazing, had I seen on the earth a +creature so fair (though, analysing now at leisure, I can quite conclude +that there was nothing at all remarkable about her good looks). Her +hair, somewhat lighter than auburn, and frizzy, was a real garment to +her nakedness, covering her below the hips, some strings of it falling, +too, into the water: her eyes, a dark blue, were wide in a most silly +expression of bewilderment. Even as I eyed and eyed her, she slowly +rose: and at once I saw in all her manner an air of unfamiliarity with +the world, as of one wholly at a loss what to do. Her pupils did not +seem accustomed to light; and I could swear that that was the first day +in which she had seen a tree or a stream. + +Her age appeared eighteen or twenty. I guessed that she was of +Circassian blood, or, at least, origin. Her skin was whitey-brown, or +old ivory-white. + + * * * * * + +She stood up motionless, at a loss. She took a lock of her hair, and +drew it through her lips. There was some look in her eyes, which I +could plainly see now, somehow indicating wild hunger, though the wood +was full of food. After letting go her hair, she stood again feckless +and imbecile, with sideward-hung head, very pitiable to see I think now, +though no faintest pity touched me then. It was clear that she did not +at all know what to make of the look of things. Finally, she sat on a +moss-bank, reached and took a musk-rose on her palm, and looked +hopelessly at it. + + * * * * * + +One minute after my first actual sight of her my extravagance of +agitation, I say, died down to something like calm. The earth was mine +by old right: I felt that: and this creature a mere slave upon whom, +without heat or haste, I might perform my will: and for some time I +stood, coolly enough considering what that will should be. + +I had at my girdle the little cangiar, with silver handle encrusted with +coral, and curved blade six inches long, damascened in gold, and sharp +as a razor; the blackest and the basest of all the devils of the Pit was +whispering in my breast with calm persistence: 'Kill, kill--and eat.' + +_Why_ I should have killed her I do not know. That question I now ask +myself. It must be true, true that it is '_not good_' for man to be +alone. There was a religious sect in the Past which called itself +'Socialist': and with these must have been the truth, man being at his +best and highest when most social, and at his worst and lowest when +isolated: for the Earth gets hold of all isolation, and draws it, and +makes it fierce, base, and materialistic, like sultans, aristocracies, +and the like: but Heaven is where two or three are gathered together. It +may be so: I do not know, nor care. But I know that after twenty years +of solitude on a planet the human soul is more enamoured of solitude +than of life, shrinking like a tender nerve from the rough intrusion of +Another into the secret realm of Self: and hence, perhaps, the +bitterness with which solitary castes, Brahmins, patricians, +aristocracies, always resisted any attempt to invade their +slowly-acquired domain of privileges. Also, it may be true, it may, it +may, that after twenty years of solitary selfishness, a man becomes, +without suspecting it--not at all noticing the slow stages--a real and +true beast, a horrible, hideous beast, mad, prowling, like that King of +Babylon, his nails like birds' claws, and his hair like eagles' +feathers, with instincts all inflamed and fierce, delighting in +darkness and crime for their own sake. I do not know, nor care: but I +know that, as I drew the cangiar, the basest and the slyest of all the +devils was whispering me, tongue in cheek: 'Kill, kill--and be merry.' + +With excruciating slowness, like a crawling glacier, tender as a nerve +of the touching leaves, I moved, I stole, obliquely toward her through +the wall of bush, the knife behind my back. Once only there was a +restraint, a check: I felt myself held back: I had to stop: for one of +the ends of my divided beard had caught in a limb of prickly-pear. + +I set to disentangling it: and it was, I believe, at the moment of +succeeding that I first noticed the state of the sky, a strip of which I +could see across the rivulet: a minute or so before it had been pretty +clear, but now was busy with hurrying clouds. It was a sinister +muttering of thunder which had made me glance upward. + +When my eyes returned to the sitting figure, she was looking foolishly +about the sky with an expression which almost proved that she had never +before heard that sound of thunder, or at least had no idea what it +could bode. My fixed regard lost not one of her movements, while inch by +inch, not breathing, careful as the poise of a balance, I crawled. And +suddenly, with a rush, I was out in the open, running her down.... + +She leapt: perhaps two, perhaps three, paces she fled: then stock still +she stood--within some four yards of me--with panting nostrils, with +enquiring face. + +I saw it all in one instant, and in one instant all was over. I had not +checked the impetus of my run at her stoppage, and I was on the point of +reaching her with uplifted knife, when I was suddenly checked and +smitten by a stupendous violence: a flash of blinding light, attracted +by the steel which I held, struck tingling through my frame, and at the +same time the most passionate crash of thunder that ever shocked a poor +human ear felled me to the ground. The cangiar, snatched from my hand, +fell near the girl's foot. + +I did not entirely lose consciousness, though, surely, the Powers no +longer hide themselves from me, and their close contact is too +intolerably rough and vigorous for a poor mortal man. During, I should +think, three or four minutes, I lay so astounded under that bullying cry +of wrath, that I could not move a finger. When at last I did sit up, the +girl was standing near me, with a sort of smile, holding out to me the +cangiar in a pouring rain. + +I took it from her, and my doddering fingers dropped it into the +stream. + + * * * * * + +Pour, pour came the rain, raining as it can in this place, not long, but +a deluge while it lasts, dripping in thick-liquidity, like a profuse +sweat, through the forest, I seeking to get back by the way I had come, +flying, but with difficulty and slowness, and a feeling in me that I was +being tracked. And so it proved: for when I struck into more open space, +nearly opposite the west walls, but now on the north side of the Golden +Horn, where there is a flat grassy ground somewhere between the valley +of Kassim and Charkoi, with horror I saw that _protégée_ of Heaven, or +of someone, not ten yards behind, following me like a mechanical figure, +it being now near three in the afternoon, and the rain drenching me +through, and I tired and hungry, and from all the ruins of +Constantinople not one whiff of smoke ascending. + +I trudged on wearily till I came to the quay of Foundoucli, and the +zaptia boat; and there she was with me still, her hair nothing but a +thin drowned string down her back. + + * * * * * + +Not only can she not speak to me in any language that I know: but she +can speak in _no_ language: it is my firm belief that she has _never_ +spoken. + +She never saw a boat, or water, or the world, till now--I could swear +it. She came into the boat with me, and sat astern, clinging for dear +life to the gunwale by her finger-nails, and I paddled the eight hundred +yards to the _Speranza_, and she came up to the deck after me. When she +saw the open water, the boat, the yalis on the coast, and then the ship, +astonishment was imprinted on her face. But she appears to know little +fear. She smiled like a child, and on the ship touched this and that, as +if each were a living thing. + +It was only here and there that one could see the ivory-brown colour of +her skin: the rest was covered with dirt, like old bottles long lying in +cellars. + +By the time we reached the _Speranza_, the rain suddenly stopped: I went +down to my cabin to change my clothes, and had to shut the door in her +face to keep her out. When I opened it, she was there, and she followed +me to the windlass, when I went to set the anchor-engine going. I +intended, I suppose, to take her to Imbros, where she might live in one +of the broken-down houses of the village. But when the anchor was not +yet half up, I stopped the engine, and let the chain run again. For I +said, 'No, I will be alone, I am not a child.' + +I knew that she was hungry by the look in her eyes: but I cared nothing +for that. I was hungry, too: and that was all I cared about. + +I would not let her be there with me another instant. I got down into +the boat, and when she followed, I rowed her back all the way past +Foundoucli and the Tophana quay to where one turns into the Golden Horn +by St. Sophia, around the mouth of the Horn being a vast semicircle of +charred wreckage, carried out by the river-currents. I went up the steps +on the Galata side before one comes to where the barge-bridge was. When +she had followed me on to the embankment, I walked up one of those +rising streets, very encumbered now with stone-_débris_ and ashes, but +still marked by some standing black wall-fragments, it being now not far +from night, but the air as clear and washed as the translucency of a +great purple diamond with the rain and the afterglow of the sun, and all +the west aflame. + +When I was about a hundred yards up in this old mixed quarter of Greeks, +Turks, Jews, Italians, Albanians, and noise and cafedjis and +wine-bibbing, having turned two corners, I suddenly gathered my skirts, +spun round, and, as fast as I could, was off at a heavy trot back to +the quay. She was after me, but being taken by surprise, I suppose, was +distanced a little at first. However, by the time I could scurry myself +down into the boat, she was so near, that she only saved herself from +the water by a balancing stoppage at the brink, as I pushed off. I then +set out to get back to the ship, muttering: 'You can have Turkey, if you +like, and I will keep the rest of the world.' + +I rowed sea-ward, my face toward her, but steadily averted, for I would +not look her way to see what she was doing. However, as I turned the +point of the quay, where the open sea washes quite rough and loud, to go +northward and disappear from her, I heard a babbling cry--the first +sound which she had uttered. I did look then: and she was still quite +near me, for the silly maniac had been running along the embankment, +following me. + +'Little fool!' I cried out across the water, 'what are you after now?' +And, oh my good God, shall I ever forget that strangeness, that wild +strangeness, of my own voice, addressing on this earth another human +soul? + +There she stood, whimpering like an abandoned dog after me. I turned the +boat, rowed, came to the first steps, landed, and struck her two +stinging slaps, one on each cheek. While she cowered, surprised no +doubt, I took her by the hand, led her back to the boat, landed on the +Stamboul side, and set off, still leading her, my object being to find +some sort of possible edifice near by, not hopelessly burned, in which +to leave her: for in all Galata there was plainly none, and Pera, I +thought, was too far to walk to. But it would have been better if I had +gone to Pera, for we had to walk quite three miles from Seraglio Point +all along the city battlements to the Seven-towers, she picking her +bare-footed way after me through the great Sahara of charred stuff, and +night now well arrived, and the moon a-drift in the heaven, making the +desolate lonesomeness of the ruins tenfold desolate, so that my heart +smote me then with bitterness and remorse, and I had a vision of myself +that night which I will not put down on paper. At last, however, pretty +late in the evening, I spied a large mansion with green lattice-work +façade, and shaknisier, and terrace-roof, which had been hidden from me +by the arcades of a bazaar, a vast open space at about the centre of +Stamboul, one of the largest of the bazaars, I should think, in the +middle of which stood the mansion, probably the home of pasha or vizier: +for it had a very distinguished look in that place. It seemed very +little hurt, though the vegetation that had apparently choked the great +open space was singed to a black fluff, among which lay thousands of +calcined bones of man, horse, ass, and camel, for all was distinct in +the bright, yet so pensive and forlorn, moonlight, which was that +Eastern moonlight of pure astral mystery which illumines Persepolis, and +Babylon, and ruined cities of the old Anakim. + +The house, I knew, would contain divans, _yatags_, cushions, foods, +wines, sherbets, henna, saffron, mastic, raki, haschish, costumes, and a +hundred luxuries still good. There was an outer wall, but the foliage +over it had been singed away, and the gate all charred. It gave way at a +push from my palm. The girl was close behind me. I next threw open a +little green lattice-door in the façade under the shaknisier, and +entered. Here it was dark, and the moment that she, too, was within, I +slipped out quickly, slammed the door in her face, and hooked it upon +her by a little hook over the latch. + +I now walked some yards beyond the court, then stopped, listening for +her expected cry: but all was still: five minutes--ten--I waited: but no +sound. I then continued my morose and melancholy way, hollow with +hunger, intending to start that night for Imbros. + +But this time I had hardly advanced twenty steps, when I heard a frail +and strangled cry, apparently in mid-air behind me, and glancing, saw +the creature lying at the gateway, a white thing in black stubble-ashes. +She had evidently jumped, well outward, from a small casement of lattice +on a level with the little shaknisier grating, through which once peeped +bright eyes, thirty feet aloft. + +I hardly believe that she was conscious of any danger in jumping, for +all the laws of life are new to her, and, having sought and found the +opening, she may have merely come with blind instinctiveness after me, +taking the first way open to her. I walked back, pulled at her arm, and +found that she could not stand. Her face was screwed with silent +pain--she did not moan. Her left foot, I could see, was bleeding: and by +the wounded ankle I took her, and dragged her so through the ashes +across the narrow court, and tossed her like a little dog with all my +force within the door, cursing her. + +Now I would not go back the long way to the ship, but struck a match, +and went lighting up girandoles, cressets, candelabra, into a confusion +of lights among great numbers of pale-tinted pillars, rose and azure, +with verd-antique, olive, and Portoro marble, and serpentine. The +mansion was large, I having to traverse quite a desert of embroidered +brocade-hangings, slender columns, and Broussa silks, till I saw a +stair-case doorway behind a Smyrna _portière_, went up, and wandered +some time in a house of gilt-barred windows, with very little furniture, +but palatial spaces, solitary huge pieces of _faïence_ of inestimable +age, and arms, my footfalls quite stifled in the Persian carpeting. I +passed through a covered-in hanging-gallery, with one window-grating +overlooking an inner court, and by this entered the harem, which +declared itself by a greater luxury, bric-à-bracerie, and profusion of +manner. Here, descending a short curved stair behind a _portière_, I +came into a marble-paved sort of larder, in which was an old negress in +blue dress, her hair still adhering, and an infinite supply of +sweetmeats, French preserved foods, sherbets, wines, and so on. I put a +number of things into a pannier, went up again, found some of those +exquisite pale cigarettes which drunken in the hollow of an emerald, +also a jewelled two-yard-long chibouque, and tembaki: and with all +descended by another stair, and laid them on the steps of a little +raised kiosk of green marble in a corner of the court; went up again, +and brought down a still-snowy _yatag_ to sleep on; and there, by the +kiosk-step, ate and passed the night, smoking for several hours in a +state of languor. In the centre of the court is a square marble well, +looking white through a rankness of wild vine, acacias in flower, weeds, +jasmines, and roses, which overgrew it, as well as the kiosk and the +whole court, climbing even the four-square arcade of Moorish arches +round the open space, under one of which I had deposited a long lantern +of crimson silk: for here no breath of the fire had come. About two in +morning I fell to sleep, a deeper peace of shadow now reigning where so +long the melancholy silver of the moon had lingered. + + * * * * * + +About eight in the morning I rose and made my way to the front, +intending that that should be my last night in this ruined place: for +all the night, sleeping and waking, the thing which had happened filled +my brain, growing from one depth of incredibility to a deeper, so that +at last I arrived at a sort of certainty that it could be nothing but a +drunken dream: but as I opened my eyes afresh, the deep-cutting +realisation of that impossibility smote like a pang of lightning-stroke +through my being: and I said: 'I will go again to the far Orient, and +forget': and I started out from the court, not knowing what had become +of her during the night, till, having reached the outer chamber, with a +wild start I saw her lying there at the door in the very spot where I +had flung her, asleep sideways, head on arm ... Softly, softly, I stept +over her, got out, and went running at a cautious clandestine trot. The +morning was in high _fête_, most fresh and pure, and to breathe was to +be young, and to see such a sunlight lighten even upon ruin so vast was +to be blithe. After running two hundred yards to one of the great broken +bazaar-portals, I looked back to see if I was followed: but all that +space was desolately empty. I then walked on past the arch, on which a +green oblong, once inscribed, as usual, with some text in gilt +hieroglyphs, is still discernible; and, emerging, saw the great panorama +of destruction, a few vast standing walls, with hollow Oriental windows +framing deep sky beyond, and here and there a pillar, or half-minaret, +and down within the walls of the old Seraglio still some leafless, +branchless trunks, and in Eyoub and Phanar leafless forests, and on the +northern horizon Pera with the steep upper-half of the Iani-Chircha +street still there, and on the height the European houses, and all +between blackness, stones, a rolling landscape of ravine, like the hilly +pack-ice of the North if its snow were ink, and to the right Scutari, +black, laid low, with its vast region of tombs, and rare stumps of its +forests, and the blithe blue sea, with the widening semicircle of +floating _débris_, looking like brown foul scum at some points, +congested before the bridgeless Golden Horn: for I stood pretty high in +the centre of Stamboul somewhere in the region of the Suleimanieh, or of +Sultan-Selim, as I judged, with immense purviews into abstract distances +and mirage. And to me it seemed too vast, too lonesome, and after +advancing a few hundred yards beyond the bazaar, I turned again. + + * * * * * + +I found the girl still asleep at the house-door, and stirring her with +my foot, woke her. She leapt up with a start of surprise, and a +remarkable sinuous agility, and gazed an astounded moment at me, till, +separating reality from dream and habit, she realised me: but +immediately subsided to the floor again, being in evident pain. I pulled +her up, and made her limp after me through several halls to the inner +court, and the well, where I set her upon the weedy margin, took her +foot in my lap, examined it, drew water, washed it, and bandaged it with +a strip torn from my caftan-hem, now and again speaking gruffly to her, +so that she might no more follow me. + +After this, I had breakfast by the kiosk-steps, and when I was +finished, put a mass of truffled _foie gras_ on a plate, brushed through +the thicket to the well, and gave it her. She took it, but looked +foolish, not eating. I then, with my forefinger, put a little into her +mouth, whereupon she set hungrily to eat it all. I also gave her some +ginger-bread, a handful of bonbons, some Krishnu wine, and some +anisette. + +I then started out afresh, gruffly bidding her stay there, and left her +sitting on the well, her hair falling down the opening, she peering +after me through the bushes. But I had not half reached the ogival +bazaar-portal, when looking anxiously back, I saw that she was limping +after me. So that this creature tracks me in the manner of a nutshell +following about in the wake of a ship. + +I turned back with her to the house, for it was necessary that I should +plan some further method of eluding her. That was five days ago, and +here I have stayed: for the house and court are sufficiently agreeable, +and form a museum of real _objets d'art_. It is settled, however, that +to-morrow I return to Imbros. + + * * * * * + +It seems certain that she never wore, saw, nor knew of, clothes. + +I have dressed her, first sousing her thoroughly with sponge and soap +in luke-warm rose-water in the silver cistern of the harem-bath, which +is a circular marbled apartment with a fountain and the complicated +ceilings of these houses, and frescoes, and gilt texts of the Koran on +the walls, and pale rose-silk hangings. On the divan I had heaped a +number of selected garments, and having shewed her how to towel herself, +I made her step into a pair of the trousers called _shintiyan_ made of +yellow-striped white-silk; this, by a running string, I tied loosely +round the upper part of her hips; then, drawing up the bottoms to her +knees, tied them there, so that their voluminous baggy folds, +overhanging still to the ankles, have rather the look of a skirt; over +this I put upon her a blue-striped chiffon chemise, or quamis, reaching +a little below the hips; I then put on a short jacket or vest of scarlet +satin, thickly embroidered in gold and precious stones, reaching +somewhat below the waist, and pretty tight-fitting; and, making her lie +on the couch, I put upon her little feet little yellow baboosh-slippers, +then anklets, on her fingers rings, round her neck a necklace of +sequins, finally dyeing her nails, which I cut, with henna. There +remained her head, but with this I would have nothing to do, only +pointing to the tarboosh which I had brought, to a square kerchief, to +some corals, and to the fresco of a woman on the wall, which, if she +chose, she might copy. Lastly, I pierced her ears with the silver +needles which they used here: and after two hours of it left her. + +About an hour afterwards I saw her in the arcade round the court, and, +to my great surprise, she had a perfect plait down her back, and over +her head and brows a green-silk feredjeh, or hood, precisely as in the +picture. + + * * * * * + +Here is a question, the answer to which would be interesting to me: +Whether or not for twenty years--or say rather twenty centuries, twenty +eternal aeons--I have been stark mad, a raving maniac; and whether or +not I am now suddenly sane, sitting here writing in my right mind, my +whole mood and tone changed, or rapidly changing? And whether such +change can be due to the presence of only one other being in the world +with me? + + * * * * * + +This singular being! Where she has lived--and how--is a problem to which +not the faintest solution is conceivable. She had, I say, never seen +clothes: for when I began to dress her, her perplexity was unbounded; +also, during her twenty years, she has never seen almonds, figs, nuts, +liqueurs, chocolate, conserves, vegetables, sugar, oil, honey, +sweetmeats, orange-sherbet, mastic, salt, raki, tobacco, and many such +things: for she showed perplexity at all these, hesitation to eat them: +but she has known and tasted _white wine_: I could see that. Here, then, +is a mystery. + + * * * * * + +I have not gone to Imbros, but remained here some days longer observing +her. + +I have allowed her to sit in a corner at meal-time, not far from where I +eat, and I have given her food. + +She is wonderfully clever! I continually find that, after an incredibly +short time, she has most completely adapted herself to this or that. +Already she wears her outfit as coquettishly as though born to clothes. +Without at all seeming observant--for, on the contrary, she gives an +impression of great flightiness--she watches me, I am convinced, with +pretty exact observation. She knows precisely when I am speaking +roughly, bidding her go, bidding her come, tired of her, tolerant of +her, scorning her, cursing her. If I wish her to the devil, she quickly +divines it by my face, and will disappear. Yesterday I noticed +something queer about her, and soon discovered that she had been +staining her lids with black kohol, like the _hanums_, so that, having +found a box, she must have guessed its use from the pictures. +Wonderfully clever!--imitative as a mirror. Two mornings ago I found an +old mother-of-pearl kittur, and sitting under the arcade, touched the +strings, playing a simple air; I could just see her behind one of the +arch-pillars on the opposite side, and she was listening with apparent +eagerness, and, I fancied, panting. Well, returning from a walk beyond +the Phanar walls in the afternoon, I heard the same air coming out from +the house, for she was repeating it pretty faultlessly by ear. + +Also, during the forenoon of the previous day, I came upon her--for +footsteps make no sound in this house--in the pacha's visitors'-hall: +and what was she doing?--copying the poses of three dancing-girls +frescoed there! So that she would seem to have a character as light as a +butterfly's, and is afraid of nothing. + + * * * * * + +Now I know. + +I had observed that at the beginning of every meal she seemed to have +something on her mind, going toward the door, hesitating as if to see +whether I would follow, and then returning. At length yesterday, after +sitting to eat, she jumped up, and to my infinite surprise, said her +first word: said it with a most quaint, experimental effort of the +tongue, as a fledgling trying the air: the word '_Come_.' + +That morning, meeting her in the court, I had told her to repeat some +words after me: but she had made no attempt, as if shy to break the long +silence of her life; and now I felt some sort of foolish pleasure in +hearing her utter that word, often no doubt heard from me: and after +hurriedly eating, I went with her, saying to myself: 'She must be about +to shew me the food to which she is accustomed: and perhaps that will +solve her origin.' + +And so it has proved. I have now discovered that to the moment when she +saw me, she had tasted only her mother's milk, dates, and that white +wine of Ismidt which the Koran permits. + +As it was getting dark, I lit and took with me the big red-silk lantern, +and we set out, she leading, and walking confoundedly fast, slackening +when I swore at her, and getting fast again: and she walks with a +certain levity, flightiness, and liberated _furore_, very hard to +describe, as though space were a luxury to be revelled in. By what +instinctive cleverness, or native vigour of memory, she found her way I +cannot tell, but she led me such a walk that night, miles, miles, till I +became furious, darkness having soon fallen with only a faint moon +obscured by cloud, and a drizzle which haunted the air, she without +light climbing and picking her thinly-slippered steps over mounds of +_débris_ and loosely-strewn masonry with unfailing agility, I +occasionally splashing a foot with horror into one of those little ponds +which always marked the Stamboul streets. When I was nearer her, I would +see her peer across and upward toward Pera, as if that were a remembered +land-mark, and would note the perpetual aspen oscillations of the long +coral drops in her ears, and the nimble ply of her limbs, wondering with +a groan if Pera was our goal. + +Our goal was even beyond Pera. When we came to the Golden Horn, she +pointed to my caique which lay at the Old Seraglio steps, and over the +water we went, she lying quite at ease now, with her face at the level +of the water in the centre of the crescent-shape, as familiarly as a +_hanum_ of old engaged in some escapade through the crowded Babel of +Galata and that north side of the Horn. + +Through Galata we passed, I already cursing the journey: and, following +the line of the coast and the great steep thoroughfare of Pera, we came +at last, almost in the country, to a great wall, and the entrance to an +immense terraced garden, whose limits were invisible, many of the trees +and avenues being still intact. + +I knew it at once: I had lain a special fuse-train in the great palace +at the top of the terraces: it was the royal palace, Yildiz. + +Up and up we went through the grounds, a few unburned old bodies in rags +of uniform still discernible here and there as the lantern swung past +them, a musician in sky-blue, a fantassin and officer-of-the-guard in +scarlet, forming a cross, with domestics of the palace in +red-and-orange. + +The palace itself was quite in ruins, together with all its surrounding +barracks, mosque, and seraglio, and, as we reached the top of the +grounds, presented a picture very like those which I have seen of the +ruins of Persepolis, only that here the columns, both standing and +fallen, were innumerable, and all more or less blackened; and through +doorless doors we passed, down immensely-wide short flights of steps, +and up them, and over strewed courtyards, by tottering fragments of +arcades, all roofless, and tracts of charcoal between interrupted +avenues of pillars, I following, expectant, and she very eager now. +Finally, down a flight of twelve or fourteen rather steep and narrow +steps, very dislocated, we went to a level which, I thought, must be the +floor of the palace vaults: for at the bottom of the steps we stood on a +large plain floor of plaster, which bore the marks of the flames; and +over this the girl ran a few steps, pointed with excited recognition to +a hole in it, ran further, and disappeared down the hole. + +When I followed, and lowered the lantern a little, I saw that the drop +down was about eight feet, made less than six feet by a heap of +stone-rubbish below, the falling of which had caused the hole: and it +was by standing on this rubbish-heap, I knew at once, that she must have +been enabled to climb out into the world. + +I dropped down, and found myself in a low flat-roofed cellar, with a +floor of black earth, very fusty and damp, but so very vast in extent +that even in the day-time, I suppose, I could not have discerned its +boundaries; I fancy, indeed, that it extends beneath the whole palace +and its environs--an enormous stretch of space: with the lantern I could +only see a very limited portion of its area. She still led me eagerly +on, and I presently came upon a whole region of flat boxes, each about +two feet square, and nine inches high, made of very thin laths, packed +to the roof; and about a-hundred-and-fifty feet from these I saw, where +she pointed, another region of bottles, fat-bellied bottles in chemises +of wicker-work, stretching away into gloom and total darkness. The +boxes, of which a great number lay broken open, as they can be by merely +pulling with the fingers at a pliant crack, contain dates; and the +bottles, of which many thousands lay empty, contain, I saw, old +Ismidt wine. Some fifty or sixty casks, covered with mildew, some old +pieces of furniture, and a great cube of rotting, curling parchments, +showed that this cellar had been more or less loosely used for the +occasional storage of superfluous stores and knick-knacks. + +It was also more or less loosely used as a domestic prison. For in the +lane between the region of boxes and the region of bottles, near the +former, there lay on the ground the skeleton of a woman, the details of +whose costume were still appreciable, with thin brass gyves on her +wrists: and when I had examined her well, I knew the whole history of +the creature standing silent by my side. + +She is the daughter of the Sultan, as I assumed when I had once +determined that the skeleton is both the skeleton of her mother, and the +skeleton of the Sultana. + +That the skeleton was her mother is clear: for the cloud occurred just +twenty-one years since, and the dead woman was, of course, at that +moment in the prison, which must have been air-tight, and with her the +girl: but since the girl is quite certainly not much more than +twenty--she looks younger--she must at that time have been either unborn +or a young babe: but a babe would hardly be imprisoned with another than +its own mother. I am rather inclined to think that the girl was unborn +at the moment of the cloud, and was born in the cellar. + +That the mother was the Sultana is clear from her fragments of dress, +and the symbolic character of her every ornament, crescent earrings, +heron-feather, and the blue campaca enamelled in a bracelet. This poor +woman, I have thought, may have been the victim of some unbounded fit of +imperial passion, incurred by some domestic crime, real or imagined, +which may have been pardoned in a day had not death overtaken her master +and the world. + +There are four steep stone steps at about the centre of the cellar, +leading up to a locked iron trap-door, apparently the only opening into +this great hole: and this trap-door must have been so nearly air-tight +as to bar the intrusion of the poison in anything like deadly quantity. + +But how rare--how strange--the coincidence of chances here. For, if the +trap-door was absolutely air-tight, I cannot think that the supply of +oxygen in the cellar, large as it was, would have been sufficient to +last the girl twenty years, to say nothing of what her mother used up +before death: for I imagine that the woman must have continued to live +some time in her dungeon, sufficiently long, at least, to teach her +child to procure its food of dates and wine; so that the door must have +been only just sufficiently hermetic to bar the poison, yet admit some +oxygen; or else, the place may have been absolutely air-tight at the +time of the cloud, and some crack, which I have not seen, opened to +admit oxygen after the poison was dispersed: in any case--the +all-but-infinite rarity of the chance! + +Thinking these things I climbed out, and we walked to Pera, where I +slept in a great white-stone house in five or six acres of garden +overlooking the cemetery of Kassim, having pointed out to the girl +another house in which to sleep. + +This girl! what a history! After existing twenty years in a sunless +world hardly three acres wide, she one day suddenly saw the only sky +which she knew collapse at one point! a hole appeared into yet a world +beyond! It was I who had come, and kindled Constantinople, and set her +free. + + * * * * * + +Ah, I see something now! I see! it was for this that I was preserved: I +to be a sort of new-fangled Adam--and this little creature to be my Eve! +That is it! _The White_ does not admit defeat: he would recommence the +Race again! At the last, the eleventh hour--in spite of all--he would +turn defeat into victory, and outwit that Other. + +However, if this be so--and I seem to see it quite clearly--then in that +White scheme is a singular flaw: at _one point_, it is obvious, that +elaborate Forethought fails: for I have a free will--and I refuse, I +refuse. + +Certainly, in this matter I am on the side of the Black: and since it +depends absolutely upon me, this time Black wins. + +No more men on the earth after me, ye Powers! To _you_ the question may +be nothing more than a gambling excitement as to the final outcome of +your aërial squabble: but to the poor men who had to bear the wrongs, +Inquisitions, rack-rents, Waterloos, unspeakable horrors, it was hard +earnest, you know! Oh the wretchedness--the deep, deep pain--of that +bungling ant-hill, happily wiped out, my God! My sweetheart Clodagh ... +she was not an ideal being! There was a man called Judas who betrayed +the gentle Founder of the Christian Faith, and there was some Roman king +named Galba, a horrid dog, and there was a French devil, Gilles de Raiz: +and the rest were all much the same, much the same. Oh no, it was not a +good race, that small infantry which called itself Man: and here, +falling on my knees before God and Satan as I write, I swear, I swear: +Never through me shall it spring and fester again. + + * * * * * + +I cannot realise her! Not at all, at all, at all! If she is out of my +sight and hearing ten minutes, I fall to doubting her reality. If I lose +her for half a day, all the old feelings, resembling certainties, come +back, that I have only been dreaming--that this appearance cannot be an +actual objective fact of life, since the impossible is impossible. + +Seventeen long years, seventeen long years, of madness.... + + * * * * * + +To-morrow I start for Imbros: and whether this girl chooses to follow +me, or whether she stays behind, I will see her from the moment I land +no more. + + * * * * * + +She must rise very early. I who am now regularly on the palace-roof at +dawn, sometimes from between the pavilion-curtains of the galleries, or +from the steps of the telescope-kiosk, may spy her far down below, a +dainty microscopic figure, generally running about the sward, or gazing +up in wonder at the palace from the lake-edge. + +It is now three months since she came with me to Imbros. + +I left her the first night in that pale-yellow house with the two green +jalousies facing the beach, where there was everything that she would +need; but I knew that, like all the houses there now, it leaked +profusely, and the next day I went down to the curving stair, cut +through the rock at the back and south of the village, climbed, and half +a mile beyond found that park and villa with gables, which I had noted +from the sea. The villa is almost intact, very strongly built of +purplish marble, though small, and very like a Western house, with +shingles, and three gables, so that I think it must have been the yali +of some Englishman, for it contains a number of English books, though +the only body I saw there was what looked like an Aararat Kurd, with +spiral string wound down his turban, yellow ankle-pantaloons, and flung +red shoulder-cloak; and all in the heavily-wooded park, and all about +the low rock-steps up the hill, profusions of man-dragora; and from the +rock-steps to the house a narrow long avenue of acacias, mossy +underfoot, that mingle overhead, the house standing about four yards +from the edge of the perpendicular sea-cliff, whence one can see the +_Speranzas_ main top-mast, and broken mizzen-mast-head, in her quiet +haven. After examining the place I went down again to the village, and +her house: but she was not there: and two hours long I paced about among +the weeds of these amateur little alleys and flat-roofed windowless +houses (though some have terrace-roofs, and a rare aperture), whose +once-raw yellows, greens, and blues look now like sunset tints when the +last flush is gone, and they fade dun. When at last she came running +with open mouth, I took her up the rock-steps, and into the house, and +there she has lived, one of the gable-tips, I now find (that overlooking +the sea), being just visible from the north-east corner of the +palace-roof, two miles from it. + +That night again, when I was leaving her, she made an attempt to follow +me. But I was resolved to end it, then: and cutting a sassafras-whip I +cut her deep, three times, till she ran, crying. + + * * * * * + +So, then, what is my fate henceforth?--to think always, from sun to +moon, and from moon to sun, of one only thing--and that thing an object +for the microscope?--to become a sneaking Paul Pry to spy upon the silly +movements of one little sparrow, like some fatuous motiveless gossip of +old, his occupation to peep, his one faculty to scent, his honey and his +achievement to unearth the infinitely unimportant? I would kill her +first! + + * * * * * + +I am convinced that she is no stay-at-home, but roams continually over +the island: for thrice, wandering myself, I have come upon her. + +The first time she was running with flushed face, intent upon striking +down a butterfly with a twig held in the left hand (for both hands she +uses with dexterity). It was at about nine in the morning, in her park, +near the bottom where there are high grass-growths and ferny luxuriance +between the close tree-trunks, and shadow, and the broken wall of an old +funeral-kiosk sunk aslant under moss, creepers, and wild flowers, behind +which I peeped hidden and wet with dew. She has had the assurance to +modify the dress I put upon her, and was herself a butterfly, for +instead of the shintiyan, she had on a zouave, hardly reaching to the +waist, of saffron satin, no feredjé, but a scarlet fez with violet +tassel, and baggy pantaloons of azure silk; down her back the long +auburn plait, quite neat, but all her front hair loose and wanton, the +fez cocked backward, while I caught glimpses of her fugitive heels +lifting out of the dropping slipper-sole. She is pretty clever, but not +clever enough, for that butterfly escaped, and in one instant I saw her +change into weary and sad, for on this earth is nothing more fickle than +that Proteus face, which resembles a landscape swept with cloud-shadows +on a bright day. Fast beat my heart that morning, owing to the +consciousness that, while I saw, I was unseen, yet might be seen. + +Another noontide, three weeks afterwards, I came upon her a good way up +yonder to the west of the palace, sleeping on her arm in an alley +between overgrown old trellises, where rioting wild vine buried her in +gloom: but I had not been peeping through the bushes a minute, when she +started up and looked wildly about, her quick consciousness, I imagine, +detecting a presence: though I think that I managed to get away unseen. +She keeps her face very dirty: all about her mouth was dry-stained with +a polychrome of grape, _mûrs_, and other coloured juices, like +slobbering _gamins_ of old. I could also see that her nose and cheeks +are now sprinkled with little freckles. + +Four days since I saw her a third time, and then found that the +primitive instinct to represent the world in pictures has been working +in her: for she was drawing. It was down in the middle one of the three +east-and-west village streets, for thither I had strolled toward +evening, and coming out upon the street from between an old wall and a +house, saw her quite near. I pulled up short--and peered. She was lying +on her face all among grasses, a piece of yellow board before her, and +in her fingers a chalk-splinter: and very intently she drew, her +tongue-tip travelling along her short upper-lip from side to side, +regularly as a pendulum, her fez tipped far back, and the left foot +swinging upward from the knee. She had drawn her yali at the top, and +now, as I could see by peering well forward, was drawing underneath the +palace--from memory, for where she lay it is all hidden: yet the palace +it was, for there were the waving lines meant for the steps, the two +slanting pillars, the slanting battlements of the outer court, and +before the portal, with turban reaching above the roof, and my two +whisks of beard sweeping below the knees--myself. + +Something spurred me, and I could not resist shouting a sudden "Hi!" +whereupon she scrambled like a spring-bok to her feet, I pointing to the +drawing, smiling. + +This creature has a way of mincing her pressed lips, while she shakes +the head, intensely cooing a fond laugh: and so she did then. + +"You are a clever little wretch, you know," said I, she cocking her eye, +trying to divine my meaning with vague smile. + +'Oh, yes, a clever little wretch,' I went on in a gruff voice, 'clever +as a serpent, no doubt: for in the first case it was the Black who used +the serpent, but now it is the White. But it will not do, you know. Do +you know what you are to me, you? You are my Eve!--a little fool, a +little piebald frog like you. But it will not do at all, at all! A nice +race it would be with you for mother, and me for father, wouldn't +it?--half-criminal like the father, half-idiot like the mother: just +like the last, in short. They used to say, in fact, that the offspring +of a brother and sister was always weak-headed: and from such a wedlock +certainly came the human race, so no wonder it was what it was: and so +it would have to be again now. Well no--unless we have the children, and +cut their throats at birth: and _you_ would not like that at all, I +know, and, on the whole, it would not work, for the White would be +striking a poor man dead with His lightning, if I attempted that. No, +then: the modern Adam is some eight to twenty thousand years wiser than +the first--you see? less instinctive, more rational. The first disobeyed +by commission: I shall disobey by omission: only his disobedience was a +sin, mine is a heroism. I have not been a particularly ideal sort of +beast so far, you know: but in me, Adam Jeffson--I swear it--the human +race shall at last attain a true nobility, the nobility of +self-extinction. I shall turn out trumps: I shall prove myself stronger +than Tendency, World-Genius, Providence, Currents of Fate, White Power, +Black Power, or whatever is the name for it. No more Clodaghs, Lucrezia +Borgias, Semiramises, Pompadours, Irish Landlords, Hundred-Years' +Wars--you see?' + +She kept her left eye obliquely cocked like a little fool, wondering, no +doubt, what I was saying. + +'And talking of Clodagh,' I went on, 'I shall call you that henceforth, +to keep me reminded. So that is your name--not Eve--but Clodagh, who was +a Poisoner, you see? She poisoned a poor man who trusted her: and that +is your name now--not Eve, but Clodagh--to remind me, you most dangerous +little speckled viper! And in order that I may no more see your foolish +little pretty face, I decree that, for the future, you wear a _yashmak_ +to cover up your lips, which, I can see, were meant to be seductive, +though dirty; and you can leave the blue eyes, and the little +white-skinned freckled nose uncovered, if you like, they being +commonplace enough. Meantime, if you care to see how to draw a palace--I +will show you.' + +Before I stretched my hand, she was presenting the board--so that she +had guessed something of my meaning! But some hard tone in my talk had +wounded her, for she presented it looking very glum, her under-lip +pushing a little obliquely out, very pathetically, I must say, as always +when she is just ready to cry. + +In a few strokes I drew the palace, and herself standing at the portal +between the pillars: and now great was her satisfaction, for she pointed +to the sketched figure, and to herself, interrogatively: and when I +nodded 'yes,' she went cooing her fond murmurous laugh, with pressed +and mincing lips: and it is clear that, in spite of my beatings, she is +in no way afraid of me. + +Before I could move away, I felt some rain-drops, and down in some +seconds rushed a shower. I looked, saw that the sky was rapidly +darkening, and ran into the nearest of the little cubical houses, +leaving her glancing sideways upward, with the quaintest artlessness of +interest in the downpour: for she is not yet quite familiarised with the +operations of nature, and seems to regard them with a certain amiable +inquisitive seriousness, as though they were living beings, comrades as +good as herself. She presently joined me, but even then stretched her +hand out to feel the drops. + +Now there came a thunder-clap, the wind was rising, and rain spattering +about me: for the panes of these houses, made, I believe, of paper +saturated in almond-oil, have long disappeared, and rains, penetrating +by roof and rare window, splash the bones of men. I gathered up my +skirts to run toward other shelter, but she was before me, saying in her +strange experimental voice that word of hers: "_Come_." + +She ran in advance, and I, with the outer robe over my head, followed, +urging flinching way against the whipped rain-wash. She took the way by +the stone horse-pond, through an alley to the left between two blind +walls, then down a steep path through wood to the rock-steps, and up we +ran, and along the hill, to her yali, which is a mile nearer the village +than the palace, though by the time we pelted into its dry shelter we +were wet to the skin. + +Sudden darkness had come, but she quickly found some matches, lit one, +looking at it with a certain meditative air, and applied it to a candle +and to a bronze Western lamp on the table, which I had taught her to oil +and light. Near a Western fire-place was a Turkish mangal, like one +which she had seen me light to warm bath-waters in Constantinople, and +when I pointed to it, she ran to the kitchen, returned with some chopped +wood, and very cleverly lit it. And there for several hours I sat that +night, reading (the first time for many years): it was a book by the +poet Milton, found in a glazed book-case on the other side of the +fire-place: and most strange, most novel, I found those august words +about warring angels that night, while the storm raved: for this man had +evidently taken no end of pains with his book, and done it gallantly +well, too, making the thing hum: and I could not conceive why he should +have been at that trouble--unless it were for the same reason that I +built the palace, because some spark bites a man, and he would be +like--but that is all vanity, and delusion. + +Well, there is a rage in the storms of late years which really +transcends bounds; I do not remember if I have noted it in these sheets +before: but I never could have conceived a turbulence so huge. Hour +after hour I sat there that night, smoking a chibouque, reading, and +listening to the batteries and lamentations of that haunted air, +shrinking from it, fearing even for the _Speranza_ by her quay in the +sequestered harbour, and for the palace-pillars. But what astonished me +was that girl: for, after sitting on the ottoman to my left some time, +she fell sideways asleep, not the least fear about her, though I should +have thought that nervousness at such a turmoil would be so natural to +her: and whence she has this light confidence in the world into which +she has so abruptly come I do not know, for it is as though someone +inspired her with the mood of nonchalance, saying: 'Be of good cheer, +and care not a pin about anything: for God is God.' + +I heard the ocean swing hoarse like heavy ordnance against the cliffs +below, where they meet the outer surface of the southern of the two +claws of land that form the harbour: and the thought came into my mind: +'If now I taught her to speak, to read, I could sometimes make her read +a book to me.' + +The winds seemed wilfully struggling for the house to snatch and wing it +away into the drear Eternities of the night: and I could not but heave +the sigh: 'Alas for us two poor waifs and castaways of our race, little +bits of flotsam and seaweed-hair cast up here a moment, ah me, on this +shore of the Ages, soon to be dragged back, O turgid Eternity, into thy +abysmal gorge; and upon what strand--who shall say?--shall she next be +flung, and I, divided then perhaps by all the stretch of the +trillion-distanced astral gulf?' And such a pity, and a wringing of the +heart, seemed in things, that a tear fell from my eyes that ominous +midnight. + +She started up at a gust of more appalling volume, rubbing her eyes, +with dishevelled hair (it must have been about midnight), listening a +minute, with that demure, droll interest of hers, to the noise of the +elements, and then smiled to me; rose then, left the room, and presently +returned with a pomegranate and some almonds on a plate, also some +delicious old sweet wine in a Samian cruche, and an old silver cup, gilt +inside, standing in a zarf. These she placed on the table near me, I +murmuring: 'Hospitality.' + +She looked at the book, which I read as I ate, with lowered left +eye-lid, seeking to guess its use, I suppose. Most things she +understands at once, but this must have baffled her: for to see one +looking fixedly at a thing, and not know what one is looking at it for, +must be very disconcerting. + +I held it up before her, saying: + +"Shall I teach you to read it? If I did, how would you repay me, you +Clodagh?" + +She cocked her eyes, seeking to comprehend. God knows, at that moment I +pitied the poor dumb waif, alone in all the whole round earth with me. +The candle-flame, moved by the wind like a slow-painting brush, +flickered upon her face, though every cranny was closed. + +"Perhaps, then," I said, "I will teach you. You are a pitiable little +derelict of your race, you know: and two hours every day I will let you +come to the palace, and I will teach you. But be sure, be careful. If +there be danger, I will kill you: assuredly--without fail. And let me +begin with a lesson now: say after me: 'White.'" + +I took her hand, and got her to understand that I wanted her to repeat +after me. + +"White," said I. + +"Hwhite," said she. + +'Power,' said I. + +'Pow-wer,' said she. + +'White Power,' said I. + +'Hwhite Pow-wer,' said she. + +'Shall not,' said I. + +'Sall not,' said she. + +'White Power shall not,' said I. + +'Hwhite Pow-wer sall not,' said she. + +'Prevail,' said I. + +'Fffail,' said she, pronouncing the 'v' with a long fluttering +'f'-sound. + +'Pre-vail,' said I. + +'Pe-vvvail,' said she. + +'White Power shall not prevail,' said I. + +'Hwhite Pow-wer sall not--fffail,' said she. + +A thunder which roared as she said it seemed to me to go laughing +through the universe, and a minute I looked upon her face with positive +shrinking fear; till, starting up, I thrust her with violence from my +path, and dashed forth to re-seek the palace and my bed. + +Such was the ingratitude and fatality which my first attempt, four +nights since, to teach her met with. It remains to be seen whether my +pity for her dumbness, or some servile tendency toward fellowship in +myself, will result in any further lesson. Certainly, I think not: for +though I have given my word, the most solemnly-pledged word may be +broken. + +Surely, surely, her presence in the world with me--for I suppose it is +that--has wrought some profound changes in my mood: for gone now +apparently are those turbulent hours when, stalking like a peacock, I +flaunted my monarchy in the face of the Eternal Powers, with hissed +blasphemies; or else dribbled, shaking my body in a lewd dance; or was +off to fire some vast city and revel in redness and the chucklings of +Hell; or rolled in the drunkenness of drugs. It was mere frenzy!--I see +it now--it was 'not good,' 'not good.' And it rather looks as if it were +past--or almost. I have clipped my beard and hair, removed the earrings, +and thought of modifying my attire. I will just watch to see whether she +comes loitering down there about the gate of the lake. + + * * * * * + +Her progress is like.... + + * * * * * + +It is nine months since I have written, on these sheets, those words, +'Her progress is like....' being the beginning of some narrative in +which something interrupted me: and since then I have had no impulse to +write. + +But I was thinking just now of the curious tricks and uncertainties of +my memory, and seeing the sheets, will record it here. I have lately +been trying to recall the name of a sister of mine--some perfectly +simple name, I know--and the name of my old home in England: and they +have completely passed out of my cognizance, though she was my only +sister, and we grew up closely together: some quite simple name, I +forget it now. Yet I can't say that my memory is bad: there are +things--quite unexpected, unimportant things--which come up in my mind +with considerable clearness. For instance, I remember to have met in +Paris (I think), long before the poison-cloud, a little Brazilian boy of +the colour of weak coffee-and-milk, of whom she now constantly reminds +me. He wore his hair short like a convict's, so that one could spy the +fish-white flesh beneath, and delighted to play solitary about the +stairs of the hotel, dressed up in the white balloon-dress of a Pierrot. +I have the impression now that he must have had very large ears. Clever +as a flea he was, knowing five or six languages, as it were by nature, +without having any suspicion that that was at all extraordinary. She has +that same light, unconscious, and nonchalant cleverness, and easy way of +life. It is little more than a year since I began to teach her, and +already she can speak English with a quite considerable vocabulary, and +perfect correctness (except that she does not pronounce the letter 'r'); +she has also read, or rather devoured, a good many books; and can write, +draw, and play the harp. And all she does without effort: rather with +the flighty naturalness with which a bird takes to the wing. + +What made me teach her to read was this: One afternoon, fourteen months +or so ago, I from the roof-kiosk saw her down at the lake-rim, a book in +hand; and as she had seen me looking steadily at books, so she was +looking steadily at it, with pathetic sideward head: so that I burst +into laughter, for I saw her clearly through the glass, and whether she +is the simplest little fool, or the craftiest serpent that ever +breathed, I am not yet sure. If I thought that she has the least design +upon my honour, it would be ill for her. + +I went to Gallipoli for two days in the month of May, and brought back a +very pretty little caique, a perfect slender crescent of the colour of +the moon, though I had two days' labour in cutting through bush-thicket +for the passage of the motor in bringing it up to the lake. It has +pleased me to see her lie among the silk cushions of the middle, while +I, paddling, taught her her first words and sentences between the hours +of eight and ten in the evening, though later they became 10 A.M. to +noon, when the reading began, we sitting on the palace-steps before the +portal, her mouth invariably well covered with the yashmak, the +lesson-book being a large-lettered old Bible found at her yali. _Why_ +she must needs wear the yashmak she has never once asked; and how much +she divines, knows, or intends, I have no idea, continually questioning +myself as to whether she is all simplicity, or all cunning. + +That she is conscious of some profound difference in our organisation I +cannot doubt: for that I have a long beard, and she none at all, is +among the most patent of facts. + + * * * * * + +I have thought that a certain _Western-ness_--a growing modernity of +tone--may be the result, as far as I am concerned, of her presence with +me? I do not know.... + + * * * * * + +There is the gleam of a lake-end just visible in the north forest from +the palace-top, and in it a good number of fish like carp, tench, roach, +etc., so in May I searched for a tackle-shop in the Gallipoli +Fatmeh-bazaar, and got four 12-foot rods, with reels, silk-line, +quill-floats, a few yards of silk-worm gut, with a packet of No. 7 and +8 hooks, and split-shot for sinkers; and since red-worms, maggots and +gentles are common on the island, I felt sure of a great many more fish +than the number I wanted, which was none at all. However, for the mere +amusement, I fished several times, lying at my length in a patch of +long-grass over-waved by an enormous cedar, where the bank is steep, and +the water deep. And one mid-afternoon she was suddenly there with me, +questioned me with her eyes, and when I consented, stayed: and presently +I said I would teach her bottom-angling, and sent her flying up to the +palace for another rod and tackle. + +That day she did nothing, for after teaching her to thread the worm, and +put the gentles on the smaller hooks, I sent her to hunt for worms to +chop up for ground-baiting the pitch for the next afternoon; and when +this was done it was dinner-time, and I sent her home, for by then I was +giving the reading-lessons in the morning. + +The next day I found her at the bank, taught her to take the sounding +for adjusting the float, and she lay down not far from me, holding the +rod. So I said to her: + +'Well, this is better than living in a dark cellar twenty years, with +nothing to do but walk up and down, sleep, and consume dates and Ismidt +wine.' + +'Yes!' says she. + +'Twenty years!' said I: 'How did you bear it?' + +'I was not closs,' says she. + +'Did you never suspect that there was a world outside that cellar?' said +I. + +'Never,' says she, 'or lather, yes: but I did not suppose that it was +_this_ world, but another where he lived.' + +'He who?' + +'He who spoke with me.' + +'Who was that?' + +'Oh! a bite!' she screamed gladly. + +I saw her float bob under, and started up, rushed to her, and taught her +how to strike and play it, though it turned out when landed to be +nothing but a tiny barbel: but she was in ecstasies, holding it on her +palm, murmuring her fond coo. + +She re-baited, and we lay again. I said: + +'But what a life: no exit, no light, no prospect, no hope--' + +'Plenty of _hope_!' says she. + +'Good Heavens! hope of what?' + +'I knew vely well that something was lipening over the cellar, or under, +or alound it, and would come to pass at a certain fixed hour, and that I +should see it, and feel it, and it would be vely nice.' + +'Ah, well, you had to wait for it, at any rate. Didn't those twenty +years seem _long_?' + +'No--at least sometimes--not often. I was always so occupied.' + +'Occupied in doing what?' + +'In eating, or dlinking, or lunning, or talking.' + +'Talking to your_self_?' + +'Not myself.' + +'To whom, then?' + +'To the one who told me when I was hungly, and put the dates to satisfy +my hunger.' + +'I see. Don't wriggle about in that way, or you will never catch any +fish. The maxim of angling is: "Study to be quiet"--' + +'O! another bite!' she called, and this time, all alone, very agilely +landed a good-sized bream. + +'But do you mean that you were never sad?' said I when she was +re-settled. + +'Sometimes I would sit and cly,' says she--'I did not know why. But if +that was "sadness," I was never miserlable, never, never. And if I +clied, it did not last long, and I would soon fall to sleep, for he +would lock me in his lap, and kiss me, and wipe all my tears away.' + +'He who?' + +'Why, what a question! he who told me when I was hungly, and of the +thing that was lipening outside the cellar, which would be so nice.' + +'I see, I see. But in all that dingy place, and thick gloom, were you +never at all afraid?' + +'Aflaid! _I_! of what?' + +'Of the unknown.' + +'I do not understand you. How could I be _aflaid_? The known was the +very opposite of tellible: it was merely hunger and dates, thirst and +wine, the desire to lun and space to lun in, the desire to sleep and +sleep: there was nothing tellible in that: and the unknown was even less +tellible than the known: for it was the nice thing that was lipening +outside the cellar. I do not understand--' + +'Ah, yes,' said I, 'you are a clever little being: but your continual +fluttering about is fatal to all angling. Isn't it in your nature to +keep still a minute? And with regard now to your habits in the +cellar--?' + +'_Another!_' she cried with happy laugh, and landed a young chub. And +that afternoon she caught seven, and I none. + + * * * * * + +Another day I took her from the pitch to one of the kitchens in the +village with some of the fish, till then always thrown away, and taught +her cooking: for the only cooking-implement in the palace is the silver +alcohol-lamp for coffee and chocolate. We both scrubbed the utensils, +and boil and fry I taught her, and the making of a sauce from vinegar, +bottled olives, and the tinned American butter from the _Speranza_, and +the boiling of rice mixed with flour for ground-baiting our pitch. And +she, at first astonished, was soon all deft housewifeliness, breathless +officiousness, and behind my back, of her own intuitiveness, grated some +dry almonds found there, and with them sprinkled the fried tench. And we +ate them, sitting on the floor together: the first new food, I suppose, +tasted by me for twenty-one years: nor did I find it disagreeable. + +The next day she came up to the palace reading a book, which turned out +to be a cookery-book in English, found at her yali; and a week later, +she appeared, out of hours, presenting me a yellow-earthenware dish +containing a mess of gorgeous colours--a boiled fish under red peppers, +bits of saffron, a greenish sauce, and almonds: but I turned her away, +and would have none of her, or her dish. + + * * * * * + +About a mile up to the west of the palace is a very old ruin in the +deepest forest, I think of a mosque, though only three truncated +internal pillars under ivy, and the weedy floor, with the courtyard and +portal-steps remain, before it being a long avenue of cedars, gently +descending from the steps, the path between the trees choked with +long-grass and wild rye reaching to my middle. Here I saw one day a +large disc of old brass, bossed in the middle, which may have been +either a shield or part of an ancient cymbal, with concentric rings +graven round it, from centre to circumference. The next day I brought +some nails, a hammer, a saw, and a box of paints from the _Speranza_; +and I painted the rings in different colours, cut down a slim +lime-trunk, nailed the thin disc along its top, and planted it well, +before the steps: for I said I would make a bull's-eye, and do rifle and +revolver practice before it, from the avenue. And this the next evening +I was doing at four hundred feet, startling the island, it seemed, with +that unusual noise, when up she came peering with enquiring face: at +which I was very angry, because my arm, long unused, was firing wide: +but I was too proud to say anything, and let her look, and soon she +understood, laughing every time I made a considerable miss, till at last +I turned upon her saying: 'If you think it so easy, you may try.' + +She had been wanting to try, for she came eagerly to the offer, and +after I had opened and showed her the mechanism, the cartridges, and how +to shoot, I put into her hands one of the _Speranza_ Colt's. She took +her bottom-lip between her teeth, shut her left eye, vaulted out the +revolver like an old shot to the level of her intense right eye, and +sent a ball through the geometrical centre of the boss. + +However, it was a fluke-shot, for I had the satisfaction of seeing her +miss every one of the other five, except the last, which hit the black. +That, however, was three weeks since, and now my hitting record is forty +per cent., and hers ninety-six--most extraordinary: so that it is clear +that this creature is the _protégée_ of someone, and favouritism is in +the world. + + * * * * * + +Her book of books is the Old Testament. Sometimes, at noon or afternoon, +I may look abroad from the roof or galleries, and see a remote figure +sitting on the sward under the shade of plane or black cypress: and I +always know that the book she cons there is the Bible--like an old +Rabbi. She has a passion for stories: and there finds a store. + +Three nights since when it was pretty late, and the moon very splendid, +I saw her passing homewards close to the lake, and shouted down to her, +meaning to say 'Good-night'; but she thought that I had called her, and +came: and sitting out on the top step we talked for hours, she without +the yashmak. + +We fell to talking about the Bible. And says she: 'What did Cain to +Abel?' + +'He knocked him over,' I replied, liking sometimes to use such idioms, +with the double object of teaching and perplexing her. + +'Over what?' says she. + +'Over his heels,' said I. + +'I do not complehend!' + +'He killed him, then.' + +'That I know. But how did Abel feel when he was killed? What is it to be +_killed_?' + +'Well,' said I, 'you have seen bones all around you, and the bones of +your mother, and you can feel the bones in your fingers. Your fingers +will become mere bone after you are dead, as die you must. Those bones +which you see around you, are, of course, the bones of the men of whom +we often speak: and the same thing happened to them which happens to a +fish or a butterfly when you catch them, and they lie all still.' + +'And the men and the butterfly feel the same after they are dead?' + +'Precisely the same. They lie in a deep drowse, and dream a +nonsense-dream.' + +'That is not dleadful. I thought that it was much more dleadful. I +should not mind dying.' + +'Ah!... so much the better: for it is possible that you may have to die +a great deal sooner than you think.' + +'I should not mind. Why were men so vely aflaid to die?' + +'Because they were all such shocking cowards.' + +'Oh, not all! not all!' + +(This girl, I know not with what motive, has now definitely set herself +up against me as the defender of the dead race. With every chance she is +at it.) + +'Nearly all,' said I: 'tell me one who was not afraid--' + +'There was Isaac,' says she: 'when Ablaham laid him on the wood to kill +him, he did not jump up and lun to hide.' + +'Isaac was a great exception,' said I: 'in the Bible and such books, you +understand, you read of only the best sorts of people; but there were +millions and millions of others--especially about the time of the +poison-cloud--on a very much lower level--putrid wretches--covetous, +false, murderous, mean, selfish, debased, hideous, diseased, making the +earth a very charnel of festering vices and crimes.' + +This, for several minutes, she did not answer, sitting with her back +half toward me, cracking almonds, continually striking one step with the +ball of her outstretched foot. In the clarid gold of the platform I saw +her fez and corals reflected as an elongated blotch of florid red. She +turned and drank some wine from the great gold Jarvan goblet which I had +brought from the temple of Boro Budor, her head quite covered in by it. +Then, the little hairs at her lip-corners still wet, says she: + +'Vices and climes, climes and vices. Always the same. What were these +climes and vices?' + +'Robberies of a hundred sorts, murders of ten hundred--' + +'But what made them _do_ them?' + +'Their evil nature--their base souls.' + +'But _you_ are one of them, _I_ am another: yet you and I live here +together, and we do no vices and climes.' + +Her astounding shrewdness! Right into the inmost heart of a matter does +her simple wit seem to pierce! + +'No,' I said, 'we do no vices and crimes, because we lack _motive_. +There is no danger that we should hate each other, for we have plenty to +eat and drink, dates, wines, and thousands of things. (Our danger is +rather the other way.) But _they_ hated and schemed, because they were +very numerous, and there arose a question among them of dates and wine.' + +'Was there not, then, enough land to grow dates and wine for all?' + +'There was--yes: much more than enough, I fancy. But some got hold of a +vast lot of it, and as the rest felt the pinch of scarcity, there arose, +naturally, a pretty state of things--including the vices and crimes.' + +'Ah, but then,' says she, 'it was not to their bad souls that the vices +and climes were due, but only to this question of land. It is certain +that if there had been no such question, there would have been no vices +and climes, because you and I, who are just like them, do no vices and +climes here, where there is no such question.' + +The clear limelight of her intelligence! She wriggled on her seat in her +effort of argument. + +'I am not going to argue the matter,' I said. 'There _was_ that question +of dates and wine, you see. And there always must be on an earth where +millions of men, with varying degrees of cunning, reside.' + +'Oh, not at all necessalily!' she cries with conviction: 'not at all, at +all: since there are much more dates and wine than are enough for all. +If there should spling up more men now, having the whole wisdom, +science, and expelience of the past at their hand, and they made an +allangement among themselves that the first man who tlied to take more +than he could work for should be killed, and sent to dleam a +nonsense-dleam, the question could never again alise!' + +'It arose before--it would arise again.' + +'But no! I can guess clearly how it alose before: it alose thlough the +sheer carelessness of the first men. The land was at first so vely, vely +much more than enough for all, that the men did not take the tlouble to +make an allangement among themselves; and afterwards the habit of +carelessness was confirmed; till at last the vely oliginal carelessness +must have got to have the look of an allangement; and so the stleam +which began in a little long ended in a big long, the long glowing more +and more fixed and fatal as the stleam lolled further flom the source. I +see it clearly, can't you? But now, if some more men would spling, they +would be taught--' + +'Ah, but no more men will _spling_, you see--!' + +'There is no telling. I sometimes feel as if they must, and shall. The +tlees blossom, the thunder lolls, the air makes me lun and leap, the +glound is full of lichness, and I hear the voice of the Lord God walking +all among the tlees of the folests.' + +As she said this, I saw her under-lip push out and tremble, as when she +is near to crying, and her eyes moisten: but a moment after she looked +at me full, and smiled, so mobile is her face: and as she looked, it +suddenly struck me what a noble temple of a brow the creature has, +almost pointed at the uplifted summit, and widening down like a +bell-curved Gothic arch, draped in strings of frizzy hair which anon she +shakes backward with her head. + +'Clodagh,' I said after some minutes--'do you know why I called you +Clodagh?' + +'No? Tell me?' + +'Because once, long ago before the poison-cloud, I had a lover called +Clodagh: and she was a....' + +'But tell me first,' cries she: 'how did one know one's lover, or one's +wife, flom all the others?' + +'Well, by their faces....' + +'But there must have been many faces--all alike--' + +'Not all alike. Each was different from the rest.' + +'Still, it must have been vely clever to tell. I can hardly conceive +any face, except yours and mine.' + +'Ah, because you are a little goose, you see.' + +'What was a goose like?' + +'It was a thing like a butterfly, only larger, and it kept its toes +always spread out, with a skin stretched between.' + +'Leally? How caplicious! And am I like that?--but what were you saying +that your lover, Clodagh, was?' + +'She was a Poisoner.' + +'Then why call me Clodagh, since _I_ am not a poisoner?' + +'I call you so to remind me: lest you--lest you--should become +my--lover, too.' + +'I am your lover already: for I love you.' + +'What, girl?' + +'Do I not love you, who are mine?' + +'Come, come, don't be a little maniac!' I went. 'Clodagh was a +_poisoner_....' + +'Why did she poison? Had she not enough dates and wine?' + +'She had, yes: but she wanted more, more, more, the silly idiot.' + +'So that the vices and climes were not confined to those that lacked +things, but were done by the others, too?' + +'By the others chiefly.' + +'Then I see how it was!' + +'How was it?' + +'The others had got _spoiled_. The vices and climes must have +begun with those who lacked things, and then the others, always seeing +vices and climes alound them, began to do them, too--as when one rotten +olive is in a bottle, the whole mass soon becomes collupted: but +originally they were not rotten, but only became so. And all though a +little carelessness at the first. I am sure that if more men could +spling now--' + +'But I _told_ you, didn't I, that no more men will spring? You +understand, Clodagh, that originally the earth produced men by a long +process, beginning with a very low type of creature, and continually +developing it, until at last a man stood up. But that can never happen +again: for the earth is old, old, and has lost her producing vigour now. +So talk no more of men _splinging_, and of things which you do not +understand. Instead, go inside--stop, I will tell you a secret: to-day +in the wood I picked some musk-roses and wound them into a wreath, +meaning to give them you for your head when you came to-morrow: and it +is inside on the pearl tripod in the second room to the left: go, +therefore, and put it on, and bring the harp, and play to me, my dear.' + +She ran quick with a little cry, and coming again, sat crowned, +incarnadine in the blushing depths of the gold. Nor did I send her home +to her lonely yali, till the pale and languished moon, weary of +all-night beatitudes, sank down soft-couched in quilts of curdling opals +to the Hesperian realms of her rest. + +So sometimes we speak together, she and I, she and I. + + * * * * * + +That ever I should write such a thing! I am driven out from Imbros! + +I was walking up in a wood yesterday to the west--it was a calm clear +evening about seven, the sun having just set. I had the book in which I +have written so far in my hand, for I had thought of making a sketch of +an old windmill to the north-west to show her. Twenty minutes before she +had been with me, for I had chanced to meet her, and she had come, but +kept darting on ahead after peeping fruit, gathering armfuls of +amaranth, nenuphar, and red-berried asphodel, till, weary of my life, I +had called to her: 'Go away! out of my sight'--and she, with suddenly +pushed under-lip, had walked off. + +Well, I was continuing my stroll, when I seemed to feel some quaking of +the ground, and before one could count twenty, it was as if the island +was bent upon wracking itself to pieces. My first thought was of her, +and in great scare I went running, calling in the direction which she +had gone, staggering as on the deck of some labouring ship, falling, +picking myself up, running again. The air was quite full of uproar, and +the land waving like the sea: and as I went plunging, not knowing +whither, I saw to my right some three or four acres of forest droop and +sink into a gulf which opened to receive them. Up I flung my arms, +crying out: 'Good God! save the girl!' and a minute later rushed out, to +my surprise, into open space on a hill-side. On the lower ground I could +see the palace, and beyond it, a small space of white sea which had the +awful appearance of being higher than the land. Down the hill-side I +staggered, driven by the impulse to fly somewhither, but about half way +down was startled afresh by a shrill pattering like musical hail, and +the next moment saw the entire palace rush with the jangling clatter of +a thousand bells into the heaving lake. + +Some seconds after this, the earthquake, having lasted fully ten +minutes, began to lull, and soon ceased. I found her an hour later +standing among the ruins of her little yali. + + * * * * * + +Well, what a thing! Probably every building on the island has been +destroyed; the palace-platform, all cracked, leans half-sunken askew +into the lake, like a huge stranded ark, while of the palace itself no +trace remains, except a mound of gold stones emerging above the lake to +the south. Gone, gone--sixteen years of vanity and vexation. But from a +practical point of view, what is a worst calamity of all is that the +_Speranza_ now lies high-and-dry in the village: for she was bodily +picked up from the quay by the tidal wave, and driven bow-foremost into +a street not half her width, and there now lies, looking huge enough in +the little village, wedged for ever, smashed in at the nip like a frail +match-box, a most astonishing spectacle: her bows forty feet up the +street, ten feet above the ground at the stem, rudder resting on the +inner edge of the quay, foremast tilted forward, the other two masts all +right, and that bottom, which has passed through seas so far, buried in +every sort of green and brown seaweed, the old _Speranza_. Her steps +were there, and by a slight leap I could catch them underneath and go up +hand-over-hand, till I got foothold; this I did at ten the same night +when the sea-water had mostly drained back from the land, leaving +everything very swampy, however; she there with me, and soon following +me upon the ship. I found most things cracked into tiny fragments, +twisted, disfigured out of likeness, the house-walls themselves +displaced a little at the nip, the bow of the cedar skiff smashed in to +her middle against the aft starboard corner of the galley; and were it +not for the fact that the air-pinnace had not broken from her heavy +ropings, and one of the compasses still whole, I do not know what I +should have done: for the four old water-logged boats in the cove have +utterly disappeared. + +I made her sleep on the cabin-floor amid the _débris_ of berth and +everything, and I myself slept high up in the wood to the west. I am +writing now lying in the long-grass the morning after, the sun rising, +though I cannot see him. My plan for to-day is to cut three or four logs +with the saw, lay them on the ground by the ship, lower the pinnace upon +them, so get her gradually down into the water, and by evening bid a +long farewell to Imbros, which drives me out in this way. Still, I look +forward with pleasure to our hour's run to the Mainland, when I shall +teach her to steer by the compass, and manipulate liquid-air, as I have +taught her to dress, to talk, to cook, to write, to think, to live. For +she is my creation, this creature: as it were, a 'rib from my side.' + +But what is the design of this expulsion? And what was it that she +called it last night?--'this new going out flom Halan'! 'Haran,' I +believe, being the place from which Abraham went out, when 'called' by +God. + + * * * * * + +We apparently felt only the tail of the earthquake at Imbros: for it has +ravaged Turkey! And we two poor helpless creatures put down here in the +theatre of all these infinite violences: it is too bad, too bad. For the +rages of Nature at present are perfectly astonishing, and what it may +come to I do not know. When we came to the Macedonian coast in good +moonlight, we sailed along it, and up the Dardanelles, looking out for +village, yali, or any habitation where we might put up: but everything +has apparently been wrecked. We saw Kilid-Bahr, Chanak-Kaleh, Gallipoli, +Lapsaki in ruins; at the last place I landed, leaving her in the boat, +and walked a little way, but soon went back with the news that there was +not even a bazaar-arch left standing whole, in most parts even the line +of the streets being obliterated, for the place had fallen like a house +of dice, and had then been shaken up and jumbled. Finally we slept in a +forest on the other side of the strait, beyond Gallipoli, taking our few +provisions, and having to wade at some points through morass a foot deep +before we reached dry woodland. + +Here, the next morning, I sat alone--for we had slept separated by at +least half a mile--thinking out the question of whither I should go: my +choice would have been to remain either in the region where I was, or to +go Eastward: but the region where I was offered no dwelling that I could +see; and to go any distance Eastward, I needed a ship. Of ships I had +seen during the night only wrecks, nor did I know where to find one in +all these latitudes. I was thus, like her 'Ablaham,' urged Westward. + +In order, then, to go Westward, I first went a little further Eastward, +once more entered the Golden Horn, and once more mounted the scorched +Seraglio steps. Here what the wickedness of man had spared, the +wickedness of Nature had destroyed, and the few houses which I had left +standing round the upper part of Pera I now saw low as the rest; also +the house near the Suleimanieh, where we had lived our first days, to +which I went as to a home, I found without a pillar standing; and that +night she slept under the half-roof of a little funeral-kiosk in the +scorched cypress-wood of Eyoub, and I a mile away, at the edge of the +forest where first I saw her. + +The next morning, having met, as agreed, at the site of the Prophet's +mosque, we traversed together the valley and cemetery of Kassim by the +quagmires up to Pera, all the landscape having to me a rather twisted +unfamiliar aspect. We had determined to spend the morning in searching +for supplies among the earthquake-ruins of Pera; and as I had decided to +collect sufficient in one day to save us further pains for some time, we +passed a good many hours in this task, I confining myself to the great +white house in the park overlooking Kassim, where I had once slept, +losing myself in the huge obliquities of its floors, roofs and +wall-fragments, she going to the old Mussulman quarter of Djianghir +near, on the heights of Taxim, where were many shops, and thence round +the brow of the hill to the great French Embassy-house, overlooking +Foundoucli and the sea, both of us having large Persian carpet-bags, and +all in the air of that wilderness of ruin that morning a sweet, strong, +permanent odour of maple-blossom. + +We met toward evening, she quivering under such a load, that I would not +let her carry it, but abandoned my day's labour, which was lighter, and +took hers, which was quite enough: we went back Westward, seeking all +the while some shelter from the saturating night-dews of this place: and +nothing could we find, till we came again, quite late, to her broken +funeral-kiosk at the entrance to the immense cemetery-avenue of Eyoub. +There without a word I left her among the shattered catafalques, for I +was weary; but having gone some distance, turned back, thinking that I +might take some more raisins from the bag; and after getting them, said +to her, shaking her little hand where she sat under the roof-shadow on a +stone: + +'Good-night, Clodagh.' + +She did not answer promptly: and her answer, to my surprise, was a +protest against her name: for a rather sulky, yet gentle, voice came +from the darkness, saying: + +'I am _not_ a Poisoner!' + +'Well,' said I, 'all right: tell me whatever you like that I should call +you, and henceforth I will call you that.' + +'Call me Eve,' says she. + +'Well, no,' said I, 'not Eve, anything but that: for _my_ name is Adam, +and if I called you Eve, that would be simply absurd, and we do not want +to be ridiculous in each other's eyes. But I will call you anything else +that you like.' + +'Call me Leda,' says she. + +'And why Leda?' said I. + +'Because Leda sounds something like Clodagh,' says she, 'and you are +al-leady in the habit of calling me Clodagh; and I saw the name Leda in +a book, and liked it: but Clodagh is most hollible, most bitterly +hollible!' + +'Well, then,' said I, 'Leda it shall be, and I shan't forget, for I like +it, too, and it suits you, and you ought to have a name beginning with +an "L." Good-night, my dear, sleep well, and dream, dream.' + +'And to you, too, my God give dleams of peace and pleasantness,' says +she; and I went. + +And it was only when I had lain myself upon leaves for my bed, my head +on my caftan, a rill for my lullaby, and two stars, which alone I could +see out of the heavenful, for my watch-lights; and only when my eyes +were already closed toward slumber, that a sudden strong thought pierced +and woke me: for I remembered that Leda was the name of a Greek woman +who had borne twins. In fact, I should not be surprised if this Greek +word Leda is the same word etymologically as the Hebrew Eve, for I have +heard of _v's_, and _b's_, and _d's_ interchanging about in this way, +and if _Di_, meaning God, or Light, and _Bi_, meaning Life, and Io_v_e, +and Iho_v_ah and Go_d_, meaning much the same, are all one, that would +be nothing astonishing to me, as wi_d_ow, and veu_v_e, are one: and +where it says, 'truly the Light is Good (_tob, b_on),' this is as if it +said, 'truly the Di is Di.' Such, at any rate, is the fatality that +attends me, even in the smallest things: for this Western Eve, or Greek +Leda, had twins. + + * * * * * + +Well, the next morning we crossed by the ruins of old Greek Phanar +across the triple Stamboul-wall, which still showed its deep-ivied +portal, and made our way, not without climbing, along the Golden Horn to +the foot of the Old Seraglio, where I soon found signs of the railway. +And that minute commenced our journey across Turkey, Bulgaria, Servia, +Bosnia, Croatia, to Trieste, occupying no day or two as in old times, +but four months, a long-drawn nightmare, though a nightmare of rich +happiness, if one may say so, leaving on the memory a vague vast +impression of monstrous ravines, ever-succeeding profundities, heights +and greatnesses, jungles strange as some moon-struck poet's fantasy, +everlasting glooms, and a sound of mighty unseen rivers, cataracts, and +slow cumbered rills whose bulrushes never see the sun, with largesse +everywhere, secrecies, profusions, the unimaginable, the unspeakable, a +savagery most lush and fierce and gaudy, and vales of Arcadie, and +remote mountain-peaks, and tarns shy as old-buried treasure, and +glaciers, and we two human folk pretty small and drowned and lost in +all that amplitude, yet moving always through it. + +We followed the lines that first day till we came to a steam train, and +I found the engine fairly good, and everything necessary to move it at +my hand: but the metals in such a condition of twisted, broken, vaulted, +and buried confusion, due to the earthquake, that, having run some +hundreds of yards to examine them, I saw that nothing could be done in +that way. At first this threw me into a condition like despair, for what +we were to do I did not know: but after persevering on foot for four +days along the deep-rusted track, which is of that large-gauge type +peculiar to Eastern Europe, I began to see that there were considerable +sound stretches, and took heart. + +I had with me land-charts and compass, but nothing for taking +altitude-observations: for the _Speranza_ instruments, except one +compass, had all been broken-up by her shock. However, on getting to the +town of Silivri, about thirty miles from our start, I saw in the ruins +of a half-standing bazaar-shop a number of brass objects, and there +found several good sextants, quadrants, and theodolites. Two mornings +later, we came upon an engine in mid-country, with coals in it, and a +stream near; I had a goat-skin of almond-oil in the bag, and found the +machinery serviceable after an hour's careful inspection, having +examined the boiler with a candle through the manhole, and removed the +autoclaves of the heaters. All was red with rust, and the shaft of the +connecting-rod in particular seemed so frail, that at one moment I was +very dubious: I decided, however, and, except for a slight leakage at +the tubulure which led the steam to the valve-chest, all went very well; +at a pressure never exceeding three-and-a-half atmospheres, we travelled +nearly a hundred and twenty miles before being stopped by a head-to-head +block on the line, when we had to abandon our engine; we then continued +another seven miles a-foot, I all the time mourning my motor, which I +had had to leave at Imbros, and hoping at every townlet to find a whole +one, but in vain. + + * * * * * + +It was wonderful to see the villages and towns going back to the earth, +already invaded by vegetation, and hardly any longer breaking the +continuity of pure Nature, the town now as much the country as the +country, and that which is not-Man becoming all in all with a certain +_furore_ of vigour. A whole day in the southern gorges of the Balkan +Mountains the slow train went tearing its way through many a mile of +bind-weed tendrils, a continuous curtain, flaming with large flowers, +but sombre as the falling shades of night, rather resembling jungles of +Ceylon and the Filipinas; and she, that day, lying in the single car +behind, where I had made her a little yatag-bed from Tatar Bazardjik, +continually played the kittur, barely touching the strings, and crooning +low, low, in her rich contralto, eternally the same air, over and over +again, crooning, crooning, some melancholy tune of her own dreaming, +just audible to me through the slow-travailing monotony of the engine; +till I was drunken with so sweet a woe, my God, a woe that was sweet as +life, and a dolour that lulled like nepenthe, and a grief that soothed +like kisses, so sweet, so sweet, that all that world of wood and gloom +lost locality and realness for me, and became nothing but a charmed and +pensive Heaven for her to moan and lullaby in; and from between my +fingers streamed plenteous tears that day, and all that I could keep on +mourning was 'O Leda, O Leda, O Leda,' till my heart was near to break. + +The feed-pump eccentric-shaft of this engine, which was very poor and +flaky, suddenly gave out about five in the afternoon, and I had to stop +in a hurry, and that sweet invisible mechanism which had crooned and +crooned about my ears in the air, and followed me whithersoever I went, +stopped too. Down she jumped, calling out: + +'Well, I had a plesentiment that something would happen, and I am so +glad, for I was tired!' + +Seeing that nothing could be done with the feed-water pump, I got down, +took the bag, and parting before us the continuous screen, we went +pioneering to the left between a rock-cleft, stepping over large stones +that looked black with moss-growths, no sky, but hundreds of feet of +impenetrable leafage overhead, and everywhere the dew-dabbled profusion +of dim ferneries, dishevelled maidenhairs mixed with a large-leaved +mimosa, wild vine, white briony, and a smell of cedar, and a soft +rushing of perpetual waters that charmed the gloaming. The way led +slightly upwards three hundred feet, and presently, after some windings, +and the climbing of five huge steps almost regular, yet obviously +natural, the gorge opened in a roundish space, fifty feet across, with +far overhanging edges seven hundred feet high; and there, behind a +curtain which fell from above, its tendrils defined and straight like a +Japanese bead-hanging, we spread the store of foods, I opening the +wines, fruits, vegetables and meats, she arranging them in order with +the gold plate, and lighting both the spirit-lamp and the lantern: for +here it was quite dark. Near us behind the curtain of tendrils was a +small green cave in the rock, and at its mouth a pool two yards wide, a +black and limpid water that leisurely wheeled, discharging a little +rivulet from the cave: and in it I saw three owl-eyed fish, a finger +long, loiter, and spur themselves, and gaze. Leda, who cannot be still +in tongue or limb, chattered in her glib baby manner as we ate, and +then, after smoking a cigarette, said that she would go and 'lun,' and +went, and left me darkling, for she is the sun and the moon and the host +of the stars, I occupying myself that night in making a calendar at the +end of this book in which I have written, for my almanack and many +things that I prized were lost with the palace--making a calendar, +counting the days in my head--but counting them across my thoughts of +her. + +She came again to tell me good-night, and then went down to the train to +sleep; and I put out the lantern, and stooped within the cave, and made +my simple couch beside the little rivulet, and slept. + +But a fitful sleep, and soon again I woke; and a long time I lay so, +gradually becoming conscious of a slow dripping at one spot in the +cave: for at a minute's interval it darkly splashed, regularly, very +deliberately; and it seemed to grow always louder and sadder, and the +splash at first was 'Leesha,' but it became 'Leda' to my ears, and it +sobbed her name, and I pitied myself, so sad was I. And when I could no +longer bear the anguished melancholy of its spasm and its sobbing, I +arose and went softly, softly, lest she should hear in that sounding +silence of the hushed and darksome night, going more slow, more soft, as +I went nearer, a sob in my throat, my feet leading me to her, till I +touched the carriage. And against it a long time I leant my clammy brow, +a sob aching in my poor throat, and she all mixed up in my head with the +suspended hushed night, and with the elfin things in the air that made +the silence so musically a-sound to the vacant ear-drum, and with the +dripping splash in the cave. And softly I turned the door-handle, and +heard her breathe in Asleep, her head near me; and I touched her hair +with my lips, and close to her ear I said--for I heard her breathe as if +in sleep--'Little Leda, I have come to you, for I could not help it, +Leda: and oh, my heart is full of the love of you, for you are mine, and +I am yours: and to live with you, till we die, and after we are dead to +be near you still, Leda, with my broken heart near your heart, little +Leda--' + +I must have sobbed, I think; for as I spoke close at her ears, with +passionately dying eyes of love, I was startled by an irregularity in +her breathing; and with cautious hurry I shut the door, and quite back +to the cave I stole in haste. + +And the next morning when we met I thought--but am not now sure--that +she smiled singularly: I thought so. She may, she _may_, have heard--But +I cannot tell. + + * * * * * + +Twice I was obliged to abandon engines on account of forest-tree +obstructions right across the line, which, do what I might, I could not +move, and these were the two bitterest incidents of the pilgrimage; and +at least thirty times I changed from engine to engine, when other trains +blocked. As for the extent of the earthquake, it is pretty certain that +it was universal over the Peninsula, and at many points exhibited +extreme violence, for up to the time that we entered upon Servian +territory, we occasionally came upon stretches of the lines so +dislocated, that it was impossible to proceed upon them, and during the +whole course I never saw one intact house or castle; four times, where +the way was of a nature to permit of it, I left the imbedded metals and +made the engine travel the ground till I came upon other metals, when I +always succeeded in driving it upon them. It was all very leisurely, for +not everywhere, nor every day, could I get a nautical observation, and +having at all times to go at low pressures for fear of tube and boiler +weakness, crawling through tunnels, and stopping when total darkness +came on, we did not go fast, nor much cared to. Once, moreover, for +three days, and once for four, we were overtaken by hurricanes of such +vast inclemency, that no thought of travelling entered our heads, our +only care being to hide our poor cowering bodies as deeply and darkly as +possible. Once I passed through a city (Adrianople) doubly devastated, +once by the hellish arson of my own hand, and once by the earthquake: +and I made haste to leave that place behind me. + +Finally, three months and twenty-seven days from the date of the +earthquake, having traversed only 900 odd English miles, I let go in the +Venice lagoon, in the early morning of the 10th September, the lateen +sail and stone anchor of a Maltese _speronare_, which I had found, and +partially cleaned, at Trieste; and thence I passed up the Canalazzo in a +gondola. For I said to Leda: 'In Venice will I pitch my Patriarch tent.' + +But to will and to do are not the same thing, and still further +Westward was I driven. For the stagnant upper canals of this place are +now mere miasmas of pestilence: and within two days I was rolling with +fever in the Old Procurazie Palace, she standing in pale wonderment at +my bed-side, sickness quite a novel thing to her: and, indeed, this was +my first serious illness since my twentieth year or thereabouts, when I +had over-worked my brain, and went a voyage to Constantinople. I could +not move from bed for some weeks, but happily did not lose my senses, +and she brought me the whole pharmacopoeia from the shops, from which to +choose my medicines. I guessed the cause of this illness, though not a +sign of it came near her, and as soon as my trembling knees could bear +me, I again set out--always Westward--enjoying now a certain luxury in +travelling compared with that Turkish difficulty, for here were no +twisted metals, more and better engines, in the cities as many good +petrol motors as I chose, and Nature markedly less savage. + +I do not know why I did not stop at Verona or Brescia, or some other +neighbourhood of the Italian lakes, since I was fond of water: but I +had, I think, the thought in my head to return to Vauclaire in France, +where I had lived, and there live: for I thought that she might like +those old monks. At all events, we did not remain long in any place till +we came to Turin, where we spent nine days, she in the house opposite +mine, and after that, at her own suggestion, went on still, passing by +train into the valley of the Isère, and then into that of the Western +Rhone, till we came to the old town of Geneva among some very great +mountains peaked with snow, the town seated at the head of a long lake +which the earth has made in the shape of the crescent moon, and like the +moon it is a thing of much beauty and many moods, suggesting a creature +under the spell of charms and magics. However, with this idea of +Vauclaire still in my head, we left Geneva in the motor which had +brought us at four in the afternoon of the 17th May, I intending to +reach the town called Bourg that night about eight, and there sleep, so +to go on to Lyons the next morning by train, and so, by the Bordeaux +route, make Vauclaire. But by some chance for which I cannot to this +hour account (unless the rain was the cause), I missed the chart-road, +which should have been fairly level, and found myself on mountain +tracks, unconscious of my whereabouts, while darkness fell, and a +windless downpour that had a certain sullen venom in its superabundance +drenched us. I stopped several times, looking about for château, +chalet, or village, but none did I see, though I twice came upon railway +lines; and not till midnight did we run down a rather steep pass upon +the shore of a lake, which, from its apparent vastness in the moonless +obscurity, I could only suppose to be the Lake of Geneva once again. +About two hundred yards to the left we saw through the rain a large +pile, apparently risen straight out of the lake, looking ghostly livid, +for it was of white stone, not high, but an old thing of complicated +white little turrets roofed with dark red candle extinguishers, and +oddities of Gothic nooks, window slits, and outline, very like a +fanciful picture. Round to this we went, drowned as rats, Leda sighing +and bedraggled, and found a narrow spit of low land projecting into the +lake, where we left the car, walked forward with the bag, crossed a +small wooden drawbridge, and came upon a rocky island with a number of +thick-foliaged trees about the castle. We quickly found a small open +portal, and went throughout the place, quite gay at the shelter, +everywhere lighting candles which we found in iron sconces in the rather +queer apartments: so that, as the castle is far seen from the shores of +the lake, it would have appeared to one looking thence a place suddenly +possessed and haunted. We found beds, and slept: and the next day it +turned out to be the antique Castle of Chillon, where we remained five +long and happy months, till again, again, Fate overtook us. + + * * * * * + +The morning after our coming, we had breakfast--our last meal +together--on the first floor in a pentagonal room approached from a +lower level by three little steps. In it is a ponderous oak table +pierced with a multitude of worm eaten tunnels, also three mighty high +backed chairs, an old oak desk covered still with papers, arras on the +walls, and three dark religious oil paintings, and a grandfathers clock: +it is at about the middle of the château, and contains two small, but +deep, three faced oriels, in each face four compartments with white +stone shafts between, these looking south upon shrubs and the rocky edge +of the island, then upon the deep blue lake, then upon another tiny +island containing four trees in a jungle of flowers, then upon the shore +of the lake interrupted by the mouths of a river which turned out to be +the Rhone, then upon a white town on the slopes which turned out to be +Villeneuve, then upon the great mountains back of Bouveret and St. +Gingolph, all having the surprised air of a resurrection just +completed, everything new washed in dyes of azure, ultramarine, indigo, +snow, emerald, that fresh morning: so that one had to call it the best +and holiest place in the world. These five old room walls, and oak +floor, and two oriels, became specially mine, though it was really +common ground to us both, and there I would do many little things. The +papers on the desk told that it had been the _bureau_ of one R.E. Gaud, +'_Grand Bailli_,' whose residence the place no doubt had been. + +She asked me while eating that morning to stay here, and I said that I +would see, though with misgiving: so together we went all about the +house, and finding it unexpectedly spacious, I consented to stop. At +both ends are suites, mostly small rooms, infinitely quaint and cosy, +furnished with heavy Henri Quatre furniture and bed draperies; and there +are separate, and as it were secret, spiral stairs for exit to each: so +we decided that she should have the suite overlooking the length of the +lake, the mouths of the Rhone, Bouveret and Villeneuve; and I should +have that overlooking the spit of land behind and the little drawbridge, +shore cliffs, and elmwood which comes down to the shore, giving at one +point a glimpse of the diminutive hamlet of Chillon; and, that decided, +I took her hand in mine, and I said: + +'Well, then, here we stay, both under the same roof--for the first time. +Leda, I will not explain why to you, but it is dangerous, so much so +that it _may_ mean the death of one or other of us: deadly, deadly +dangerous, my poor girl. You do not understand, but that is the fact, +believe me, for I know it very well, and I would not tell you false. +Well, then, you will easily comprehend, that this being so, you must +never on any account come near my part of the house, nor will I come +near yours. Lately we have been very much together, but then we have +been active, full of purpose and occupation: here we shall be nothing of +the kind, I can see. You do not understand at all--but things are so. We +must live perfectly separate lives, then. You are nothing to me, really, +nor I to you, only we live on the same earth, which is nothing at all--a +mere chance. Your own food, clothes, and everything that you want, you +will procure for yourself: it is perfectly easy: the shores are crowded +with mansions, castles, towns and villages; and I will do the same for +myself. The motor down there I set apart for your private use: if I want +another, I will get one; and to-day I will set about looking you up a +boat and fishing tackle, and cut a cross on the bow of yours, so that +you may know yours, and never use mine. All this is very necessary: you +cannot dream how much: but I know how much. Do not run any risks in +climbing, now, or with the motor, or in the boat ... little Leda ...' + +I saw her under-lip push, and I turned away in haste, for I did not care +whether she cried or not. In that long voyage, and in my illness at +Venice, she had become too near and dear to me, my tender love, my dear +darling soul; and I said in my heart: 'I will be a decent being: I will +turn out trumps.' + + * * * * * + +Under this castle is a sort of dungeon, not narrow, nor very dark, in +which are seven stout dark-grey pillars, and an eighth, half-built into +the wall; and one of them which has an iron ring, as well as the ground +around it, is all worn away by some prisoner or prisoners once chained +there; and in the pillar the word 'Byron' engraved. This made me +remember that a poet of that name had written something about this +place, and two days afterwards I actually came upon three volumes of the +poet in a room containing a great number of books, many of them English, +near the Grand Bailli's _bureau_: and in one I read the poem, which is +called 'The Prisoner of Chillon.' I found it very affecting, and the +description good, only I saw no seven rings, and where he speaks of the +'pale and livid light,' he should speak rather of the dun and brownish +gloom, for the word 'light' disconcerts the fancy, and of either pallor +or blue there is there no sign. However, I was so struck by the horror +of man's cruelty to man, as depicted in this poem, that I determined +that she should see it; went up straight to her rooms with the book, +and, she being away, ferreted among her things to see what she was +doing, finding all very neat, except in one room where were a number of +prints called _La Mode_, and _débris_ of snipped cloth, and medley. +When, after two hours, she came in, and I suddenly presented myself, +'Oh!' she let slip, and then fell to cooing her laugh; and I took her +down through a big room stacked with every kind of rifle, with +revolvers, cartridges, powder, swords, bayonets--evidently some official +or cantonal magazine--and then showed her the worn stone in the dungeon, +the ring, the narrow deep slits in the wall, and I told the tale of +cruelty, while the splashing of the lake upon the rock outside was heard +with a strange and tragic sound, and her mobile face was all one sorrow. + +'How cruel they must have been!' cries she with tremulous lip, her face +at the same time reddened with indignation. + +'They were mere beastly monsters,' said I: 'it is nothing surprising if +monsters were cruel.' + +And in the short time while I said that, she was looking up with a +new-born smile. + +'Some others came and set the plisoner flee!' cries she. + +'Yes,' said I, 'they did, but--' + +'That was good of them,' says she. + +'Yes,' said I, 'that was all right, so far as it went.' + +'And it was a time when men had al-leady become cluel,' says she: 'if +those who set him flee were so good when all the lest were cluel, what +would they have been at a time when all the lest were kind? They would +have been just like Angels....!' + + * * * * * + +At this place fishing, and long rambles, were the order of the day, both +for her and for me, especially fishing, though a week rarely passed +which did not find me at Bouveret, St. Gingolph, Yvoire, Messery, Nyon, +Ouchy, Vevay, Montreux, Geneva, or one of the two dozen villages, +townlets, or towns, that crowd the shores, all very pretty places, each +with its charm, and mostly I went on foot, though the railway runs right +round the forty odd miles of the lake's length. One noon-day I was +walking through the main-street of Vevay going on to the Cully-road when +I had a fearful shock, for in a shop just in front of me to the right I +heard a sound--an unmistakable indication of life--as of clattering +metals shaken together. My heart leapt into my mouth, I was conscious of +becoming bloodlessly pale, and on tip-toe of exquisite caution I stole +up to the open door--peeped in--and it was she standing on the counter +of a jeweller's shop, her back turned to me, with head bent low over a +tray of jewels in her hands, which she was rummaging for something. I +went _'Hoh!'_ for I could not help it, and all that day, till sunset, we +were very dear friends, for I could not part from her, we walking +together by vor-alpen, wood, and shore all the way to Ouchy, she just +like a creature crazy that day with the bliss of living, rolling in +grasses and perilous flowery declines, stamping her foot defiantly at +me, arrogant queen that she is, and then running like mad for me to +catch her, with laughter, _abandon_, carolling railleries, and the +levity of the wild ass's colt on the hills, entangling her loose-flung +hair with Bacchic tendril and blossom, and drinking, in the passage +through Cully, more wine, I thought, than was good: and the flaming +darts of lightning that shot and shocked me that day, and the inner +secret gleams and revelations of Beauty which I had, and the pangs of +white-hot honey that tortured my soul and body, and were too much for +me, and made me sick, oh Heaven, what tongue could express all that deep +world of things? And at Ouchy with a backward wave of my arm I silently +motioned her from me, for I was dumb, and weak, and I left her there: +and all that long night her power was upon me, for she is stronger than +gravitation, which may be evaded, and than all the forces of life +combined, and the sun and the moon and the earth are nothing compared +with her; and when she was gone from me I was like a fish in the air, or +like a bird in the deep, for she is my element of life, made for me to +breathe in, and I drown without her: so that for many hours I lay on +that grassy hill leading to the burial-ground outside Ouchy that night, +like a man sore wounded, biting the grass. + +What made things worse for me was her adoption of European clothes since +coming to this place: I believe that, in her adroit way, she herself +made some of her dresses, for one day I saw in her apartments a number +of coloured fashion-plates, with a confusion like dress-making; or she +may have been only modifying finished things from the shops, for her +Western dressing is not quite like what I remember of the modern female +style, but is really, I should say, quite her own, rather resembling the +Greek, or the eighteenth century. At any rate, the airs and graces are +as natural to her as feathers to parrots; and she has changes like the +moon; never twice the same, and always transcending her last phase and +revelation: for I could not have conceived of anyone in whom _taste_ was +a faculty so separate as in her, so positive and salient, like smelling +or sight--more like _smelling_: for it is the faculty, half Reason, half +Imagination, by which she fore-scents precisely what will suit +exquisitely with what; so that every time I saw her, I received the +impression of a perfectly novel, completely bewitching, work of Art: the +special quality of works of Art being to produce the momentary +conviction that anything else whatever could not possibly be so good. + +Occasionally, from my window I would see her in the wood beyond the +drawbridge, cool and white in green shade, with her Bible probably, +training her skirt like a court-lady, and looking much taller than +before. I believe that this new dressing produced a separation between +us more complete than it might have been; and especially after that day +between Vevay and Ouchy I was very careful not to meet her. The more I +saw that she bejewelled herself, powdered herself, embalmed herself like +sachets of sweet scents, chapleted her Greek-dressed head with gold +fillets, the more I shunned her. Myself, somehow, had now resumed +European dress, and, ah me, I was greatly changed, greatly changed, God +knows, from the portly inflated monarch-creature that strutted and +groaned four years previously in the palace at Imbros: so that my manner +of life and thought might once more now have been called modern and +Western. + +All the more was my sense of responsibility awful: and from day to day +it seemed to intensify. An arguing Voice never ceased to remonstrate +within me, nor left me peace, and the curse of unborn hosts appeared to +menace me. To strengthen my fixity I would often overwhelm myself, and +her, with muttered opprobriums, calling myself 'convict,' her +'lady-bird'; asking what manner of man was I that I should dare so great +a thing; and as for her, what was she to be the Mother of a world?--a +versatile butterfly with a woman's brow! And continually now in my +fiercer moods I was meditating either my death--or hers. + +Ah, but the butterfly did not let me forget her brow! To the south-west +of Villeneuve, between the forest and the river is a well-grown gentian +field, and returning from round St. Gingolph to the Château one day in +the third month after an absence of three days, I saw, as I turned a +corner in the descent of the mountain, some object floating in the air +above the field. Never was I more startled, and, above all, perplexed: +for, beside the object soaring there like a great butterfly, I could see +nothing to account for it. It was not long, however, before I came to +the conclusion that she has re-invented _the kite_--for she had almost +certainly never seen one--and I presently sighted her holding the string +in the midfield. Her invention resembles the kind called 'swallow-tail' +of old. + + * * * * * + +But mostly it was on the lake that I saw her, for there we chiefly +lived, and occasionally there were guilty approaches and _rencontres_, +she in her boat, I in mine, both being slight clinker-built Montreux +pleasure-boats, which I had spent some days in overhauling and +varnishing, mine with jib, fore-and-aft mainsail, and spanker, hers +rather smaller, one-masted, with an easy-running lug-sail. It was no +uncommon thing for me to sail quite to Geneva, and come back from a +seven-days' cruise with my soul filled and consoled with the lake and +all its many moods of bright and darksome, serene and pensive, dolorous +and despairing and tragic, at morning, at noon, at sunset, at midnight, +a panorama that never for an instant ceased to unroll its +transformations, I sometimes climbing the mountains as high as the +goat-herd region of hoch-alpen, once sleeping there. And once I was made +very ill by a two-weeks' horror which I had: for she disappeared in her +skiff, I being at the Château, and she did not come back; and while she +was away there was a tempest that turned the lake into an angry ocean, +and, ah my good God, she did not come. At last, half-crazy at the vacant +days of misery which went by and by, and she did not come, I set out +upon a wild-goose quest, of her--of all the hopeless things the most +hopeless, for the world is great--and I sought and did not find her; and +after three days I turned back, recognising that I was mad to search the +infinite, and coming near the Château, I saw her wave her handkerchief +from the island-edge, for she divined that I had gone to seek her, and +she was watching for me: and when I took her hand, what did she say to +me, the Biblical simpleton?--'Oh you of little Faith!' says she. And she +had adventures to lisp, with all the _r_'s liquefied into _l_'s, and I +was with her all that day again. + +Once a month perhaps she would knock at my outermost door, which I +mostly kept locked when at home, bringing me a sumptuously-dressed, +highly-spiced red trout or grayling, which I had not the heart to +refuse, and exquisitely she does them, all hot and spiced, applying +apparently to their preparation the taste which she applies to dress; +and her extraordinary luck in angling did not fail to supply her with +the finest specimens, though, for that matter, this lake, with its old +fish-hatcheries and fish-ladders, is not miserly in that way, swarming +now with the best lake trout, river trout, red trout, and with salmon, +of which last I have brought in one with the landing-net of, I should +say, thirty-five to forty pounds. As the bottom goes off very rapidly +from the two islands to a depth of eight to nine hundred feet, we did +not long confine ourselves to bottom-fishing, but gradually advanced to +every variety of manoeuvre, doing middle-water spinning with +three-triangle flights and sliding lip-hook for jack and trout, trailing +with the sail for salmon, live-baiting with the float for pike, daping +with blue-bottles, casting with artificial flies, and I could not say in +which she became the most carelessly adept, for all soon seemed as old +and natural to her as an occupation learned from birth. + + * * * * * + +On the 21st October I attained my forty-sixth birthday in excellent +health: a day destined to end for me in bloodshed and tragedy, alas. I +forget now what circumstance had caused me to mention the date long +beforehand in, I think, Venice, not dreaming that she would keep any +count of it, nor was I even sure that my calendar was not faulty by a +day. But at ten in the morning of what I called the 21st, descending by +my private spiral in flannels with some trout and par bait, and +tackle--I met her coming up, my God, though she had no earthly right to +be there. With her cooing murmur of a laugh, yet pale, pale, and with a +most guilty look, she presented me a large bouquet of wild flowers. + +I was at once thrown into a state of great agitation. She was dressed in +rather a frippery of _mousseline de soie_, all cream-laced, with +wide-hanging short sleeves, a large diamond at the low open neck, the +ivory-brown skin there contrasting with the powdered bluish-white of her +face, where, however, the freckles were not quite whited out; on her +feet little pink satin slippers, without any stockings--a divinely pale +pink; and well back on her hair a plain thin circlet of gold; and she +smelled like heaven, God knows. + +I could not speak. She broke an awkward silence, saying, very faint and +pallid: + +'It is the day!' + +'I--perhaps--' I said, or some incoherency like that. + +I saw the touch of enthusiasm which she had summoned up quenched by my +manner. + +'I have not done long again?' she asked, looking down, breaking another +silence. + +'No, no, oh no,' said I hurriedly: 'not done wrong again. Only, I could +not suppose that you would count up the days. You are ... considerate. +Perhaps--but--' + +'Tell Leda?' + +'Perhaps.... I was going to say ... you might come fishing with me....' + +'O luck!' she went softly. + +I was pierced by a sense of my base cowardice, my incredible weakness: +but I could not at all help it. + +I took the flowers, and we went down to the south side, where my boat +lay; I threw out some of the fish from the well; arranged the tackle, +and then the stern cushions for her; got up the sails; and out we went, +she steering, I in the bows, with every possible inch of space between +us, receiving delicious intermittent whiffs from her of ambergris, +frangipane, or some blending of perfumes, the morning being bright and +hot, with very little breeze on the water, which looked mottled, like +colourless water imperfectly mixed with indigo-wash, we making little +headway; so it was some time before I moved nearer her to get the par +for fixing on the three-triangle flight, for I was going to trail for +salmon or large lake-trout; and during all that time we spoke not a word +together. + +Afterwards I said: + +'Who told you that flowers are proper to birthdays? or that birthdays +are of any importance?' + +'I suppose that nothing can happen so important as birth,' says she: +'and perfumes must be ploper to birth, because the wise men blought +spices to the young Jesus.' + +This _naïveté_ was the cause of my immediate recovery: for to laugh is +to be saved: and I laughed right out, saying: + +'But you read the Bible too much! all your notions are biblical. You +should read the quite modern books.' + +'I have tlied,' says she: 'but I cannot lead them long, nor often. The +whole world seems to have got so collupted. It makes me shudder.' + +'Ah, well now, you see, you quite come round to my point of view,' said +I. + +'Yes, and no,' says she: 'they had got so _spoiled_, that is all. +Everlybody seems to have become quite dull-witted--the plainest tluths +they could not see. I can imagine that those faculties which aided them +in their stlain to become lich themselves, and make the lest more poor, +must have been gleatly sharpened, while all the other faculties +withered: as I can imagine a person with one eye seeing double thlough +it, and quite blind on the other side.' + +'Ah,' said I, 'I do not think they even _wanted_ to see on the other +side. There were some few tolerably good and clear-sighted ones among +them, you know: and these all agreed in pointing out how, by changing +one or two of their old man-in-the-moon Bedlam arrangements, they could +greatly better themselves: but they heard with listless ears: I don't +know that they ever made any considerable effort. For they had become +more or less unconscious of their misery, so miserable were they: like +the man in Byron's "Prisoner of Chillon," who, when his deliverers came, +was quite indifferent, for he says: + + "It was at length the same to me + Fettered or fetterless to be: + I had learned to love Despair."' + +'Oh my God,' she went, covering her face a moment, 'how dleadful! And +it is tlue, it seems tlue:--they had learned to love Despair, to be even +ploud of Despair. Yet all the time, I feel _sure_ flom what I have lead, +flom what I scent, that the individual man was stluggling to see, to +live light, but without power, like one's leg when it is asleep: that is +so pletty of them all! that they meant well--everly one. But they were +too tloubled and sad, too awfully burdened: they had no chance at all. +Such a queer, unnatulal feeling it gives me to lead of all that world: I +can't desclibe it; all their motives seem so tainted, their life so +lopsided. Tluely, the whole head was sick, and the whole heart faint.' + +'Quite so,' said I: 'and observe that this was no new thing: in the very +beginning of the Book we read how God saw that the wickedness of man was +great on the earth, and every imagination of his heart evil....' + +'Yes,' she interrupted, 'that is tlue: but there must have been some +_cause!_ We can be quite _sure_ that it was not natulal, because you and +I are men, and our hearts are not evil.' + +This was her great argument which she always trotted out, because she +found that I had usually no answer to give to it. But this time I said: + +'Our hearts not evil? Say yours: but as to mine you know nothing, +Leda.' + +The semicircles under her eyes had that morning, as often, a certain +moist, heavy, pensive and weary something, as of one fresh from a revel, +very sweet and tender: and, looking softly at me with it, she answered: + +'I know my own heart, and it is not evil: not at all: not even in the +very least: and I know yours, too.' + +'You know _mine!_' cried I, with a half-laugh of surprise. + +'Quite well,' says she. + +I was so troubled by this cool assurance, that I said not a word, but +going to her, handed her the baited flight, swivel-trace, and line, +which she paid out; then I got back again almost into the bows. + +After a ten-minutes I spoke again: + +'So this is news to me: you know all about my heart. Well, come, tell me +what is in it!' + +Now she was silent, pretending to be busy with the trail, till she said, +speaking with low-bent face, and a voice that I could only just hear: + +'I will tell you what is in it: in it is a lebellion which you think +good, but is not good. If a stleam will just flow, neither tlying to +climb upward, nor over-flowing its banks, but lunning modestly in its +fated channel just wherever it is led, then it will finally leach the +sea--the mighty ocean--and lose itself in fulness.' + +'Ah,' said I, 'but that counsel is not new. It is what the philosophers +used to call "yielding to Destiny," and "following Nature." And Destiny +and Nature, I give you my word, often led mankind quite wrong--' + +'Or _seemed_ to,' says she--'for a time: as when a stleam flows north a +little, and the sea is to the south: but it is bound for the sea all the +time, and will turn again. Destiny never could, and cannot yet, be +judged, for it is not finished: and our lace should follow blindly +whither it points, sure that thlough many curves it leads the world to +our God.' + +'Our God indeed!' I cried, getting very excited: 'girl! you talk +speciously, but falsely! whence have you these thoughts in that head of +yours? Girl! you talk of "our race"! But there are only two of us left? +Are you talking _at_ me, Leda? Do not _I_ follow Destiny?' + +'You?' she sighed, with down-bent face: 'ah, poor me!' + +'What should I do if I followed it?' said I, with a crazy curiosity. + +Her face hung lower, paler, in trouble: and she said: + +'You would come now and sit near me here. You would not be there where +you are. You would be always and for ever near me....' + +My good God! I felt my face redden. + +'Oh, I could not _tell_ you...!' I cried: 'you talk the most disastrous...! +you lack all responsibility...! Never, never...!' + +Her face now was covered with her left hand, her right on the tiller: +and bitingly she said, with a touch of venom: + +'I could _make_ you come--_now_, if I chose: but I will not: I will wait +upon my God....' + +'_Make_ me!' I cried: 'Leda! How make me?' + +'I could cly before you, as I cly often and often ... in seclet ... for +my childlen....' + +'_You_ cry in secret? This is news--' + +'Yes, yes, I cly. Is not the burden of the world heavy upon me, too? and +the work I have to do _vely, vely_ gleat? And often and often I cly in +seclet, thinking of it: and I could cly now if I chose, for you love +your little girl so much, that you could not lesist me one minute....' + +Now I saw the push and tortion and trembling of her poor little +under-lip, boding tears: and at once a flame was in me which was +altogether beyond control; and crying out: 'why, my poor dear,' I found +myself in the act of rushing through the staggering boat to take her to +me. + +Mid-way, however, I was saved: a whisper, intense as lightning, arrested +me: 'Forward is no escape, nor backward, but _sideward_ there may be a +way!' And at a sudden impulse, before I knew what I was doing, I was in +the water swimming. + +The smaller of the islands was two hundred yards away, and thither I +swam, rested some minutes, and thence to the Castle. I did not once look +behind me. + + * * * * * + +Well, from 11 A.M. till five in the afternoon, I thought it all out, +lying in the damp flannels on my face on the sofa in the recess beside +my bed, where it was quite dark behind the tattered piece of arras: and +what things I suffered that day, and what deeps I sounded, and what +prayers I prayed, God knows. What infinitely complicated the awful +problem was this thought in my head: that to kill her would be far more +merciful to her than to leave her alone, having killed myself: and, +Heaven knows, it was for her alone that I thought, not at all caring for +myself. To kill her was better: but to kill her with my own hands--that +was too hard to expect of a poor devil like me, a poor common son of +Adam, after all, and never any sublime self-immolator, as two or three +of them were. And hours I lay there with brows convulsed in an agony, +groaning only those words: 'To kill her! to kill her!' thinking +sometimes that I should be merciful to myself too, and die, and let her +live, and not care, since, after my death, I would not see her suffer, +for the dead know not anything: and to expect me to kill her with my own +hand was a little too much. Yet that one or other of us must die was +perfectly certain, for I knew that I was just on the brink of failing in +my oath, and matters here had reached an obvious crisis: unless we could +make up our minds to part...? putting the width of the earth between +us? That conception occurred to me: and in the turmoil of my thoughts it +seemed a possibility. Finally, about 5 P.M., I resolved upon something: +and first I leapt up, went down and across the house into the arsenal, +chose a small revolver, fitted it with cartridge, took it up-stairs, +lubricated it with lamp-oil, went down and out across the drawbridge, +walked two miles beyond the village, shot the revolver at a tree, found +its action accurate, and started back. When I came to the Castle, I +walked along the island to the outer end, and looked up: there were her +pretty cream Valenciennes, put up by herself, waving inward before the +light lake-breeze at one open oriel; and I knew that she was in the +Castle, for I felt it: and always, always, when she was within, I knew, +for I felt her with me; and always when she was away, I knew, I felt, +for the air had a dreadful drought, and a barrenness, in it. And I +looked up for a time to see if she would come to the window, and then I +called, and she appeared. And I said to her: 'Come down here.' + + * * * * * + +Just here there is a little rock-path to the south, going down to the +water between rocks mixed with shrub-like little trees, three yards +long: a path, or a lane, one might call it, for at the lower end the +rocks and trees reach well over a tall man's head. There she had tied my +boat to a slender linden-trunk: and sadder now than Gethsemane that +familiar boat seemed to my eyes, for I knew very well that I should +never enter it more. I walked up and down the path, awaiting her: and +from the jacket-pocket in which lay the revolver I drew a box of Swedish +matches, from it took two matches, and broke off a bit from the plain +end of one; and the two I held between my left thumb and forefinger +joint, the phosphorus ends level and visible, the other ends invisible: +and I awaited her, pacing fast, and my brow was as stern as Azrael and +Rhadamanthus. + +She came, very pale, poor thing, and flurried, breathing fast. And +'Leda,' I said, meeting her in the middle of the lane, and going +straight to the point, 'we are to part, as you guess--for ever, as you +guess--for I see very well by your face that you guess. I, too, am very +sorry, my little child, and heavy is my heart. To leave you ... alone +... in the world ... is--death for me. But it must, ah it must, be +done.' + +Her face suddenly turned as sallow as the dead were, when the shroud was +already on, and the coffin had become a stale added piece of +room-furniture by the bed-side; but in recording that fact, I record +also this other: that, accompanying this mortal sallowness, which +painfully shewed up her poor freckles, was a steady smile, a little +turned-down: a smile of steady, of slightly disdainful--Confidence. + +She did not say anything: so I went on. + +'I have thought long,' said I, 'and I have made a plan--a plan which +cannot be effective without _your_ consent and co-operation: and the +plan is this: we go from this place together--this same night--to some +unknown spot, some town, say a hundred miles hence--by train. There I +get two motors, and I in one, and you in the other, we separate, going +different ways. We shall thus never be able, however much we may want +to, to rediscover each other in all this wide world. That is my plan.' + +She looked me in the face, smiling her smile: and the answer was not +long in coming. + +'I will go in the tlain with you,' says she with slow decisiveness: 'but +where you leave me, there I will stay, till I die; and I will patiently +wait till my God convert you, and send you back to me.' + +'That means that you refuse to do what I say?' + +'Yes,' said she, bowing the head with great dignity. + +'Well, you speak, not like a girl, Leda,' said I, 'but like a full woman +now. But still, reflect a minute.... O reflect! If you stayed where I +left you, I _should_ go back to you, and pretty soon, too: I know that I +should. Tell me, then--reflect well, and tell me--do you definitely +refuse to part with me?' + +The answer was pretty prompt, cool, and firm: + +'Yes; I lefuse.' + +I left her then, took a turn down the path, and came back. + +'Then,' said I, 'here are two matches in my grasp: be good enough to +draw one.' + +_Now_ she was hit to the heart: I saw her eyes widen to the width of +horror, with a glassy stare: she had read of the drawing of lots in the +Bible: she knew that it meant death for me, or for her. + +But she obeyed without a word, after one backward start and then a brief +hovering in decision of thumb and forefinger over my held-out hand. I +had fixed it in my mind that if she drew the shorter of the matches, +then she should die; if the longer, then I should die. + +She drew the shorter.... + + * * * * * + +This was only what I should have expected: for I knew that God loved +her, and hated me. + +But instantly upon the first shock of the enormity that I should be her +executioner, I made my resolve: to drop shot, too, at the moment after +she dropped shot, so disposing my body, that it would fall half upon +her, and half by her, so that we might be close always: and that would +not be so bad, after all. + +With a sudden movement I snatched the revolver from my pocket: she did +not move, except her white lips, which, I think, whispered: + +'_Not yet_....' + +I stood with hanging arm, forefinger on trigger, looking at her. I saw +her glance once at the weapon, and then she fixed her eyes upwards upon +my face: and now that same smile, which had disappeared, was on her lips +again, meaning confidence, meaning disdain. + +I waited for her to open her mouth to say something--to stop that +smile--that I might shoot her quick and sudden: and she would not, +knowing that I could not kill her while she was smiling; and suddenly, +all my pity and love for her changed into a strange resentment and rage +against her, for she was purposely making hard for me what I was doing +for her sake: and the bitter thought was in my mind: 'You are nothing to +me: if you want to die, you do your own killing; and I will do my own +killing.' And without one word to her, I strode away, and left her +there. + +I see now that this whole drawing of lots was nothing more than a farce: +I never could have killed her, smiling, or no smiling: for to each thing +and man is given a certain strength: and a thing cannot be stronger than +its strength, strive as it may: it is so strong, and no stronger, and +there is an end of the matter. + +I walked up to the Grand Bailli's _bureau_, a room about twenty-five +feet from the ground. By this time it was getting pretty dark, but I +could see, by peering, the face of a grandfather's-clock which I had +long since set going, and kept wound. It is on the north side of the +room, over the writing-desk opposite the oriels. It then pointed to +half-past six, and in order to fix some definite moment for the bitter +effort of the mortal act, I said: 'At Seven.' I then locked the door +which opens upon three little steps near the desk, and also the +stair-door; and I began to pace the chamber. There was not a breath of +air here, and I was hot; I seemed to be stifling, tore open my shirt at +the throat, and opened the lower half of the central mullion-space of +one oriel. Some minutes later, at twenty-five to seven, I lit two +candles on the desk, and sat to write to her, the pistol at my right +hand; but I had hardly begun, when I thought that I heard a sound at the +three-step door, which was only four feet to my left: a sound which +resembled a scraping of her slipper; I stole to the door, and crouched, +listening: but I could hear nothing further. I then returned to the +desk, and set to writing, giving her some last directions for her life, +telling her why I died, how I loved her, much better than my own soul, +begging her to love me always, and to live on to please me, but if she +_would_ die, then to be sure to die near me. Tears were pouring down my +face, when, turning, I saw her standing in a terrified pose hardly two +feet behind me. The absolute stealth which had brought and put her +there, unknown to me, was like miracle: for the ladder, whose top I saw +intruding into the open oriel, I knew well, having often seen it in a +room below, and its length was quite thirty feet, nor could its weight +be trifling: yet I had heard not one hint of its impact upon the window. +But there, at all events, she was, wan as a ghost. + +Immediately, as my consciousness realised her, my hand instinctively +went out to secure the weapon: but she darted upon it, and was an +instant before me. I flew after her to wrench it away, but she flew, +too: and before I caught her, had thrown it cleanly through two rungs of +the ladder and the window. I dashed to the window, and after a hurried +peer thought that I saw it below at the foot of a rock; away I flew to +the stair-door, wrung open the lock, and down the stairs, three at a +time, I ran to recover it. I remember being rather surprised that she +did not follow, forgetting all about the ladder. + +But with a horrid shock I was reminded of it the moment I reached the +bottom, before ever I had passed from the house: for I heard the report +of the weapon--that crack, my God! and crying out: 'Well, Lord, she has +died for me, then!' I tottered forward, and tumbled upon her, where she +lay under the incline of the ladder in her blood. + + * * * * * + +That night! what a night it was! of fingers shivering with haste, of +harum-scarum quests and searches, of groans, and piteous appeals to God. +For there were no surgical instruments, lint, anaesthetics, nor +antiseptics that I knew of in the Château; and though I knew of a house +in Montreux where I could find them, the distance was quite infinite, +and the time an eternity in which to leave her all alone, bleeding to +death; and, to my horror, I remembered that there was barely enough +petrol in the motor, and the store usually kept in the house exhausted. +However, I did it, leaving her there unconscious on her bed: but _how_ I +did it, and lived sane afterwards, that is another matter. + +If I had not been a medical man, she must, I think, have died: for the +bullet had broken the left fifth rib, had been deflected, and I found +it buried in the upper part of the abdominal wall. I did not go from her +bed-side: I did not sleep, though I nodded and staggered: for all things +were nothing to me, but her: and for a frightfully long time she +remained comatose. While she was still in this state I took her to a +chalet beyond Villeneuve, three miles away on the mountain-side, a +homely, but very salubrious place which I knew, imbedded in verdures, +for I was desperate at her long collapse, and had hope in the higher +air. And there after three more days, she opened her eyes, and smiled +with me. + +It was then that I said to myself: 'This is the noblest, sagest, and +also the most loveable, of the creatures whom God has made in heaven or +earth. She has won my life, and I will live.... But at least, to save +myself, I will put the broadest Ocean that there is between her and me: +for I wish to be a decent being, for the honour of my race, being the +last, and to turn out trumps ... though I do love my dear, God +knows....' + +And thus, after only fifty-five days at the chalet, were we forced still +further Westward. + + * * * * * + +I wished her to remain at Chillon, intending, myself, to start for the +Americas, whence any sudden impulse to return to her could not be +easily accomplished: but she refused, saying that she would come with me +to the coast of France: and I could not say her no. + +And at the coast, after thirteen days we arrived, three days before the +New Year, traversing France by steam, air, and petrol traction. + +We came to Havre--infirm, infirm of will that I was: for in my deep +heart was the secret, hidden away from my own upper self, that, she +being at Havre, and I at Portsmouth, we could still speak together. + +We came humming into the dark town of Havre in a four-seat motor-car +about ten in the evening of the 29th December: a raw bleak night, she, +it was clear, poor thing, bitterly cramped with cold. I had some +recollection of the place, for I had been there, and drove to the quays, +near which I stopped at the _Maire's_ large house, a palatial place +overlooking the sea, in which she slept, I occupying another near. + +The next morning I was early astir, searched in the _mairie_ for a map +of the town, where I also found a _Bottin_: I could thus locate the +Telephone Exchange. In the _Maire's_ house, which I had fixed upon to be +her home, the telephone was set up in an alcove adjoining a very stately +_salon_ Louis Quinze; and though I knew that these little dry batteries +would not be run down in twenty odd years, yet, fearing any weakness, I +broke open the box, and substituted a new one from the Company's stores +two streets away, at the same time noting the exchange-number of the +instrument. This done, I went down among the ships by the wharves, and +fixed upon the first old green air-boat that seemed fairly sound, broke +open a near shop, procured some buckets of oil, and by three o'clock had +tested and prepared my ship. It was a dull and mournful day, drizzling, +chilly. I returned then to the _mairie_, where for the first time I saw +her, and she was heavy of heart that day: but when I broke the news that +she would be able to speak to me, every day, all day, first she was all +incredulous astonishment, then, for a moment, her eyes turned white to +Heaven, then she was skipping like a kid. We were together three +precious hours, examining the place, and returning with stores of +whatever she might require, till I saw darkness coming on, and we went +down to the ship. + +And when those long-dead screws awoke and moved, bearing me toward the +Outer Basin, I saw her stand darkling, lonely, on the Quai through +heart-rending murk and drizzly inclemency: and oh my God, the gloomy +under-look of those red eyes, and the piteous out-push of that little +lip, and the hurried burying of that face! My heart broke, for I had not +given her even one little, last kiss, and she had been so good, quietly +acquiescing, like a good wife, not attempting to force her presence upon +me in the ship; and I left her there, all widowed, alone on the +Continent of Europe, watching after me: and I went out to the bleak and +dreary fields of the sea. + + * * * * * + +Arriving at Portsmouth the next morning, I made my residence in the +first house in which I found an instrument, a spacious dwelling facing +the Harbour Pier. I then hurried round to the Exchange, which is on the +Hard near the Docks, a large red building with facings of Cornish +moor-stone, a bank on the ground-floor, and the Exchange on the first. +Here I plugged her number on to mine, ran back, rang--and, to my great +thanksgiving, heard her speak. (This instrument, however, did not prove +satisfactory: I broke the box, and put in another battery, and still the +voice was muffled: finally, I furnished the middle room at the Exchange +with a truckle-bed, stores, and a few things, and here have taken up +residence.) + +I believe that she lives and sleeps under the instrument, as I here +live and sleep, sleep and live, under it. My instrument is quite near +one of the harbour-windows, so that, hearing her, I can gaze out toward +her over the expanse of waters, yet see her not; and she, too, looking +over the sea toward me, can hear a voice from the azure depths of +nowhere, yet see me not. + + * * * * * + +I this morning early to her: + +'Good morning! Are you there?' + +'Good morning! No: I am there,' says she. + +'Well, that was what I asked--"are you there"?' + +'But I not here, I am there,' says she. + +'I know very well that you are not "here,"' said I, 'for I do not see +you: but I asked if you were there, and you say "No," and then "Yes."' + +'It is the paladox of the heart,' says she. + +'The what?' + +'The paladox,' says she. + +'But still I do not understand: how can you be both there and not +there?' + +'If my ear is here, and I elsewhere?' says she. + +'An operation?' + +'Yes!' says she. + +'What doctor?' + +'A specialist!' says she. + +'An ear-specialist?' + +'A heart!' says she. + +'And you let a heart-specialist operate on your ear?' + +'On myself he operlated, and left the ear behind!' says she. + +'Well, and how are you after it?' + +'Fairly well. Are you?' says she. + +'Quite well. Did you sleep well?' + +'Except when you lang me up at midnight. I have had such a dleam ...' + +'What?' + +'I dleamed that I saw two little boys of the same age--only I could not +see their faces, I never can see anybody's face, only yours and mine, +mine and yours always--of the same age--playing in a wood....' + +'Ah, I hope that one of them was not called Cain, my poor girl.' + +'Not at all! neither of them! Suppose I tell a stoly, and say that one +was called Caius and the other Tibelius, or one John and the other +Jesus?' + +'Ah. Well, tell me the _dleam_....' + +'Now you do not deserve.' + +'Well, what will you do to-day?' + +'I? It is a lovely day ... have you nice weather in England?' + +'Very.' + +'Well, between eleven and twelve I will go out and gather Spling-flowers +in the park, and cover the salon deep, deep. Wouldn't you like to be +here?' + +'Not I.' + +'You would!' + +'Why should I? I prefer England.' + +'But Flance is nice too: and Flance wants to be fliends with England, +and is waiting, oh waiting, for England to come over, and be fliends. +Couldn't some _lapplochement_ be negotiated?' + +'Good-bye. This talking spoils my morning smoke....' + +So we speak together across the sea, my God. + + * * * * * + +On the morning of the 8th April, when I had been separated thirteen +weeks from her, I boarded several ships in the Inner Port, a lunacy in +my heart, and selected what looked like a very swift boat, one of the +smaller Atlantic air-steamers called the _Stettin_, which seemed to +require the least labour in oiling, &c., in order to fit her for the +sea: for the boat in which I had come to England was a mere tub, though +sound, and I pined for the wings of a dove, that I might fly away to +her, and be at rest. + +I toiled with fluttering hands that day, and I believe that I was of the +colour of ashes to my very lips. By half-past two o'clock I was +finished, and by three was coasting down Southampton Water by Netley +Hospital and the Hamble-mouth, having said not one word about anything +at the telephone, or even to my own guilty heart not a word. But in the +silent depths of my being I felt this fact: that this must be a 35-knot +boat, and that, if driven hard, hard, in spite of the heavy garment of +seaweed which she trailed, she would do 30; also that Havre was 120 +miles away, and at 7 P.M. I should be on its quay. + +And when I was away, and out on the bright and breezy sea, I called to +her, crying out: '_I am coming!_' And I knew that she heard me, and that +her heart leapt to meet me, for mine leapt, too, and felt her answering. + +The sun went down: it set. I was tired of the day's work, and of +standing at the high-set wheel; and I could not yet see the coast of +France. And a thought smote me, and after another ten minutes I turned +the ship's head back, my face screwed with pain, God knows, like a man +whose thumbs are ground between the screws, and his body drawn out and +out on the rack to tenuous length, and his flesh massacred with pincers: +and I fell upon the floor of the bridge contorted with anguish: for I +could not go to her. But after a time that paroxysm passed, and I rose +up sullen and resentful, and resumed my place at the wheel, steering +back for England: for a fixed resolve was in my breast, and I said: 'Oh +no, no more. If I could bear it, I would, I would ... but if it is +impossible, how can I? To-morrow night as the sun sets--without fail--so +help me God--I will kill myself.' + + * * * * * + +So it is finished, my good God. + +On the early morning of the next day, the 9th, I having come back to +Portsmouth about eleven the previous night, when I bid her 'Good +morning' through the telephone, she said 'Good morning,' and not another +word. I said: + +'I got my hookah-bowl broken last night, and shall be trying to mend it +to-day.' + +No answer. + +'Are you there?' said I. + +'Yes,' says she. + +'Then why don't you answer?' said I. + +'Where were you all yesterday?' says she. + +'I went for a little cruise in the basin,' said I. + +Silence for three minutes: then she says: + +'What is the matter?' + +'Matter?' said I, 'nothing!' + +'_Tell me!_' she says--with such an intensity and rage, as to make me +shudder. + +'There is nothing to tell, Leda!' + +'Oh, but how can you be so _cluel_ to me?' she cries, and ah, there was +anguish in that voice! 'There is something to tell--there _is!_ Don't I +know it vely well by your voice?' + +Ah, the thought took me then, how, on the morrow, she would ring, and +have no answer; and she would ring again, and have no answer; and she +would ring all day, and ring, and ring; and for ever she would ring, +with white-flowing hair and the staring eye-balls of frenzy, battering +reproaches at the doors of God, and the Universe would cry back to her +howls and ravings only one eternal answer of Silence, of Silence. And as +I thought of that--for very pity, for very pity, my God--I could not +help sobbing aloud: + +'May God pity you, woman!' + +I do not know if she heard it: she _must_, I think, have heard: but no +reply came; and there I, shivering like the sheeted dead, stood waiting +for her next word, waiting long, dreading, hoping for, her voice, +thinking that if she spoke and sobbed but once, I should drop dead, +dead, where I stood, or bite my tongue through, or shriek the high laugh +of distraction. But when at last, after quite thirty or forty minutes +she spoke, her voice was perfectly firm and calm. She said: + +'Are you there?' + +'Yes,' said I, 'yes, Leda.' + +'What was the color,' says she, 'of the poison-cloud which destroyed the +world?' + +'Purple, Leda,' said I. + +'And it had a smell like almonds or peach blossoms, did it not?' says +she. + +'Yes,' said I, 'yes.' + +'Then,' says she, 'there is _another_ eruption. Every now and again I +seem to scent strange whiffs like that ... and there is a purple vapour +in the East which glows and glows ... just see if you can see it....' + +I flew across the room to an east window, threw up the grimy sash, and +looked. But the view was barred by the plain brick back of a tall +warehouse. I rushed back, gasped to her to wait, rushed down the two +stairs, and out upon the Hard. For a minute I ran dodging wildly about, +seeking a purview to the East, and finally ran up the dockyard, behind +the storehouses to the Semaphore, and reached the top, panting for life. +I looked abroad. The morning sky, but for a bank of cloud to the +north-west, was cloudless, the sun blazing in a region of clear azure +pallor. And back again I flew. + +'I cannot see it...!' I cried. + +'Then it has not tlavelled far enough to the north-west yet,' she said +with decision. + +'My wife!' I cried: 'you are my wife now!' + +'Am I?' says she: 'at last? Are you glad?... But shall I not soon die?' + +'No! You can escape! My home! My heart! If only for an hour or two, then +death--just think, together--on the same couch, for ever, heart to +heart--how sweet!' + +'Yes! how sweet! But how escape?' + +'It travelled slowly before. Get quick--will you?--into one of the +smaller boats by the quay--there is one just under the crane that is an +air-boat--you have seen me turn on the air, haven't you?--that handle on +the right as you descend the steps under the dial-thing--get first a +bucket of oil from the shop next to the clock-tower in the quay-street, +and throw it over everything that you see rusted. Only, spend no +time--for me, my heaven! You can steer by the tiller and compass: well, +the wheel is quite the same, only just the opposite. First unmoor, then +to the handle, then to the wheel. The course is directly North-East by +North. I will meet you on the sea--go now--' + +I was wild with bliss. I thought that I should take her between my arms, +and have the little freckles against my face, and taste her short +firm-fleshed upper-lip, and moan upon her, and whimper upon her, and +mutter upon her, and say 'My wife.' And even when I knew that she was +gone from the telephone, I still stood there, hoarsely calling after +her: 'My wife! My wife!' + + * * * * * + +I flew down to where the steamer lay moored that had borne me the +previous day. Her joint speed with the speed of Leda's boat would be +forty knots: in three hours we must meet. I had not the least fear of +her dying before I saw her: for, apart from the deliberate movement of +the vapour that first time, I fore-tasted and trusted my love, that she +would surely come, and not fail: as dying saints fore-tasted and trusted +Eternal Life. + +I was no sooner on board the _Stettin_ than her engines were straining +under what was equivalent to forced draught. On the previous day it +would have little surprised me at any moment, while I drove her, to be +carried to the clouds in an explosion from her deep-rusted steel tanks: +but this day such a fear never crossed my mind: for I knew very well +that I was immortal till I saw her. + +The sea was not only perfectly smooth, but placid, as on the previous +day: only it seemed far placider, and the sun brighter, and there was a +levity in the breezes that frilled the sea in fugitive dark patches, +like _frissons_ of tickling; and I thought that the morning was a true +marriage-morning, and remembered that it was a Sabbath; and sweet odours +our wedding would not lack of peach and almond, though, looking +eastward, I could see no faintest sign of any purple cloud, but only +rags of chiffon under the sun; and it would be an eternal wedding, for +one day in our sight would be as a thousand years, and our thousand +years of bliss would be but one day, and in the evening of all that +eternity death would come and sweetly lay its finger upon our languid +lids, and we should die of weary bliss; and all manner of dancings and +singings--fandango and light galliard, corantoes and the solemn +gavotte--were a-tune in my heart that happy day; and running by the +chart-house to the wheel, I saw under the table a great roll of old +flags, and presently they were flying in a long curve of gala from the +main; and the sea rumpled in a long tract of tumbling milk behind me; +and I hasted homeward, to meet my heart. + + * * * * * + +No purple cloud could I see as, on and on, for two hours, I tore +southward: but at hot noon, on the weather beam I spied through the +glass across the water something else which moved, and it was you who +came to me, Oh Leda, my spirit's breath! + +I bore down upon her, waving: and soon I saw her stand like an ancient +mariner, but in white muslins that fluttered, at her wheel on the +bridge--it was one of those little old Havre-Antwerp craft very high in +the bows--and she waved a little white thing. And we came nearer, till I +could spy her face, her smile, and I shouted her to stop, and in a +minute stopped myself, and by happy steering came with slowing headway +to a slight crash by her side, and ran down the trellised steps to her, +and led her up; and on the deck, without saying a word, I fell to my +knees before her, and I bowed my brow to the floor, with obeisance, and +I worshipped her there as Heaven. + +And we were wedded: for she, too, bowed the knee with me under the +jovial blue sky; and under her eyes were the little moist semicircles of +dreamy pensive fatigue, so dear and wifish: and God was there, and saw +her kneel: for He loves the girl. + +And I got the two ships apart, and they rested there some yards divided +all the day, and we were in the main-deck cabin, where I had locked a +door, so that no one might come in to be with my love and me. + + * * * * * + +I said to her: + +'We will fly west to one of the Somersetshire coal-mines, or to one of +the Cornwall tin-mines, and we will barricade ourselves against the +cloud, and provision ourselves for six months--for it is perfectly +feasible, and we have plenty of time, and no crowds to break down our +barricades--and there in the deep earth we will live sweetly together, +till the danger is overpast.' + +And she smiled, and drew her hand across my face, and said: + +'No, no: don't you tlust in my God? do you think He would leally let me +die?' + +For she has appropriated the Almighty God to herself, naming Him '_my_ +God'--the impudence: though she generally knows what she is saying, too. +And she would not fly the cloud. + +And I am now writing three weeks later at a little place called +Château-les-Roses, and no poison-cloud, and no sign of any poison-cloud, +has come. And this I do not understand. + +It may be that she divined that I was about to destroy myself ... she +may be quite capable.... But no, I do not understand, and shall never +ask her. + +But _this_ I understand: that it is _the White_ who is Master here: that +though he wins but by a hair, yet he wins, he wins: and since he wins, +dance, dance, my heart. + +I look for a race that shall resemble its Mother: nimble-witted, +light-minded, pious--like her; all-human, ambidextrous, ambicephalous, +two-eyed--like her; and if, like her, they talk the English language +with all the r's turned into l's, I shall not care. + +They will be vegetable-eaters, I suppose, when all the meat now extant +is eaten up: but it is not certain that meat is good for men: and if it +is really good, then they will _invent_ a meat: for they will be _her_ +sons, and she, to the furthest cycle in which the female human mind is +permitted to orbit, is, I swear, all-wise. + +There was a preaching man--a Scotchman he was, named Macintosh, or +something like that--who said that the last end of Man shall be well, +and very well: and she says the same: and the agreement of these two +makes a Truth. And to that I now say: Amen, Amen. + +For I, Adam Jeffson, second Parent of the world, hereby lay down, +ordain, and decree for all time, clearly perceiving it now: That the one +Motto and Watch-word essentially proper to each human individual, and to +the whole Race of Man, as distinct from other races in heaven or in +earth, was always, and remains, even this: 'Though He slay me, yet will +I trust in Him.' + +THE END. + + + + +*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE PURPLE CLOUD *** + +Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions will +be renamed. + +Creating the works from print editions not protected by U.S. copyright +law means that no one owns a United States copyright in these works, +so the Foundation (and you!) can copy and distribute it in the +United States without permission and without paying copyright +royalties. 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Shiel</div> +<div style='display:block; margin:1em 0'> +This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and +most other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions +whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms +of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online +at <a href="https://www.gutenberg.org">www.gutenberg.org</a>. If you +are not located in the United States, you will have to check the laws of the +country where you are located before using this eBook. +</div> +<div style='display:block; margin-top:1em; margin-bottom:1em; margin-left:2em; text-indent:-2em'>Title: The Purple Cloud</div> +<div style='display:block; margin-top:1em; margin-bottom:1em; margin-left:2em; text-indent:-2em'>Author: M.P. Shiel</div> +<div style='display:block; margin:1em 0'>Release Date: February 22, 2004 [eBook #11229]<br /> +[Most recently updated: December 1, 2023]</div> +<div style='display:block; margin:1em 0'>Language: English</div> +<div style='display:block; margin-left:2em; text-indent:-2em'>Produced by: Suzanne Shell, Garrett Alley, Maria Khomenko and PG Distributed Proofreaders</div> +<div style='margin-top:2em; margin-bottom:4em'>*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE PURPLE CLOUD ***</div> + +<h1>The Purple Cloud</h1> + +<h2 class="no-break">By M.P. Shiel</h2> + +<p class="center"> +1901 +</p> + +<h3>estai kai Samos ammos, eseitai Daelos adaelos</h3> + +<p class="center"> +<i>Sibylline Prophecy</i> +</p> + +<hr /> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2>INTRODUCTION</h2> + +<p> +About three months ago—that is to say, toward the end of May of this year of +1900—the writer whose name appears on the title-page received as noteworthy a +letter, and packet of papers, as it has been his lot to examine. They came from +a very good friend of mine, whose name there is no reason that I should now +conceal—Dr. Arthur Lister Browne, M.A. (Oxon.), F.R.C.P. It happened that for +two years I had been spending most of my time in France, and as Browne had a +Norfolk practice, I had not seen him during my visits to London. Moreover, +though our friendship was of the most intimate kind, we were both atrocious +correspondents: so that only two notes passed between us during those years. +</p> + +<p> +Till, last May, there reached me the letter—and the packet—to which I refer. +The packet consisted of four note-books, quite crowded throughout with those +giddy shapes of Pitman's shorthand, whose <i>ensemble</i> so resembles startled +swarms hovering in flighty poses on the wing. They were scribbled in pencil, +with little distinction between thick and thin strokes, few vowels: so that +their slow deciphering, I can assure the reader, has been no holiday. The +letter also was pencilled in shorthand; and this letter, together with the +second of the note-books which I have deciphered (it was marked 'III.'), I now +publish. +</p> + +<p> +[I must say, however, that in some five instances there will occur sentences +rather crutched by my own guess-work; and in two instances the characters were +so impossibly mystical, that I had to abandon the passage with a head-ache. But +all this will be found immaterial to the general narrative.] +</p> + +<p> +The following is Browne's letter: +</p> + +<p> +'DEAR OLD SHIEL,—I have just been lying thinking of you, and wishing that you +were here to give one a last squeeze of the hand before I—"<i>go</i>": for, by +all appearance, "going" I am. Four days ago, I began to feel a soreness in the +throat, and passing by old Johnson's surgery at Selbridge, went in and asked +him to have a look at me. He muttered something about membranous laryngitis +which made me smile, but by the time I reached home I was hoarse, and not +smiling: before night I had dyspnoca and laryngeal stridor. I at once +telegraphed to London for Morgan, and, between him and Johnson, they have been +opening my trachea, and burning my inside with chromic acid and the galvanic +cautery. The difficulty as to breathing has subsided, and it is wonderful how +little I suffer: but I am much too old a hand not to know what's what: the +bronchi are involved—<i>too far</i> involved—and as a matter of absolute fact, +there isn't any hope. Morgan is still, I believe, fondly dwelling upon the +possibility of adding me to his successful-tracheotomy statistics, but +prognosis was always my strong point, and I say No. The very small consolation +of my death will be the beating of a specialist in his own line. So we shall +see. +</p> + +<p> +'I have been arranging some of my affairs this morning, and remembered these +notebooks. I intended letting you have them months ago, but my habit of putting +things off, and the fact that the lady was alive from whom I took down the +words, prevented me. Now she is dead, and as a literary man, and a student of +life, you should be interested, if you can manage to read them. You may even +find them valuable. +</p> + +<p> +'I am under a little morphia at present, propped up in a nice little state of +languor, and as I am able to write without much effort, I will tell you in the +old Pitman's something about her. Her name was Miss Mary Wilson; she was about +thirty when I met her, forty-five when she died, and I knew her intimately all +those fifteen years. Do you know anything about the philosophy of the hypnotic +trance? Well, that was the relation between us—hypnotist and subject. She had +been under another man before my time, but no one was ever so successful with +her as I. She suffered from <i>tic douloureux</i> of the fifth nerve. She had +had most of her teeth drawn before I saw her, and an attempt had been made to +wrench out the nerve on the left side by the external scission. But it made no +difference: all the clocks in hell tick-tacked in that poor woman's jaw, and it +was the mercy of Providence that ever she came across <i>me</i>. My +organisation was found to have almost complete, and quite easy, control over +hers, and with a few passes I could expel her Legion. +</p> + +<p> +'Well, you never saw anyone so singular in personal appearance as my friend, +Miss Wilson. Medicine-man as I am, I could never behold her suddenly without a +sensation of shock: she suggested so inevitably what we call "the <i>other</i> +world," one detecting about her some odour of the worm, with the feeling that +here was rather ghost than woman. And yet I can hardly convey to you the why of +this, except by dry details as to the contours of her lofty brow, meagre lips, +pointed chin, and ashen cheeks. She was tall and deplorably emaciated, her +whole skeleton, except the thigh-bones, being quite visible. Her eyes were of +the bluish hue of cigarette smoke, and had in them the strangest, feeble, +unearthly gaze; while at thirty-five her paltry wisp of hair was quite white. +</p> + +<p> +'She was well-to-do, and lived alone in old Wooding Manor-house, five miles +from Ash Thomas. As you know, I was "beginning" in these parts at the time, and +soon took up my residence at the manor. She insisted that I should devote +myself to her alone; and that one patient constituted the most lucrative +practice which I ever had. +</p> + +<p> +'Well, I quickly found that, in the state of trance, Miss Wilson possessed very +remarkable powers: remarkable, I mean, not, of course, because peculiar to +herself in <i>kind</i>, but because they were so constant, reliable, exact, and +far-reaching, in degree. The veriest fledgling in psychical science will now +sit and discourse finically to you about the reporting powers of the mind in +its trance state—just as though it was something quite new! This simple fact, I +assure you, which the Psychical Research Society, only after endless +investigation, admits to be scientific, has been perfectly well known to every +old crone since the Middle Ages, and, I assume, long previously. What an +unnecessary air of discovery! The certainty that someone in trance in +Manchester can tell you what is going on in London, or in Pekin, was not, of +course, left to the acumen of an office in Fleet Street; and the society, in +establishing the fact beyond doubt for the general public, has not gone one +step toward explaining it. They have, in fact, revealed nothing that many of us +did not, with absolute assurance, know before. +</p> + +<p> +'But talking of poor Miss Wilson, I say that her powers were <i>remarkable</i>, +because, though not exceptional in <i>genre</i>, they were so special in +quantity,—so "constant," and "far-reaching." I believe it to be a fact that, +<i>in general</i>, the powers of trance manifest themselves more particularly +with regard to space, as distinct from time: the spirit roams in the present—it +travels over a plain—it does not <i>usually</i> attract the interest of +observers by great ascents, or by great descents. I fancy that is so. But Miss +Wilson's gift was special to this extent, that she travelled in every +direction, and easily in all but one, north and south, up and down, in the +past, the present, and the future. +</p> + +<p> +This I discovered, not at once, but gradually. She would emit a stream of +sounds in the trance state—I can hardly call it <i>speech</i>, so murmurous, +yet guttural, was the utterance, mixed with puffy breath-sounds at the languid +lips. This state was accompanied by an intense contraction of the pupils, +absence of the knee-jerk, considerable rigor, and a rapt and arrant expression. +I got into the habit of sitting long hours at her bed-side, quite fascinated by +her, trying to catch the import of that opiate and visionary language which +came puffing and fluttering in deliberate monotone from her lips. Gradually, in +the course of months, my ear learned to detect the words; "the veil was rent" +for me also; and I was able to follow somewhat the course of her musing and +wandering spirit. +</p> + +<p> +At the end of six months I heard her one day repeat some words which were +familiar to me. They were these: "Such were the arts by which the Romans +extended their conquests, and attained the palm of victory; and the concurring +testimony of different authors enables us to describe them with precision..." I +was startled: they are part of Gibbon's "Decline and Fall," which I easily +guessed that she had never read. +</p> + +<p> +I said in a stern voice: "Where are you?" +</p> + +<p> +She replied, "Us are in a room, eight hundred and eleven miles above. A man is +writing. Us are reading." +</p> + +<p> +I may tell you two things: first, that in trance she never spoke of herself as +"I," nor even as "we," but, for some unknown reason, in the <i>objective</i> +way, as "<i>us</i>": "us are," she would say—"us will," "us went"; though, of +course, she was an educated lady, and I don't think ever lived in the West of +England, where they say "us" in that way; secondly, when wandering in the past, +she always represented herself as being "<i>above</i>" (the earth?), and higher +the further back in time she went; in describing present events she appears to +have felt herself <i>on</i> (the earth); while, as regards the future, she +invariably declared that "<i>us</i>" were so many miles "within" (the earth). +</p> + +<p> +To her excursions in this last direction, however, there seemed to exist +certain fixed limits: I say seemed, for I cannot be sure, and only mean that, +in spite of my efforts, she never, in fact, went far in this direction. Three, +four thousand "miles" were common figures on her lips in describing her +distance "above"; but her distance "within" never got beyond sixty-three. +Usually, she would say twenty, twenty-five. She appeared, in relation to the +future, to resemble a diver in the deep sea, who, the deeper he strives, finds +a more resistant pressure, till, at no great depth, resistance becomes +prohibition, and he can no further strive. +</p> + +<p> +'I am afraid I can't go on: though I had a good deal to tell you about this +lady. During fifteen years, off and on, I sat listening by her dim bed-side to +her murmuring trances! At last my expert ear could detect the sense of her +faintest sigh. I heard the "Decline and Fall" from beginning to end. Some of +her reports were the most frivolous nonsense: over others I have hung in a +horror of interest. Certainly, my friend, I have heard some amazing words +proceed from those wan lips of Mary Wilson. Sometimes I could hitch her +repeatedly to any scene or subject that I chose by the mere exercise of my +will; at others, the flighty waywardness of her spirit eluded and baffled me: +she resisted—she disobeyed: otherwise I might have sent you, not four +note-books, but twenty, or forty. About the fifth year it struck me that it +would be well to jot down her more connected utterances, since I knew +shorthand. +</p> + +<p> +The note-book marked "I.," <a href="#note-1"><small><sup>1</sup></small></a> +which seems to me the most curious, belongs to the seventh year. Its history, +like those of the other three, is this: I heard her one afternoon murmuring in +the intonation used when <i>reading</i>; the matter interested me; I asked her +where she was. She replied: "Us are forty-five miles within: us read, and +another writes"; from which I concluded that she was some fifteen to thirty +years in the future, perusing an as yet unpublished work. After that, during +some weeks, I managed to keep her to the same subject, and finally, I fancy, +won pretty well the whole work. I believe you would find it striking, and hope +you will be able to read my notes. +</p> + +<p> +'But no more of Mary Wilson now. Rather let us think a little of A.L. Browne, +F.R.C.P.!—with a breathing-tube in his trachea, and Eternity under his +pillow...' [Dr. Browne's letter then continues on a subject of no interest +here.] +</p> + +<p> +[The present writer may add that Dr. Browne's prognosis of his own case proved +correct, for he passed away two days after writing the above. My transcription +of the shorthand book marked 'III.' I now proceed to give without comment, +merely reminding the reader that the words form the substance of a book or +document to be written, or to be motived (according to Miss Wilson) in that +Future, which, no less than the Past, substantively exists in the +Present—though, like the Past, we see it not. I need only add that the title, +division into paragraphs, &c., have been arbitrarily contrived by myself +for the sake of form and convenience.] +</p> + +<p class="footnote"> +<a name="note-1"></a><sup>1</sup> [This I intend to publish under the title of +'The Last Miracle; 'II.' will bear that of 'The Lord of the Sea'; the present +book is marked 'III.' The perusal of 'IV.' I have yet finished, but so far do +not consider it suitable for publication.] +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2>(<i>Here begins the note-book marked 'III.'</i>)</h2> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2>THE PURPLE CLOUD</h2> + +<p> +Well, the memory seems to be getting rather impaired now, rather weak. What, +for instance, was the name of that parson who preached, just before the +<i>Boreal</i> set out, about the wickedness of any further attempt to reach the +North Pole? I have forgotten! Yet four years ago it was familiar to me as my +own name. +</p> + +<p> +Things which took place before the voyage seem to be getting a little cloudy in +the memory now. I have sat here, in the loggia of this Cornish villa, to write +down some sort of account of what has happened—God knows why, since no eye can +ever read it—and at the very beginning I cannot remember the parson's name. +</p> + +<p> +He was a strange sort of man surely, a Scotchman from Ayrshire, big and gaunt, +with tawny hair. He used to go about London streets in shough and rough-spun +clothes, a plaid flung from one shoulder. Once I saw him in Holborn with his +rather wild stalk, frowning and muttering to himself. He had no sooner come to +London, and opened chapel (I think in Fetter Lane), than the little room began +to be crowded; and when, some years afterwards, he moved to a big establishment +in Kensington, all sorts of men, even from America and Australia, flocked to +hear the thunderstorms that he talked, though certainly it was not an age apt +to fly into enthusiasms over that species of pulpit prophets and prophecies. +But this particular man undoubtedly did wake the strong dark feelings that +sleep in the heart; his eyes were very singular and powerful; his voice from a +whisper ran gathering, like snow-balls, and crashed, as I have heard the +pack-ice in commotion far yonder in the North; while his gestures were as +uncouth and gawky as some wild man's of the primitive ages. +</p> + +<p> +Well, this man—what <i>was</i> his name?—Macintosh? Mackay? I think—yes, that +was it! <i>Mackay</i>. Mackay saw fit to take offence at the new attempt to +reach the Pole in the <i>Boreal</i>; and for three Sundays, when the +preparations were nearing completion, stormed against it at Kensington. +</p> + +<p> +The excitement of the world with regard to the North Pole had at this date +reached a pitch which can only be described as <i>fevered</i>, though that word +hardly expresses the strange ecstasy and unrest which prevailed: for the +abstract interest which mankind, in mere desire for knowledge, had always felt +in this unknown region, was now, suddenly, a thousand and a thousand times +intensified by a new, concrete interest—a tremendous <i>money</i> interest. +</p> + +<p> +And the new zeal had ceased to be healthy in its tone as the old zeal was: for +now the fierce demon Mammon was making his voice heard in this matter. +</p> + +<p> +Within the ten years preceding the <i>Boreal</i> expedition, no less than +twenty-seven expeditions had set out, and failed. +</p> + +<p> +The secret of this new rage lay in the last will and testament of Mr. Charles +P. Stickney of Chicago, that king of faddists, supposed to be the richest +individual who ever lived: he, just ten years before the <i>Boreal</i> +undertaking, had died, bequeathing 175 million dollars to the man, of whatever +nationality, who first reached the Pole. +</p> + +<p> +Such was the actual wording of the will—<i>'the man who first reached'</i>: and +from this loose method of designating the person intended had immediately burst +forth a prolonged heat of controversy in Europe and America as to whether or no +the testator meant <i>the Chief</i> of the first expedition which reached: but +it was finally decided, on the highest legal authority, that, in any case, the +actual wording of the document held good: and that it was the individual, +whatever his station in the expedition, whose foot first reached the 90th +degree of north latitude, who would have title to the fortune. +</p> + +<p> +At all events, the public ferment had risen, as I say, to a pitch of positive +fever; and as to the <i>Boreal</i> in particular, the daily progress of her +preparations was minutely discussed in the newspapers, everyone was an +authority on her fitting, and she was in every mouth a bet, a hope, a jest, or +a sneer: for now, at last, it was felt that success was probable. So this +Mackay had an acutely interested audience, if a somewhat startled, and a +somewhat cynical, one. +</p> + +<p> +A truly lion-hearted man this must have been, after all, to dare proclaim a +point-of-view so at variance with the spirit of his age! One against four +hundred millions, they bent one way, he the opposite, saying that they were +wrong, all wrong! People used to call him 'John the Baptist Redivivus': and +without doubt he did suggest something of that sort. I suppose that at the time +when he had the face to denounce the <i>Boreal</i> there was not a sovereign on +any throne in Europe who, but for shame, would have been glad of a subordinate +post on board. +</p> + +<p> +On the third Sunday night of his denunciation I was there in that Kensington +chapel, and I heard him. And the wild talk he talked! He seemed like a man +delirious with inspiration. +</p> + +<p> +The people sat quite spell-bound, while Mackay's prophesying voice ranged up +and down through all the modulations of thunder, from the hurrying mutter to +the reverberant shock and climax: and those who came to scoff remained to +wonder. +</p> + +<p> +Put simply, what he said was this: That there was undoubtedly some sort of +Fate, or Doom, connected with the Poles of the earth in reference to the human +race: that man's continued failure, in spite of continual efforts, to reach +them, abundantly and super-abundantly proved this; and that this failure +constituted a lesson—<i>and a warning</i>—which the race disregarded at its +peril. +</p> + +<p> +The North Pole, he said, was not so very far away, and the difficulties in the +way of reaching it were not, on the face of them, so very great: human +ingenuity had achieved a thousand things a thousand times more difficult; yet +in spite of over half-a-dozen well-planned efforts in the nineteenth century, +and thirty-one in the twentieth, man had never reached: always he had been +baulked, baulked, by some seeming chance—some restraining Hand: and herein lay +the lesson—<i>herein the warning</i>. Wonderfully—really +<i>wonderfully</i>—like the Tree of Knowledge in Eden, he said, was that Pole: +all the rest of earth lying open and offered to man—but <i>That</i> +persistently veiled and 'forbidden.' It was as when a father lays a hand upon +his son, with: 'Not here, my child; wheresoever you will—but not here.' +</p> + +<p> +But human beings, he said, were free agents, with power to stop their ears, and +turn a callous consciousness to the whispers and warning indications of Heaven; +and he believed, he said, that the time was now come when man would find it +absolutely in his power to stand on that 90th of latitude, and plant an impious +right foot on the head of the earth—just as it had been given into the absolute +power of Adam to stretch an impious right hand, and pluck of the Fruit of +Knowledge; but, said he—his voice pealing now into one long proclamation of +awful augury—just as the abuse of that power had been followed in the one case +by catastrophe swift and universal, so, in the other, he warned the entire race +to look out thenceforth for nothing from God but a lowering sky, and thundery +weather. +</p> + +<p> +The man's frantic earnestness, authoritative voice, and savage gestures, could +not but have their effect upon all; as for me, I declare, I sat as though a +messenger from Heaven addressed me. But I believe that I had not yet reached +home, when the whole impression of the discourse had passed from me like water +from a duck's back. The Prophet in the twentieth century was not a success. +John Baptist himself, camel-skin and all, would have met with only tolerant +shrugs. I dismissed Mackay from my mind with the thought: 'He is behind his +age, I suppose.' +</p> + +<p> +But haven't I thought differently of Mackay since, my God...? +</p> + +<hr /> + +<p> +Three weeks—it was about that—before that Sunday night discourse, I was visited +by Clark, the chief of the coming expedition—a mere visit of friendship. I had +then been established about a year at No. II, Harley Street, and, though under +twenty-five, had, I suppose, as <i>élite</i> a practice as any doctor in +Europe. +</p> + +<p> +<i>Élite</i>—but small. I was able to maintain my state, and move among the +great: but now and again I would feel the secret pinch of moneylessness. Just +about that time, in fact, I was only saved from considerable embarrassment by +the success of my book, 'Applications of Science to the Arts.' +</p> + +<p> +In the course of conversation that afternoon, Clark said to me in his light +hap-hazard way: +</p> + +<p> +'Do you know what I dreamed about you last night, Adam Jeffson? I dreamed that +you were with us on the expedition.' +</p> + +<p> +I think he must have seen my start: on the same night I had myself dreamed the +same thing; but not a word said I about it now. There was a stammer in my +tongue when I answered: +</p> + +<p> +'Who? I?—on the expedition?—I would not go, if I were asked.' +</p> + +<p> +'Oh, you would.' +</p> + +<p> +'I wouldn't. You forget that I am about to be married.' +</p> + +<p> +'Well, we need not discuss the point, as Peters is not going to die,' said he. +'Still, if anything did happen to him, you know, it is you I should come +straight to, Adam Jeffson.' +</p> + +<p> +'Clark, you jest,' I said: 'I know really very little of astronomy, or magnetic +phenomena. Besides, I am about to be married....' +</p> + +<p> +'But what about your botany, my friend? <i>There's</i> what we should be +wanting from you: and as for nautical astronomy, poh, a man with your +scientific habit would pick all that up in no time.' +</p> + +<p> +'You discuss the matter as gravely as though it were a possibility, Clark,' I +said, smiling. 'Such a thought would never enter my head: there is, first of +all, my <i>fiancée</i>——' +</p> + +<p> +'Ah, the all-important Countess, eh?—Well, but she, as far as I know the lady, +would be the first to force you to go. The chance of stamping one's foot on the +North Pole does not occur to a man every day, my son.' +</p> + +<p> +'Do talk of something else!' I said. 'There is Peters....' +</p> + +<p> +'Well, of course, there is Peters. But believe me, the dream I had was so +clear——' +</p> + +<p> +'Let me alone with your dreams, and your Poles!' I laughed. +</p> + +<p> +Yes, I remember: I pretended to laugh loud! But my secret heart knew, even +<i>then</i>, that one of those crises was occurring in my life which, from my +youth, has made it the most extraordinary which any creature of earth ever +lived. And I knew that this was so, firstly, because of the two dreams, and +secondly, because, when Clark was gone, and I was drawing on my gloves to go to +see my <i>fiancée</i>, I heard distinctly the old two Voices talk within me: +and One said: 'Go not to see her now!' and the Other: 'Yes, go, go!' +</p> + +<p> +The two Voices of my life! An ordinary person reading my words would +undoubtedly imagine that I mean only two ordinary contradictory impulses—or +else that I rave: for what modern man could comprehend how real-seeming were +those voices, how loud, and how, ever and again, I heard them contend within +me, with a nearness 'nearer than breathing,' as it says in the poem, and +'closer than hands and feet.' +</p> + +<p> +About the age of seven it happened first to me. I was playing one summer +evening in a pine-wood of my father's; half a mile away was a quarry-cliff; and +as I played, it suddenly seemed as if someone said to me, inside of me: 'Just +take a walk toward the cliff'; and as if someone else said: 'Don't go that way +at all'—mere whispers then, which gradually, as I grew up, seemed to swell into +cries of wrathful contention! I did go toward the cliff: it was steep, thirty +feet high, and I fell. Some weeks later, on recovering speech, I told my +astonished mother that 'someone had pushed me' over the edge, and that someone +else 'had caught me' at the bottom! +</p> + +<p> +One night, soon after my eleventh birthday, lying in bed, the thought struck me +that my life must be of great importance to some thing or things which I could +not see; that two Powers, which hated each other, must be continually after me, +one wishing for some reason to kill me, and the other for some reason to keep +me alive, one wishing me to do so and so, and the other to do the opposite; +that I was not a boy like other boys, but a creature separate, special, marked +for—something. Already I had notions, touches of mood, passing instincts, as +occult and primitive, I verily believe, as those of the first man that stepped; +so that such Biblical expressions as 'The Lord spake to So-and-so, saying' have +hardly ever suggested any question in my mind as to how the Voice was heard: I +did not find it so very difficult to comprehend that originally man had more +ears than two; nor should have been surprised to know that I, in these latter +days, more or less resembled those primeval ones. +</p> + +<p> +But not a creature, except perhaps my mother, has ever dreamed me what I here +state that I was. I seemed the ordinary youth of my time, bow in my 'Varsity +eight, cramming for exams., dawdling in clubs. When I had to decide as to a +profession, who could have suspected the conflict that transacted itself in my +soul, while my brain was indifferent to the matter—that agony of strife with +which the brawling voices shouted, the one: 'Be a scientist—a doctor,' and the +other: 'Be a lawyer, an engineer, an artist—be <i>anything</i> but a doctor!' +</p> + +<p> +A doctor I became, and went to what had grown into the greatest of medical +schools—Cambridge; and there it was that I came across a man, named Scotland, +who had a rather odd view of the world. He had rooms, I remember, in the New +Court at Trinity, and a set of us were generally there. He was always talking +about certain 'Black' and 'White Powers, till it became absurd, and the men +used to call him 'black-and-white-mystery-man,' because, one day, when someone +said something about 'the black mystery of the universe,' Scotland interrupted +him with the words: 'the black-and-white mystery.' +</p> + +<p> +Quite well I remember Scotland now—the sweetest, gentle soul he was, with a +passion for cats, and Sappho, and the Anthology, very short in stature, with a +Roman nose, continually making the effort to keep his neck straight, and draw +his paunch in. He used to say that the universe was being frantically contended +for by two Powers: a White and a Black; that the White was the stronger, but +did not find the conditions on our particular planet very favourable to his +success; that he had got the best of it up to the Middle Ages in Europe, but +since then had been slowly and stubbornly giving way before the Black; and that +finally the Black would win—not everywhere perhaps, but <i>here</i>—and would +carry off, if no other earth, at least <i>this</i> one, for his prize. +</p> + +<p> +This was Scotland's doctrine, which he never tired of repeating; and while +others heard him with mere toleration, little could they divine with what agony +of inward interest, I, cynically smiling there, drank in his words. Most +profound, most profound, was the impression they made upon me. +</p> + +<hr /> + +<p> +But I was saying that when Clark left me, I was drawing on my gloves to go to +see my <i>fiancée</i>, the Countess Clodagh, when I heard the two voices most +clearly. +</p> + +<p> +Sometimes the urgency of one or other impulse is so overpowering, that there is +no resisting it: and it was so then with the one that bid me go. +</p> + +<p> +I had to traverse the distance between Harley Street and Hanover Square, and +all the time it was as though something shouted at my physical ear: 'Since you +go, breathe no word of the <i>Boreal</i>, and Clark's visit'; and another +shout: 'Tell, tell, hide nothing!' +</p> + +<p> +It seemed to last a month: yet it was only some minutes before I was in Hanover +Square, and Clodagh in my arms. +</p> + +<p> +She was, in my opinion, the most superb of creatures, Clodagh—that haughty neck +which seemed always scorning something just behind her left shoulder. Superb! +but ah—I know it now—a godless woman, Clodagh, a bitter heart. +</p> + +<p> +Clodagh once confessed to me that her favourite character in history was +Lucrezia Borgia, and when she saw my horror, immediately added: 'Well, no, I am +only joking!' Such was her duplicity: for I see now that she lived in the +constant effort to hide her heinous heart from me. Yet, now I think of it, how +completely did Clodagh enthral me! +</p> + +<p> +Our proposed marriage was opposed by both my family and hers: by mine, because +her father and grandfather had died in lunatic asylums; and by hers, because, +forsooth, I was neither a rich nor a noble match. A sister of hers, much older +than herself, had married a common country doctor, Peters of Taunton, and this +so-called <i>mésalliance</i> made the so-called <i>mésalliance</i> with me +doubly detestable in the eyes of her relatives. But Clodagh's extraordinary +passion for me was to be stemmed neither by their threats nor prayers. What a +flame, after all, was Clodagh! Sometimes she frightened me. +</p> + +<p> +She was at this date no longer young, being by five years my senior, as also, +by five years, the senior of her nephew, born from the marriage of her sister +with Peters of Taunton. This nephew was Peter Peters, who was to accompany the +<i>Boreal</i> expedition as doctor, botanist, and meteorological assistant. +</p> + +<p> +On that day of Clark's visit to me I had not been seated five minutes with +Clodagh, when I said: +</p> + +<p> +'Dr. Clark—ha! ha! ha!—has been talking to me about the Expedition. He says +that if anything happened to Peters, I should be the first man he would run to. +He has had an absurd dream...' +</p> + +<p> +The consciousness that filled me as I uttered these words was the +<i>wickedness</i> of me—the crooked wickedness. But I could no more help it +than I could fly. +</p> + +<p> +Clodagh was standing at a window holding a rose at her face. For quite a minute +she made no reply. I saw her sharp-cut, florid face in profile, steadily bent +and smelling. She said presently in her cold, rapid way: +</p> + +<p> +'The man who first plants his foot on the North Pole will certainly be +ennobled. I say nothing of the many millions... I only wish that I was a man!' +</p> + +<p> +'I don't know that I have any special ambition that way,' I rejoined. 'I am +very happy in my warm Eden with my Clodagh. I don't like the outer Cold.' +</p> + +<p> +'Don't let me think little of you!' she answered pettishly. +</p> + +<p> +'Why should you, Clodagh? I am not bound to desire to go to the North Pole, am +I?' +</p> + +<p> +'But you <i>would</i> go, I suppose, if you could?' +</p> + +<p> +'I might—I—doubt it. There is our marriage....' +</p> + +<p> +'Marriage indeed! It is the one thing to transform our marriage from a sneaking +difficulty to a ten times triumphant event.' +</p> + +<p> +'You mean if <i>I</i> personally were the first to stand at the Pole. But there +are many in an expedition. It is very unlikely that <i>I</i>, personally—' +</p> + +<p> +'For <i>me</i> you will, Adam—' she began. +</p> + +<p> +'"<i>Will</i>," Clodagh?' I cried. 'You say "<i>will</i>"? there is not even +the slightest shadow of a probability—!' +</p> + +<p> +'But why? There are still three weeks before the start. They say...' +</p> + +<p> +She stopped, she stopped. +</p> + +<p> +'They say what?' +</p> + +<p> +Her voice dropped: +</p> + +<p> +'That Peter takes atropine.' +</p> + +<p> +Ah, I started then. She moved from the window, sat in a rocking-chair, and +turned the leaves of a book, without reading. We were silent, she and I; I +standing, looking at her, she drawing the thumb across the leaf-edges, and +beginning again, contemplatively. Then she laughed dryly a little—a dry, mad +laugh. +</p> + +<p> +'Why did you start when I said that?' she asked, reading now at random. +</p> + +<p> +'<i>I</i>! I did not start, Clodagh! What made you think that I started? I did +not start! Who told you, Clodagh, that Peters takes atropine?' +</p> + +<p> +'He is my nephew: I should know. But don't look dumbfoundered in that absurd +fashion: I have no intention of poisoning him in order to see you a +multimillionaire, and a Peer of the Realm....' +</p> + +<p> +'My dearest Clodagh!' +</p> + +<p> +'I easily might, however. He will be here presently. He is bringing Mr. Wilson +for the evening.' (Wilson was going as electrician of the expedition.) +</p> + +<p> +'Clodagh.' I said, 'believe me, you jest in a manner which does not please me.' +</p> + +<p> +'Do I really?' she answered with that haughty, stiff half-turn of her throat: +'then I must be more exquisite. But, thank Heaven, it is only a jest. Women are +no longer admired for doing such things.' +</p> + +<p> +'Ha! ha! ha!—no—no longer admired, Clodagh! Oh, my good Lord! let us change +this talk....' +</p> + +<p> +But now she could talk of nothing else. She got from me that afternoon the +history of all the Polar expeditions of late years, how far they reached, by +what aids, and why they failed. Her eyes shone; she listened eagerly. Before +this time, indeed, she had been interested in the <i>Boreal</i>, knew the +details of her outfitting, and was acquainted with several members of the +expedition. But now, suddenly, her mind seemed wholly possessed, my mention of +Clark's visit apparently setting her well a-burn with the Pole-fever. +</p> + +<p> +The passion of her kiss as I tore myself from her embrace that day I shall not +forget. I went home with a pretty heavy heart. +</p> + +<p> +The house of Dr. Peter Peters was three doors from mine, on the opposite side +of the street. Toward one that night, his footman ran to knock me up with the +news that Peters was very ill. I hurried to his bed-side, and knew by the first +glance at his deliriums and his staring pupils that he was poisoned with +atropine. Wilson, the electrician, who had passed the evening with him at +Clodagh's in Hanover Square, was there. +</p> + +<p> +'What on earth is the matter?' he said to me. +</p> + +<p> +'Poisoned,' I answered. +</p> + +<p> +'Good God! what with?' +</p> + +<p> +'Atropine.' +</p> + +<p> +'Good Heavens!' +</p> + +<p> +'Don't be frightened: I think he will recover.' +</p> + +<p> +'Is that certain?' +</p> + +<p> +'Yes, I think—that is, if he leaves off taking the drug, Wilson.' +</p> + +<p> +'What! it is he who has poisoned himself?' +</p> + +<p> +I hesitated, I hesitated. But I said: +</p> + +<p> +'He is in the habit of taking atropine, Wilson.' +</p> + +<p> +Three hours I remained there, and, God knows, toiled hard for his life: and +when I left him in the dark of the fore-day, my mind was at rest: he would +recover. +</p> + +<p> +I slept till 11 A.M., and then hurried over again to Peters. In the room were +my two nurses, and Clodagh. +</p> + +<p> +My beloved put her forefinger to her lips, whispering: +</p> + +<p> +'Sh-h-h! he is asleep....' +</p> + +<p> +She came closer to my ear, saying: +</p> + +<p> +'I heard the news early. I am come to stay with him, till—the last....' +</p> + +<p> +We looked at each other some time—eye to eye, steadily, she and I: but mine +dropped before Clodagh's. A word was on my mouth to say, but I said nothing. +</p> + +<p> +The recovery of Peters was not so steady as I had expected. At the end of the +first week he was still prostrate. It was then that I said to Clodagh: +</p> + +<p> +'Clodagh, your presence at the bed-side here somehow does not please me. It is +so unnecessary.' +</p> + +<p> +'Unnecessary certainly,' she replied: 'but I always had a genius for nursing, +and a passion for watching the battles of the body. Since no one objects, why +should you?' +</p> + +<p> +'Ah!... I don't know. This is a case that I dislike. I have half a mind to +throw it to the devil.' +</p> + +<p> +'Then do so.' +</p> + +<p> +'And you, too—go home, go home, Clodagh!' +</p> + +<p> +'But <i>why</i>?—if one does no harm. In these days of "the corruption of the +upper classes," and Roman decadence of everything, shouldn't every innocent +whim be encouraged by you upright ones who strive against the tide? Whims are +the brakes of crimes: and this is mine. I find a sensuous pleasure, almost a +sensual, in dabbling in delicate drugs—like Helen, for that matter, and Medea, +and Calypso, and the great antique women, who were all excellent chymists. To +study the human ship in a gale, and the slow drama of its foundering—isn't that +a quite thrilling distraction? And I want you to get into the habit at once of +letting me have my little way——' +</p> + +<p> +Now she touched my hair with a lofty playfulness that soothed me: but even then +I looked upon the rumpled bed, and saw that the man there was really very sick. +</p> + +<p> +I have still a nausea to write about it! Lucrezia Borgia in her own age may +have been heroic: but Lucrezia in this late century! One could retch up the +heart... +</p> + +<p> +The man grew sick on that bed, I say. The second week passed, and only ten days +remained before the start of the expedition. +</p> + +<p> +At the end of that second week, Wilson, the electrician, was one evening +sitting by Peter's bedside when I entered. +</p> + +<p> +At the moment, Clodagh was about to administer a dose to Peters; but seeing me, +she put down the medicine-glass on the night table, and came toward me; and as +she came, I saw a sight which stabbed me: for Wilson took up the deposited +medicine-glass, elevated it, looked at it, smelled into it: and he did it with +a kind of hurried, light-fingered stealth; and he did it with an under-look, +and a meaningness of expression which, I thought, proved mistrust.... +</p> + +<p> +Meantime, Clark came each day. He had himself a medical degree, and about this +time I called him in professionally, together with Alleyne of Cavendish Square, +to consultation over Peters. The patient lay in a semi-coma broken by +passionate vomitings, and his condition puzzled us all. I formally stated that +he took atropine—had been originally poisoned by atropine: but we saw that his +present symptoms were not atropine symptoms, but, it almost seemed, of some +other vegetable poison, which we could not precisely name. +</p> + +<p> +'Mysterious thing,' said Clark to me, when we were alone. +</p> + +<p> +'<i>I</i> don't understand it,' I said. +</p> + +<p> +'Who are the two nurses?' +</p> + +<p> +'Oh, highly recommended people of my own.' +</p> + +<p> +'At any rate, my dream about you comes true, Jeffson. It is clear that Peters +is out of the running now.' +</p> + +<p> +I shrugged. +</p> + +<p> +'I now formally invite you to join the expedition,' said Clark: 'do you +consent?' +</p> + +<p> +I shrugged again. +</p> + +<p> +'Well, if that means consent,' he said, 'let me remind you that you have only +eight days, and all the world to do in them.' +</p> + +<p> +This conversation occurred in the dining-room of Peters' house: and as we +passed through the door, I saw Clodagh gliding down the passage +outside—rapidly—away from us. +</p> + +<p> +Not a word I said to her that day about Clark's invitation. Yet I asked myself +repeatedly: Did she not know of it? Had she not <i>listened</i>, and heard? +</p> + +<p> +However that was, about midnight, to my great surprise, Peters opened his eyes, +and smiled. By noon the next day, his fine vitality, which so fitted him for an +Arctic expedition, had re-asserted itself. He was then leaning on an elbow, +talking to Wilson, and except his pallor, and strong stomach-pains, there was +now hardly a trace of his late approach to death. For the pains I prescribed +some quarter-grain tablets of sulphate of morphia, and went away. +</p> + +<p> +Now, David Wilson and I never greatly loved each other, and that very day he +brought about a painful situation as between Peters and me, by telling Peters +that I had taken his place in the expedition. Peters, a touchy fellow, at once +dictated a letter of protest to Clark; and Clark sent Peters' letter to me, +marked with a big note of interrogation in blue pencil. +</p> + +<p> +Now, all Peters' preparations were made, mine not; and he had six days in which +to recover himself. I therefore wrote to Clark, saying that the changed +circumstances of course annulled my acceptance of his offer, though I had +already incurred the inconvenience of negotiating with a <i>locum tenens</i>. +</p> + +<p> +This decided it: Peters was to go, I stay. The fifth day before the departure +dawned. It was a Friday, the 15th June. Peters was now in an arm-chair. He was +cheerful, but with a fevered pulse, and still the stomach-pains. I was giving +him three quarter-grains of morphia a day. That Friday night, at 11 P.M., I +visited him, and found Clodagh there, talking to him. Peters was smoking a +cigar. +</p> + +<p> +'Ah,' Clodagh said, 'I was waiting for you, Adam. I didn't know whether I was +to inject anything to-night. Is it Yes or No?' +</p> + +<p> +'What do you think, Peters?' I said: 'any more pains?' +</p> + +<p> +'Well, perhaps you had better give us another quarter,' he answered: 'there's +still some trouble in the tummy off and on.' +</p> + +<p> +'A quarter-grain, then, Clodagh, 'I said. +</p> + +<p> +As she opened the syringe-box, she remarked with a pout: +</p> + +<p> +'Our patient has been naughty! He has taken some more atropine.' +</p> + +<p> +I became angry at once. +</p> + +<p> +'Peters,' I cried, 'you know you have no right to be doing things like that +without consulting me! Do that once more, and I swear I have nothing further to +do with you!' +</p> + +<p> +'Rubbish,' said Peters: 'why all this unnecessary heat? It was a mere +flea-bite. I felt that I needed it.' +</p> + +<p> +'He injected it with his own hand...' remarked Clodagh. +</p> + +<p> +She was now standing at the mantel-piece, having lifted the syringe-box from +the night-table, taken from its velvet lining both the syringe and the vial +containing the morphia tablets, and gone to the mantel-piece to melt one of the +tablets in a little of the distilled water there. Her back was turned upon us, +and she was a long time. I was standing; Peters in his arm-chair, smoking. +Clodagh then began to talk about a Charity Bazaar which she had visited that +afternoon. +</p> + +<p> +She was long, she was long. The crazy thought passed through some dim region of +my soul: 'Why is she so <i>long</i>?' +</p> + +<p> +'Ah, that was a pain!' went Peters: 'never mind the bazaar, aunt—think of the +morphia.' +</p> + +<p> +Suddenly an irresistible impulse seized me—to rush upon her, to dash syringe, +tabloids, glass, and all, from her hands. I <i>must</i> have obeyed it—I was on +the tip-top point of obeying—my body already leant prone: but at that instant a +voice at the opened door behind me said: +</p> + +<p> +'Well, how is everything?' +</p> + +<p> +It was Wilson, the electrician, who stood there. With lightning swiftness I +remembered an under-look of mistrust which I had once seen on his face. Oh, +well, I would not, and could not!—she was my love—I stood like marble... +</p> + +<p> +Clodagh went to meet Wilson with frank right hand, in the left being the +fragile glass containing the injection. My eyes were fastened on her face: it +was full of reassurance, of free innocence. I said to myself: 'I must surely be +mad!' +</p> + +<p> +An ordinary chat began, while Clodagh turned up Peters' sleeve, and, kneeling +there, injected his fore-arm. As she rose, laughing at something said by +Wilson, the drug-glass dropped from her hand, and her heel, by an apparent +accident, trod on it. She put the syringe among a number of others on the +mantel-piece. +</p> + +<p> +'Your friend has been naughty, Mr. Wilson,' she said again with that same pout: +'he has been taking more atropine.' +</p> + +<p> +'Not really?' said Wilson. +</p> + +<p> +'Let me alone, the whole of you,' answered Peters: 'I ain't a child.' +</p> + +<p> +These were the last intelligible words he ever spoke. He died shortly before 1 +A.M. He had been poisoned by a powerful dose of atropine. +</p> + +<p> +From that moment to the moment when the <i>Boreal</i> bore me down the Thames, +all the world was a mere tumbling nightmare to me, of which hardly any detail +remains in my memory. Only I remember the inquest, and how I was called upon to +prove that Peters had himself injected himself with atropine. This was +corroborated by Wilson, and by Clodagh: and the verdict was in accordance. +</p> + +<p> +And in all that chaotic hurry of preparation, three other things only, but +those with clear distinctness now, I remember. +</p> + +<p> +The first—and chief—is that tempest of words which I heard at Kensington from +that big-mouthed Mackay on the Sunday night. What was it that led me, busy as I +was, to that chapel that night? Well, perhaps I know. +</p> + +<p> +There I sat, and heard him: and most strangely have those words of his +peroration planted themselves in my brain, when, rising to a passion of +prophecy, he shouted: 'And as in the one case, transgression was followed by +catastrophe swift and universal, so, in the other, I warn the entire race to +look out thenceforth for nothing from God but a lowering sky, and thundery +weather.' +</p> + +<p> +And this second thing I remember: that on reaching home, I walked into my +disordered library (for I had had to hunt out some books), where I met my +housekeeper in the act of rearranging things. She had apparently lifted an old +Bible by the front cover to fling it on the table, for as I threw myself into a +chair my eye fell upon the open print near the beginning. The print was very +large, and a shaded lamp cast a light upon it. I had been hearing Mackay's wild +comparison of the Pole with the tree of Eden, and that no doubt was the reason +why such a start convulsed me: for my listless eyes had chanced to rest upon +some words. +</p> + +<p> +'The woman gave me of the tree, and I did eat....' +</p> + +<p> +And a third thing I remember in all that turmoil of doubt and flurry: that as +the ship moved down with the afternoon tide a telegram was put into my hand; it +was a last word from Clodagh; and she said only this: +</p> + +<p> +'Be first—for Me.' +</p> + +<hr /> + +<p> +The <i>Boreal</i> left St. Katherine's Docks in beautiful weather on the +afternoon of the 19th June, full of good hope, bound for the Pole. +</p> + +<p> +All about the docks was one region of heads stretched far in innumerable +vagueness, and down the river to Woolwich a continuous dull roar and murmur of +bees droned from both banks to cheer our departure. +</p> + +<p> +The expedition was partly a national affair, subvented by Government: and if +ever ship was well-found it was the <i>Boreal</i>. She had a frame tougher far +than any battle-ship's, capable of ramming some ten yards of drift-ice; and she +was stuffed with sufficient pemmican, codroe, fish-meal, and so on, to last us +not less than six years. +</p> + +<p> +We were seventeen, all told, the five Heads (so to speak) of the undertaking +being Clark (our Chief), John Mew (commander), Aubrey Maitland (meteorologist), +Wilson (electrician), and myself (doctor, botanist, and assistant +meteorologist). +</p> + +<p> +The idea was to get as far east as the 100°, or the 120°, of longitude; +to catch there the northern current; to push and drift our way northward; and +when the ship could no further penetrate, to leave her (either three, or else +four, of us, on ski), and with sledges drawn by dogs and reindeer make a dash +for the Pole. +</p> + +<p> +This had also been the plan of the last expedition—that of the <i>Nix</i>—and +of several others. The <i>Boreal</i> only differed from the <i>Nix</i>, and +others, in that she was a thing of nicer design, and of more exquisite +forethought. +</p> + +<p> +Our voyage was without incident up to the end of July, when we encountered a +drift of ice-floes. On the 1st August we were at Kabarova, where we met our +coal-ship, and took in a little coal for emergency, liquid air being our proper +motor; also forty-three dogs, four reindeer, and a quantity of reindeer-moss; +and two days later we turned our bows finally northward and eastward, passing +through heavy 'slack' ice under sail and liquid air in crisp weather, till, on +the 27th August, we lay moored to a floe off the desolate island of Taimur. +</p> + +<p> +The first thing which we saw here was a bear on the shore, watching for young +white-fish: and promptly Clark, Mew, and Lamburn (engineer) went on shore in +the launch, I and Maitland following in the pram, each party with three dogs. +</p> + +<p> +It was while climbing away inland that Maitland said to me: +</p> + +<p> +'When Clark leaves the ship for the dash to the Pole, it is three, not two, of +us, after all, that he is going to take with him, making a party of four.' +</p> + +<p> +<i>I</i>: 'Is that so? Who knows?' +</p> + +<p> +<i>Maitland</i>: 'Wilson does. Clark has let it out in conversation with +Wilson.' +</p> + +<p> +<i>I</i>: 'Well, the more the merrier. Who will be the three?' +</p> + +<p> +<i>Maitland</i>: 'Wilson is sure to be in it, and there may be Mew, making the +third. As to the fourth, I suppose <i>I</i> shall get left out in the cold.' +</p> + +<p> +<i>I</i>: 'More likely I.' +</p> + +<p> +<i>Maitland</i>: 'Well, the race is between us four: Wilson, Mew, you and I. It +is a question of physical fitness combined with special knowledge. You are too +lucky a dog to get left out, Jeffson.' +</p> + +<p> +<i>I</i>: 'Well, what does it matter, so long as the expedition as a whole is +successful? That is the main thing.' +</p> + +<p> +<i>Maitland</i>: 'Oh yes, that's all very fine talk, Jeffson! But is it quite +sincere? Isn't it rather a pose to affect to despise $175,000,000? <i>I</i> +want to be in at the death, and I mean to be, if I can. We are all more or less +self-interested.' +</p> + +<p> +'Look,' I whispered—'a bear.' +</p> + +<p> +It was a mother and cub: and with determined trudge she came wagging her low +head, having no doubt smelled the dogs. We separated on the instant, doubling +different ways behind ice-boulders, wanting her to go on nearer the shore, +before killing; but, passing close, she spied, and bore down at a trot upon me. +I fired into her neck, and at once, with a roar, she turned tail, making now +straight in Maitland's direction. I saw him run out from cover some hundred +yards away, aiming his long-gun: but no report followed: and in half a minute +he was under her fore-paws, she striking out slaps at the barking, shrinking +dogs. Maitland roared for my help: and at that moment, I, poor wretch, in far +worse plight than he, stood shivering in ague: for suddenly one of those +wrangles of the voices of my destiny was filling my bosom with loud commotion, +one urging me to fly to Maitland's aid, one passionately commanding me be +still. But it lasted, I believe, some seconds only: I ran and got a shot into +the bear's brain, and Maitland leapt up with a rent down his face. +</p> + +<p> +But singular destiny! Whatever I did—if I did evil, if I did good—the result +was the same: tragedy dark and sinister! Poor Maitland was doomed that voyage, +and my rescue of his life was the means employed to make his death the more +certain. +</p> + +<p> +I think that I have already written, some pages back, about a man called +Scotland, whom I met at Cambridge. He was always talking about certain 'Black' +and 'White' beings, and their contention for the earth. We others used to call +him the black-and-white mystery-man, because, one day—but that is no matter +now. Well, with regard to all that, I have a fancy, a whim of the mind—quite +wide of the truth, no doubt—but I have it here in my brain, and I will write it +down now. It is this: that there may have been some sort of arrangement, or +understanding, between Black and White, as in the case of Adam and the fruit, +that, should mankind force his way to the Pole and the old forbidden secret +biding there, then some mishap should not fail to overtake the race of man; +that the White, being kindly disposed to mankind, did not wish this to occur, +and intended, for the sake of the race, to destroy our entire expedition before +it reached; and that the Black, knowing that the White meant to do this, and by +what means, used me—<i>me</i>!—to outwit this design, first of all working that +I should be one of the party of four to leave the ship on ski. +</p> + +<p> +But the childish attempt, my God, to read the immense riddle of the world! I +could laugh loud at myself, and at poor Black-and-White Scotland, too. The +thing can't be so simple. +</p> + +<p> +Well, we left Taimur the same day, and good-bye now to both land and open sea. +Till we passed the latitude of Cape Chelyuskin (which we did not sight), it was +one succession of ice-belts, with Mew in the crow's-nest tormenting the +electric bell to the engine-room, the anchor hanging ready to drop, and Clark +taking soundings. Progress was slow, and the Polar night gathered round us +apace, as we stole still onward and onward into that blue and glimmering land +of eternal frore. We now left off bed-coverings of reindeer-skin and took to +sleeping-bags. Eight of the dogs had died by the 25th September, when we were +experiencing 19° of frost. In the darkest part of our night, the Northern +Light spread its silent solemn banner over us, quivering round the heavens in a +million fickle gauds. +</p> + +<p> +The relations between the members of our little crew were excellent—with one +exception: David Wilson and I were not good friends. +</p> + +<p> +There was a something—a tone—in the evidence which he had given at the inquest +on Peters, which made me mad every time I thought of it. He had heard Peters +admit just before death that he, Peters, had administered atropine to himself: +and he had had to give evidence of that fact. But he had given it in a most +half-hearted way, so much so, that the coroner had asked him: 'What, sir, are +you hiding from me?' Wilson had replied: 'Nothing. I have nothing to tell.' +</p> + +<p> +And from that day he and I had hardly exchanged ten words, in spite of our +constant companionship in the vessel; and one day, standing alone on a floe, I +found myself hissing with clenched fist: 'If he dared suspect Clodagh of +poisoning Peters, I could <i>kill</i> him!' +</p> + +<p> +Up to 78° of latitude the weather had been superb, but on the night of the +7th October—well I remember it—we experienced a great storm. Our tub of a ship +rolled like a swing, drenching the whimpering dogs at every lurch, and hurling +everything on board into confusion. The petroleum-launch was washed from the +davits; down at one time to 40° below zero sank the thermometer; while a +high aurora was whiffed into a dishevelled chaos of hues, resembling the +smeared palette of some turbulent painter of the skies, or mixed battle of +long-robed seraphim, and looking the very symbol of tribulation, tempest, +wreck, and distraction. I, for the first time, was sick. +</p> + +<p> +It was with a dizzy brain, therefore, that I went off watch to my bunk. Soon, +indeed, I fell asleep: but the rolls and shocks of the ship, combined with the +heavy Greenland anorak which I had on, and the state of my body, together +produced a fearful nightmare, in which I was conscious of a vain struggle to +move, a vain fight for breath, for the sleeping-bag turned to an iceberg on my +bosom. Of Clodagh was my gasping dream. I dreamed that she let fall, drop by +drop, a liquid, coloured like pomegranate-seeds, into a glass of water; and she +presented the glass to Peters. The draught, I knew, was poisonous as death: and +in a last effort to break the bands of that dark slumber, I was conscious, as I +jerked myself upright, of screaming aloud: +</p> + +<p> +'Clodagh! Clodagh! <i>Spare the man...!</i>' +</p> + +<p> +My eyes, starting with horror, opened to waking; the electric light was shining +in the cabin; and there stood David Wilson looking at me. +</p> + +<p> +Wilson was a big man, with a massively-built, long face, made longer by a +beard, and he had little nervous contractions of the flesh at the cheek-bones, +and plenty of big freckles. His clinging pose, his smile of disgust, his whole +air, as he stood crouching and lurching there, I can shut my eyes, and see now. +</p> + +<p> +What he was doing in my cabin I did not know. To think, my good God, that he +should have been led there just then! This was one of the four-men starboard +berths: <i>his</i> was a-port: yet there he was! But he explained at once. +</p> + +<p> +'Sorry to interrupt your innocent dreams, says he: 'the mercury in Maitland's +thermometer is frozen, and he asked me to hand him his spirits-of-wine one from +his bunk...' +</p> + +<p> +I did not answer. A hatred was in my heart against this man. +</p> + +<p> +The next day the storm died away, and either three or four days later the +slush-ice between the floes froze definitely. The <i>Boreal's</i> way was thus +blocked. We warped her with ice-anchors and the capstan into the position in +which she should lay up for her winter's drift. This was in about 79° 20' +N. The sun had now totally vanished from our bleak sky, not to reappear till +the following year. +</p> + +<p> +Well, there was sledging with the dogs, and bear-hunting among the hummocks, as +the months, one by one, went by. One day Wilson, by far our best shot, got a +walrus-bull; Clark followed the traditional pursuit of a Chief, examining +Crustacea; Maitland and I were in a relation of close friendship, and I +assisted his meteorological observations in a snow-hut built near the ship. +Often, through the twenty-four hours, a clear blue moon, very spectral, very +fair, suffused all our dim and livid clime. +</p> + +<p> +It was five days before Christmas that Clark made the great announcement: he +had determined, he said, if our splendid northward drift continued, to leave +the ship about the middle of next March for the dash to the Pole. He would take +with him the four reindeer, all the dogs, four sledges, four kayaks, and three +companions. The companions whom he had decided to invite were: Wilson, Mew, and +Maitland. +</p> + +<p> +He said it at dinner; and as he said it, David Wilson glanced at my wan face +with a smile of pleased malice: for <i>I</i> was left out. +</p> + +<p> +I remember well: the aurora that night was in the sky, and at its edge floated +a moon surrounded by a ring, with two mock-moons. But all shone very vaguely +and far, and a fog, which had already lasted some days, made the ship's bows +indistinct to me, as I paced the bridge on my watch, two hours after Clark's +announcement. +</p> + +<p> +For a long time all was very still, save for the occasional whine of a dog. I +was alone, and it grew toward the end of my watch, when Maitland would succeed +me. My slow tread tolled like a passing-bell, and the mountainous ice lay vague +and white around me, its sheeted ghastliness not less dreadfully silent than +eternity itself. +</p> + +<p> +Presently, several of the dogs began barking together, left off, and began +again. +</p> + +<p> +I said to myself; 'There is a bear about somewhere.' +</p> + +<p> +And after some five minutes I saw—I thought that I saw—it. The fog had, if +anything thickened; and it was now very near the end of my watch. +</p> + +<p> +It had entered the ship, I concluded, by the boards which slanted from an +opening in the port bulwarks down to the ice. Once before, in November, a bear, +having smelled the dogs, had ventured on board at midnight: but <i>then</i> +there had resulted a perfect hubbub among the dogs. <i>Now</i>, even in the +midst of my excitement, I wondered at their quietness, though some +whimpered—with fear, I thought. I saw the creature steal forward from the +hatchway toward the kennels a-port; and I ran noiselessly, and seized the +watch-gun which stood always loaded by the companionway. +</p> + +<p> +By this time, the form had passed the kennels, reached the bows, and now was +making toward me on the starboard side. I took aim. Never, I thought, had I +seen so huge a bear—though I made allowance for the magnifying effect of the +fog. +</p> + +<p> +My finger was on the trigger: and at that moment a deathly shivering sickness +took me, the wrangling voices shouted at me, with 'Shoot!' 'Shoot not!' +'Shoot!' Ah well, that latter shout was irresistible. I drew the trigger. The +report hooted through the Polar night. +</p> + +<p> +The creature dropped; both Wilson and Clark were up at once: and we three +hurried to the spot. +</p> + +<p> +But the very first near glance showed a singular kind of bear. Wilson put his +hand to the head, and a lax skin came away at his touch.... It was Aubrey +Maitland who was underneath it, and I had shot him dead. +</p> + +<p> +For the past few days he had been cleaning skins, among them the skin of the +bear from which I had saved him at Taimur. Now, Maitland was a born +pantomimist, continually inventing practical jokes; and perhaps to startle me +with a false alarm in the very skin of the old Bruin which had so nearly done +for him, he had thrown it round him on finishing its cleaning, and so, in mere +wanton fun, had crept on deck at the hour of his watch. The head of the +bear-skin, and the fog, must have prevented him from seeing me taking aim. +</p> + +<p> +This tragedy made me ill for weeks. I saw that the hand of Fate was upon me. +When I rose from bed, poor Maitland was lying in the ice behind the great +camel-shaped hummock near us. +</p> + +<p> +By the end of January we had drifted to 80° 55'; and it was then that +Clark, in the presence of Wilson, asked me if I would make the fourth man, in +the place of poor Maitland, for the dash in the spring. As I said 'Yes, I am +willing,' David Wilson spat with a disgusted emphasis. A minute later he +sighed, with 'Ah, poor Maitland...' and drew in his breath with a <i>tut! +tut!</i> +</p> + +<p> +God knows, I had an impulse to spring then and there at his throat, and +strangle him: but I curbed myself. +</p> + +<p> +There remained now hardly a month before the dash, and all hands set to work +with a will, measuring the dogs, making harness and seal-skin shoes for them, +overhauling sledges and kayaks, and cutting every possible ounce of weight. But +we were not destined, after all, to set out that year. About the 20th February, +the ice began to pack, and the ship was subjected to an appalling pressure. We +found it necessary to make trumpets of our hands to shout into one another's +ears, for the whole ice-continent was crashing, popping, thundering everywhere +in terrific upheaval. Expecting every moment to see the <i>Boreal</i> crushed +to splinters, we had to set about unpacking provisions, and placing sledges, +kayaks, dogs and everything in a position for instant flight. It lasted five +days, and was accompanied by a tempest from the north, which, by the end of +February, had driven us back south into latitude 79° 40'. Clark, of course, +then abandoned the thought of the Pole for that summer. +</p> + +<p> +And immediately afterwards we made a startling discovery: our stock of +reindeer-moss was found to be somehow ridiculously small. Egan, our second +mate, was blamed; but that did not help matters: the sad fact remained. Clark +was advised to kill one or two of the deer, but he pig-headedly refused: and by +the beginning of summer they were all dead. +</p> + +<p> +Well, our northward drift recommenced. Toward the middle of February we saw a +mirage of the coming sun above the horizon; there were flights of Arctic +petrels and snow-buntings; and spring was with us. In an ice-pack of big +hummocks and narrow lanes we made good progress all the summer. +</p> + +<p> +When the last of the deer died, my heart sank; and when the dogs killed two of +their number, and a bear crushed a third, I was fully expecting what actually +came; it was this: Clark announced that he could now take only two companions +with him in the spring: and they were Wilson and Mew. So once more I saw David +Wilson's pleased smile of malice. +</p> + +<p> +We settled into our second winter-quarters. Again came December, and all our +drear sunless gloom, made worse by the fact that the windmill would not work, +leaving us without the electric light. +</p> + +<p> +Ah me, none but those who have felt it could dream of one half the mental +depression of that long Arctic night; how the soul takes on the hue of the +world; and without and within is nothing but gloom, gloom, and the reign of the +Power of Darkness. +</p> + +<p> +Not one of us but was in a melancholic, dismal and dire mood; and on the 13th +December Lamburn, the engineer, stabbed Cartwright, the old harpooner, in the +arm. +</p> + +<p> +Three days before Christmas a bear came close to the ship, and then turned +tail. Mew, Wilson, I and Meredith (a general hand) set out in pursuit. After a +pretty long chase we lost him, and then scattered different ways. It was very +dim, and after yet an hour's search, I was returning weary and disgusted to the +ship, when I saw some shadow like a bear sailing away on my left, and at the +same time sighted a man—I did not know whom—running like a handicapped ghost +some little distance to the right. So I shouted out: +</p> + +<p> +'There he is—come on! This way!' +</p> + +<p> +The man quickly joined me, but as soon as ever he recognised me, stopped dead. +The devil must have suddenly got into him, for he said: +</p> + +<p> +'No, thanks, Jeffson: alone with you I am in danger of my life....' +</p> + +<p> +It was Wilson. And I, too, forgetting at once all about the bear, stopped and +faced him. +</p> + +<p> +'I see,' said I. 'But, Wilson, you are going to explain to me <i>now</i> what +you mean, you hear? What <i>do</i> you mean, Wilson?' +</p> + +<p> +'What I say,' he answered deliberately, eyeing me up and down: 'alone with you +I am in danger of my life. Just as poor Maitland was, and just as poor Peters +was. Certainly, you are a deadly beast.' +</p> + +<p> +Fury leapt, my God, in my heart. Black as the tenebrous Arctic night was my +soul. +</p> + +<p> +'Do you mean,' said I, 'that I want to put you out of the way in order to go in +your place to the Pole? Is that your meaning, man?' +</p> + +<p> +'That's about my meaning, Jeffson,' says he: 'you are a deadly beast, you +know.' +</p> + +<p> +'Stop!' I said, with blazing eye. 'I am going to kill <i>you</i>, Wilson—as +sure as God lives: but I want to hear first. Who <i>told</i> you that I killed +Peters?' +</p> + +<p> +'Your lover killed him—with <i>your</i> collusion. Why, I heard you, man, in +your beastly sleep, calling the whole thing out. And I was pretty sure of it +before, only I had no proofs. By God, I should enjoy putting a bullet into you, +Jeffson!' +</p> + +<p> +'You wrong me—you, you wrong me!' I shrieked, my eyes staring with ravenous +lust for his blood; 'and now I am going to pay you well for it. <i>Look out, +you!</i>' +</p> + +<p> +I aimed my gun for his heart, and I touched the trigger. He held up his left +hand. +</p> + +<p> +'Stop,' he said, 'stop.' (He was one of the coolest of men ordinarily.) 'There +is no gallows on the <i>Boreal</i>, but Clark could easily rig one for you. I +want to kill you, too, because there are no criminal courts up here, and it +would be doing a good action for my country. But not here—not now. Listen to +me—don't shoot. Later we can meet, when all is ready, so that no one may be the +wiser, and fight it all out.' +</p> + +<p> +As he spoke I let the gun drop. It was better so. I knew that he was much the +best shot on the ship, and I an indifferent one: but I did not care, I did not +care, if I was killed. +</p> + +<p> +It is a dim, inclement land, God knows: and the spirit of darkness and +distraction is there. +</p> + +<p> +Twenty hours later we met behind the great saddle-shaped hummock, some six +miles to the S.E. of the ship. We had set out at different times, so that no +one might suspect. And each brought a ship's-lantern. +</p> + +<p> +Wilson had dug an ice-grave near the hummock, leaving at its edge a heap of +brash-ice and snow to fill it. We stood separated by an interval of perhaps +seventy yards, the grave between us, each with a lantern at his feet. +</p> + +<p> +Even so we were mere shadowy apparitions one to the other. The air glowered +very drearily, and present in my inmost soul were the frills of cold. A chill +moon, a mere abstraction of light, seemed to hang far outside the universe. The +temperature was at 55° below zero, so that we had on wind-clothes over our +anoraks, and heavy foot-bandages under our Lap boots. Nothing but a weird +morgue seemed the world, haunted with despondent madness; and exactly like that +world about us were the minds of us two poor men, full of macabre, bleak, and +funereal feelings. +</p> + +<p> +Between us yawned an early grave for one or other of our bodies. +</p> + +<p> +I heard Wilson cry out: +</p> + +<p> +'Are you ready, Jeffson?' +</p> + +<p> +'Aye, Wilson!' cried I. +</p> + +<p> +'<i>Then here goes!</i>' cries he. +</p> + +<p> +Even as he spoke, he fired. Surely, the man was in deadly earnest to kill me. +</p> + +<p> +But his shot passed harmlessly by me: as indeed was only likely: we were mere +shadows one to the other. +</p> + +<p> +I fired perhaps ten seconds later than he: but in those ten seconds he stood +perfectly revealed to me in clear, lavender light. +</p> + +<p> +An Arctic fire-ball had traversed the sky, showering abroad, a sulphurous +glamour over the snow-landscape. Before the intenser blue of its momentary +shine had passed away, I saw Wilson stagger forward, and drop. And him and his +lantern I buried deep there under the rubble ice. +</p> + +<hr /> + +<p> +On the 13th March, nearly three months later, Clark, Mew and I left the Boreal +in latitude 85° 15'. +</p> + +<p> +We had with us thirty-two dogs, three sledges, three kayaks, human provisions +for 112 days, and dog provisions for 40. Being now about 340 miles from the +Pole, we hoped to reach it in 43 days, then, turning south, and feeding living +dogs with dead, make either Franz Josef Land or Spitzbergen, at which latter +place we should very likely come up with a whaler. +</p> + +<p> +Well, during the first days, progress was very slow, the ice being rough and +laney, and the dogs behaving most badly, stopping dead at every difficulty, and +leaping over the traces. Clark had had the excellent idea of attaching a +gold-beater's-skin balloon, with a lifting power of 35 pounds, to each sledge, +and we had with us a supply of zinc and sulphuric-acid to repair the +hydrogen-waste from the bags; but on the third day Mew over-filled and burst +his balloon, and I and Clark had to cut ours loose in order to equalise +weights, for we could neither leave him behind, turn back to the ship, nor mend +the bag. So it happened that at the end of the fourth day out, we had made only +nineteen miles, and could still from a hummock discern afar the leaning masts +of the old Boreal. Clark led on ski, captaining a sledge with 400 lbs. of +instruments, ammunition, pemmican, aleuronate bread; Mew followed, his sledge +containing provisions only; and last came I, with a mixed freight. But on the +third day Clark had an attack of snow-blindness, and Mew took his place. +</p> + +<p> +Pretty soon our sufferings commenced, and they were bitter enough. The sun, +though constantly visible day and night, gave no heat. Our sleeping-bags (Clark +and Mew slept together in one, I in another) were soaking wet all the night, +being thawed by our warmth; and our fingers, under wrappings of senne-grass and +wolf-skin, were always bleeding. Sometimes our frail bamboo-cane kayaks, lying +across the sledges, would crash perilously against an ice-ridge—and they were +our one hope of reaching land. But the dogs were the great difficulty: we lost +six mortal hours a day in harnessing and tending them. On the twelfth day Clark +took a single-altitude observation, and found that we were only in latitude +86° 45'; but the next day we passed beyond the furthest point yet reached +by man, viz. 86° 53', attained by the <i>Nix</i> explorers four years +previously. +</p> + +<hr /> + +<p> +Our one secret thought now was food, food—our day-long lust for the +eating-time. Mew suffered from 'Arctic thirst. +</p> + +<hr /> + +<p> +Under these conditions, man becomes in a few days, not a savage only, but a +mere beast, hardly a grade above the bear and walrus. Ah, the ice! A long and +sordid nightmare was that, God knows. +</p> + +<p> +On we pressed, crawling our little way across the Vast, upon whose hoar +silence, from Eternity until then, Bootes only, and that Great Bear, had +watched. +</p> + +<hr /> + +<p> +After the eleventh day our rate of march improved: all lanes disappeared, and +ridges became much less frequent. By the fifteenth day I was leaving behind the +ice-grave of David Wilson at the rate of ten to thirteen miles a day. +</p> + +<p> +Yet, as it were, his arm reached out and touched me, even there. +</p> + +<p> +His disappearance had been explained by a hundred different guesses on the +ship—all plausible enough. I had no idea that anyone connected me in any way +with his death. +</p> + +<p> +But on our twenty-second day of march, 140 miles from our goal, he caused a +conflagration of rage and hate to break out among us three. +</p> + +<p> +It was at the end of a march, when our stomachs were hollow, our frames ready +to drop, and our mood ravenous and inflamed. One of Mew's dogs was sick: it was +necessary to kill it: he asked me to do it. +</p> + +<p> +'Oh,' said I, 'you kill your own dog, of course.' +</p> + +<p> +'Well, I don't know,' he replied, catching fire at once, 'you ought to be used +to killing, Jeffson.' +</p> + +<p> +'How do you mean, Mew?' said I with a mad start, for madness and the flames of +Hell were instant and uppermost in us all: 'you mean because my profession——' +</p> + +<p> +'Profession! damn it, no,' he snarled like a dog: 'go and dig up David Wilson—I +dare say you know where to find him—and he will tell you my meaning, right +enough.' +</p> + +<p> +I rushed at once to Clark, who was stooping among the dogs, unharnessing: and +savagely pushing his shoulder, I exclaimed: +</p> + +<p> +'That beast accuses me of murdering David Wilson!' +</p> + +<p> +'Well?' said Clark. +</p> + +<p> +'I'd split his skull as clean——!' +</p> + +<p> +'Go away, Adam Jeffson, and let me be!' snarled Clark. +</p> + +<p> +'Is that all you've got to say about it, then—you?' +</p> + +<p> +'To the devil with you, man, say I, and let me be!' cried he: 'you know your +own conscience best, I suppose.' +</p> + +<p> +Before this insult I stood with grinding teeth, but impotent. However, from +that moment a deeper mood of brooding malice occupied my spirit. Indeed the +humour of us all was one of dangerous, even murderous, fierceness. In that +pursuit of riches into that region of cold, we had become almost like the +beasts that perish. +</p> + +<hr /> + +<p> +On the 10th April we passed the 89th parallel of latitude, and though sick to +death, both in spirit and body, pressed still on. Like the lower animals, we +were stricken now with dumbness, and hardly once in a week spoke a word one to +the other, but in selfish brutishness on through a real hell of cold we moved. +It is a cursed region—beyond doubt cursed—not meant to be penetrated by man: +and rapid and awful was the degeneration of our souls. As for me, never could I +have conceived that savagery so heinous could brood in a human bosom as now I +felt it brood in mine. If men could enter into a country specially set apart +for the habitation of devils, and there become possessed of evil, as we were so +would they be. +</p> + +<hr /> + +<p> +As we advanced, the ice every day became smoother; so that, from four miles a +day, our rate increased to fifteen, and finally (as the sledges lightened) to +twenty. +</p> + +<p> +It was now that we began to encounter a succession of strange-looking objects +lying scattered over the ice, whose number continually increased as we +proceeded. They had the appearance of rocks, or pieces of iron, incrusted with +glass-fragments of various colours, and they were of every size. Their +incrustations we soon determined to be diamonds, and other precious stones. On +our first twenty-mile day Mew picked up a diamond-crystal as large as a child's +foot, and such objects soon became common. We thus found the riches which we +sought, beyond all dream; but as the bear and the walrus find them: for +ourselves we had lost; and it was a loss of riches barren as ashes, for all +those millions we would not have given an ounce of fish-meal. Clark grumbled +something about their being meteor-stones, whose ferruginous substance had been +lured by the magnetic Pole, and kept from frictional burning in their fall by +the frigidity of the air: and they quickly ceased to interest our sluggish +minds, except in so far as they obstructed our way. +</p> + +<hr /> + +<p> +We had all along had good weather: till, suddenly, on the morning of the 13th +April, we were overtaken by a tempest from the S.W., of such mighty and solemn +volume that the heart quailed beneath it. It lasted in its full power only an +hour, but during that time snatched two of our sledges long distances, and +compelled us to lie face-downward. We had travelled all the sun-lit night, and +were gasping with fatigue; so as soon as the wind allowed us to huddle together +our scattered things, we crawled into the sleeping-bags, and instantly slept. +</p> + +<p> +We knew that the ice was in awful upheaval around us; we heard, as our eyelids +sweetly closed, the slow booming of distant guns, and brittle cracklings of +artillery. This may have been a result of the tempest stirring up the ocean +beneath the ice. Whatever it was, we did not care: we slept deep. +</p> + +<p> +We were within ten miles of the Pole. +</p> + +<hr /> + +<p> +In my sleep it was as though someone suddenly shook my shoulder with urgent +'<i>Up! up</i>!' It was neither Clark nor Mew, but a dream merely: for Clark +and Mew, when I started up, I saw lying still in their sleeping-bag. +</p> + +<p> +I suppose it must have been about noon. I sat staring a minute, and my first +numb thought was somehow this: that the Countess Clodagh had prayed me 'Be +first'—for her. Wondrous little now cared I for the Countess Clodagh in her far +unreal world of warmth—precious little for the fortune which she coveted: +millions on millions of fortunes lay unregarded around me. But that thought, +<i>Be first!</i> was deeply suggested in my brain, as if whispered there. +Instinctively, brutishly, as the Gadarean swine rushed down a steep place, I, +rubbing my daft eyes, arose. +</p> + +<p> +The first thing which my mind opened to perceive was that, while the tempest +was less strong, the ice was now in extraordinary agitation. I looked abroad +upon a vast plain, stretched out to a circular, but waving horizon, and varied +by many hillocks, boulders, and sparkling meteor-stones that everywhere +tinselled the blinding white, some big as houses, most small as limbs. And this +great plain was now rearranging itself in a widespread drama of havoc, +withdrawing in ravines like mutual backing curtsies, then surging to clap +together in passionate mountain-peaks, else jostling like the Symplegades, +fluent and inconstant as billows of the sea, grinding itself, piling itself, +pouring itself in cataracts of powdered ice, while here and there I saw the +meteor-stones leap spasmodically, in dusts and heaps, like geysers or spurting +froths in a steamer's wake, a tremendous uproar, meantime, filling all the air. +As I stood, I plunged and staggered, and I found the dogs sprawling, with +whimperings, on the heaving floor. +</p> + +<p> +I did not care. Instinctively, daftly, brutishly, I harnessed ten of them to my +sledge; put on Canadian snow-shoes: and was away northward—alone. +</p> + +<p> +The sun shone with a clear, benign, but heatless shining: a ghostly, remote, +yet quite limpid light, which seemed designed for the lighting of other planets +and systems, and to strike here by happy chance. A great wind from the S.W., +meantime, sent thin snow-sweepings flying northward past me. +</p> + +<p> +The odometer which I had with me had not yet measured four miles, when I began +to notice two things: first that the jewelled meteor-stones were now +accumulating beyond all limit, filling my range of vision to the northern +horizon with a dazzling glister: in mounds, and parterres, and scattered +disconnection they lay, like largesse of autumn leaves, spread out over those +Elysian fields and fairy uplands of wealth, trillions of billions, so that I +had need to steer my twining way among them. Now, too, I noticed that, but for +these stones, all roughness had disappeared, not a trace of the upheaval going +on a little further south being here, for the ice lay positively as smooth as a +table before me. It is my belief that this stretch of smooth ice has never, +never felt one shock, or stir, or throe, and reaches right down to the bottom +of the deep. +</p> + +<hr /> + +<p> +And now with a wild hilarity I flew. Gradually, a dizziness, a lunacy, had +seized upon me, till finally, up-buoyed on air, and dancing mad, I sped, I +spun, with grinning teeth that chattered and gibbered, and eyeballs of +distraction: for a Fear, too—most cold and dreadful—had its hand of ice upon my +heart, I being so alone in that place, face to face with the Ineffable: but +still with a giddy levity, and a fatal joy, and a blind hilarity, on I sped, I +spun. +</p> + +<hr /> + +<p> +The odometer measured nine miles from my start. I was in the immediate +neighbourhood of the Pole. +</p> + +<p> +I cannot say when it began, but now I was conscious of a sound in my ears, +distinct and near, a steady sound of splashing, or fluttering, resembling the +noising of a cascade or brook: and it grew. Forty more steps I took (slide I +could not now for the meteorites)—perhaps sixty—perhaps eighty: and now, to my +sudden horror, I stood by a circular clean-cut lake. +</p> + +<p> +One minute only, swaying and nodding there, I stood: and then I dropped down +flat in swoon. +</p> + +<hr /> + +<p> +In a hundred years, I suppose, I should never succeed in analysing <i>why</i> I +swooned: but my consciousness still retains the impression of that horrid +thrill. I saw nothing distinctly, for my whole being reeled and toppled +drunken, like a spinning-top in desperate death-struggle at the moment when it +flags, and wobbles dissolutely to fall; but the very instant that my eyes met +what was before me, I knew, I knew, that here was the Sanctity of Sanctities, +the old eternal inner secret of the Life of this Earth, which it was a most +burning shame for a man to see. The lake, I fancy, must be a mile across, and +in its middle is a pillar of ice, very low and broad; and I had the clear +impression, or dream, or notion, that there was a name, or word, graven all +round in the ice of the pillar in characters which I could never read; and +under the name a long date; and the fluid of the lake seemed to me to be +wheeling with a shivering ecstasy, splashing and fluttering, round the pillar, +always from west to east, in the direction of the spinning of the earth; and it +was borne in upon me—I can't at all say how—that this fluid was the substance +of a living creature; and I had the distinct fancy, as my senses failed, that +it was a creature with many dull and anguished eyes, and that, as it wheeled +for ever round in fluttering lust, it kept its eyes always turned upon the name +and the date graven in the pillar. But this must be my madness.... +</p> + +<hr /> + +<p> +It must have been not less than an hour before a sense of life returned to me; +and when the thought stabbed my brain that a long, long time I had lain there +in the presence of those gloomy orbs, my spirit seemed to groan and die within +me. +</p> + +<p> +In some minutes, however, I had scrambled to my feet, clutched at a dog's +harness, and without one backward glance, was flying from that place. +</p> + +<p> +Half-way to the halting-place, I waited Clark and Mew, being very sick and +doddering, and unable to advance. But they did not come. +</p> + +<p> +Later on, when I gathered force to go further, I found that they had perished +in the upheaval of the ice. One only of the sledges, half buried, I saw near +the spot of our bivouac. +</p> + +<hr /> + +<p> +Alone that same day I began my way southward, and for five days made good +progress. On the eighth day I noticed, stretched right across the south-eastern +horizon, a region of purple vapour which luridly obscured the face of the sun: +and day after day I saw it steadily brooding there. But what it could be I did +not understand. +</p> + +<hr /> + +<p> +Well, onward through the desert ice I continued my lonely way, with a baleful +shrinking terror in my heart; for very stupendous, alas! is the burden of that +Arctic solitude upon one poor human soul. +</p> + +<p> +Sometimes on a halt I have lain and listened long to the hollow silence, +recoiling, crushed by it, hoping that at least one of the dogs might whine. I +have even crept shivering from the thawed sleeping-bag to flog a dog, so that I +might hear a sound. +</p> + +<p> +I had started from the Pole with a well-filled sledge, and the sixteen dogs +left alive from the ice-packing which buried my comrades. This was on the +evening of the 13th April. I had saved from the wreck of our things most of the +whey-powder, pemmican, &c., as well as the theodolite, compass, +chronometer, train-oil lamp for cooking, and other implements: I was therefore +in no doubt as to my course, and I had provisions for ninety days. But ten days +from the start my supply of dog-food failed, and I had to begin to slaughter my +only companions, one by one. +</p> + +<p> +Well, in the third week the ice became horribly rough, and with moil and toil +enough to wear a bear to death, I did only five miles a day. After the day's +work I would crawl with a dying sigh into the sleeping-bag, clad still in the +load of skins which stuck to me a mere filth of grease, to sleep the sleep of a +swine, indifferent if I never woke. +</p> + +<p> +Always—day after day—on the south-eastern horizon, brooded sullenly that +curious stretched-out region of purple vapour, like the smoke of the +conflagration of the world. And I noticed that its length constantly reached +out and out, and silently grew. +</p> + +<hr /> + +<p> +Once I had a very pleasant dream. I dreamed that I was in a garden—an Arabian +paradise—so sweet was the perfume. All the time, however, I had a +sub-consciousness of the gale which was actually blowing from the S.E. over the +ice, and, at the moment when I awoke, was half-wittedly droning to myself; 'It +is a Garden of Peaches; but I am not really in the garden: I am really on the +ice; only, the S.E. storm is wafting to me the aroma of this Garden of +Peaches.' +</p> + +<p> +I opened my eyes—I started—I sprang to my feet! For, of all the miracles!—I +could not doubt—an actual aroma like peach-blossom was in the algid air about +me! +</p> + +<p> +Before I could collect my astonished senses, I began to vomit pretty violently, +and at the same time saw some of the dogs, mere skeletons as they were, +vomiting, too. For a long time I lay very sick in a kind of daze, and, on +rising, found two of the dogs dead, and all very queer. The wind had now +changed to the north. +</p> + +<p> +Well, on I staggered, fighting every inch of my deplorably weary way. This +odour of peach-blossom, my sickness, and the death of the two dogs, remained a +wonder to me. +</p> + +<p> +Two days later, to my extreme mystification (and joy), I came across a bear and +its cub lying dead at the foot of a hummock. I could not believe my eyes. There +she lay on her right side, a spot of dirty-white in a disordered patch of snow, +with one little eye open, and her fierce-looking mouth also; and the cub lay +across her haunch, biting into her rough fur. I set to work upon her, and +allowed the dogs a glorious feed on the blubber, while I myself had a great +banquet on the fresh meat. I had to leave the greater part of the two +carcasses, and I can feel again now the hankering reluctance—quite unnecessary, +as it turned out—with which I trudged onwards. Again and again I found myself +asking: 'Now, what could have killed those two bears?' +</p> + +<p> +With brutish stolidness I plodded ever on, almost like a walking machine, +sometimes nodding in sleep while I helped the dogs, or manouvred the sledge +over an ice-ridge, pushing or pulling. On the 3rd June, a month and a half from +my start, I took an observation with the theodolite, and found that I was not +yet 400 miles from the Pole, in latitude 84° 50'. It was just as though +some Will, some Will, was obstructing and retarding me. +</p> + +<p> +However, the intolerable cold was over, and soon my clothes no longer hung +stark on me like armour. Pools began to appear in the ice, and presently, what +was worse, my God, long lanes, across which, somehow, I had to get the sledge. +But about the same time all fear of starvation passed away: for on the 6th June +I came across another dead bear, on the 7th three, and thenceforth, in rapidly +growing numbers, I met not bears only, but fulmars, guillemots, snipes, Ross's +gulls, little awks—all, all, lying dead on the ice. And never anywhere a living +thing, save me, and the two remaining dogs. +</p> + +<p> +If ever a poor man stood shocked before a mystery, it was I now. I had a big +fear on my heart. +</p> + +<p> +On the 2nd July the ice began packing dangerously, and soon another storm broke +loose upon me from the S.W. I left off my trek, and put up the silk tent on a +five-acre square of ice surrounded by lanes: and <i>again</i>—for the second +time—as I lay down, I smelled that delightful strange odour of peach-blossom, a +mere whiff of it, and presently afterwards was taken sick. However, it passed +off this time in a couple of hours. +</p> + +<p> +Now it was all lanes, lanes, alas! yet no open water, and such was the +difficulty and woe of my life, that sometimes I would drop flat on the ice, and +sob: 'Oh, no more, no more, my God: here let me die.' The crossing of a lane +might occupy ten or twelve entire hours, and then, on the other side I might +find another one opening right before me. Moreover, on the 8th July, one of the +dogs, after a feed on blubber, suddenly died; and there was left me only +'Reinhardt,' a white-haired Siberian dog, with little pert up-sticking ears, +like a cat's. Him, too, I had to kill on coming to open water. +</p> + +<p> +This did not happen till the 3rd August, nearly four months from the Pole. +</p> + +<p> +I can't think, my God, that any heart of man ever tholed the appalling +nightmare and black abysm of sensations in which, during those four long desert +months, I weltered: for though I was as a brute, I had a man's heart to feel. +What I had seen, or dreamed, at the Pole followed and followed me; and if I +shut my poor weary eyes to sleep, those others yonder seemed to watch me still +with their distraught and gloomy gaze, and in my spinning dark dreams spun that +eternal ecstasy of the lake. +</p> + +<p> +However, by the 28th July I knew from the look of the sky, and the absence of +fresh-water ice, that the sea could not be far; so I set to work, and spent two +days in putting to rights the now battered kayak. This done, I had no sooner +resumed my way than I sighted far off a streaky haze, which I knew to be the +basalt cliffs of Franz Josef Land; and in a craziness of joy I stood there, +waving my ski-staff about my head, with the senile cheers of a very old man. +</p> + +<p> +In four days this land was visibly nearer, sheer basaltic cliffs mixed with +glacier, forming apparently a great bay, with two small islands in the +mid-distance; and at fore-day of the 3rd August I arrived at the definite edge +of the pack-ice in moderate weather at about the freezing-point. +</p> + +<p> +I at once, but with great reluctance, shot Reinhardt, and set to work to get +the last of the provisions, and the most necessary of the implements, into the +kayak, making haste to put out to the toilless luxury of being borne on the +water, after all the weary trudge. Within fourteen hours I was coasting, with +my little lug-sail spread, along the shore-ice of that land. It was midnight of +a calm Sabbath, and low on the horizon smoked the drowsing red sun-ball, as my +canvas skiff lightly chopped her little way through this silent sea. Silent, +silent: for neither snort of walrus, nor yelp of fox, nor cry of startled +kittiwake, did I hear: but all was still as the jet-black shadow of the cliffs +and glacier on the tranquil sea: and many bodies of dead things strewed the +surface of the water. +</p> + +<hr /> + +<p> +When I found a little fjord, I went up it to the end where stood a stretch of +basalt columns, looking like a shattered temple of Antediluvians; and when my +foot at last touched land, I sat down there a long, long time in the rubbly +snow, and silently wept. My eyes that night were like a fountain of tears. For +the firm land is health and sanity, and dear to the life of man; but I say that +the great ungenial ice is a nightmare, and a blasphemy, and a madness, and the +realm of the Power of Darkness. +</p> + +<hr /> + +<p> +I knew that I was at Franz Josef Land, somewhere or other in the neighbourhood +of C. Fligely (about 82° N.), and though it was so late, and getting cold, +I still had the hope of reaching Spitzbergen that year, by alternately sailing +all open water, and dragging the kayak over the slack drift-ice. All the ice +which I saw was good flat fjord-ice, and the plan seemed feasible enough; so +after coasting about a little, and then three days' good rest in the tent at +the bottom of a ravine of columnar basalt opening upon the shore, I packed some +bear and walrus flesh, with what artificial food was left, into the kayak, and +I set out early in the morning, coasting the shore-ice with sail and paddle. In +the afternoon I managed to climb a little way up an iceberg, and made out that +I was in a bay whose terminating headlands were invisible. I accordingly +decided to make S.W. by W. to cross it, but, in doing so, I was hardly out of +sight of land, when a northern storm overtook me toward midnight; before I +could think, the little sail was all but whiffed away, and the kayak upset. I +only saved it by the happy chance of being near a floe with an ice-foot, which, +projecting under the water, gave me foot-hold; and I lay on the floe in a +mooning state the whole night under the storm, for I was half drowned. +</p> + +<p> +And at once, on recovering myself, I abandoned all thought of whalers and of +Europe for that year. Happily, my instruments, &c., had been saved by the +kayak-deck when she capsized. +</p> + +<hr /> + +<p> +A hundred yards inland from the shore-rim, in a circular place where there was +some moss and soil, I built myself a semi-subterranean Eskimo den for the long +Polar night. The spot was quite surrounded by high sloping walls of basalt, +except to the west, where they opened in a three-foot cleft to the shore, and +the ground was strewn with slabs and boulders of granite and basalt. I found +there a dead she-bear, two well-grown cubs, and a fox, the latter having +evidently fallen from the cliffs; in three places the snow was quite red, +overgrown with a red lichen, which at first I took for blood. I did not even +yet feel secure from possible bears, and took care to make my den fairly tight, +a work which occupied me nearly four weeks, for I had no tools, save a hatchet, +knife, and metal-shod ski-staff. I dug a passage in the ground two feet wide, +two deep, and ten long, with perpendicular sides, and at its north end a +circular space, twelve feet across, also with perpendicular sides, which I +lined with stones; the whole excavation I covered with inch-thick walrus-hide, +skinned during a whole bitter week from four of a number that lay about the +shore-ice; for ridge-pole I used a thin pointed rock which I found near, +though, even so, the roof remained nearly flat. This, when it was finished, I +stocked well, putting in everything, except the kayak, blubber to serve both +for fuel and occasional light, and foods of several sorts, which I procured by +merely stretching out the hand. The roof of both circular part and passage was +soon buried under snow and ice, and hardly distinguishable from the general +level of the white-clad ground. Through the passage, if I passed in or out, I +crawled flat, on hands and knees: but that was rare: and in the little round +interior, mostly sitting in a cowering attitude, I wintered, harkening to the +large and windy ravings of darkling December storms above me. +</p> + +<hr /> + +<p> +All those months the burden of a thought bowed me; and an unanswered question, +like the slow turning of a mechanism, revolved in my gloomy spirit: for +everywhere around me lay bears, walruses, foxes, thousands upon thousands of +little awks, kittiwakes, snow-owls, eider-ducks, gulls-dead, dead. Almost the +only living things which I saw were some walruses on the drift-floes: but very +few compared with the number which I expected. It was clear to me that some +inconceivable catastrophe had overtaken the island during the summer, +destroying all life about it, except some few of the amphibia, cetacea, and +crustacea. +</p> + +<p> +On the 5th December, having crept out from the den during a southern storm, I +had, for the third time, a distant whiff of that self-same odour of +peach-blossom: but now without any after-effects. +</p> + +<hr /> + +<p> +Well, again came Christmas, the New Year—Spring: and on the 22nd May I set out +with a well-stocked kayak. The water was fairly open, and the ice so good, that +at one place I could sail the kayak over it, the wind sending me sliding at a +fine pace. Being on the west coast of Franz Josef Land, I was in as favourable +a situation as possible, and I turned my bow southward with much hope, keeping +a good many days just in sight of land. Toward the evening of my third day out +I noticed a large flat floe, presenting far-off a singular and lovely sight, +for it seemed freighted thick with a profusion of pink and white roses, showing +in its clear crystal the empurpled reflection. On getting near I saw that it +was covered with millions of Ross's gulls, all dead, whose pretty rosy bosoms +had given it that appearance. +</p> + +<p> +Up to the 29th June I made good progress southward and westward (the weather +being mostly excellent), sometimes meeting dead bears, floating away on floes, +sometimes dead or living walrus-herds, with troop after troop of dead +kittiwakes, glaucus and ivory gulls, skuas, and every kind of Arctic fowl. On +that last day—the 29th June—I was about to encamp on a floe soon after +midnight, when, happening to look toward the sun, my eye fell, far away south +across the ocean of floes, upon something—<i>the masts of a ship</i>. +</p> + +<p> +A phantom ship, or a real ship: it was all one; real, I must have instantly +felt, it could not be: but at a sight so incredible my heart set to beating in +my bosom as though I must surely die, and feebly waving the cane oar about my +head, I staggered to my knees, and thence with wry mouth toppled flat. +</p> + +<p> +So overpoweringly sweet was the thought of springing once more, like the beasts +of Circe, from a walrus into a man. At this time I was tearing my bear's-meat +just like a bear; I was washing my hands in walrus-blood to produce a glairy +sort of pink cleanliness, in place of the black grease which chronically coated +them. +</p> + +<p> +Worn as I was, I made little delay to set out for that ship; and I had not +travelled over water and ice four hours when, to my in-describable joy, I made +out from the top of a steep floe that she was the <i>Boreal</i>. It seemed most +strange that she should be anywhere hereabouts: I could only conclude that she +must have forced and drifted her way thus far westward out of the ice-block in +which our party had left her, and perhaps now was loitering here in the hope of +picking us up on our way to Spitzbergen. +</p> + +<p> +In any case, wild was the haste with which I fought my way to be at her, my +gasping mouth all the time drawn back in a <i>rictus</i> of laughter at the +anticipation of their gladness to see me, their excitement to hear the grand +tidings of the Pole attained. Anon I waved the paddle, though I knew that they +could not yet see me, and then I dug deep at the whitish water. What astonished +me was her main-sail and fore-mast square-sail—set that calm morning; and her +screws were still, for she moved not at all. The sun was abroad like a cold +spirit of light, touching the great ocean-room of floes with dazzling spots, +and a tint almost of rose was on the world, as it were of a just-dead bride in +her spangles and white array. The <i>Boreal</i> was the one little distant +jet-black spot in all this purity: and upon her, as though she were Heaven, I +paddled, I panted. But she was in a queerish state: by 9 A.M. I could see that. +Two of the windmill arms were not there, and half lowered down her starboard +beam a boat hung askew; moreover, soon after 10 I could clearly see that her +main-sail had a long rent down the middle. +</p> + +<p> +I could not at all make her out. She was not anchored, though a sheet-anchor +hung over at the starboard cathead; she was not moored; and two small +ice-floes, one on each side, were sluggishly bombarding her bows. +</p> + +<p> +I began now to wave the paddle, battling for my breath, ecstatic, crazy with +excitement, each second like a year to me. Very soon I could make out someone +at the bows, leaning well over, looking my way. Something put it into my head +that it was Sallitt, and I began an impassioned shouting. 'Hi! Sallitt! Hallo! +Hi!' I called. +</p> + +<p> +I did not see him move: I was still a good way off: but there he stood, leaning +steadily over, looking my way. Between me and the ship now was all navigable +water among the floes, and the sight of him so visibly near put into me such a +shivering eagerness, that I was nothing else but a madman for the time, sending +the kayak flying with venomous digs in quick-repeated spurts, and mixing with +the diggings my crazy wavings, and with both the daft shoutings of 'Hallo! Hi! +Bravo! I have <i>been to the Pole!</i>' +</p> + +<p> +Well, vanity, vanity. Nearer still I drew: it was broad morning, going on +toward noon: I was half a mile away, I was fifty yards. But on board the +<i>Boreal</i>, though now they <i>must</i> have heard me, seen me, I observed +no movement of welcome, but all, all was still as death that still Arctic +morning, my God. Only, the ragged sail flapped a little, and—one on each +side—two ice-floes sluggishly bombarded the bows, with hollow sounds. +</p> + +<p> +I was certain now that Sallitt it was who looked across the ice: but when the +ship swung a little round, I noticed that the direction of his gaze was carried +with her movement, he no longer looking my way. +</p> + +<p> +'Why, Sallitt!' I shouted reproachfully: 'why, Sallitt, man...!' I whined. +</p> + +<p> +But even as I shouted and whined, a perfect wild certainty was in my heart: for +an aroma like peach, my God, had been suddenly wafted from the ship upon me, +and I must have very well known then that that watchful outlook of Sallitt saw +nothing, and on the <i>Boreal</i> were dead men all; indeed, very soon I saw +one of his eyes looking like a glass eye which has slid askew, and glares +distraught. And now again my wretched body failed, and my head dropped forward, +where I sat, upon the kayak-deck. +</p> + +<hr /> + +<p> +Well, after a long time, I lifted myself to look again at that forlorn and +wandering craft. There she lay, quiet, tragic, as it were culpable of the dark +secret she bore; and Sallitt, who had been such good friends with me, would not +cease his stare. I knew quite well why he was there: he had leant over to +vomit, and had leant ever since, his forearms pressed on the bulwark-beam, his +left knee against the boards, and his left shoulder propped on the cathead. +When I came quite near, I saw that with every bump of the two floes against the +bows, his face shook in response, and nodded a little; strange to say, he had +no covering on his head, and I noted the play of the faint breezes in his uncut +hair. After a time I would approach no more, for I was afraid; I did not dare, +the silence of the ship seemed so sacred and awful; and till late afternoon I +sat there, watching the black and massive hull. Above her water-line emerged +all round a half-floating fringe of fresh-green sea-weed, proving old neglect; +an abortive attempt had apparently been made to lower, or take in, the +larch-wood pram, for there she hung by a jammed davit-rope, stern up, bow in +the water; the only two arms of the windmill moved this way and that, through +some three degrees, with an <i>andante</i> creaking sing-song; some washed +clothes, tied on the bow-sprit rigging to dry, were still there; the iron +casing all round the bluff bows was red and rough with rust; at several points +the rigging was in considerable tangle; occasionally the boom moved a little +with a tortured skirling cadence; and the sail, rotten, I presume, from +exposure—for she had certainly encountered no bad weather—gave out anon a heavy +languid flap at a rent down the middle. Besides Sallitt, looking out there +where he had jammed himself, I saw no one. +</p> + +<p> +By a paddle-stroke now, and another presently, I had closely approached her +about four in the afternoon, though my awe of the ship was complicated by that +perfume of hers, whose fearful effects I knew. My tentative approach, however, +proved to me, when I remained unaffected, that, here and now, whatever danger +there had been was past; and finally, by a hanging rope, with a thumping +desperation of heart, I clambered up her beam. +</p> + +<hr /> + +<p> +They had died, it seemed, very suddenly, for nearly all the twelve were in +poses of activity. Egan was in the very act of ascending the companion-way; +Lamburn was sitting against the chart-room door, apparently cleaning two +carbines; Odling at the bottom of the engine-room stair seemed to be drawing on +a pair of reindeer komagar; and Cartwright, who was often in liquor, had his +arms frozen tight round the neck of Martin, whom he seemed to be kissing, they +two lying stark at the foot of the mizzen-mast. +</p> + +<p> +Over all—over men, decks, rope-coils—in the cabin, in the engine-room—between +skylight leaves—on every shelf, in every cranny—lay a purplish ash or dust, +very impalpably fine. And steadily reigning throughout the ship, like the very +spirit of death, was that aroma of peach-blossom. +</p> + +<hr /> + +<p> +Here it had reigned, as I could see from the log-dates, from the rust on the +machinery, from the look of the bodies, from a hundred indications, during +something over a year. It was, therefore, mainly by the random workings of +winds and currents that this fragrant ship of death had been brought hither to +me. +</p> + +<p> +And this was the first direct intimation which I had that the Unseen Powers +(whoever and whatever they may be), who through the history of the world had +been so very, very careful to conceal their Hand from the eyes of men, hardly +any longer intended to be at the pains to conceal their Hand from me. It was +just as though the Boreal had been openly presented to me by a spiritual +agency, which, though I could not see it, I could readily apprehend. +</p> + +<hr /> + +<p> +The dust, though very thin and flighty above-decks, lay thickly deposited +below, and after having made a tour of investigation throughout the ship, the +first thing which I did was to examine that—though I had tasted nothing all +day, and was exhausted to death. I found my own microscope where I had left it +in the box in my berth to starboard, though I had to lift up Egan to get at it, +and to step over Lamburn to enter the chart-room; but there, toward evening, I +sat at the table and bent to see if I could make anything of the dust, while it +seemed to me as if all the myriad spirits of men that have sojourned on the +earth, and angel and devil, and all Time and all Eternity, hung silent round +for my decision; and such an ague had me, that for a long time my wandering +finger-tips, all ataxic with agitation, eluded every delicate effort which I +made, and I could nothing do. Of course, I know that an odour of peach-blossom +in the air, resulting in death, could only be associated with some vaporous +effluvium of cyanogen, or of hydrocyanic ('prussic') acid, or of both; and when +I at last managed to examine some of the dust under the microscope, I was not +therefore surprised to find, among the general mass of purplish ash, a number +of bright-yellow particles, which could only be minute crystals of potassic +ferrocyanide. What potassic ferrocyanide was doing on board the <i>Boreal</i> I +did not know, and I had neither the means, nor the force of mind, alas! to dive +then further into the mystery; I understood only that by some extraordinary +means the air of the region just south of the Polar environ had been +impregnated with a vapour which was either cyanogen, or some product of +cyanogen; also, that this deadly vapour, which is very soluble, had by now +either been dissolved by the sea, or else dispersed into space (probably the +latter), leaving only its faint after-perfume; and seeing this, I let my poor +abandoned head drop again on the table, and long hours I sat there staring mad, +for I had a suspicion, my God, and a fear, in my breast. +</p> + +<hr /> + +<p> +The <i>Boreal,</i> I found, contained sufficient provisions, untouched by the +dust, in cases, casks, &c., to last me, probably, fifty years. After two +days, when I had partially scrubbed and boiled the filth of fifteen months from +my skin, and solaced myself with better food, I overhauled her thoroughly, and +spent three more days in oiling and cleaning the engine. Then, all being ready, +I dragged my twelve dead and laid them together in two rows on the chart-room +floor; and I hoisted for love the poor little kayak which had served me through +so many tribulations. At nine in the morning of the 6th July, a week from my +first sighting of the <i>Boreal</i>, I descended to the engine-room to set out. +</p> + +<p> +The screws, like those of most quite modern ships, were driven by the simple +contrivance of a constant stream of liquid air, contained in very powerful +tanks, exploding through capillary tubes into non-expansion slide-valve chests, +much as in the ordinary way with steam: a motor which gave her, in spite of her +bluff hulk, a speed of sixteen knots. It is, therefore, the simplest thing for +one man to take these ships round the world, since their movement, or stopping, +depend upon nothing but the depressing or raising of a steel handle, provided +that one does not get blown to the sky meantime, as liquid air, in spite of its +thousand advantages, occasionally blows people. At any rate, I had tanks of air +sufficient to last me through twelve years' voyaging; and there was the +ordinary machine on board for making it, with forty tons of coal, in case of +need, in the bunkers, and two excellent Belleville boilers: so I was well +supplied with motors at least. +</p> + +<p> +The ice here was quite slack, and I do not think I ever saw Arctic weather so +bright and gay, the temperature at 41°. I found that I was midway between +Franz Josef and Spitzbergen, in latitude 79° 23' N. and longitude 39° +E.; my way was perfectly clear; and something almost like a mournful +hopefulness was in me as the engines slid into their clanking turmoil, and +those long-silent screws began to churn the Arctic sea. I ran up with alacrity +and took my stand at the wheel; and the bows of my eventful Argo turned +southward and westward. +</p> + +<hr /> + +<p> +When I needed food or sleep, the ship slept, too: when I awoke, she continued +her way. +</p> + +<p> +Sixteen hours a day sometimes I stood sentinel at that wheel, overlooking the +varied monotony of the ice-sea, till my knees would give, and I wondered why a +wheel at which one might sit was not contrived, rather delicate steering being +often required among the floes and bergs. By now, however, I was less weighted +with my ball of Polar clothes, and stood almost slim in a Lap great-coat, a +round Siberian fur cap on my head. +</p> + +<p> +At midnight when I threw myself into my old berth, it was just as though the +engines, subsided now into silence, were a dead thing, and had a ghost which +haunted me; for I heard them still, and yet not them, but the silence of their +ghost. +</p> + +<p> +Sometimes I would startle from sleep, horrified to the heart at some sound of +exploding iceberg, or bumping floe, noising far through that white mystery of +quietude, where the floes and bergs were as floating tombs, and the world a +liquid cemetery. Never could I describe the strange Doom's-day shock with which +such a sound would recall me from far depths of chaos to recollection of +myself: for often-times, both waking and in nightmare, I did not know on which +planet I was, nor in which Age, but felt myself adrift in the great gulf of +time and space and circumstance, without bottom for my consciousness to stand +upon; and the world was all mirage and a new show to me; and the boundaries of +dream and waking lost. +</p> + +<p> +Well, the weather was most fair all the time, and the sea like a pond. During +the morning of the fifth day, the 11th July, I entered, and went moving down, +an extraordinary long avenue of snow-bergs and floes, most regularly placed, +half a mile across and miles long, like a Titanic double-procession of statues, +or the Ming Tombs, but rising and sinking on the cadenced swell; many towering +high, throwing placid shadows on the aisle between; some being of a lucid +emerald tint; and three or four pouring down cascades that gave a far and +chaunting sound. The sea between was of a strange thick bluishness, almost like +raw egg-white; while, as always here, some snow-clouds, white and woolly, +floated in the pale sky. Down this avenue, which produced a mysterious +impression of Cyclopean cathedrals and odd sequesteredness, I had not passed a +mile, when I sighted a black object at the end. +</p> + +<p> +I rushed to the shrouds, and very soon made out a whaler. +</p> + +<p> +Again the same panting agitations, mad rage to be at her, at once possessed me; +I flew to the indicator, turned the lever to full, then back to give the wheel +a spin, then up the main-mast ratlins, waving a long foot-bandage of vadmel +tweed picked up at random, and by the time I was within five hundred yards of +her, had worked myself to such a pitch, that I was again shouting that futile +madness: 'Hullo! Hi! Bravo! <i>I have been to the Pole!</i>' +</p> + +<p> +And those twelve dead that I had in the chart-room there must have heard me, +and the men on the whaler must have heard me, and smiled their smile. +</p> + +<p> +For, as to that whaler, I should have known better at once, if I had not been +crazy, since she <i>looked</i> like a ship of death, her boom slamming to port +and starboard on the gentle heave of the sea, and her fore-sail reefed that +serene morning. Only when I was quite near her, and hurrying down to stop the +engines, did the real truth, with perfect suddenness, drench my heated brain; +and I almost ran into her, I was so stunned. +</p> + +<p> +However, I stopped the <i>Boreal</i> in time, and later on lowered the kayak, +and boarded the other. +</p> + +<p> +This ship had evidently been stricken silent in the midst of a perfect drama of +activity, for I saw not one of her crew of sixty-two who was not busy, except +one boy. I found her a good-sized thing of 500 odd tons, ship-rigged, with +auxiliary engine of seventy horse-power, and pretty heavily armour-plated round +the bows. There was no part of her which I did not over-haul, and I could see +that they had had a great time with whales, for a mighty carcass, attached to +the outside of the ship by the powerful cant-purchase tackle, had been in +process of flensing and cutting-in, and on the deck two great blankets of +blubber, looking each a ton-weight, surrounded by twenty-seven men in many +attitudes, some terrifying to see, some disgusting, several grotesque, all so +unhuman, the whale dead, and the men dead, too, and death was there, and the +rank-flourishing germs of Inanity, and a mesmerism, and a silence, whose +dominion was established, and its reign was growing old. Four of them, who had +been removing the gums from a mass of stratified whalebone at the mizzen-mast +foot, were quite imbedded in whale-flesh; also, in a barrel lashed to the top +of the main top-gallant masthead was visible the head of a man with a long +pointed beard, looking steadily out over the sea to the S.W., which made me +notice that five only of the probable eight or nine boats were on board; and +after visiting the 'tween-decks, where I saw considerable quantities of stowed +whalebone plates, and about fifty or sixty iron oil-tanks, and cut-up blubber; +and after visiting cabin, engine-room, fo'cas'le, where I saw a lonely boy of +fourteen with his hand grasping a bottle of rum under all the turned-up clothes +in a chest, he, at the moment of death, being evidently intent upon hiding it; +and after two hours' search of the ship, I got back to my own, and half an hour +later came upon all the three missing whale-boats about a mile apart, and +steered zig-zag near to each. They contained five men each and a steerer, and +one had the harpoon-gun fired, with the loose line coiled round and round the +head and upper part of the stroke line-manager; and in the others hundreds of +fathoms of coiled rope, with toggle-irons, whale-lances, hand-harpoons, and +dropped heads, and grins, and lazy <i>abandon</i>, and eyes that stared, and +eyes that dozed, and eyes that winked. +</p> + +<p> +After this I began to sight ships not infrequently, and used regularly to have +the three lights burning all night. On the 12th July I met one, on the 15th +two, on the 16th one, on the 17th three, on the 18th two—all Greenlanders, I +think: but, of the nine, I boarded only three, the glass quite clearly showing +me, when yet far off, that on the others was no life; and on the three which I +boarded were dead men; so that that suspicion which I had, and that fear, grew +very heavy upon me. +</p> + +<p> +I went on southward, day after day southward, sentinel there at my wheel; clear +sunshine by day, when the calm pale sea sometimes seemed mixed with regions of +milk, and at night the immense desolation of a world lit by a sun that was long +dead, and by a light that was gloom. It was like Night blanched in death then; +and wan as the very kingdom of death and Hades I have seen it, most terrifying, +that neuter state and limbo of nothingness, when unreal sea and spectral sky, +all boundaries lost, mingled in a vast shadowy void of ghastly phantasmagoria, +pale to utter huelessness, at whose centre I, as if annihilated, seemed to +swoon in immensity of space. Into this disembodied world would come anon +waftures of that peachy scent which I knew: and their frequency rapidly grew. +But still the <i>Boreal</i> moved, traversing, as it were, bottomless Eternity: +and I reached latitude 72°, not far now from Northern Europe. +</p> + +<p> +And now, as to that blossomy peach-scent—even while some floes were yet around +me—I was just like some fantastic mariner, who, having set out to search for +Eden and the Blessed Islands, finds them, and balmy gales from their gardens +come out, while he is yet afar, to meet him with their perfumes of almond and +champac, cornel and jasmin and lotus. For I had now reached a zone where the +peach-aroma was constant; all the world seemed embalmed in its spicy fragrance; +and I could easily imagine myself voyaging beyond the world toward some clime +of perpetual and enchanting Spring. +</p> + +<hr /> + +<p> +Well, I saw at last what whalers used to call 'the blink of the ice'; that is +to say, its bright apparition or reflection in the sky when it is left behind, +or not yet come-to. By this time I was in a region where a good many craft of +various sorts were to be seen; I was continually meeting them; and not one did +I omit to investigate, while many I boarded in the kayak or the larch-wood +pram. Just below latitude 70° I came upon a good large fleet of what I +supposed to be Lafoden cod and herring fishers, which must have drifted +somewhat on a northward current. They had had a great season, for the boats +were well laden with curing fish. I went from one to the other on a zig-zag +course, they being widely scattered, some mere dots to the glass on the +horizon. The evening was still and clear with that astral Arctic clearness, the +sun just beginning his low-couched nightly drowse. These sturdy-looking brown +boats stood rocking gently there with slow-creaking noises, as of things +whining in slumber, without the least damage, awaiting the appalling storms of +the winter months on that tenebrous sea, when a dark doom, and a deep grave, +would not fail them. The fishers were braw carles, wearing, many of them, +fringes of beard well back from the chin-point, with hanging woollen caps. In +every case I found below-decks a number of cruses of corn-brandy, marked +<i>aquavit</i>, two of which I took into the pram. In one of the smacks an +elderly fisher was kneeling in a forward sprawling pose, clasping the lug-mast +with his arms, the two knees wide apart, head thrown back, and the yellow +eye-balls with their islands of grey iris staring straight up the mast-pole. At +another of them, instead of boarding in the pram, I shut off the +<i>Boreal's</i> liquid air at such a point that, by delicate steering, she +slackened down to a stoppage just a-beam of the smack, upon whose deck I was +thus able to jump down. After looking around I descended the three steps aft +into the dark and garrety below-decks, and with stooping back went calling in +an awful whisper: '<i>Anyone? Anyone?</i>' Nothing answered me: and when I went +up again, the <i>Boreal</i> had drifted three yards beyond my reach. There +being a dead calm, I had to plunge into the water, and in that half-minute +there a sudden cold throng of unaccountable terrors beset me, and I can feel +again now that abysmal desolation of loneliness, and sense of a hostile and +malign universe bent upon eating me up: for the ocean seemed to me nothing but +a great ghost. +</p> + +<p> +Two mornings later I came upon another school, rather larger boats these, which +I found to be Brittany cod-fishers. Most of these, too, I boarded. In every +below-decks was a wooden or earthenware image of the Virgin, painted in gaudy +faded colours; and in one case I found a boy who had been kneeling before the +statue, but was toppled sideways now, his knees still bent, and the cross of +Christ in his hand. These stalwart blue woollen blouses and tarpaulin +sou'-westers lay in every pose of death, every detail of feature and expression +still perfectly preserved. The sloops were all the same, all, all: with +sing-song creaks they rocked a little, nonchalantly: each, as it were, with a +certain sub-consciousness of its own personality, and callous unconsciousness +of all the others round it: yet each a copy of the others: the same hooks and +lines, disembowelling-knives, barrels of salt and pickle, piles and casks of +opened cod, kegs of biscuit, and low-creaking rockings, and a bilgy smell, and +dead men. The next day, about eighty miles south of the latitude of Mount +Hekla, I sighted a big ship, which turned out to be the French cruiser +<i>Lazare Tréport</i>. I boarded and overhauled her during three hours, her +upper, main, and armoured deck, deck by deck, to her lowest black depths, even +childishly spying up the tubes of her two big, rusted turret-guns. Three men in +the engine-room had been much mangled, after death, I presume, by a burst +boiler; floating about 800 yards to the north-east lay a long-boat of hers, low +in the water, crammed with marines, one oar still there, jammed between the +row-lock and the rower's forced-back chin; on the ship's starboard deck, in the +long stretch of space between the two masts, the blue-jackets had evidently +been piped up, for they lay there in a sort of serried disorder, to the number +of two hundred and seventy-five. Nothing could be of suggestion more tragic +than the wasted and helpless power of this poor wandering vessel, around whose +stolid mass myriads of wavelets, busy as aspen-leaves, bickered with a +continual weltering splash that was quite loud to hear. I sat a good time that +afternoon in one of her steely port main-deck casemates on a gun-carriage, my +head sunken on my breast, furtively eyeing the bluish turned-up feet, all +shrunk, exsanguined, of a sailor who lay on his back before me; his soles were +all that I could see, the rest of him lying head-downwards beyond the steel +door-sill. +</p> + +<p> +Drenched in seas of lugubrious reverie I sat, till, with a shuddering start, I +awoke, paddled back to the <i>Boreal</i>, and, till sleep conquered me, went on +my way. At ten the next morning, coming on deck, I spied to the west a group of +craft, and turned my course upon them. They turned out to be eight Shetland +sixerns, which must have drifted north-eastward hither. I examined them well, +but they were as the long list of the others: for all the men, and all the +boys, and all the dogs on them were dead. +</p> + +<hr /> + +<p> +I could have come to land a long time before I did: but I would not: I was so +afraid. For I was used to the silence of the ice: and I was used to the silence +of the sea: but, God knows it, I was afraid of the silence of the land. +</p> + +<hr /> + +<p> +Once, on the 15th July, I had seen a whale, or thought I did, spouting very +remotely afar on the S.E. horizon; and on the 19th I distinctly saw a shoal of +porpoises vaulting the sea-surface, in their swift-successive manner, +northward: and seeing them, I had said pitifully to myself: 'Well, I am not +quite alone in the world, then, my good God—not quite alone.' +</p> + +<p> +Moreover, some days later, the <i>Boreal</i> had found herself in a bank of cod +making away northward, millions of fish, for I saw them, and one afternoon +caught three, hand-running, with the hook. +</p> + +<p> +So the sea, at least, had its tribes to be my mates. +</p> + +<p> +But if I should find the land as still as the sea, without even the spouting +whale, or school of tumbling sea-hogs—<i>if Paris were dumber than the eternal +ice</i>—what then, I asked myself, should I do? +</p> + +<hr /> + +<p> +I could have made short work, and landed at Shetland, for I found myself as far +westward as longitude 11° 23' W.: but I would not: I was so afraid. The +shrinking within me to face that vague suspicion which I had, turned me first +to a foreign land. +</p> + +<p> +I made for Norway, and on the first night of this definite intention, at about +nine o'clock, the weather being gusty, the sky lowering, the air sombrous, and +the sea hard-looking, dark, and ridged, I was steaming along at a good rate, +holding the wheel, my poor port and starboard lights still burning there, when, +without the least notice, I received the roughest physical shock of my life, +being shot bodily right over the wheel, thence, as from a cannon, twenty feet +to the cabin-door, through it head-foremost down the companion-way, and still +beyond some six yards along the passage. I had crashed into some dark and dead +ship, probably of large size, though I never saw her, nor any sign of her; and +all that night, and the next day till four in the afternoon, the <i>Boreal</i> +went driving alone over the sea, whither she would: for I lay unconscious. When +I woke, I found that I had received really very small injuries, considering: +but I sat there on the floor a long time in a sulky, morose, disgusted, and +bitter mood; and when I rose, pettishly stopped the ship's engines, seeing my +twelve dead all huddled and disfigured. Now I was afraid to steam by night, and +even in the daytime I would not go on for three days: for I was childishly +angry with I know not what, and inclined to quarrel with Those whom I could not +see. +</p> + +<p> +However, on the fourth day, a rough swell which knocked the ship about, and +made me very uncomfortable, coaxed me into moving; and I did so with bows +turned eastward and southward. +</p> + +<p> +I sighted the Norway coast four days later, in latitude 63° 19', at noon of +the 11th August, and pricked off my course to follow it; but it was with a slow +and dawdling reluctance that I went, at much less than half-speed. In some +eight hours, as I knew from the chart, I ought to sight the lighthouse light on +Smoelen Island; and when quiet night came, the black water being branded with +trails of still moonlight, I passed quite close to it, between ten and twelve, +almost under the shadow of the mighty hills: but, oh my God, no light was +there. And all the way down I marked the rugged sea-board slumber darkling, +afar or near, with never, alas! one friendly light. +</p> + +<hr /> + +<p> +Well, on the 15th August I had another of those maniac raptures, whose passing +away would have left an elephant racked and prostrate. During four days I had +seen not one sign of present life on the Norway coast, only hills, hills, dead +and dark, and floating craft, all dead and dark; and my eyes now, I found, had +acquired a crazy fixity of stare into the very bottom of the vacant abyss of +nothingness, while I remained unconscious of being, save of one point, +rainbow-blue, far down in the infinite, which passed slowly from left to right +before my consciousness a little way, then vanished, came back, and passed +slowly again, from left to right continually; till some prick, or voice, in my +brain would startle me into the consciousness that I was staring, whispering +the profound confidential warning: <i>You must not stare so, or it is over with +you!</i>' Well, lost in a blank trance of this sort, I was leaning over the +wheel during the afternoon of the 15th, when it was as if some instinct or +premonition in my soul leapt up, and said aloud: 'If you look just yonder, +<i>you will see...!</i>' I started, and in one instant had surged up from all +that depth of reverie to reality: I glanced to the right: and there, at last, +my God, I saw something human which moved, rapidly moved: at last!—and it came +to me. +</p> + +<p> +That sense of recovery, of waking, of new solidity, of the comfortable usual, a +million-fold too intense for words—how sweetly consoling it was! Again now, as +I write, I can fancy and feel it—the rocky solidity, the adamant ordinary, on +which to base the feet, and live. From the day when I stood at the Pole, and +saw there the dizzy thing that made me swoon, there had come into my way not +one sign or trace that other beings like myself were alive on the earth with +me: till now, suddenly, I had the sweet indubitable proof: for on the +south-western sea, not four knots away, I saw a large, swift ship: and her +bows, which were sharp as a hatchet, were steadily chipping through the smooth +sea at a pretty high pace, throwing out profuse ribbony foams that went +wide-vawering, with outward undulations, far behind her length, as she ran the +sea in haste, straight northward. +</p> + +<p> +At the moment, I was steering about S.E. by S., fifteen miles out from a +shadowy-blue series of Norway mountains; and just giving the wheel one frantic +spin to starboard to bring me down upon her, I flew to the bridge, leant my +back on the main-mast, which passed through it, put a foot on the white iron +rail before me, and there at once felt all the mocking devils of distracted +revelry possess me, as I caught the cap from my long hairs, and commenced to +wave and wave and wave, red-faced maniac that I was: for at the second nearer +glance, I saw that she was flying an ensign at the main, and a long pennant at +the main-top, and I did not know what she was flying those flags there for: and +I was embittered and driven mad. +</p> + +<p> +With distinct minuteness did she print herself upon my consciousness in that +five minutes' interval: she was painted a dull and cholera yellow, like many +Russian ships, and there was a faded pink space at her bows under the line +where the yellow ceased: the ensign at her main I made out to be the +blue-and-white saltire, and she was clearly a Russian passenger-liner, +two-masted, two-funnelled, though from her funnels came no trace of smoke, and +the position of her steam-cones was anywhere. All about her course the sea was +spotted with wobbling splendours of the low sun, large coarse blots of glory +near the eye, but lessening to a smaller pattern in the distance, and at the +horizon refined to a homogeneous band of livid silver. +</p> + +<p> +The double speed of the <i>Boreal</i> and the other, hastening opposite ways, +must have been thirty-eight or forty knots, and the meeting was accomplished in +certainly less than five minutes: yet into that time I crowded years of life. I +was shouting passionately at her, my eyes starting from my head, my face all +inflamed with rage the most prone, loud and urgent. For she did not stop, nor +signal, nor make sign of seeing me, but came furrowing down upon me like +Juggernaut, with steadfast run. I lost reason, thought, memory, purpose, sense +of relation, in that access of delirium which transported me, and can only +remember now that in the midst of my shouting, a word, uttered by the fiends +who used my throat to express their frenzy, set me laughing high and madly: for +I was crying: 'Hi! Bravo! Why don't you stop? <i>Madmen! I have been to the +Pole!'</i> +</p> + +<p> +That instant an odour arose, and came, and struck upon my brain, most +detestable, most execrable; and while one might count ten, I was aware of her +near-sounding engines, and that cursed charnel went tearing past me on her +maenad way, not fifteen yards from my eyes and nostrils. She was a thing, my +God, from which the vulture and the jackal, prowling for offal, would fly with +shrieks of loathing. I had a glimpse of decks piled thick with her festered +dead. +</p> + +<p> +In big black letters on the round retreating yellow stern my eye-corner caught +the word <i>Yaroslav</i>, as I bent over the rail to retch and cough and vomit +at her. She was a horrid thing. +</p> + +<p> +This ship had certainly been pretty far south in tropical or sub-tropical +latitudes with her great crowd of dead: for all the bodies which I had seen +till then, so far from smelling ill, seemed to give out a certain perfume of +the peach. She was evidently one of those many ships of late years which have +substituted liquid air for steam, yet retained their old steam-funnels, +&c., in case of emergency: for air, I believe, was still looked at askance +by several builders, on account of the terrible accidents which it sometimes +caused. The <i>Boreal</i> herself is a similar instance of both motors. This +vessel, the <i>Yaroslav</i>, must have been left with working engines when her +crew were overtaken by death, and, her air-tanks being still unexhausted, must +have been ranging the ocean with impunity ever since, during I knew not how +many months, or, it might be, years. +</p> + +<p> +Well, I coasted Norway for nearly a hundred and sixty miles without once going +nearer land than two or three miles: for something held me back. But passing +the fjord-mouth where I knew that Aadheim was, I suddenly turned the helm to +port, almost before I knew that I was doing it, and made for land. +</p> + +<p> +In half an hour I was moving up an opening in the land with mountains on either +hand, streaky crags at their summit, umbrageous boscage below; and the whole +softened, as it were, by veils woven of the rainbow. +</p> + +<p> +This arm of water lies curved about like a thread which one drops, only the +curves are much more pointed, so that every few minutes the scene was changed, +though the vessel just crawled her way up, and I could see behind me nothing of +what was passed, or only a land-locked gleam like a lake. +</p> + +<p> +I never saw water so polished and glassy, like clarid polished marble, +reflecting everything quite clean-cut in its lucid abysm, over which hardly the +faintest zephyr breathed that still sun-down; it wimpled about the bluff +<i>Boreal</i>, which seemed to move as if careful not to bruise it, in rich +wrinkles and creases, like glycerine, or dewy-trickling lotus-oil; yet it was +only the sea: and the spectacle yonder was only crags, and autumn-foliage and +mountain-slope: yet all seemed caught-up and chaste, rapt in a trance of rose +and purple, and made of the stuff of dreams and bubbles, of pollen-of-flowers, +and rinds of the peach. +</p> + +<p> +I saw it not only with delight, but with complete astonishment: having +forgotten, as was too natural in all that long barrenness of ice and sea, that +anything could be so ethereally fair: yet homely, too, human, familiar, and +consoling. The air here was richly spiced with that peachy scent, and there was +a Sabbath and a nepenthe and a charm in that place at that hour, as it were of +those gardens of Hesperus, and fields of asphodel, reserved for the spirits of +the just. +</p> + +<p> +Alas! but I had the glass at my side, and for me nepenthe was mixed with a +despair immense as the vault of heaven, my good God: for anon I would take it +up to spy some perched hut of the peasant, or burg of the 'bonder,' on the +peaks: and I saw no one there; and to the left, at the third marked bend of the +fjord, where there is one of those watch-towers that these people used for +watching in-coming fish, I spied, lying on a craggy slope just before the +tower, a body which looked as if it must surely tumble head-long, but did not. +And when I saw that, I felt definitely, for the first time, that shoreless +despair which I alone of men have felt, high beyond the stars, and deep as +hell; and I fell to staring again that blank stare of Nirvana and the lunacy of +Nothingness, wherein Time merges in Eternity, and all being, like one drop of +water, flies scattered to fill the bottomless void of space, and is lost. +</p> + +<p> +The <i>Boreal's</i> bow walking over a little empty fishing-boat roused me, and +a minute later, just before I came to a new promontory and bend, I saw two +people. The shore there is some three feet above the water, and edged with +boulders of rock, about which grows a fringe of shrubs and small trees: behind +this fringe is a path, curving upward through a sombre wooded little gorge; and +on the path, near the water, I saw a driver of one of those Norwegian sulkies +that were called karjolers: he, on the high front seat, was dead, lying +sideways and backwards, with low head resting on the wheel; and on a trunk +strapped to a frame on the axle behind was a boy, his head, too, resting +sideways on the wheel, near the other's; and the little pony was dead, pitched +forward on its head and fore-knees, tilting the shafts downward; and some +distance from them on the water floated an empty skiff. +</p> + +<hr /> + +<p> +When I turned the next fore-land, I all at once began to see a number of craft, +which increased as I advanced, most of them small boats, with some schooners, +sloops, and larger craft, the majority a-ground: and suddenly now I was +conscious that, mingling with that delicious odour of +spring-blossoms—profoundly modifying, yet not destroying it—was another odour, +wafted to me on the wings of the very faint land-breeze: and 'Man,' I said, 'is +decomposing': for I knew it well: it was the odour of human corruption. +</p> + +<hr /> + +<p> +The fjord opened finally in a somewhat wider basin, shut-in by quite steep, +high-towering mountains, which reflected themselves in the water to their last +cloudy crag: and, at the end of this I saw ships, a quay, and a modest, homely +old town. +</p> + +<p> +Not a sound, not one: only the languidly-working engines of the <i>Boreal</i>. +Here, it was clear, the Angel of Silence had passed, and his scythe mown. +</p> + +<p> +I ran and stopped the engines, and, without anchoring, got down into an empty +boat that lay at the ship's side when she stopped; and I paddled twenty yards +toward the little quay. There was a brigantine with all her courses set, three +jibs, stay-sails, square-sails, main and fore-sails, and gaff-top-sail, looking +hanging and listless in that calm place, and wedded to a still copy of herself, +mast-downward, in the water; there were three lumber-schooners, a forty-ton +steam-boat, a tiny barque, five Norway herring-fishers, and ten or twelve +shallops: and the sailing-craft had all fore-and-aft sails set, and about each, +as I passed among them, brooded an odour that was both sweet and abhorrent, an +odour more suggestive of the very genius of mortality—the inner mind and +meaning of Azrael—than aught that I could have conceived: for all, as I soon +saw, were crowded with dead. +</p> + +<p> +Well, I went up the old mossed steps, in that strange dazed state in which one +notices frivolous things: I remember, for instance, feeling the lightness of my +new clothes: for the weather was quite mild, and the day before I had changed +to Summer things, having on now only a common undyed woollen shirt, the sleeves +rolled up, and cord trousers, with a belt, and a cloth cap over my long hair, +and an old pair of yellow shoes, without laces, and without socks. And I stood +on the unhewn stones of the edge of the quay, and looked abroad over a largish +piece of unpaved ground, which lay between the first house-row and the quay. +</p> + +<p> +What I saw was not only most woeful, but wildly startling: woeful, because a +great crowd of people had assembled, and lay dead, there; and wildly startling, +because something in their <i>tout ensemble</i> told me in one minute why they +were there in such number. +</p> + +<p> +They were there in the hope, and with the thought, to fly westward by boat. +</p> + +<p> +And the something which told me this was a certain <i>foreign</i> air about +that field of the dead as the eye rested on it, something un-northern, +southern, and Oriental. +</p> + +<p> +Two yards from my feet, as I stepped to the top, lay a group of three: one a +Norway peasant-girl in skirt of olive-green, scarlet stomacher, embroidered +bodice, Scotch bonnet trimmed with silver lace, and big silver shoe-buckles; +the second was an old Norway man in knee-breeches, and eighteenth-century +small-clothes, and red worsted cap; and the third was, I decided, an old Jew of +the Polish Pale, in gaberdine and skull-cap, with ear-locks. +</p> + +<p> +I went nearer to where they lay thick as reaped stubble between the quay and a +little stone fountain in the middle of the space, and I saw among those +northern dead two dark-skinned women in costly dress, either Spanish or +Italian, and the yellower mortality of a Mongolian, probably a Magyar, and a +big negro in zouave dress, and some twenty-five obvious French, and two Morocco +fezes, and the green turban of a shereef, and the white of an Ulema. +</p> + +<p> +And I asked myself this question: 'How came these foreign stragglers here in +this obscure northern town?' +</p> + +<p> +And my wild heart answered: 'There has been an impassioned stampede, northward +and westward, of all the tribes of Man. And this that I, Adam Jeffson, here see +is but the far-tossed spray of that monstrous, infuriate flood.' +</p> + +<hr /> + +<p> +Well, I passed up a street before me, careful, careful where I trod. It was not +utterly silent, nor was the quay-square, but haunted by a pretty dense cloud of +mosquitoes, and dreamy twinges of music, like the drawing of the violin-bow in +elf-land. The street was narrow, pavered, steep, and dark; and the sensations +with which I, poor bent man, passed through that dead town, only Atlas, fabled +to bear the burden of this Earth, could divine. +</p> + +<hr /> + +<p> +I thought to myself: If now a wave from the Deep has washed over this planetary +ship of earth, and I, who alone happened to be in the extreme bows, am the sole +survivor of that crew?... What then, my God, shall I do? +</p> + +<hr /> + +<p> +I felt, I felt, that in this townlet, save the water-gnats of Norway, was no +living thing; that the hum and the savour of Eternity filled, and wrapped, and +embalmed it. +</p> + +<p> +The houses are mostly of wood, some of them fairly large, with a +<i>porte-cochère</i> leading into a semi-circular yard, around which the +building stands, very steep-roofed, and shingled, in view of the heavy +snow-masses of winter. Glancing into one open casement near the ground, I saw +an aged woman, stout and capped, lie on her face before a very large porcelain +stove; but I paced on without stoppage, traversed several streets, and came +out, as it became dark, upon a piece of grass-land leading downward to a +mountain-gorge. It was some distance along this gorge that I found myself +sitting the next morning: and how, and in what trance, I passed that whole +blank night is obliterated from my consciousness. When I looked about with the +return of light I saw majestic fir-grown mountains on either hand, almost +meeting overhead at some points, deeply shading the mossy gorge. I rose, and +careless of direction, went still onward, and walked and walked for hours, +unconscious of hunger; there was a profusion of wild mountain-strawberries, +very tiny, which must grow almost into winter, a few of which I ate; there were +blue gentianellas, and lilies-of-the-valley, and luxuriance of verdure, and a +noise of waters. Occasionally, I saw little cataracts on high, fluttering like +white wild rags, for they broke in the mid-fall, and were caught away, and +scattered; patches also of reaped hay and barley, hung up, in a singular way, +on stakes six feet high, I suppose to dry; there were perched huts, and a +seemingly inaccessible small castle or burg, but none of these did I enter: and +five bodies only I saw in the gorge, a woman with a babe, and a man with two +small oxen. +</p> + +<p> +About three in the afternoon I was startled to find myself there, and turned +back. It was dark when I again passed through those gloomy streets of Aadheim, +making for the quay, and now I felt both my hunger and a dropping weariness. I +had no thought of entering any house, but as I passed by one open +<i>porte-cochère</i>, something, I know not what, made me turn sharply in, for +my mind had become as fluff on the winds, not working of its own action, but +the sport of impulses that seemed external. I went across the yard, and +ascended a wooden spiral stair by a twilight which just enabled me to pick my +way among five or six vague forms fallen there. In that confined place +fantastic qualms beset me; I mounted to the first landing, and tried the door, +but it was locked; I mounted to the second: the door was open, and with a chill +reluctance I took a step inward where all was pitch darkness, the window-stores +being drawn. I hesitated: it was very dark. I tried to utter that word of mine, +but it came in a whisper inaudible to my ears: I tried again, and this time +heard myself say: '<i>anyone</i>?' At the same time I had made another step +forward, and trodden upon a soft abdomen; and at that contact terrors the most +cold and ghastly thrilled me through and through, for it was as though I saw in +that darkness the sudden eyeballs of Hell and frenzy glare upon me, and with a +low gurgle of affright I was gone, helter-skelter down the stairs, treading +upon flesh, across the yard, and down the street, with pelting feet, and open +arms, and sobbing bosom, for I thought that all Aadheim was after me; nor was +my horrid haste appeased till I was on board the <i>Boreal</i>, and moving down +the fjord. +</p> + +<p> +Out to sea, then, I went again; and within the next few days I visited Bergen, +and put in at Stavanger. And I saw that Bergen and Stavanger were dead. +</p> + +<p> +It was then, on the 19th August, that I turned my bow toward my native land. +</p> + +<hr /> + +<p> +From Stavanger I steered a straight course for the Humber. +</p> + +<p> +I had no sooner left behind me the Norway coast than I began to meet the ships, +the ships—ship after ship; and by the time I entered the zone of the ordinary +alternation of sunny day and sunless night, I was moving through the midst of +an incredible number of craft, a mighty and wide-spread fleet. +</p> + +<p> +Over all that great expanse of the North Sea, where, in its most populous days +of trade, the sailor might perhaps sight a sail or two, I had now at every +moment at least ten or twelve within scope of the glass, oftentimes as many as +forty, forty-five. +</p> + +<p> +And very still they lay on a still sea, itself a dead thing, livid as the lips +of death; and there was an intensity in the calm that was appalling: for the +ocean seemed weighted, and the air drugged. +</p> + +<p> +Extremely slow was my advance, for at first I would not leave any ship, however +remotely small, without approaching sufficiently to investigate her, at least +with the spy-glass: and a strange multitudinous mixture of species they were, +trawlers in hosts, war-ships of every nation, used, it seemed, as +passenger-boats, smacks, feluccas, liners, steam-barges, great four-masters +with sails, Channel boats, luggers, a Venetian <i>burchiello</i>, colliers, +yachts, <i>remorqueurs</i>, training ships, dredgers, two <i>dahabeeahs</i> +with curving gaffs, Marseilles fishers, a Maltese <i>speronare</i>, American +off-shore sail, Mississippi steam-boats, Sorrento lug-schooners, Rhine punts, +yawls, old frigates and three-deckers, called to novel use, Stromboli caiques, +Yarmouth tubs, xebecs, Rotterdam flat-bottoms, floats, mere gunwaled +rafts—anything from anywhere that could bear a human freight on water had come, +and was here: and all, I knew, had been making westward, or northward, or both; +and all, I knew, were crowded; and all were tombs, listlessly wandering, my +God, on the wandering sea with their dead. +</p> + +<p> +And so fair was the world about them, too: the brightest suavest autumn +weather; all the still air aromatic with that vernal perfume of peach: yet not +so utterly still, but if I passed close to the lee of any floating thing, the +spicy stirrings of morning or evening wafted me faint puffs of the odour of +mortality over-ripe for the grave. +</p> + +<p> +So abominable and accursed did this become to me, such a plague and a hissing, +vague as was the offence, that I began to shun rather than seek the ships, and +also I now dropped my twelve, whom I had kept to be my companions all the way +from the Far North, one by one, into the sea: for now I had definitely passed +into a zone of settled warmth. +</p> + +<p> +I was convinced, however, that the poison, whatever it might be, had some +embalming, or antiseptic, effect upon the bodies: at Aadheim, Bergen and +Stavanger, for instance, where the temperature permitted me to go without a +jacket, only the merest hints and whiffs of the processes of dissolution had +troubled me. +</p> + +<hr /> + +<p> +Very benign, I say, and pleasant to see, was sky and sea during all that +voyage: but it was at sun-set that my sense of the wondrously beautiful was +roused and excited, in spite of that great burden which I carried. Certainly, I +never saw sun-sets resembling those, nor could have conceived of aught so +flamboyant, extravagant, and bewitched: for the whole heaven seemed turned into +an arena for warring Hierarchies, warring for the universe, or it was like the +wild countenance of God defeated, and flying marred and bloody from His +enemies. But many evenings I watched with unintelligent awe, believing it but a +portent of the un-sheathed sword of the Almighty; till, one morning, a thought +pricked me like a sword, for I suddenly remembered the great sun-sets of the +later nineteenth century, witnessed in Europe, America, and, I believe, over +the world, after the eruption of the volcano of Krakatoa. +</p> + +<p> +And whereas I had before said to myself: 'If now a wave from the Deep has +washed over this planetary ship of earth...,' I said now: 'A wave—but not from +the Deep: a wave rather which she had reserved, and has spouted, from her own +un-motherly entrails...' +</p> + +<hr /> + +<p> +I had some knowledge of Morse telegraphy, and of the manipulation of +tape-machines, telegraphic typing-machines, and the ordinary wireless +transmitter and coherer, as of most little things of that sort which came +within the outskirts of the interest of a man of science; I had collaborated +with Professor Stanistreet in the production of a text-book called +'Applications of Science to the Arts,' which had brought us some notoriety; +and, on the whole, the <i>minutiae</i> of modern things were still pretty fresh +in my memory. I could therefore have wired from Bergen or Stavanger, supposing +the batteries not run down, to somewhere: but I would not: I was so afraid; +afraid lest for ever from nowhere should come one answering click, or flash, or +stirring.... +</p> + +<hr /> + +<p> +I could have made short work, and landed at Hull: but I would not: I was so +afraid. For I was used to the silence of the ice: and I was used to the silence +of the sea: but I was afraid of the silence of England. +</p> + +<hr /> + +<p> +I came in sight of the coast on the morning of the 26th August, somewhere about +Hornsea, but did not see any town, for I put the helm to port, and went on +further south, no longer bothering with the instruments, but coasting at +hap-hazard, now in sight of land, and now in the centre of a circle of sea; not +admitting to myself the motive of this loitering slowness, nor thinking at all, +but ignoring the deep-buried fear of the to-morrow which I shirked, and +instinctively hiding myself in to-day. I passed the Wash, I passed Yarmouth, +Felixstowe. By now the things that floated motionless on the sea were beyond +numbering, for I could hardly lower my eyes ten minutes and lift them, without +seeing yet another there: so that soon after dusk I, too, had to lie still +among them all, till morning: for they lay dark, and to move at any pace would +have been to drown the already dead. +</p> + +<p> +Well, I came to the Thames-mouth, and lay pretty well in among the Flats and +Pan Sands towards eight one evening, not seven miles from Sheppey and the North +Kent coast: and I did not see any Nore Light, nor Girdler Light: and all along +the coast I had seen no light: but as to that I said not one word to myself, +not admitting it, nor letting my heart know what my brain thought, nor my brain +know what my heart surmised; but with a daft and mock-mistrustful under-look I +would regard the darkling land, holding it a sentient thing that would be +playing a prank upon a poor man like me. +</p> + +<p> +And the next morning, when I moved again, my furtive eye-corners were very well +aware of the Prince's Channel light-ship, and also the Tongue ship, for there +they were: but I would not look at them at all, nor go near them: for I did not +wish to have anything to do with whatever might have happened beyond my own +ken, and it was better to look straight before, seeing nothing, and concerning +one's-self with one's-self. +</p> + +<p> +The next evening, after having gone out to sea again, I was in a little to the +E. by S. of the North Foreland: and I saw no light there, nor any Sandhead +light; but over the sea vast signs of wreckage, and the coasts were strewn with +old wrecked fleets. I turned about S.E., very slowly moving—for anywhere +hereabouts hundreds upon hundreds of craft lay dead within a ten-mile circle of +sea—and by two in the fore-day had wandered up well in sight of the French +cliffs: for I had said: 'I will go and see the light-beam of the great +revolving-drum on Calais pier that nightly beams half-way over-sea to England.' +And the moon shone clear in the southern heaven that morning, like a great old +dying queen whose Court swarms distantly from around her, diffident, pale, and +tremulous, the paler the nearer; and I could see the mountain-shadows on her +spotty full-face, and her misty aureole, and her lights on the sea, as it were +kisses stolen in the kingdom of sleep; and all among the quiet ships mysterious +white trails and powderings of light, like palace-corridors in some fairy-land +forlorn, full of breathless wan whispers, scandals, and runnings-to-and-fro, +with leers, and agitated last embraces, and flight of the princess, and +death-bed of the king; and on the N.E. horizon a bank of brown cloud that +seemed to have no relation with the world; and yonder, not far, the white +coast-cliffs, not so low as at Calais near, but arranged in masses separated by +vales of sward, each with its wreck: but no light of any revolving-drum I saw. +</p> + +<hr /> + +<p> +I could not sleep that night: for all the operations of my mind and body seemed +in abeyance. Mechanically I turned the ship westward again; and when the sun +came up, there, hardly two miles from me, were the cliffs of Dover; and on the +crenulated summit of the Castle I spied the Union Jack hang motionless. +</p> + +<p> +I heard eight, nine o'clock strike in the cabin, and I was still at sea. But +some mad, audacious whisper was at my brain: and at 10.30, the 2nd September, +immediately opposite the Cross Wall Custom House, the <i>Boreal's</i> +anchor-chain, after a voyage of three years, two months, and fourteen days, ran +thundering, thundering, through the starboard hawse-hole. +</p> + +<p> +Ah heaven! but I must have been stark mad to let the anchor go! for the effect +upon me of that shocking obstreperous hubbub, breaking in upon all that +cemetery repose that blessed morning, and lasting it seemed a year, was most +appalling; and at the sudden racket I stood excruciated, with shivering knees +and flinching heart, God knows: for not less terrifically uproarious than the +clatter of the last Trump it raged and raged, and I thought that all the +billion dead could not fail to start, and rise, at alarum so excessive, and +question me with their eyes.... +</p> + +<hr /> + +<p> +On the top of the Cross Wall near I saw a grey crab fearlessly crawl; at the +end where the street begins, I saw a single gas-light palely burn that broad +day, and at its foot a black man lay on his face, clad only in a shirt and one +boot; the harbour was almost packed with every sort of craft, and on a +Calais-Dover boat, eight yards from my stern, which must have left Calais +crowded to suffocation, I saw the rotted dead lie heaped, she being unmoored, +and continually grinding against an anchored green brig. +</p> + +<p> +And when I saw that, I dropped down upon my knees at the capstan, and my poor +heart sobbed out the frail cry: 'Well, Lord God, Thou hast destroyed the work +of Thy hand...' +</p> + +<hr /> + +<p> +After a time I got up, went below in a state of somnambulism, took a packet of +pemmican cakes, leapt to land, and went following the railway that runs from +the Admiralty Pier. In an enclosed passage ten yards long, with railway masonry +on one side, I saw five dead lie, and could not believe that I was in England, +for all were dark-skinned people, three gaudily dressed, and two in flowing +white robes. It was the same when I turned into a long street, leading +northward, for here were a hundred, or more, and never saw I, except in +Constantinople, where I once lived eighteen months, so variegated a mixture of +races, black, brunette, brown, yellow, white, in all the shades, some emaciated +like people dead from hunger, and, overlooking them all, one English boy with a +clean Eton collar sitting on a bicycle, supported by a lamp-post which his arms +clasped, he proving clearly the extraordinary suddenness of the death which had +overtaken them all. +</p> + +<p> +I did not know whither, nor why, I went, nor had I the least idea whether all +this was visually seen by me in the world which I had known, or in some other, +or was all phantasy of my disembodied spirit—for I had the thought that I, too, +might be dead since old ages, and my spirit wandering now through the universe +of space, in which there is neither north nor south, nor up nor down, nor +measure nor relation, nor aught whatever, save an uneasy consciousness of a +dream about bottomlessness. Of grief or pain, I think, I felt nothing; though I +have a sort of memory now that some sound, resembling a sob or groan, though it +was neither, came at regular clockwork intervals from my bosom during three or +four days. Meantime, my brain registered like a tape-machine details the most +frivolous, the most ludicrous—the name of a street, Strond Street, Snargate +Street; the round fur cap—black fur for the side, white ermine for the top—of a +portly Karaite priest on his back, whose robes had been blown to his spread +knees, as if lifted and neatly folded there; a violin-bow gripped between the +thick, irregular teeth of a little Spaniard with brushed-back hair and +mad-looking eyes; odd shoes on the foot of a French girl, one black, one brown. +They lay in the street about as numerous as gunners who fall round their +carriage, at intervals of five to ten feet, the majority—as was the case also +in Norway, and on the ships—in poses of distraction, with spread arms, or +wildly distorted limbs, like men who, the instant before death, called upon the +rocks and hills to cover them. +</p> + +<hr /> + +<p> +On the left I came to an opening in the land, called, I believe, 'The Shaft,' +and into this I turned, climbing a very great number of steps, almost covered +at one point with dead: the steps I began to count, but left off, then the +dead, and left off. Finally, at the top, which must be even higher than the +Castle, I came to a great open space laid out with gravel-walks, and saw +fortifications, barracks, a citadel. I did not know the town, except by +passings-through, and was surprised at the breadth of view. Between me and the +Castle to the east lay the district of crowding houses, brick and ragstone, +mixed in the distance with vague azure haze; and to the right the harbour, the +sea, with their ships; and visible around me on the heights seven or eight +dead, biting the dust; the sun now high and warm, with hardly a cloud in the +sky; and yonder a mist, which was the coast of France. +</p> + +<p> +It seemed too big for one poor man. +</p> + +<p> +My head nodded. I sat on a bench, black-painted and hard, the seat and back of +horizontal boards, with intervals; and as I looked, I nodded, heavy-headed and +weary: for it was too big for me. And as I nodded, with forehead propped on my +left hand, and the packet of pemmican cakes in my right, there was in my head, +somehow, an old street-song of my childhood: and I groaned it sleepily, like +coronachs and drear funereal nenias, dirging; and the packet beat time in my +right hand, falling and raising, falling heavily and rising, in time. +</p> + +<p class="poem"> +I'll buy the ring,<br/> +You'll rear the kids:<br/> +Servants to wait on our ting, ting, ting.<br/> +. . . . .<br/> +. . . . .<br/> +Ting, ting,<br/> +Won't we be happy?<br/> +Ting, ting,<br/> +That shall be it:<br/> +I'll buy the ring,<br/> +You'll rear the kids:<br/> +Servants to wait on our ting, ting, ting.<br/> +. . . . .<br/> +. . . . . +</p> + +<p> +So maundering, I fell forward upon my face, and for twenty-three hours, the +living undistinguished from the dead, I slept there. +</p> + +<hr /> + +<p> +I was awakened by drizzle, leapt up, looked at a silver chronometer which, +attached by a leather to my belt, I carried in my breeches-pocket, and saw that +it was 10 A.M. The sky was dark, and a moaning wind—almost a new thing now to +me—had arisen. +</p> + +<p> +I ate some pemmican, for I had a reluctance—needless as it turned out—to touch +any of the thousand luxuries here, sufficient no doubt, in a town like Dover +alone, to last me five or six hundred years, if I could live so long; and, +having eaten, I descended The Shaft, and spent the whole day, though it rained +and blustered continually, in wandering about. Reasoning, in my numb way, from +the number of ships on the sea, I expected to find the town over-crowded with +dead: but this was not so; and I should say, at a venture, that not a thousand +English, nor fifteen thousand foreigners, were in it: for that westward rage +and stampede must have operated here also, leaving the town empty but for the +ever new-coming hosts. +</p> + +<p> +The first thing which I did was to go into an open grocer's shop, which was +also a post and telegraph office, with the notion, I suppose, to get a message +through to London. In the shop a single gas-light was burning its last, and +this, with that near the pier, were the only two that I saw: and ghastly enough +they looked, transparently wannish, and as it were ashamed, like blinking +night-things overtaken by the glare of day. I conjectured that they had so +burned and watched during months, or years: for they were now blazing +diminished, with streaks and rays in the flame, as if by effort, and if these +were the only two, they must have needed time to all-but exhaust the works. +Before the counter lay a fashionably-dressed negro with a number of tied +parcels scattered about him, and on the counter an empty till, and behind it a +tall thin woman with her face resting sideways in the till, fingers clutching +the outer counter-rim, and such an expression of frantic terror as I never saw. +I got over the counter to a table behind a wire-gauze, and, like a numb fool, +went over the Morse alphabet in my mind before touching the transmitting key, +though I knew no code-words, and there, big enough to be seen, was the ABC +dial, and who was to answer my message I did not ask myself: for habit was +still strong upon me, and my mind refused to reason from what I saw to what I +did not see; but the moment I touched the key, and peered greedily at the +galvanometer-needle at my right, I saw that it did not move, for no current was +passing; and with a kind of fright, I was up, leapt, and got away from the +place, though there was a great number of telegrams about the receiver which, +if I had been in my senses, I would have stopped and read. +</p> + +<p> +Turning the corner of the next street, I saw wide-open the door of a +substantial large house, and went in. From bottom to top there was no one +there, except one English girl, sitting back in an easy-chair in the +drawing-room, which was richly furnished with Valenciennes curtains and +azure-satin things. She was a girl of the lowest class, hardly clad in black +rags, and there she lay with hanging jaw, in a very crooked and awkward pose, a +jemmy at her feet, in her left hand a roll of bank-notes, and in her lap three +watches. In fact, the bodies which I saw here were, in general, either those of +new-come foreigners, or else of the very poor, the very old, or the very young. +</p> + +<p> +But what made me remember this house was that I found here on one of the sofas +a newspaper: <i>The Kent Express</i>; and sitting unconscious of my dead +neighbour, I pored a long while over what was written there. +</p> + +<p> +It said in a passage which I tore out and kept: +</p> + +<p> +'Telegraphic communication with Tilsit, Insterburg, Warsaw, Cracow, Przemysl, +Gross Wardein, Karlsburg, and many smaller towns lying immediately eastward of +the 21st parallel of longitude has ceased during the night. In some at least of +them there must have been operators still at their duty, undrawn into the great +westward-rushing torrent: but as all messages from Western Europe have been +answered only by that dread mysterious silence which, just three months and two +days since, astounded the world in the case of Eastern New Zealand, we can only +assume that these towns, too, have been added to the long and mournful list; +indeed, after last evening's Paris telegrams we might have prophesied with some +certainty, not merely their overthrow, but even the hour of it: for the +rate-uniformity of the slow-riding vapour which is touring our globe is no +longer doubtful, and has even been definitely fixed by Professor Craven at +100-1/2 miles per day, or 4 miles 330 yards per hour. Its nature, its origin, +remains, of course, nothing but matter of conjecture: for it leaves no living +thing behind it: nor, God knows, is that of any moment now to us who remain. +The rumour that it is associated with an odour of almonds is declared, on high +authority, to be improbable; but the morose purple of its impending gloom has +been attested by tardy fugitives from the face of its rolling and smoky march. +</p> + +<p> +'Is this the end? We do not, and cannot, believe it. Will the pure sky which we +to-day see above us be invaded in nine days, or less, by this smoke of the Pit +of Darkness? In spite of the assurances of the scientists, we still doubt. For, +if so, to what purpose that long drama of History, in which we seem to see the +Hand of the Dramaturgist? Surely, the end of a Fifth Act should be obvious, +satisfying to one's sense of the complete: but History, so far, long as it has +been, resembles rather a Prologue than a Fifth Act. Can it be that the Manager, +utterly dissatisfied, would sweep all off, and 'hang up' the piece for ever? +Certainly, the sins of mankind have been as scarlet: and if the fair earth +which he has turned into Hell, send forth now upon him the smoke of Hell, +little the wonder. But we cannot yet believe. There is a sparing strain in +nature, and through the world, as a thread, is spun a silence which smiles, and +on the end of events we find placarded large the words: "Why were ye afraid?" A +dignified Hope, therefore—even now, when we cower beneath this worldwide shadow +of the wings of the Condor of Death—becomes us: and, indeed, we see such an +attitude among some of the humblest of our people, from whose heart ascends the +cry: "Though He slay me, yet will I trust in Him." Here, therefore, O Lord! O +Lord, look down, and save! +</p> + +<p> +'But even as we thus write of hope, Reason, if we would hear her, whispers us +"fool": and inclement is the sky of earth. No more ships can New York Harbour +contain, and whereas among us men die weekly of privations by the hundred +thousand, yonder across the sea they perish by the million: for where the rich +are pinched, how can the poor live? Already 700 out of the 1000 millions of our +race have perished, and the empires of civilisation have crumbled like +sand-castles in a horror of anarchy. Thousands upon thousands of unburied dead, +anticipating the more deliberate doom that comes and smokes, and rides and +comes and comes, and does not fail, encumber the streets of London, Manchester, +Liverpool. The guides of the nation have fled; the father stabs his child, and +the wife her husband, for a morsel of food; the fields lie waste; wanton crowds +carouse in our churches, universities, palaces, banks and hospitals; we +understand that late last night three territorial regiments, the Munster +Fusiliers, and the Lotian and East Lancashire Regiments, riotously disbanded +themselves, shooting two officers; infectious diseases, as we all know, have +spread beyond limit; in several towns the police seem to have disappeared, and, +in nearly all, every vestige of decency; the results following upon the sudden +release of the convicts appear to be monstrous in the respective districts; and +within three short months Hell seems to have acquired this entire planet, +sending forth Horror, like a rabid wolf, and Despair, like a disastrous sky, to +devour and confound her. Hear, therefore, O Lord, and forgive our iniquities! O +Lord, we beseech Thee! Look down, O Lord, and spare!' +</p> + +<hr /> + +<p> +When I had read this, and the rest of the paper, which had one whole sheet-side +blank, I sat a long hour there, eyeing a little patch of the purple ash on a +waxed board near the corner where the girl sat with her time-pieces, so useless +in her Eternity; and there was not a feeling in me, except a pricking of +curiosity, which afterwards became morbid and ravenous, to know something more +of that cloud, or smoke, of which this man spoke, of its dates, its origin, its +nature, its minute details. Afterwards, I went down, and entered several +houses, searching for more papers, but did not find any; then I found a +paper-shop which was open, with boards outside, but either it had been +deserted, or printing must have stopped about the date of the paper which I had +read, for the only three news-papers there were dated long prior, and I did not +read them. +</p> + +<p> +Now it was raining, and a blustering autumn day it was, distributing the odours +of the world, and bringing me continual mixed whiffs of flowers and the hateful +stench of decay. But I would not mind it much. +</p> + +<p> +I wandered and wandered, till I was tired of spahi and bashi-bazouk, of Greek +and Catalan, of Russian 'pope' and Coptic abuna, of dragoman and Calmuck, of +Egyptian maulawi and Afghan mullah, Neapolitan and sheik, and the nightmare of +wild poses, colours, stuffs and garbs, the yellow-green kefie of the Bedouin, +shawl-turbans of Baghdad, the voluminous rose-silk tob of women, and +face-veils, and stark distorted nakedness, and sashes of figured muslin, and +the workman's cords, and the red tarboosh. About four, for very weariness, I +was sitting on a door-steep, bent beneath the rain; but soon was up again, +fascinated no doubt by this changing bazaar of sameness, its chance +combinations and permutations, and novelty in monotony. About five I was at a +station, marked Harbour Station, in and about which lay a considerable crowd, +but not one train. I sat again, and rested, rose and roamed again; soon after +six I found myself at another station, called 'Priory'; and here I saw two long +trains, both crowded, one on a siding, and one at the up-platform. +</p> + +<p> +I examined both engines, and found them of the old boiler steam-type with +manholes, heaters, autoclaves, feed-pump, &c., now rare in western +countries, except England. In one there was no water, but in that at the +platform, the float-lever, barely tilted toward the float, showed that there +was some in the boiler. Of this one I overhauled all the machinery, and found +it good, though rusted. There was plenty of fuel, and oil, which I supplemented +from a near shop: and during ninety minutes my brain and hands worked with an +intelligence as it were automatic, of their own motion. After three journeys +across the station and street, I saw the fire blaze well, and the manometer +move; when the lever of the safety-valve, whose load I lightened by half an +atmosphere, lifted, I jumped down, and tried to disconnect the long string of +carriages from the engine: but failed, the coupling being an automatic +arrangement new to me; nor did I care. It was now very dark; but there was +still oil for bull's-eye and lantern, and I lit them. I forgot nothing. I +rolled driver and stoker—the guard was absent—one to the platform, one upon the +rails: and I took their place there. At about 8.30 I ran out from Dover, my +throttle-valve pealing high a long falsetto through the bleak and desolate +night. +</p> + +<hr /> + +<p> +My aim was London. But even as I set out, my heart smote me: I knew nothing of +the metals, their junctions, facing-points, sidings, shuntings, and +complexities. Even as to whether I was going toward, or away from, London, I +was not sure. But just in proportion as my first timorousness of the engine +hardened into familiarity and self-sureness, I quickened speed, wilfully, with +an obstinacy deaf and blind. +</p> + +<p> +Finally, from a mere crawl at first, I was flying at a shocking velocity, while +something, tongue in cheek, seemed to whisper me: 'There must be other trains +blocking the lines, at stations, in yards, and everywhere—it is a maniac's +ride, a ride of death, and Flying Dutchman's frenzy: remember your dark +five-deep brigade of passengers, who rock and bump together, and will suffer in +a collision.' But with mulish stubbornness I thought: 'They wished to go to +London'; and on I raged, not wildly exhilarated, so far as I can remember, nor +lunatic, but feeling the dull glow of a wicked and morose Unreason urge in my +bosom, while I stoked all blackened at the fire, or saw the vague mass of dead +horse or cow, running trees and fields, and dark homestead and deep-slumbering +farm, flit ghostly athwart the murky air, as the half-blind saw 'men like trees +walking.' +</p> + +<p> +Long, however, it did not last: I could not have been twenty miles from Dover +when, on a long reach of straight lines, I made out before me a tarpaulined +mass opposite a signal-point: and at once callousness changed to terror within +me. But even as I plied the brake, I felt that it was too late: I rushed to the +gangway to make a wild leap down an embankment to the right, but was thrown +backward by a quick series of rough bumps, caused by eight or ten cattle which +lay there across the lines: and when I picked myself up, and leapt, some +seconds before the impact, the speed must have considerably slackened, for I +received no fracture, but lay in semi-coma in a patch of yellow-flowered whin +on level ground, and was even conscious of a fire on the lines forty yards +away, and, all the night, of vague thunder sounding from somewhere. +</p> + +<hr /> + +<p> +About five, or half-past, in the morning I was sitting up, rubbing my eyes, in +a dim light mixed with drizzle. I could see that the train of my last night's +debauch was a huddled-up chaos of fallen carriages and disfigured bodies. A +five-barred gate on my left opened into a hedge, and swung with creaks: two +yards from my feet lay a little shaggy pony with swollen wan abdomen, the very +picture of death, and also about me a number of dead wet birds. +</p> + +<p> +I picked myself up, passed through the gate, and walked up a row of trees to a +house at their end. I found it to be a little country-tavern with a barn, +forming one house, the barn part much larger than the tavern part. I went into +the tavern by a small side-door—behind the bar—into a parlour—up a little +stair—into two rooms: but no one was there. I then went round into the barn, +which was paved with cobble-stones, and there lay a dead mare and foal, some +fowls, with two cows. A ladder-stair led to a closed trap-door in the floor +above. I went up, and in the middle of a wilderness of hay saw nine +people—labourers, no doubt—five men and four women, huddled together, and with +them a tin-pail containing the last of some spirit; so that these had died +merry. +</p> + +<p> +I slept three hours among them, and afterwards went back to the tavern, and had +some biscuits of which I opened a new tin, with some ham, jam and apples, of +which I made a good meal, for my pemmican was gone. +</p> + +<p> +Afterwards I went following the rail-track on foot, for the engines of both the +collided trains were smashed. I knew northward from southward by the position +of the sun: and after a good many stoppages at houses, and by railway-banks, I +came, at about eleven in the night, to a great and populous town. +</p> + +<p> +By the Dane John and the Cathedral, I immediately recognised it as Canterbury, +which I knew quite well. And I walked up Castle Street to the High Street, +conscious for the first time of that regularly-repeated sound, like a sob or +groan, which was proceeding from my throat. As there was no visible moon, and +these old streets very dim, I had to pick my way, lest I should desecrate the +dead with my foot, and they all should rise with hue and cry to hunt me. +However, the bodies here were not numerous, most, as before, being foreigners: +and these, scattered about this strict old English burg that mourning dark +night, presented such a scene of the baneful wrath of God, and all abomination +of desolation, as broke me quite down at one place, where I stood in travail +with jeremiads and sore sobbings and lamentations, crying out upon it all, God +knows. +</p> + +<p> +Only when I stood at the west entrance of the Cathedral I could discern, +spreading up the dark nave, to the lantern, to the choir, a phantasmagorical +mass of forms: I went a little inward, and striking three matches, peered +nearer: the two transepts, too, seemed crowded—the cloister-doorway was +blocked—the southwest porch thronged, so that a great congregation must have +flocked hither shortly before their fate overtook them. +</p> + +<p> +Here it was that I became definitely certain that the after-odour of the poison +was not simply lingering in the air, but was being more or less given off by +the bodies: for the blossomy odour of this church actually overcame that other +odour, the whole rather giving the scent of old mouldy linens long embalmed in +cedars. +</p> + +<p> +Well, away with stealthy trot I ran from the abysmal silence of that place, and +in Palace Street near made one of those sudden immoderate rackets that seemed +to outrage the universe, and left me so woefully faint, decrepit, and gasping +for life (the noise of the train was different, for there I was flying, but +here a captive, and which way I ran was capture). Passing in Palace Street, I +saw a little lampshop, and wanting a lantern, tried to get in, but the door was +locked; so, after going a few steps, and kicking against a policeman's +truncheon, I returned to break the window-glass. I knew that it would make a +fearful noise, and for some fifteen or twenty minutes stood hesitating: but +never could I have dreamed, my good God, of <i>such</i> a noise, so passionate, +so dominant, so divulgent, and, O Heaven, so long-lasting: for I seemed to have +struck upon the weak spot of some planet, which came suddenly tumbling, with +protracted bellowing and <i>débâcle</i>, about my ears. It was a good hour +before I would climb in; but then quickly found what I wanted, and some big +oil-cans; and till one or two in the morning, the innovating flicker of my +lantern went peering at random into the gloomy nooks of the town. +</p> + +<p> +Under a deep old Gothic arch that spanned a pavered alley, I saw the little +window of a little house of rubble, and between the two diamond-paned sashes +rags tightly beaten in, the idea evidently being to make the place air-tight +against the poison. When I went in I found the door of that room open, though +it, too, apparently, had been stuffed at the edges; and on the threshold an old +man and woman lay low. I conjectured that, thus protected, they had remained +shut in, till either hunger, or the lack of oxygen in the used-up air, drove +them forth, whereupon the poison, still active, must have instantly ended them. +I found afterwards that this expedient of making air-tight had been widely +resorted to; and it might well have proved successful, if both the supply of +inclosed air, and of food, had been anywhere commensurate with the durability +of the poisonous state. +</p> + +<p> +Weary, weary as I grew, some morbid persistence sustained me, and I would not +rest. About four in the morning I was at a station again, industriously +bending, poor wretch, at the sooty task of getting another engine ready for +travel. This time, when steam was up, I succeeded in uncoupling the carriages +from the engine, and by the time morning broke, I was lightly gliding away over +the country, whither I did not know, but making for London. +</p> + +<hr /> + +<p> +Now I went with more intelligence and caution, and got on very well, travelling +seven days, never at night, except it was very clear, never at more than twenty +or twenty-five miles, and crawling through tunnels. I do not know the maze into +which the train took me, for very soon after leaving Canterbury it must have +gone down some branch-line, and though the names were marked at stations, that +hardly helped me, for of their situation relatively to London I was seldom +sure. Moreover, again and again was my progress impeded by trains on the +metals, when I would have to run back to a shunting-point or a siding, and, in +two instances, these being far behind, changed from my own to the impeding +engine. On the first day I travelled unhindered till noon, when I stopped in +open country that seemed uninhabited for ages, only that half a mile to the +left, on a shaded sward, was a large stone house of artistic design, coated +with tinted harling, the roof of red Ruabon tiles, and timbered gables. I +walked to it after another row with putting out the fire and arranging for a +new one, the day being bright and mild, with great masses of white cloud in the +sky. The house had an outer and an inner hall, three reception rooms, fine +oil-paintings, a kind of museum, and a large kitchen. In a bed-room +above-stairs I found three women with servants' caps, and a footman, arranged +in a strange symmetrical way, head to head, like rays of a star. As I stood +looking at them, I could have sworn, my good God, that I heard someone coming +up the stairs. But it was some slight creaking of the breeze in the house, +augmented a hundredfold to my inflamed and fevered hearing: for, used for years +now to this silence of Eternity, it is as though I hear all sounds through an +ear-trumpet. I went down, and after eating, and drinking some clary-water, made +of brandy, sugar, cinnamon, and rose water, which I found in plenty, I lay down +on a sofa in the inner hall, and slept a quiet sleep until near midnight. +</p> + +<p> +I went out then, still possessed with the foolish greed to reach London, and +after getting the engine to rights, went off under a clear black sky thronged +with worlds and far-sown spawn, some of them, I thought, perhaps like this of +mine, whelmed and drowned in oceans of silence, with one only inhabitant to see +it, and hear its silence. And all the long night I travelled, stopping twice +only, once to get the coal from an engine which had impeded me, and once to +drink some water, which I took care, as always, should be running water. When I +felt my head nod, and my eyes close about 5 A.M., I threw myself, just outside +the arch of a tunnel upon a grassy bank, pretty thick with stalks and flowers, +the workings of early dawn being then in the east: and there, till near eleven, +slept. +</p> + +<p> +On waking, I noticed that the country now seemed more like Surrey than Kent: +there was that regular swell and sinking of the land; but, in fact, though it +must have been either, it looked like neither, for already all had an aspect of +return to a state of wild nature, and I could see that for a year at the least +no hand had tended the soil. Near before me was a stretch of lucerne of such +extraordinary growth, that I was led during that day and the succeeding one to +examine the condition of vegetation with some minuteness, and nearly everywhere +I detected a certain hypertrophie tendency in stamens, calycles, pericarps, and +pistils, in every sort of bulbiferous growth that I looked at, in the rushes, +above all, the fronds, mosses, lichens, and all cryptogamia, and in the +trefoils, clover especially, and some creepers. Many crop-fields, it was clear, +had been prepared, but not sown; some had not been reaped: and in both cases I +was struck with their appearance of rankness, as I was also when in Norway, and +was all the more surprised that this should be the case at a time when a +poison, whose action is the arrest of oxidation, had traversed the earth; I +could only conclude that its presence in large volumes in the lower strata of +the atmosphere had been more or less temporary, and that the tendency to +exuberance which I observed was due to some principle by which Nature acts with +freer energy and larger scope in the absence of man. +</p> + +<p> +Two yards from the rails I saw, when I got up, a little rill beside a rotten +piece of fence, barely oozing itself onward under masses of foul and stagnant +fungoids: and here there was a sudden splash, and life: and I caught sight of +the hind legs of a diving young frog. I went and lay on my belly, poring over +the clear dulcet little water, and presently saw two tiny bleaks, or ablets, go +gliding low among the swaying moss-hair of the bottom-rocks, and thought how +gladly would I be one of them, with my home so thatched and shady, and my life +drowned in their wide-eyed reverie. At any rate, these little creatures are +alive, the batrachians also, and, as I found the next day, pupae and chrysales +of one sort or another, for, to my deep emotion, I saw a little white butterfly +staggering in the air over the flower-garden of a rustic station named Butley. +</p> + +<hr /> + +<p> +It was while I was lying there, poring upon that streamlet, that a thought came +into my head: for I said to myself: 'If now I be here alone, alone, alone... +alone, alone... one on the earth... and my girth have a spread of 25,000 +miles... what will happen to my mind? Into what kind of creature shall I writhe +and change? I may live two years so! What will have happened then? I may live +five years—ten! What will have happened after the five? the ten? I may live +twenty, thirty, forty...' +</p> + +<p> +Already, already, there are things that peep and sprout within me...! +</p> + +<hr /> + +<p> +I wanted food and fresh running water, and walked from the engine half a mile +through fields of lucerne whose luxuriance quite hid the foot-paths, and +reached my shoulder. After turning the brow of a hill, I came to a park, +passing through which I saw some dead deer and three persons, and emerged upon +a terraced lawn, at the end of which stood an Early English house of pale brick +with copings, plinths, stringcourses of limestone, and spandrels of carved +marble; and some distance from the porch a long table, or series of tables, in +the open air, still spread with cloths that were like shrouds after a month of +burial; and the table had old foods on it, and some lamps; and all around it, +and all on the lawn, were dead peasants. I seemed to know the house, probably +from some print which I may have seen, but I could not make out the escutcheon, +though I saw from its simplicity that it must be very ancient. Right across the +façade spread still some of the letters in evergreens of the motto: +'Many happy returns of the day,' so that someone must have come of age, or +something, for inside all was gala, and it was clear that these people had +defied a fate which they, of course, foreknew. I went nearly throughout the +whole spacious place of thick-carpeted halls, marbles, and famous oils, antlers +and arras, and gilt saloons, and placid large bed-chambers: and it took me an +hour. There were here not less than a hundred and eighty people. In the first +of a vista of three large reception-rooms lay what could only have been a +number of quadrille parties, for to the <i>coup d'oeil</i> they presented a +two-and-two appearance, made very repulsive by their jewels and evening-dress. +I had to steel my heart to go through this house, for I did not know if these +people were looking at me as soon as my back was turned. Once I was on the very +point of flying, for I was going up the great central stairway, and there came +a pelt of dead leaves against a window-pane in a corridor just above on the +first floor, which thrilled me to the inmost soul. But I thought that if I once +fled, they would all be at me from behind, and I should be gibbering mad long, +long before I reached the outer hall, and so stood my ground, even defiantly +advancing. In a small dark bedroom in the north wing on the second floor—that +is to say, at the top of the house—I saw a tall young lady and a groom, or +wood-man, to judge by his clothes, horribly riveted in an embrace on a settee, +she with a light coronet on her head in low-necked dress, and their lipless +teeth still fiercely pressed together. I collected in a bag a few delicacies +from the under-regions of this house, Lyons sausages, salami, mortadel, apples, +roes, raisins, artichokes, biscuits, a few wines, a ham, bottled fruit, +pickles, coffee, and so on, with a gold plate, tin-opener, cork-screw, fork, +&c., and dragged them all the long way back to the engine before I could +eat. +</p> + +<hr /> + +<p> +My brain was in such a way, that it was several days before the perfectly +obvious means of finding my way to London, since I wished to go there, at all +occurred to me; and the engine went wandering the intricate railway-system of +the south country, I having twice to water her with a coal-bucket from a pool, +for the injector was giving no water from the tank under the coals, and I did +not know where to find any near tank-sheds. On the fifth evening, instead of +into London, I ran into Guildford. +</p> + +<hr /> + +<p> +That night, from eleven till the next day, there was a great storm over +England: let me note it down. And ten days later, on the 17th of the month came +another; and on the 23rd another; and I should be put to it to count the great +number since. And they do not resemble English storms, but rather Arctic ones, +in a certain very suggestive something of personalness, and a carousing malice, +and a Tartarus gloom, which I cannot quite describe. That night at Guildford, +after wandering about, and becoming very weary, I threw myself upon a cushioned +pew in an old Norman church with two east apses, called St. Mary's, using a +Bible-cushion for pillow, and placing some distance away a little tin lamp +turned low, whose ray served me for <i>veilleuse</i> through the night. Happily +I had taken care to close up everything, or, I feel sure, the roof must have +gone. Only one dead, an old lady in a chapel on the north side of the chancel, +whom I rather mistrusted, was there with me: and there I lay listening: for, +after all, I could not sleep a wink, while outside vogued the immense tempest. +And I communed with myself, thinking: 'I, poor man, lost in this conflux of +infinitudes and vortex of the world, what can become of me, my God? For dark, +ah dark, is the waste void into which from solid ground I am now plunged a +million fathoms deep, the sport of all the whirlwinds: and it were better for +me to have died with the dead, and never to have seen the wrath and turbulence +of the Ineffable, nor to have heard the thrilling bleakness of the winds of +Eternity, when they pine, and long, and whimper, and when they vociferate and +blaspheme, and when they expostulate and intrigue and implore, and when they +despair and die, which ear of man should never hear. For they mean to eat me +up, I know, these Titanic darknesses: and soon like a whiff I shall pass away, +and leave the world to them.' So till next morning I lay mumping, with shivers +and cowerings: for the shocks of the storm pervaded the locked church to my +very heart; and there were thunders that night, my God, like callings and +laughs and banterings, exchanged between distant hill-tops in Hell. +</p> + +<hr /> + +<p> +Well, the next morning I went down the steep High Street, and found a young +nun at the bottom whom I had left the previous evening with a number of girls +in uniform opposite the Guildhall—half-way up the street. She must have been +spun down, arm over arm, for the wind was westerly, and whereas I had left her +completely dressed to her wimple and beads, she was now nearly stripped, and +her little flock scattered. And branches of trees, and wrecked houses, and +reeling clouds of dead leaves were everywhere that wild morning. +</p> + +<p> +This town of Guildford appeared to be the junction of an extraordinary number +of railway-lines, and before again setting out in the afternoon, when the wind +had lulled, having got an A B C guide, and a railway-map, I decided upon my +line, and upon a new engine, feeling pretty sure now of making London, only +thirty miles away. I then set out, and about five o'clock was at Surbiton, near +my aim; I kept on, expecting every few minutes to see the great city, till +darkness fell, and still, at considerable risk, I went, as I thought, forward: +but no London was there. I had, in fact, been on a loop-line, and at Surbiton +gone wrong again; for the next evening I found myself at Wokingham, farther +away than ever. +</p> + +<p> +I slept on a rug in the passage of an inn called The Rose, for there was a +wild, Russian-looking man, with projecting top-teeth, on a bed in the house, +whose appearance I did not like, and it was late, and I too tired to walk +further; and the next morning pretty early I set out again, and at 10 A.M. was +at Reading. +</p> + +<p> +The notion of navigating the land by precisely the same means as the sea, +simple and natural as it was, had not at all occurred to me: but at the first +accidental sight of a compass in a little shop-window near the river at +Reading, my difficulties as to getting to any desired place in the world +vanished once and for all: for a good chart or map, the compass, a pair of +compasses, and, in the case of longer distances, a quadrant, sextant or +theodolite, with a piece of paper and pencil, were all that were necessary to +turn an engine into a land-ship, one choosing the lines that ran nearest the +direction of one's course, whenever they did not run precisely. +</p> + +<p> +Thus provided, I ran out from Reading about seven in the evening, while there +was still some light, having spent there some nine hours. This was the town +where I first observed that shocking crush of humanity, which I afterwards met +in every large town west of London. Here, I should say, the English were quite +equal in number to the foreigners: and there were enough of both, God knows: +for London must have poured many here. There were houses, in every room of +which, and on the stairs, the dead actually overlay each other, and in the +streets before them were points where only on flesh, or under carriages, was it +possible to walk. I went into the great County Gaol, from which, as I had read, +the prisoners had been released two weeks before-hand, and there I found the +same pressed condition, cells occupied by ten or twelve, the galleries +continuously rough-paved with faces, heads, and old-clothes-shops of robes; and +in the parade-ground, against one wall, a mass of human stuff, like tough grey +clay mixed with rags and trickling black gore, where a crush as of hydraulic +power must have acted. At a corner between a gate and a wall near the +biscuit-factory of this town I saw a boy, whom I believe to have been blind, +standing jammed, at his wrist a chain-ring, and, at the end of the chain, a +dog; from his hap-hazard posture I conjectured that he, and chain, and dog had +been lifted from the street, and placed so, by the storm of the 7th of the +month; and what made it very curious was that his right arm pointed a little +outward just over the dog, so that, at the moment when I first sighted him, he +seemed a drunken fellow setting his dog at me. In fact, all the dead I found +much mauled and stripped and huddled: and the earth seemed to be making an +abortive effort to sweep her streets. +</p> + +<p> +Well, some little distance from Reading I saw a big flower-seed farm, looking +dead in some plots, and in others quite rank: and here again, fluttering quite +near the engine, two little winged aurelians in the quiet evening air. I went +on, passing a great number of crowded trains on the down-line, two of them in +collision, and very broken up, and one exploded engine; even the fields and +cuttings on either hand of the line had a rather populous look, as if people, +when trains and vehicles failed, had set to trudging westward in caravans and +streams. When I came to a long tunnel near Slough, I saw round the foot of the +arch an extraordinary quantity of wooden <i>débris</i>, and as I went very +slowly through, was alarmed by the continuous bumping of the train, which, I +knew, was passing over bodies; at the other end were more <i>débris</i>; and I +easily guessed that a company of desperate people had made the tunnel air-tight +at the two arches, and provisioned themselves, with the hope to live there till +the day of destiny was passed; whereupon their barricades must have been +crashed through by some up-train and themselves crushed, or else, other crowds, +mad to share their cave of refuge, had stormed the boardings. This latter, as I +afterwards found, was a very usual event. +</p> + +<p> +I should very soon have got to London now, but, as my bad luck would have it, I +met a long up-train on the metals, with not one creature in any part of it. +There was nothing to do but to tranship, with all my things, to its engine, +which I found in good condition with plenty of coal and water, and to set it +going, a hateful labour: I being already jet-black from hair to toes. However, +by half-past ten I found myself stopped by another train only a quarter of a +mile from Paddington, and walked the rest of the way among trains in which the +standing dead still stood, propped by their neighbours, and over metals where +bodies were as ordinary and cheap as waves on the sea, or twigs in a forest. I +believe that wild crowds had given chase on foot to moving trains, or fore-run +them in the frenzied hope of inducing them to stop. +</p> + +<p> +I came to the great shed of glass and girders which is the station, the night +being perfectly soundless, moonless, starless, and the hour about eleven. +</p> + +<p> +I found later that all the electric generating-stations, or all that I visited, +were intact; that is to say, must have been shut down before the arrival of the +doom; also that the gas-works had almost certainly been abandoned some time +previously: so that this city of dreadful night, in which, at the moment when +Silence choked it, not less than forty to sixty millions swarmed and droned, +must have more resembled Tartarus and the foul shades of Hell than aught to +which my fancy can liken it. +</p> + +<p> +For, coming nearer the platforms, I saw that trains, in order to move at all, +must have moved through a slough of bodies pushed from behind, and forming a +packed homogeneous mass on the metals: and I knew that they <i>had</i> moved. +Nor could <i>I</i> now move, unless I decided to wade: for flesh was +everywhere, on the roofs of trains, cramming the interval between them, on the +platforms, splashing the pillars like spray, piled on trucks and lorries, a +carnal quagmire; and outside, it filled the space between a great host of +vehicles, carpeting all that region of London. And all here that odour of +blossoms, which nowhere yet, save on one vile ship, had failed, was now wholly +overcome by another: and the thought was in my head, my God, that if the soul +of man had sent up to Heaven the odour which his body gave to me, then it was +not so strange that things were as they were. +</p> + +<p> +I got out from the station, with ears, God knows, that still awaited the +accustomed noising of this accursed town, habituated as I now was to all the +dumb and absent void of Soundlessness; and I was overwhelmed in a new awe, and +lost in a wilder woesomeness, when, instead of lights and business, I saw the +long street which I knew brood darker than Babylons long desolate, and in place +of its ancient noising, heard, my God, a shocking silence, rising higher than I +had ever heard it, and blending with the silence of the inane, eternal stars in +heaven. +</p> + +<hr /> + +<p> +I could not get into any vehicle for some time, for all thereabouts was +practically a mere block; but near the Park, which I attained by stooping among +wheels, and selecting my foul steps, I overhauled a Daimler car, found in it +two cylinders of petrol, lit the ignition-lamp, removed with averted abhorrence +three bodies, mounted, and broke that populous stillness. And through streets +nowhere empty of bodies I went urging eastward my jolting, and spattered, and +humming way. +</p> + +<p> +That I should have persisted, with so much pains, to come to this unbounded +catacomb, seems now singular to me: for by that time I could not have been +sufficiently daft to expect to find another being like myself on the earth, +though I cherished, I remember, the irrational hope of yet somewhere finding +dog, or cat, or horse, to be with me, and would anon think bitterly of +Reinhardt, my Arctic dog, which my own hand had shot. But, in reality, a morbid +curiosity must have been within me all the time to read the real truth of what +had happened, so far as it was known, or guessed, and to gloat upon all that +drama, and cup of trembling, and pouring out of the vials of the wrath of God, +which must have preceded the actual advent of the end of Time. This +inquisitiveness had, at every town which I reached, made the search for +newspapers uppermost in my mind; but, by bad luck, I had found only four, all +of them ante-dated to the one which I had read at Dover, though their dates +gave me some idea of the period when printing must have ceased, viz. soon after +the 17th July—about three months subsequent to my arrival at the Pole—for none +I found later than this date; and these contained nothing scientific, but only +orisons and despairings. On arriving, therefore, at London, I made straight for +the office of the <i>Times</i>, only stopping at a chemist's in Oxford Street +for a bottle of antiseptic to hold near my nose, though, having once left the +neighbourhood of Paddington, I had hardly much need of this. +</p> + +<p> +I made my way to the square where the paper was printed, to find that, even +there, the ground was closely strewn with calpac and pugaree, black abayeh and +fringed praying-shawl, hob-nail and sandal, figured lungi and striped silk, all +very muddled and mauled. Through the dark square to the twice-dark building I +passed, and found open the door of an advertisement-office; but on striking a +match, saw that it had been lighted by electricity, and had therefore to +retrace my stumbling steps, till I came to a shop of lamps in a near alley, +walking meantime with timid cares that I might hurt no one—for in this enclosed +neighbourhood I began to feel strange tremors, and kept striking matches, +which, so still was the black air, hardly flickered. +</p> + +<p> +When I returned to the building with a little lighted lamp, I at once saw a +file on a table, and since there were a number of dead there, and I wished to +be alone, I took the heavy mass of paper between my left arm and side, and the +lamp in my right hand; passed then behind a counter; and then, to the right, up +a stair which led me into a very great building and complexity of wooden steps +and corridors, where I went peering, the lamp visibly trembling in my hand, for +here also were the dead. Finally, I entered a good-sized carpeted room with a +baize-covered table in the middle, and large smooth chairs, and on the table +many manuscripts impregnated with purple dust, and around were books in +shelves. This room had been locked upon a single man, a tall man in a +frock-coat, with a pointed grey beard, who at the last moment had decided to +fly from it, for he lay at the threshold, apparently fallen dead the moment he +opened the door. Him, by drawing his feet aside, I removed, locked the door +upon myself, sat at the table before the dusty file, and, with the little lamp +near, began to search. +</p> + +<p> +I searched and read till far into the morning. But God knows, He alone.... +</p> + +<p> +I had not properly filled the little reservoir with oil, and at about three in +the fore-day, it began to burn sullenly lower, letting sparks, and turning the +glass grey: and in my deepest chilly heart was the question: 'Suppose the lamp +goes out before the daylight....' +</p> + +<p> +I knew the Pole, and cold, I knew them well: but to be frozen by panic, my God! +I read, I say, I searched, I would not stop: but I read that night racked by +terrors such as have never yet entered into the heart of man to conceive. My +flesh moved and crawled like a lake which, here and there, the breeze ruffles. +Sometimes for two, three, four minutes, the profound interest of what I read +would fix my mind, and then I would peruse an entire column, or two, without +consciousness of the meaning of one single word, my brain all drawn away to the +innumerable host of the wan dead that camped about me, pierced with horror lest +they should start, and stand, and accuse me: for the grave and the worm was the +world; and in the air a sickening stirring of cerements and shrouds; and the +taste of the pale and insubstantial grey of ghosts seemed to infect my throat, +and faint odours of the loathsome tomb my nostrils, and the toll of deep-toned +passing-bells my ears; finally the lamp smouldered very low, and my charnel +fancy teemed with the screwing-down of coffins, lych-gates and sextons, and the +grating of ropes that lower down the dead, and the first sound of the earth +upon the lid of that strait and gloomy home of the mortal; that lethal look of +cold dead fingers I seemed to see before me, the insipidness of dead tongues, +the pout of the drowned, and the vapid froths that ridge their lips, till my +flesh was moist as with the stale washing-waters of morgues and mortuaries, and +with such sweats as corpses sweat, and the mawkish tear that lies on dead men's +cheeks; for what is one poor insignificant man in his flesh against a whole +world of the disembodied, he alone with them, and nowhere, nowhere another of +his kind, to whom to appeal against them? I read, and I searched: but God, God +knows ... If a leaf of the paper, which I slowly, warily, stealingly turned, +made but one faintest rustle, how did that <i>reveille</i> boom in echoes +through the vacant and haunted chambers of my poor aching heart, my God! and +there was a cough in my throat which for a cruelly long time I would not cough, +till it burst in horrid clamour from my lips, sending crinkles of cold through +my inmost blood. For with the words which I read were all mixed up visions of +crawling hearses, wails, and lugubrious crapes, and piercing shrieks of madness +in strange earthy vaults, and all the mournfulness of the black Vale of Death, +and the tragedy of corruption. Twice during the ghostly hours of that night the +absolute and undeniable certainty that some presence—some most gashly silent +being—stood at my right elbow, so thrilled me, that I leapt to my feet to +confront it with clenched fists, and hairs that bristled stiff in horror and +frenzy. After that second time I must have fainted; for when it was broad day, +I found my dropped head over the file of papers, supported on my arms. And I +resolved then never again after sunset to remain in any house: for that night +was enough to kill a horse, my good God; and that this is a haunted planet I +know. +</p> + +<hr /> + +<p> +What I read in the <i>Times</i> was not very definite, for how could it be? but +in the main it confirmed inferences which I had myself drawn, and fairly +satisfied my mind. +</p> + +<p> +There had been a battle royal in the paper between my old collaborator +Professor Stanistreet and Dr. Martin Rogers, and never could I have conceived +such an indecorous piece of business, men like them calling one another 'tyro,' +'dreamer,' and in one place 'block-head.' Stanistreet denied that the perfumed +odour of almonds attributed to the advancing cloud could be due to anything but +the excited fancy of the reporting fugitives, because, said he, it was unknown +that either Cn, HCn, or K<sub>4</sub>FeCn<sub>6</sub> had been given out by +volcanoes, and the destructiveness to life of the travelling cloud could only +be owing to CO and CO<sub>2</sub>. To this Rogers, in an article characterised +by extraordinary heat, replied that he could not understand how even a +'tyro'(!) in chemical and geological phenomena would venture to rush into print +with the statement that HCn had not commonly been given out by volcanoes: that +it <i>had</i> been, he said, was perfectly certain; though whether it had been +or not could not affect the decision of a reasoning mind as to whether it was +being: for that cyanogen, as a matter of fact, was not rare in nature, though +not directly occurring, being one of the products of the common distillation of +pit-coal, and found in roots, peaches, almonds, and many tropical flora; also +that it had been actually pointed out as probable by more than one thinker that +some salt or salts of Cn, the potassic, or the potassic ferrocyanide, or both, +must exist in considerable stores in the earth at volcanic depths. In reply to +this, Stanistreet in a two-column article used the word 'dreamer,' and Rogers, +when Berlin had been already silenced, finally replied with his amazing +'block-head.' But, in my opinion, by far the most learned and lucid of the +scientific dicta was from the rather unexpected source of Sloggett, of the +Dublin Science and Art Department: he, without fuss, accepted the statements of +the fugitive eye-witnesses, down to the assertion that the cloud, as it rolled +travelling, seemed mixed from its base to the clouds with languid tongues of +purple flame, rose-coloured at their edges. This, Sloggett explained, was the +characteristic flame of both cyanogen and hydrocyanic acid vapour, which, being +inflammable, may have become locally ignited in the passage over cities, and +only burned in that limited and languid way on account of the ponderous volumes +of carbonic anhydride with which they must, of course, be mixed: the dark +empurpled colour was due to the presence of large quantities of the scoriae of +the trappean rocks: basalts, green-stone, trachytes, and the various +porphyries. This article was most remarkable for its clear divination, because +written so early—not long, in fact, after the cessation of telegraphic +communication with Australia and China; and at a date so early Sloggett stated +that the character of the devastation not only proved an eruption—another, but +far greater Krakatoa—probably in some South Sea region, but indicated that its +most active product must be, not CO, but potassic ferrocyanide +(K<sub>4</sub>FeCn<sub>6</sub>), which, undergoing distillation with the +products of sulphur in the heat of eruption, produced hydrocyanic acid (HCn); +and this volatile acid, he said, remaining in a vaporous state in all climates +above a temperature of 26.5° C., might involve the entire earth, if the +eruption proved sufficiently powerful, travelling chiefly in a direction +contrary to the earth's west-to-east motion, the only regions which would +certainly be exempt being the colder regions of the Arctic circles, where the +vapour of the acid would assume the liquid state, and fall as rain. He did not +anticipate that vegetation would be permanently affected, unless the eruption +were of inconceivable duration and activity, for though the poisonous quality +of hydrocyanic acid consisted in its sudden and complete arrest of oxidation, +vegetation had two sources of life—the soil as well as the air; with this +exception, all life, down to the lowest evolutionary forms, would disappear +(here was the one point in which he was somewhat at fault), until the earth +reproduced them. For the rest, he fixed the rate of the on-coming cloud at from +100 to 105 miles a day; and the date of eruption, either the 14th, 15th, or +16th of April—which was either one, two, or three days after the arrival of the +<i>Boreal</i> party at the Pole; and he concluded by saying that, if the facts +were as he had stated them, then he could suggest no hiding-place for the race +of man, unless such places as mines and tunnels could be made air-tight; nor +could even they be of use to any considerable number, except in the event of +the poisonous state of the air being of very short duration. +</p> + +<hr /> + +<p> +I had thought of mines before: but in a very languid way, till this article, +and other things that I read, as it were struck my brain a slap with the +notion. For 'there,' I said, 'if anywhere, shall I find a man....' +</p> + +<hr /> + +<p> +I went out from that building that morning feeling like a man bowed down with +age, for the depths of unutterable horror into which I had had glimpses during +that one night made me very feeble, and my steps tottered, and my brain reeled. +</p> + +<p> +I got out into Farringdon Street, and at the near Circus, where four streets +meet, had under my furthest range of vision nothing but four fields of bodies, +bodies, clad in a rag-shop of every faded colour, or half-clad, or not clad at +all, actually, in many cases, over-lying one another, as I had seen at Reading, +but here with a markedly more skeleton appearance: for I saw the +swollen-looking shoulders, sharp hips, hollow abdomens, and stiff bony limbs of +people dead from famine, the whole having the grotesque air of some +<i>macabre</i> battle-field of fallen marionettes. Mixed with these was an +extraordinary number of vehicles of all sorts, so that I saw that driving among +them would be impracticable, whereas the street which I had taken during the +night was fairly clear. I thought a minute what I should do: then went by a +parallel back-street, and came out to a shop in the Strand, where I hoped to +find all the information which I needed about the excavations of the country. +The shutters were up, and I did not wish to make any noise among these people, +though the morning was bright, it being about ten o'clock, and it was easy to +effect entrance, for I saw a crow-bar in a big covered furniture-van near. I, +therefore, went northward, till I came to the British Museum, the +cataloguing-system of which I knew well, and passed in. There was no one at the +library-door to bid me stop, and in the great round reading-room not a soul, +except one old man with a bag of goître hung at his neck, and spectacles, he +lying up a book-ladder near the shelves, a 'reader' to the last. I got to the +printed catalogues, and for an hour was upstairs among the dim sacred galleries +of this still place, and at the sight of certain Greek and Coptic papyri, +charters, seals, had such a dream of this ancient earth, my good God, as even +an angel's pen could not half express on paper. Afterwards, I went away loaded +with a good hundred-weight of Ordnance-maps, which I had stuffed into a bag +found in the cloak-room, with three topographical books; I then, at an +instrument-maker's in Holborn, got a sextant and theodolite, and at a grocer's +near the river put into a sack-bag provisions to last me a week or two; at +Blackfriars Bridge wharf-station I found a little sharp white steamer of a few +tons, which happily was driven by liquid air, so that I had no troublesome fire +to light: and by noon I was cutting my solitary way up the Thames, which flowed +as before the ancient Britons were born, and saw it, and built mud-huts there +amid the primaeval forest; and afterwards the Romans came, and saw it, and +called it Tamesis, or Thamesis. +</p> + +<hr /> + +<p> +That night, as I lay asleep on the cabin-cushions of my little boat under the +lee of an island at Richmond, I had a clear dream, in which something, or +someone, came to me, and asked me a question: for it said: 'Why do you go +seeking another man?—that you may fall upon him, and kiss him? or that you may +fall upon him, and murder him?' And I answered sullenly in my dream: 'I would +not murder him. I do not wish to murder anyone.' +</p> + +<hr /> + +<p> +What was essential to me was to know, with certainty, whether I was really +alone: for some instinct began to whisper me: 'Find that out: be sure, be sure: +for without the assurance you can never be—yourself.' +</p> + +<p> +I passed into the great Midland Canal, and went northward, leisurely advancing, +for I was in no hurry. The weather remained very warm, and great part of the +country was still dressed in autumn leaves. I have written, I think, of the +terrific character of the tempests witnessed in England since my return: well, +the calms were just as intense and novel. This observation was forced upon me: +and I could not but be surprised. There seemed no middle course now: if there +was a wind, it was a storm: if there was not a storm, no leaf stirred, not a +roughening zephyr ran the water. I was reminded of maniacs that laugh now, and +rave now—but never smile, and never sigh. +</p> + +<p> +On the fourth afternoon I passed by Leicester, and the next morning left my +pleasant boat, carrying maps and compass, and at a small station took engine, +bound for Yorkshire, where I loitered and idled away two foolish months, +sometimes travelling by steam-engine, sometimes by automobile, sometimes by +bicycle, and sometimes on foot, till the autumn was quite over. +</p> + +<hr /> + +<p> +There were two houses in London to which especially I had thought to go: one in +Harley Street, and one in Hanover Square: but when it came to the point, I +would not; and there was a little embowered home in Yorkshire, where I was +born, to which I thought to go: but I would not, confining myself for many days +to the eastern half of the county. +</p> + +<p> +One morning, while passing on foot along the coast-wall from Bridlington to +Flambro', on turning my eyes from the sea, I was confronted by a thing which +for a moment or two struck me with the most profound astonishment. I had come +to a mansion, surrounded by trees, three hundred yards from the cliffs: and +there, on a path at the bottom of the domain, right before me, was a board +marked: 'Trespassers will be Prosecuted.' At once a mad desire—the first which +I had had—to laugh, to roar with laughter, to send wild echoes of merriment +clapping among the chalk gullies, and abroad on the morning air, seized upon +me: but I kept it under, though I could not help smiling at this poor man, with +his little delusion that a part of the earth was his. +</p> + +<p> +Here the cliffs are, I should say, seventy feet high, broken by frequent slips +in the upper stratum of clay, and, as I proceeded, climbing always, I +encountered some rather formidable gullies in the chalk, down and then up which +I had to scramble, till I came to a great mound or barrier, stretching right +across the great promontory, and backed by a natural ravine, this, no doubt, +having been raised as a rampart by some of those old invading pirate-peoples, +who had their hot life-scuffle, and are done now, like the rest. Going on, I +came to a bay in the cliff, with a great number of boats lodged on the slopes, +some quite high, though the declivities are steep; toward the inner slopes is a +lime-kiln which I explored, but found no one there. When I came out on the +other side, I saw the village, with an old tower at one end, on a bare stretch +of land; and thence, after an hour's rest in the kitchen of a little inn, went +out to the coast-guard station, and the lighthouse. +</p> + +<p> +Looking across the sea eastward, the light-keepers here must have seen that +thick cloud of convolving browns and purples, perhaps mixed with small tongues +of fire, slowly walking the water, its roof in the clouds, upon them: for this +headland is in precisely the same longitude as London; and, reckoning from the +hour when, as recorded in the <i>Times</i>, the cloud was seen from Dover over +Calais, London and Flambro' must have been overtaken soon after three o'clock +on the Sunday afternoon, the 25th July. At sight in open daylight of a doom so +gloomy—prophesied, but perhaps hoped against to the last, and now come—the +light-keepers must have fled howling, supposing them to have so long remained +faithful to duty: for here was no one, and in the village very few. In this +lighthouse, which is a circular white tower, eighty feet high, on the edge of +the cliff, is a book for visitors to sign their names: and I will write +something down here in black and white: for the secret is between God only, and +me: After reading a few of the names, I took my pencil, and I wrote my name +there. +</p> + +<hr /> + +<p> +The reef before the Head stretches out a quarter of a mile, looking bold in the +dead low-water that then was, and showing to what extent the sea has pushed +back this coast, three wrecks impaled on them, and a big steamer quite near, +waiting for the first movements of the already strewn sea to perish. All along +the cliff-wall to the bluff crowned by Scarborough Castle northward, and to the +low vanishing coast of Holderness southward, appeared those cracks and caves +which had brought me here, though there seemed no attempts at barricades; +however, I got down a rough slope on the south side to a rude wild beach, +strewn with wave-worn masses of chalk: and never did I feel so paltry and short +a thing as there, with far-outstretched bays of crags about me, their bluffs +encrusted at the base with stale old leprosies of shells and barnacles, and +crass algae-beards, and, higher up, the white cliff all stained and +weather-spoiled, the rock in some parts looking quite chalky, and elsewhere +gleaming hard and dull like dirty marbles, while in the huge withdrawals of the +coast yawn darksome gullies and caverns. Here, in that morning's walk, I saw +three little hermit-crabs, a limpet, and two ninnycocks in a pool of weeds +under a bearded rock. What astonished me here, and, indeed, above, and +everywhere, in London even, and other towns, was the incredible number of birds +that strewed the ground, at some points resembling a real rain, birds of nearly +every sort, including tropic specimens: so that I had to conclude that they, +too, had fled before the cloud from country to country, till conquered by +weariness and grief, and then by death. +</p> + +<p> +By climbing over rocks thick with periwinkles, and splashing through great +sloppy stretches of crinkled sea-weed, which give a raw stench of brine, I +entered the first of the gullies: a narrow, long, winding one, with sides +polished by the sea-wash, and the floor rising inwards. In the dark interior I +struck matches, able still to hear from outside the ponderous spasmodic rush +and jostle of the sea between the crags of the reef, but now quite faintly. +Here, I knew, I could meet only dead men, but urged by some curiosity, I +searched to the end, wading in the middle through a three-feet depth of +sea-weed twine: but there was no one; and only belemnites and fossils in the +chalk. I searched several to the south of the headland, and then went northward +past it toward another opening and place of perched boats, called in the map +North Landing: where, even now, a distinct smell of fish, left by the old +crabbers and herring-fishers, was perceptible. A number of coves and bays +opened as I proceeded; a faded green turf comes down in curves at some parts on +the cliff-brows, like wings of a young soldier's hair, parted in the middle, +and plastered on his brow; isolated chalk-masses are numerous, obelisks, +top-heavy columns, bastions; at one point no less than eight headlands +stretched to the end of the world before me, each pierced by its arch, Norman +or Gothic, in whole or in half; and here again caves, in one of which I found a +carpet-bag stuffed with a wet pulp like bread, and, stuck to the rock, a +Turkish tarboosh; also, under a limestone quarry, five dead asses: but no man. +The east coast had evidently been shunned. Finally, in the afternoon I reached +Filey, very tired, and there slept. +</p> + +<hr /> + +<p> +I went onward by train-engine all along the coast to a region of iron-ore, +alum, and jet-excavations round Whitby and Middlesborough. By by-ways near the +small place of Goldsborough I got down to the shore at Kettleness, and reached +the middle of a bay in which is a cave called the Hob-Hole, with excavations +all around, none of great depth, made by jet-diggers and quarrymen. In the cave +lay a small herd of cattle, though for what purpose put there I cannot guess; +and in the jet-excavations I found nothing. A little further south is the chief +alum-region, as at Sandsend, but as soon as I saw a works, and the great gap in +the ground like a crater, where the lias is quarried, containing only heaps of +alum-shale, brushwood-stacks, and piles of cement-nodules extracted from the +lias, I concluded that here could have been found no hiding; nor did I +purposely visit the others, though I saw two later. From round Whitby, and +those rough moors, I went on to Darlington, not far now from my home: but I +would not continue that way, and after two days' indecisive lounging, started +for Richmond and the lead mines about Arkengarth Dale, near Reeth. Here begins +a region of mountain, various with glens, fells, screes, scars, swards, becks, +passes, villages, river-heads, and dales. Some of the faces which I saw in it +almost seemed to speak to me in a broad dialect which I knew. But they were not +numerous in proportion: for all this country-side must have had its population +multiplied by at least some hundreds; and the villages had rather the air of +Danube, Levant, or Spanish villages. In one, named Marrick, I saw that the +street had become the scene either of a great battle or a great massacre; and +soon I was everywhere coming upon men and women, English and foreign, dead from +violence: cracked heads, wounds, unhung jaws, broken limbs, and so on. Instead +of going direct to the mines from Reeth, that waywardness which now rules my +mind, as squalls an abandoned boat, took me somewhat further south-west to the +village of Thwaite, which I actually could not enter, so occupied with dead was +every spot on which the eye rested a hundred yards about it. Not far from here +I turned up, on foot now, a very steep, stony road to the right, which leads +over the Buttertubs Pass into Wensleydale, the day being very warm and bright, +with large clouds that looked like lakes of molten silver giving off grey fumes +in their centre, casting moody shadows over the swardy dale, which below +Thwaite expands, showing Muker two miles off, the largest village of Upper +Swaledale. Soon, climbing, I could look down upon miles of Swaledale and the +hills beyond, a rustic panorama of glens and grass, river and cloudshadow, and +there was something of lightness in my step that fair day, for I had left all +my maps and things, except one, at Reeth, to which I meant to return, and the +earth, which is very good, was—mine. The ascent was rough, and also long: but +if I paused and looked behind—I saw, I saw. Man's notion of a Heaven, a +Paradise, reserved for the spirits of the good, clearly arose from impressions +which the earth made upon his mind: for no Paradise can be fairer than this; +just as his notion of a Hell arose from the squalid mess into which his own +foolish habits of thought and action turned this Paradise. At least, so it +struck me then: and, thinking it, there was a hiss in my breath, as I went up +into what more and more acquired the character of a mountain pass, with points +of almost Alpine savagery: for after I had skirted the edge of a deep glen on +the left, the slopes changed in character, heather was on the mountain-sides, a +fretting beck sent up its noise, then screes, and scars, and a considerable +waterfall, and a landscape of crags; and lastly a broad and rather desolate +summit, palpably nearer the clouds. +</p> + +<hr /> + +<p> +Two days later I was at the mines: and here I first saw that wide-spread scene +of horror with which I have since become familiar. The story of six out of ten +of them all is the same, and short: selfish 'owners,' an ousted world, an easy +bombardment, and the destruction of all concerned, before the arrival of the +cloud in many cases. About some of the Durham pit-mouths I have been given the +impression that the human race lay collected there; and that the notion of +hiding himself in a mine must have occurred to every man alive, and sent him +thither. +</p> + +<p> +In these lead mines, as in most vein-mining, there are more shafts than in +collieries, and hardly any attempt at artificial ventilation, except at rises, +winzes and cul-de-sacs. I found accordingly that, though their depth does not +exceed three hundred feet, suffocation must often have anticipated the other +dreaded death. In nearly every shaft, both up-take and down-take, was a ladder, +either of the mine, or of the fugitives, and I was able to descend without +difficulty, having dressed myself in a house at the village in a check flannel +shirt, a pair of two-buttoned trousers with circles of leather at the knees, +thick boots, and a miner's hat, having a leather socket attached to it, into +which fitted a straight handle from a cylindrical candlestick; with this light, +and also a Davy-lamp, which I carried about with me for a good many months, I +lived for the most part in the deeps of the earth, searching for the treasure +of a life, to find everywhere, in English duckies and guggs, Pomeranian women +in gaudy stiff cloaks, the Walachian, the Mameluk, the Khirgiz, the Bonze, the +Imaum, and almost every type of man. +</p> + +<hr /> + +<p> +One most brilliant Autumn day I walked by the village market-cross at Barnard, +come at last, but with a tenderness in my heart, and a reluctance, to where I +was born; for I said I would go and see my sister Ada, and—the other old one. I +leaned and loitered a long time on the bridge, gazing up to the craggy height, +which is heavy with waving wood, and crowned by the Castle-tower, the Tees +sweeping round the mountain-base, smooth here and sunlit, but a mile down, +where I wished to go, but would not, brawling bedraggled and lacerated, like a +sweet strumpet, all shallow among rocks under reaches of shadow—the shadow of +Rokeby Woods. I climbed very leisurely up the hill-side, having in my hand a +bag with a meal, and up the stair in the wall to the top I went, where there is +no parapet, but a massiveness of wall that precludes danger; and here in my +miner's attire I sat three hours, brooding sleepily upon the scene of lush +umbrageous old wood that marks the long way the river takes, from Marwood Chase +up above, and where the rapid Balder bickers in, down to bowery Rokeby, touched +now with autumn; the thickness of trees lessening away toward the uplands, +where there are far etherealized stretches of fields within hedgerows, and in +the sunny mirage of the farthest azure remoteness hints of lonesome moorland. +It was not till near three that I went down along the river, then, near Rokeby, +traversing the old meadow, and ascending the old hill: and there, as of old, +was the little black square with yellow letters on the gate-wall: +</p> + +<p class="center"> +HUNT HILL HOUSE. +</p> + +<p> +No part, no house, I believe, of this country-side was empty of strange +corpses: and they were in Hunt Hill, too. I saw three in the weedy plot to the +right of the garden-path, where once the hawthorn and lilac tree had grown from +well-rollered grass, and in the little bush-wilderness to the left, which was +always a wilderness, one more: and in the breakfast-room, to the right of the +hall, three; and in the new wooden clinker-built attachment opening upon the +breakfast-room, two, half under the billiard-table; and in her room overlooking +the porch on the first floor, the long thin form of my mother on her bed, with +crushed-in left temple, and at the foot of the bed, face-downward on the floor, +black-haired Ada in a night-dress. +</p> + +<p> +Of all the men and women who died, they two alone had burying. For I digged a +hole with the stable-spade under the front lilac; and I wound them in the +sheets, foot and form and head; and, not without throes and qualms, I bore and +buried them there. +</p> + +<hr /> + +<p> +Some time passed after this before the long, multitudinous, and perplexing task +of visiting the mine-regions again claimed me. I found myself at a place called +Ingleborough, which is a big table-mountain, with a top of fifteen to twenty +acres, from which the sea is visible across Lancashire to the west; and in the +sides of this strange hill are a number of caves which I searched during three +days, sleeping in a garden-shed at a very rural and flower-embowered village, +for every room in it was thronged, a place marked Clapham in the chart, in +Clapdale, which latter is a dale penetrating the slopes of the mountain: and +there I found by far the greatest of the caves which I saw, having ascended a +path from the village to a hollow between two grass slopes, where there is a +beck, and so entering an arch to the left, screened by trees, into the +limestone cliff. The passage narrows pretty rapidly inwards, and I had not +proceeded two yards before I saw the clear traces of a great battle here. All +this region had, in fact, been invaded, for the cave must have been famous, +though I did not remember it myself, and for some miles round the dead were +pretty frequent, making the immediate approach to the cave a matter for care, +if the foot was to be saved from pollution. It is clear that there had been an +iron gate across the entrance, that within this a wall had been built across, +shutting in I do not know how many, perhaps one or two, perhaps hundreds: and +both gate and wall had been stormed and broken down, for there still were the +sledges and rocks which, without doubt, had done it. I had a lamp, and at my +forehead the lighted candle, and I went on quickly, seeing it useless now to +choose my steps where there was no choice, through a passage incrusted, roof +and sides, with a scabrous petrified lichen, the roof low for some ninety +yards, covered with down-looking cones, like an inverted forest of children's +toy-trees. I then came to a round hole, apparently artificial, opening through +a curtain of stalagmitic formation into a great cavern beyond, which was quite +animated and festal with flashes, sparkles, and diamond-lustres, hung in their +myriads upon a movement of the eye, these being produced by large numbers of +snowy wet stalagmites, very large and high, down the centre of which ran a +continuous long lane of clothes and hats and faces; with hasty reluctant feet I +somehow passed over them, the cave all the time widening, thousands of +stalactites appearing on the roof of every size, from virgin's breast to +giant's club, and now everywhere the wet drip, drip, as it were a populous busy +bazaar of perspiring brows and hurrying feet, in which the only business is to +drip. Where stalactite meets stalagmite there are pillars: where stalactite +meets stalactite in fissures long or short there are elegances, flimsy +draperies, delicate fantasies; there were also pools of water in which hung +heads and feet, and there were vacant spots at outlying spaces, where the +arched roof, which continually heightened itself, was reflected in the chill +gleam of the floor. Suddenly, the roof came down, the floor went up, and they +seemed to meet before me; but looking, I found a low opening, through which, +drawing myself on the belly over slime for some yards in repulsive proximity to +dead personalities, I came out upon a floor of sand and pebbles under a long +dry tunnel, arched and narrow, grim and dull, without stalactites, suggestive +of monks, and catacomb-vaults, and the route to the grave; and here the dead +were much fewer, proving either that the general mob had not had time to +penetrate so far inward, or else that those within, if they were numerous, had +gone out to defend, or to harken to, the storm of their citadel. This passage +led me into an open space, the grandest of all, loftily vaulted, full of genie +riches and buried treasures of light, the million-fold <i>ensemble</i> of +lustres dancing schottishe with the eye, as it moved or was still: this place, +I should guess, being quite half a mile from the entrance. My prying lantern +showed me here only nineteen dead, men of various nations, and at the far end +two holes in the floor, large enough to admit the body, through which from +below came up a sound of falling water. Both of these holes, I could see, had +been filled with cement concrete—wisely, I fancy, for a current of air from +somewhere seemed to be now passing through them: and this would have resulted +in the death of the hiders. Both, however, of the fillings had been broken +through, one partially, the other wholly, by the ignorant, I presume, who +thought to hide in a secret place yet beyond, where they may have believed, on +seeing the artificial work, that others were. I had my ear a long time at one +of these openings, listening to that mysterious chant down below in a darkness +most murky and dismal; and afterwards, spurred by the stubborn will which I had +to be thorough, I went back, took a number of outer robes from the bodies, tied +them well together, then one end round the nearest pillar, and having put my +mouth to the hole, calling: <i>'Anyone? Anyone?'</i> let myself down by the +rope of garments, the candle at my head: I had not, however, descended far into +those mournful shades, when my right foot plunged into water: and instantly the +feeling of terror pierced me that all the evil things in the universe were at +my leg to drag me down to Hell: and I was up quicker than I went down: nor did +my flight cease till, with a sigh of deliverance, I found myself in open air. +</p> + +<hr /> + +<p> +After this, seeing that the autumn warmth was passing away, I set myself with +more system to my task, and within the next six months worked with steadfast +will, and strenuous assiduity, seeking, not indeed for a man in a mine, but for +some evidence of the possibility that a man might be alive, visiting in that +time Northumberland and Durham, Fife and Kinross, South Wales and +Monmouthshire, Cornwall and the Midlands, the lead mines of Derbyshire, of +Allandale and other parts of Northumberland, of Alston Moor and other parts of +Cumberland, of Arkendale and other parts of Yorkshire, of the western part of +Durham, of Salop, of Cornwall, of the Mendip Hills of Somersetshire, of Flint, +Cardigan, and Montgomery, of Lanark and Argyll, of the Isle of Man, of +Waterford and Down; I have gone down the 360-ft. Grand Pipe iron ladder of the +abandoned graphite-mine at Barrowdale in Cumberland, half-way up a mountain +2,000 feet high; and visited where cobalt and manganese ore is mined in pockets +at the Foel Hiraeddog mine near Rhyl in Flintshire, and the lead and copper +Newton Stewart workings in Galloway; the Bristol coal-fields, and mines of +South Staffordshire, where, as in Somerset, Gloucester, and Shropshire, the +veins are thin, and the mining-system is the 'long-wall,' whereas in the North, +and Wales, the system is the 'pillar-and stall'; I have visited the open +workings for iron ores of Northamptonshire, and the underground stone-quarries, +and the underground slate-quarries, with their alternate pillars and chambers, +in the Festiniog district of North Wales; also the rock-salt workings; the tin, +copper and cobalt workings of Cornwall; and where the minerals were brought to +the surface on the backs of men, and where they were brought by adit-levels +provided with rail-roads, and where, as in old Cornish mines, there are two +ladders in the shaft, moved up and down alternately, see-saw, and by skipping +from one to the other at right moments you ascended or descended, and where the +drawing-up is by a gin or horse-whinn, with vertical drum; the Tisbury and +Chilmark quarries in Wiltshire, the Spinkwell and Cliffwood quarries in +Yorkshire; and every tunnel, and every recorded hole: for something urged +within me, saying: 'You must be sure first, or you can never be—yourself.' +</p> + +<hr /> + +<p> +At the Farnbrook Coal-field, in the Red Colt Pit, my inexperience nearly ended +my life: for though I had a minute theoretical knowledge of all British +workings, I was, in my practical relation to them, like a man who has learnt +seamanship on shore. At this place the dead were accumulated, I think beyond +precedent, the dark plain around for at least three miles being as strewn as a +reaped field with stacks, and, near the bank, much more strewn than +stack-fields, filling the only house within sight of the pit-mouth—the small +place provided for the company's officials—and even lying over the great +mountain-heap of wark, composed of the shale and <i>débris</i> of the working. +Here I arrived on the morning of the 15th December, to find that, unlike the +others, there was here no rope-ladder or other contrivance fixed by the +fugitives in the ventilating-shaft, which, usually, is not very deep, being +also the pumping-shaft, containing a plug-rod at one end of the beam-engine +which works the pumps; but looking down the shaft, I discerned a vague mass of +clothes, and afterwards a thing that could only be a rope-ladder, which a batch +of the fugitives, by hanging to it their united weight, must have dragged down +upon themselves, to prevent the descent of yet others. My only way of going +down, therefore, was by the pit-mouth, and as this was an important place, +after some hesitation I decided, very rashly. First I provided for my coming up +again by getting a great coil of half-inch rope, which I found in the bailiff's +office, probably 130 fathoms long, rope at most mines being so plentiful, that +it almost seemed as if each fugitive had provided himself in that way. This +length of rope I threw over the beam of the beam-engine in the bite where it +sustains the rod, and paid one end down the shaft, till both were at the +bottom: in this way I could come up, by tying one rope-end to the rope-ladder, +hoisting it, fastening the other end below, and climbing the ladder; and I then +set to work to light the pit-mouth engine-fire to effect my descent. This done, +I started the engine, and brought up the cage from the bottom, the 300 yards of +wire-rope winding with a quaint deliberateness round the drum, reminding me of +a camel's nonchalant leisurely obedience. When I saw the four meeting chains of +the cage-roof emerge, the pointed roof, and two-sided frame, I stopped the +ascent, and next attached to the knock-off gear a long piece of twine which I +had provided; carried the other end to the cage, in which I had five +companions; lit my hat-candle, which was my test for choke-damp, and the Davy; +and without the least reflection, pulled the string. That hole was 900 feet +deep. First the cage gave a little up-leap, and then began to descend—quite +normally, I thought, though the candle at once went out—nor had I the least +fear; a strong current of air, indeed, blew up the shaft: but that happens in +shafts. <i>This</i> current, however, soon became too vehemently boisterous for +anything: I saw the lamp-light struggle, the dead cheeks quiver, I heard the +cage-shoes go singing down the wire-rope guides, and quicker we went, and +quicker, that facile descent of Avernus, slipping lightly, then raging, with +sparks at the shoes and guides, and a hurricane in my ears and eyes and mouth. +When we bumped upon the 'dogs' at the bottom, I was tossed a foot upwards with +the stern-faced others, and then lay among them in the eight-foot space without +consciousness. +</p> + +<p> +It was only when I sat, an hour later, disgustedly reflecting on this incident, +that I remembered that there was always some 'hand-working' of the engine +during the cage-descents, an engineman reversing the action by a handle at +every stroke of the piston, to prevent bumping. However, the only permanent +injury was to the lamp: and I found many others inside. +</p> + +<p> +I got out into the coal-hole, a large black hall 70 feet square by 15 high, the +floor paved with iron sheets; there were some little holes round the wall, dug +for some purpose which I never could discover, some waggons full of coal and +shale standing about, and all among the waggons, and on them, and under them, +bodies, clothes. I got a new lamp, pouring in my own oil, and went down a long +steep ducky-road, very rough, with numerous rollers, over which ran a rope to +the pit-mouth for drawing up the waggons; and in the sides here, at regular +intervals, man-holes, within which to rescue one's self from down-tearing +waggons; and within these man-holes, here and there, a dead, and in others +every sort of food, and at one place on the right a high dead heap, and the air +here hot at 64 or 65 degrees, and getting hotter with the descent. +</p> + +<p> +The ducky led me down into a standing—a space with a turn-table—of unusual +size, which I made my base of operations for exploring. Here was a very +considerable number of punt-shaped putts on carriages, and also waggons, such +as took the new-mined coal from putt to pit-mouth; and raying out from this +open standing, several avenues, some ascending as guggs, some descending as +dipples, and the dead here all arranged in groups, the heads of this group +pointing up this gugg, of that group toward that twin-way, of that other down +that dipple, and the central space, where weighing was done, almost empty: and +the darksome silence of this deep place, with all these multitudes, I found +extremely gravitating and hypnotic, drawing me, too, into their great Passion +of Silence in which they lay, all, all, so fixed and veteran; and at one time I +fell a-staring, nearer perhaps to death and the empty Gulf than I knew; but I +said I would be strong, and not sink into their habit of stillness, but let +them keep to their own way, and follow their own fashion, and I would keep to +my own way, and follow my own fashion, nor yield to them, though I was but one +against many; and I roused myself with a shudder; and setting to work, caught +hold of the drum-chain of a long gugg, and planting my feet in the chogg-holes +in which rested the wheels of the putt-carriages that used to come roaring down +the gugg, I got up, stooping under a roof only three feet high, till I came, +near the end of the ascent, upon the scene of another battle: for in this gugg +about fifteen of the mine-hands had clubbed to wall themselves in, and had done +it, and I saw them lie there all by themselves through the broken cement, with +their bare feet, trousers, naked bodies all black, visage all fierce and wild, +the grime still streaked with sweat-furrows, the candle in their rimless hats, +and, outside, their own 'getting' mattocks and boring-irons to besiege them. +From the bottom of this gugg I went along a very undulating twin-way, into +which, every thirty yards or so, opened one of those steep putt-ways which they +called topples, the twin-ways having plates of about 2-1/2 ft. gauge for the +putts from the headings, or workings, above to come down upon, full of coal and +shale: and all about here, in twin-way and topples, were ends and corners, and +not one had been left without its walling-in, and only one was then intact, +some, I fancied, having been broken open by their own builders at the spur of +suffocation, or hunger; and the one intact I broke into with a mattock—it was +only a thin cake of plaster, but air-tight—and in a space not seven feet long +behind it I found the very ill-smelling corpse of a carting-boy, with guss and +tugger at his feet, and the pad which protected his head in pushing the putts, +and a great heap of loaves, sardines, and bottled beer against the walls, and +five or six mice that suddenly pitched screaming through the opening which I +made, greatly startling me, there being of dead mice an extraordinary number in +all this mine-region. I went back to the standing, and at one point in the +ground, where there was a windlass and chain, lowered myself down a 'cut'—a +small pit sunk perpendicularly to a lower coal-stratum, and here, almost +thinking I could hear the perpetual rat-tat of notice once exchanged between +the putt-boys below and the windlass-boys above, I proceeded down a dipple to +another place like a standing, for in this mine there were six, or perhaps +seven, veins: and there immediately I came upon the acme of the horrible drama +of this Tartarus, for all here was not merely crowded, but, at some points, a +packed congestion of flesh, giving out a strong smell of the peach, curiously +mixed with the stale coal-odour of the pit, for here ventilation must have been +very limited; and a large number of these masses had been shot down by only +three hands, as I found: for through three hermetical holes in a plaster-wall, +built across a large gugg, projected a little the muzzles of three rifles, +which must have glutted themselves with slaughter; and when, after a horror of +disgust, having swum as it were through a dead sea, I got to the wall, I peeped +from a small clear space before it through a hole, and made out a man, two +youths in their teens, two women, three girls, and piles of cartridges and +provisions; the hole had no doubt been broken from within at the spur of +suffocation, when the poison must have entered; and I conjectured that here +must be the mine-owner, director, manager, or something of that sort, with his +family. In another dipple-region, when I had re-ascended to a higher level, I +nearly fainted before I could retire from the commencement of a region of +after-damp, where there had been an explosion, the bodies lying all hairless, +devastated, and grotesque. But I did not desist from searching every other +quarter, no momentary work, for not till near six did I go up by the +pumping-shaft rope-ladder. +</p> + +<hr /> + +<p> +One day, standing in that wild region of bare rock and sea, called Cornwall +Point, whence one can see the crags and postillion wild rocks where Land's End +dashes out into the sea, and all the wild blue sea between, and not a house in +sight, save the chimney of some little mill-like place peeping between the +rocks inland—on that day I finished what I may call my official search. +</p> + +<p> +In going away from that place, walking northward, I came upon a lonely house by +the sea, a very beautiful house, made, it was clear, by an artist, of the +bungalow type, with an exquisitely sea-side expression. I went to it, and found +its special feature a spacious loggia or verandah, sheltered by the overhanging +upper story. Up to the first floor, the exterior is of stone in rough-hewn +blocks with a distinct batter, while extra protection from weather is afforded +by green slating above. The roofs, of low pitch, are also covered with green +slates, and a feeling of strength and repose is heightened by the very long +horizontal lines. At one end of the loggia is a hexagonal turret, opening upon +the loggia, containing a study or nook. In front, the garden slopes down to the +sea, surrounded by an architectural sea-wall; and in this place I lived three +weeks. It was the house of the poet Machen, whose name, when I saw it, I +remembered very well, and he had married a very beautiful young girl of +eighteen, obviously Spanish, who lay on the bed in the large bright bedroom to +the right of the loggia, on her left exposed breast being a baby with an +india-rubber comforter in its mouth, both mother and child wonderfully +preserved, she still quite lovely, white brow under low curves of black hair. +The poet, strange to say, had not died with them, but sat in the sitting-room +behind the bedroom in a long loose silky-grey jacket, at his desk—actually +writing a poem! writing, I could see, furiously fast, the place all littered +with the written leaves—at three o'clock in the morning, when, as I knew, the +cloud overtook this end of Cornwall, and stopped him, and put his head to rest +on the desk; and the poor little wife must have got sleepy, waiting for it to +come, perhaps sleepless for many long nights before, and gone to bed, he +perhaps promising to follow in a minute to die with her, but bent upon +finishing that poem, and writing feverishly on, running a race with the cloud, +thinking, no doubt, 'just two couplets more,' till the thing came, and put his +head to rest on the desk, poor carle: and I do not know that I ever encountered +aught so complimentary to my race as this dead poet Machen, and his race with +the cloud: for it is clear now that the better kind of those poet men did not +write to please the vague inferior tribes who might read them, but to deliver +themselves of the divine warmth that thronged in their bosom; and if all the +readers were dead, still they would have written; and for God to read they +wrote. At any rate, I was so pleased with these poor people, that I stayed with +them three weeks, sleeping under blankets on a couch in the drawing-room, a +place full of lovely pictures and faded flowers, like all the house: for I +would not touch the young mother to remove her. And finding on Machen's desk a +big note-book with soft covers, dappled red and yellow, not yet written in, I +took it, and a pencil, and in the little turret-nook wrote day after day for +hours this account of what has happened, nearly as far as it has now gone. And +I think that I may continue to write it, for I find in it a strange +consolation, and companionship. +</p> + +<hr /> + +<p> +In the Severn Valley, somewhere in the plain between Gloucester and Cheltenham, +in a rather lonely spot, I at that time travelling on a tricycle-motor, I spied +a curious erection, and went to it. I found it of considerable size, perhaps +fifty feet square, and thirty high, made of pressed bricks, the perfectly flat +roof, too, of brick, and not one window, and only one door: this door, which I +found open, was rimmed all round its slanting rims with india-rubber, and when +closed must have been perfectly air-tight. Just inside I came upon fifteen +English people of the dressed class, except two, who were evidently +bricklayers: six ladies, and nine men: and at the further end, two more, men, +who had their throats cut; along one wall, from end to end were provisions; and +I saw a chest full of mixed potassic chlorate and black oxide of manganese, +with an apparatus for heating it, and producing oxygen—a foolish thing, for +additional oxygen could not alter the quantity of breathed carbonic anhydride, +which is a direct narcotic poison. Whether the two with cut throats had +sacrificed themselves for the others when breathing difficulties commenced, or +been killed by the others, was not clear. When they could bear it no longer, +they must have finally opened the door, hoping that by then, after the passage +of many days perhaps, the outer air would be harmless, and so met their death. +I believe that this erection must have been run up by their own hands under the +direction of the two bricklayers, for they could not, I suppose, have got +workmen, except on the condition of the workmen's admission: on which condition +they would naturally employ as few as possible. +</p> + +<p> +In general, I remarked that the rich must have been more urgent and earnest in +seeking escape than the others: for the poor realised only the near and +visible, lived in to-day, and cherished the always-false notion that to-morrow +would be just like to-day. In an out-patients' waiting-room, for instance, in +the Gloucester infirmary, I chanced to see an astonishing thing: five bodies of +poor old women in shawls, come to have their ailments seen-to on the day of +doom; and these, I concluded, had been unable to realise that anything would +really happen to the daily old earth which they knew, and had walked with +assurance on: for if everybody was to die, they must have thought, who would +preach in the Cathedral on Sunday evenings?—so they could not have believed. In +an adjoining room sat an old doctor at a table, the stethoscope-tips still +clinging in his ears: a woman with bared chest before him; and I thought to +myself: 'Well, this old man, too, died doing his work....' +</p> + +<p> +In this same infirmary there was one surgical ward—for in a listless mood I +went over it—where the patients had died, not of the poison, nor of +suffocation, but of hunger: for the doctors, or someone, had made the long room +air-tight, double-boarding the windows, felting the doors, and then locking +them outside; they themselves may have perished before their precautions for +the imprisoned patients were complete: for I found a heap of maimed shapes, +mere skeletons, crowded round the door within. I knew very well that they had +not died of the cloud-poison, for the pestilence of the ward was unmixed with +that odour of peach which did not fail to have more or less embalming effects +upon the bodies which it saturated. I rushed stifling from that place; and +thinking it a pity, and a danger, that such a horror should be, I at once set +to work to gather combustibles to burn the building to the ground. +</p> + +<p> +It was while I sat in an arm-chair in the street the next afternoon, smoking, +and watching the flames of this structure, that something was suddenly born in +me, something from the lowest Hell: and I smiled a smile that never yet man +smiled. And I said: 'I will burn, I will burn: I will return to London....' +</p> + +<hr /> + +<p> +While I was on this Eastward journey, stopping for the night at the town of +Swindon, I had a dream: for I dreamed that a little brown bald old man, with a +bent back, whose beard ran in one thin streamlet of silver from his chin to +trail along the ground, said to me: 'You think that you are alone on the earth, +its sole Despot: well, have your fling: but as sure as God lives, as God lives, +as God lives'—he repeated it six times—'sooner or later, later or sooner, you +will meet another....' +</p> + +<p> +And I started from that frightful sleep with the brow of a corpse, wet with +sweat.... +</p> + +<hr /> + +<p> +I returned to London on the 29th of March, arriving within a hundred yards of +the Northern Station one windy dark evening about eight, where I alighted, and +walked to Euston Road, then eastward along it, till I came to a shop which I +knew to be a jeweller's, though it was too dark to see any painted words. The +door, to my annoyance, was locked, like nearly all the shop-doors in London: I +therefore went looking near the ground, and into a cart, for something heavy, +very soon saw a labourer's ponderous boots, cut one from the shrivelled foot, +and set to beat at the glass till it came raining; then knocked away the bottom +splinters, and entered. +</p> + +<p> +No horrors now at that clatter of broken glass; no sick qualms; my pulse +steady; my head high; my step royal; my eye cold and calm. +</p> + +<hr /> + +<p> +Eight months previously, I had left London a poor burdened, cowering wight. I +could scream with laughter now at that folly! But it did not last long. I +returned to it—the Sultan. +</p> + +<hr /> + +<p> +No private palace being near, I was going to that great hotel in Bloomsbury: +but though I knew that numbers of candle-sticks would be there, I was not sure +that I should find sufficient: for I had acquired the habit within the past few +months of sleeping with at least sixty lighted about me, and their form, +pattern, style, age, and material was of no small importance I selected ten +from the broken shop, eight gold and silver, and two of old ecclesiastical +brass, and having made a bundle, went out, found a bicycle at the Metropolitan +Station, pumped it, tied my bundle to the handle-bar, and set off riding. But +since I was too lazy to walk, I should certainly have procured some other means +of travelling, for I had not gone ten jolted and creaking yards, when something +went snap—it was a front fork—and I found myself half on the ground, and half +across the bare knees of a Highland soldier. I flew with a shower of kicks upon +the foolish thing: but that booted nothing; and this was my last attempt in +that way in London, the streets being in an unsuitable condition. +</p> + +<p> +All that dismal night it blew great guns: and during nearly three weeks, till +London was no more, there was a storm, with hardly a lull, that seemed to +behowl her destruction. +</p> + +<hr /> + +<p> +I slept in a room on the second-floor of a Bloomsbury hotel that night; and +waking the next day at ten, ate with accursed shiverings in the cold +banqueting-room; went out then, and under drear low skies walked a long way to +the West district, accompanied all the time by a sound of flapping +flags—fluttering robes and rags—and grotesquely grim glimpses of decay. It was +pretty cold, and though I was warmly clad, the base <i>bizarrerie</i> of the +European clothes which I wore had become a perpetual offence and mockery in my +eyes: at the first moment, therefore, I set out whither I knew that I should +find such clothes as a man might wear: to the Turkish Embassy in Bryanston +Square. +</p> + +<p> +I found it open, and all the house, like most other houses, almost carpeted +with dead forms. I had been acquainted with Redouza Pasha, and cast an eye +about for him amid that invasion of veiled hanums, fierce-looking Caucasians in +skins of beasts, a Sheik-ul-Islam in green cloak, a khalifa, three emirs in +cashmere turbans, two tziganes, their gaudy brown mortality more glaringly +abominable than even the Western's. I could recognise no Redouza here: but the +stair was fairly clear, and I soon came to one of those boudoirs which sweetly +recall the deep-buried inner seclusion and dim sanctity of the Eastern home: a +door encrusted with mother-of-pearl, sculptured ceiling, candles clustered in +tulips and roses of opal, a brazen brasero, and, all in disarray, the silken +chemise, the long winter-cafetan doubled with furs, costly cabinets, sachets of +aromas, babooshes, stuffs of silk. When, after two hours, I went from the +house, I was bathed, anointed, combed, scented, and robed. +</p> + +<hr /> + +<p> +I have said to myself: 'I will ravage and riot in my Kingdoms. I will rage like +the Caesars, and be a withering blight where I pass like Sennacherib, and +wallow in soft delights like Sardanapalus. I will build me a palace, vast as a +city, in which to strut and parade my Monarchy before the Heavens, with stones +of pure molten gold, and rough frontispiece of diamond, and cupola of amethyst, +and pillars of pearl. For there were many men to the eye: but there was One +only, really: and I was he. And always I knew it:—some faintest secret whisper +which whispered me: "<i>You</i> are the Arch-one, the <i>motif</i> of the +world, Adam, and the rest of men not much." And they are gone—all! all!—as no +doubt they deserved: and I, as was meet, remain. And there are wines, and +opiums, and haschish; and there are oils, and spices, fruits and bivalves, and +soft-breathing Cyclades, and scarlet luxurious Orients. I will be restless and +turbulent in my territories: and again, I will be languishing and fond. I will +say to my soul: "Be Full."' +</p> + +<hr /> + +<p> +I watch my mind, as in the old days I would watch a new precipitate in a +test-tube, to see into what sediment it would settle. +</p> + +<p> +I am very averse to trouble of any sort, so that the necessity for the simplest +manual operations will rouse me to indignation: but if a thing will contribute +largely to my ever-growing voluptuousness, I will undergo a considerable amount +of labour to accomplish it, though without steady effort, being liable to +side-winds and whims, and purposeless relaxations. +</p> + +<p> +In the country I became very irritable at the need which confronted me of +occasionally cooking some green vegetable—the only item of food which it was +necessary to take some trouble over: for all meats, and many fish, some quite +delicious, I find already prepared in forms which will remain good probably a +century after my death, should I ever die. In Gloucester, however, I found +peas, asparagus, olives, and other greens, already prepared to be eaten without +base cares: and these, I now see, exist everywhere in stores so vast +comparatively to the needs of a single man, that they may be called infinite. +Everything, in fact, is infinite compared with my needs. I take my meals, +therefore, without more trouble than a man who had to carve his joint, or +chicken: though even that little I sometimes find most irksome. There remains +the detestable degradation of lighting fires for warmth, which I have +occasionally to do: for the fire at the hotel invariably goes out while I +sleep. But that is an inconvenience of this vile northern island only, to which +I shall soon bid eternal glad farewells. +</p> + +<p> +During the afternoon of my second day in London, I sought out a strong petrol +motor in Holborn, overhauled and oiled it a little, and set off over +Blackfriars Bridge, making for Woolwich through that other more putrid London +on the south river-side. One after the other, I connected, as I came upon them, +two drays, a cab, and a private carriage, to my motor in line behind, having +cut away the withered horses, and using the reins, chain-harness, &c., as +impromptu couplings. And with this novel train, I rumbled eastward. +</p> + +<p> +Half-way I happened to look at my old silver chronometer of <i>Boreal</i>-days, +which I have kept carefully wound—and how I can be still thrown into these +sudden frantic agitations by a nothing, a nothing, my good God! I do not know. +This time it was only the simple fact that the hands chanced to point to 3.10 +P.M., the precise moment at which all the clocks of London had stopped—for each +town has its thousand weird fore-fingers, pointing, pointing still, to the +moment of doom. In London it was 3.10 on a Sunday afternoon. I first noticed it +going up the river on the face of the 'Big Ben' of the Parliament-house, and I +now find that they all, all, have this 3.10 mania, time-keepers still, but +keepers of the end of Time, fixedly noting for ever and ever that one moment. +The cloud-mass of fine penetrating <i>scoriae</i> must have instantly stopped +their works, and they had fallen silent with man. But in their insistence upon +this particular minute I had found something so hideously solemn, yet +mock-solemn, personal, and as it were addressed to <i>me</i>, that when my own +watch dared to point to the same moment, I was thrown into one of those sudden, +paroxysmal, panting turmoils of mind, half rage, half horror, which have hardly +once visited me since I left the <i>Boreal</i>. On the morrow, alas, another +awaited me; and again on the second morrow after. +</p> + +<hr /> + +<p> +My train was execrably slow, and not until after five did I arrive at the +entrance-gates of the Woolwich Royal Arsenal; and seeing that it was too late +to work, I uncoupled the motor, and leaving the others there, turned back; but +overtaken by lassitude, I procured candles, stopped at the Greenwich +Observatory, and in that old dark pile, remained for the night, listening to a +furious storm. But, a-stir by eight the next morning, I got back by ten to the +Arsenal, and proceeded to analyse that vast and multiple entity. Many parts of +it seemed to have been abandoned in undisciplined haste, and in the Cap +Factory, which I first entered, I found tools by which to effect entry into any +desired part. My first search was for time-fuses of good type, of which I +needed two or three thousand, and after a wearily long time found a great +number symmetrically arranged in rows in a range of buildings called the +Ordnance Store Department. I then descended, walked back to the wharf, brought +up my train, and began to lower the fuses in bag-fulls by ropes through a +shoot, letting go each rope as the fuses reached the cart. However, on winding +one fuse, I found that the mechanism would not go, choked with scoriae; and I +had to resign myself to the task of opening and dusting every one: a wretched +labour in which I spent that day, like a workman. But about four I threw them +to the devil, having done two hundred odd, and then hummed back in the motor to +London. +</p> + +<hr /> + +<p> +That same evening at six I paid, for the first time, a visit to my old self in +Harley Street. It was getting dark, and a bleak storm that hooted like +whooping-cough swept the world. At once I saw that even <i>I</i> had been +invaded: for my door swung open, banging, a lowered catch preventing it from +slamming; in the passage the car-lamp shewed me a young man who seemed a Jew, +sitting as if in sleep with dropped head, a back-tilted silk-hat pressed down +upon his head to the ears; and lying on face, or back, or side, six more, one a +girl with Arlesienne head-dress, one a negress, one a Deal lifeboat's-man, and +three of uncertain race; the first room—the waiting-room—is much more +numerously occupied, though there still, on the table, lies the volume of +<i>Punch</i>, the <i>Gentlewoman</i>, and the book of London views in +heliograph. Behind this, descending two steps, is the study and +consulting-room, and there, as ever, the revolving-cover oak writing-desk: but +on my little shabby-red sofa, a large lady much too big for it, in shimmering +brown silk, round her left wrist a <i>trousseau</i> of massive gold trinkets, +her head dropped right back, almost severed by an infernal gash from the +throat. Here were two old silver candle-sticks, which I lit, and went upstairs: +in the drawing-room sat my old house-keeper, placidly dead in a rocking-chair, +her left hand pressing down a batch of the open piano-keys, among many +strangers. But she was very good: she had locked my bedroom against intrusion; +and as the door stands across a corner behind a green-baize curtain, it had not +been seen, or, at least, not forced. I did not know where the key might be, but +a few thumps with my back drove it open: and there lay my bed intact, and +everything tidy. This was a strange coming-back to it, Adam. +</p> + +<p> +But what intensely interested me in that room was a big thing standing at the +maroon-and-gold wall between wardrobe and dressing-table—that gilt frame—and +that man painted within it there. It was myself in oils, done by—I forget his +name now: a towering celebrity he was, and rather a close friend of mine at one +time. In a studio in St. John's Wood, I remember, he did it; and many people +said that it was quite a great work of art. I suppose I was standing before it +quite thirty minutes that night, holding up the bits of candle, lost in wonder, +in amused contempt at that thing there. It is I, certainly: that I must admit. +There is the high-curving brow—really a King's brow, after all, it strikes me +now—and that vacillating look about the eyes and mouth which used to make my +sister Ada say: 'Adam is weak and luxurious.' Yes, that is wonderfully done, +the eyes, that dear, vacillating look of mine; for although it is rather a +staring look, yet one can almost see the dark pupils stir from side to side: +very well done. And there is the longish face; and the rather thin, stuck-out +moustache, shewing both lips which pout a bit; and there is the nearly black +hair; and there is the rather visible paunch; and there is, oh good Heaven, the +neat pink cravat—ah, it must have been <i>that—the cravat</i>—that made me +burst out into laughter so loud, mocking, and uncontrollable the moment my eye +rested there! 'Adam Jeffson,' I muttered reproachfully when it was over, 'could +that poor thing in the frame have been you?' +</p> + +<p> +I cannot quite state why the tendency toward Orientalism—Oriental dress—all the +manner of an Oriental monarch—has taken full possession of me: but so it is: +for surely I am hardly any longer a Western, 'modern' mind, but a primitive and +Eastern one. Certainly, that cravat in the frame has receded a million, million +leagues, ten thousand forgotten aeons, from me! Whether this is a result due to +my own personality, of old acquainted with Eastern notions, or whether, +perhaps, it is the natural accident to any mind wholly freed from trammels, I +do not know. But I seem to have gone right back to the very beginnings, and +resemblance with man in his first, simple, gaudy conditions. My hair, as I sit +here writing, already hangs a black, oiled string down my back; my scented +beard sweeps in two opening whisks to my ribs; I have on the <i>izar</i>, a +pair of drawers of yomani cloth like cotton, but with yellow stripes; over this +a soft shirt, or quamis, of white silk, reaching to my calves; over this a +short vest of gold-embroidered crimson, the <i>sudeyree</i>; over this a +khaftan of green-striped silk, reaching to the ankles, with wide, long sleeves +divided at the wrist, and bound at the waist with a voluminous gaudy shawl of +Cashmere for girdle; over this a warm wide-flowing torrent of white drapery, +lined with ermine. On my head is the skull-cap, covered by a high crimson cap +with deep-blue tassel; and on my feet is a pair of thin yellow-morocco shoes, +covered over with thick red-morocco babooshes. My ankles—my ten fingers—my +wrists—are heavy with gold and silver ornaments; and in my ears, which, with +considerable pain, I bored three days since, are two needle-splinters, to +prepare the holes for rings. +</p> + +<hr /> + +<p> +O Liberty! I am free.... +</p> + +<hr /> + +<p> +While I was going to visit my old home in Harley Street that night, at the very +moment when I turned from Oxford Street into Cavendish Square, this thought, +fiercely hissed into my ears, was all of a sudden seething in me: 'If now I +should lift my eyes, and see a man walking yonder—just yonder—<i>at the corner +there</i>—turning from Harewood Place into Oxford Street—what, my good God, +should I do?—I without even a knife to run and plunge into his heart?' +</p> + +<p> +And I turned my eyes—ogling, suspicious eyes of furtive horror—reluctantly, +lingeringly turned—and I peered deeply with lowered brows across the murky +winds at that same spot: but no man was there. +</p> + +<p> +Hideously frequent is this nonsense now become with me—in streets of towns—in +deep nooks of the country: the invincible assurance that, if I but turn the +head, and glance <i>there</i>—at a certain fixed spot—I shall surely see—I +<i>must</i> see—a man. And glance I must, glance I must, though I perish: and +when I glance, though my hairs creep and stiffen like stirring amobse, yet in +my eyes, I know, is monarch indignation against the intruder, and my neck +stands stiff as sovereignty itself, and on my brow sits more than all the +lordship of Persepolis and Iraz. +</p> + +<p> +To what point of wantonness this arrogance of royalty may lead me, I do not +know: I will watch, and see. It is written: 'It is not good for man to be +alone!' But good or no, the arrangement of One planet, One inhabitant, already +seems to me, not merely a natural and proper, but the <i>only</i> natural and +proper, condition; so much so, that any other arrangement has now, to my mind, +a certain improbable, wild, and far-fetched unreality, like the Utopian schemes +of dreamers and faddists. That the whole world should have been made for +<i>me</i> alone—that London should have been built only in order that <i>I</i> +might enjoy the vast heroic spectacle of its burning—that all history, and all +civilisation should have existed only in order to accumulate for <i>my</i> +pleasures its inventions and facilities, its stores of purple and wine, of +spices and gold—no more extraordinary does it all seem to me than to some +little unreflecting Duke of my former days seemed the possessing of lands which +his remote forefathers seized, and slew the occupiers: nor, in reality, is it +even so extraordinary, I being alone. But what sometimes strikes me with some +surprise is, not that the present condition of the world, with one sole master, +should seem the common-place and natural condition, but that it should have +come to seem <i>so</i> common-place and natural—in nine months. The mind of +Adam Jeffson is adaptable. +</p> + +<hr /> + +<p> +I sat a long time thinking such things by my bed that night, till finally I was +disposed to sleep there. But I had no considerable number of candle-sticks, nor +was even sure of candles. I remembered, however, that Peter Peters, three doors +away on the other side of the street, had had four handsome silver candelabra +in his drawing-room, each containing six stems; and I said to myself: 'I will +search for candles in the kitchen, and if I find any, I will go and get Peter +Peters' candelabra, and sleep here.' +</p> + +<p> +I took then the two lights which I had, my good God; went down to the passage; +then down to the basement; and there had no difficulty in finding three packets +of large candles, the fact being, I suppose, that the cessation of gas-lighting +had compelled everyone to provide themselves in this way, for there were a +great many wherever I looked. With these I re-ascended, went into a little +alcove on the second-floor where I had kept some drugs, got a bottle of +carbolic oil, and for ten minutes went dashing all the corpses in the house. I +then left the two lighted bits of candle on the waiting-room table, and, with +the car-lamp, passed along the passage to the front-door, which was very +violently banging. I stepped out to find that the storm had increased to a +mighty turbulence (though it was dry), which at once caught my clothes, and +whirled them into a flapping cloud about and above me; also, I had not crossed +the street when my lamp was out. I persisted, however, half blinded, to Peters' +door. It was locked: but immediately near the pavement was a window, the lower +sash up, into which, with little trouble, I lifted myself and passed. My foot, +as I lowered it, stood on a body: and this made me angry and restless. I hissed +a curse, and passed on, scraping the carpet with my soles, that I might hurt no +one: for I did not wish to hurt any one. Even in the almost darkness of the +room I recognised Peters' furniture, as I expected: for the house was his on a +long lease, and I knew that his mother had had the intention to occupy it after +his death. But as I passed into the passage, all was mere blank darkness, and +I, depending upon the lamp, had left the matches in the other house. I groped +my way to the stairs, and had my foot on the first step, when I was stopped by +a vicious shaking of the front-door, which someone seemed to be at with +hustlings and the most urgent poundings: I stood with peering stern brows two +or three minutes, for I knew that if I once yielded to the flinching at my +heart, no mercy would be shown me in this house of tragedy, and thrilling +shrieks would of themselves arise and ring through its haunted chambers. The +rattling continued an inordinate time, and so instant and imperative, that it +seemed as if it could not fail to force the door. But, though horrified, I +whispered to my heart that it could only be the storm which was struggling at +it like the grasp of a man, and after a time went on, feeling my way by the +broad rail, in my brain somehow the thought of a dream which I had had in the +<i>Boreal</i> of the woman Clodagh, how she let drop a fluid like +pomegranate-seeds into water, and tendered it to Peter Peters: and it was a +mortal purging draught; but I would not stop, but step by step went up, though +I suffered very much, my brows peering at the utter darkness, and my heart +shocked at its own rashness. I got to the first landing, and as I turned to +ascend the second part of the stair, my left hand touched something icily cold: +I made some quick instinctive movement of terror, and, doing so, my foot struck +against something, and I stumbled, half falling over what seemed a small table +there. Immediately a horrible row followed, for something fell to the ground: +and at that instant, ah, I heard something—a voice—a human voice, which uttered +words close to my ear—the voice of Clodagh, for I knew it: yet not the voice of +Clodagh in the flesh, but her voice clogged with clay and worms, and full of +effort, and thick-tongued: and in that ghastly speech of the grave I distinctly +heard the words: +</p> + +<p> +'<i>Things being as they are in the matter of the death of Peter ...</i>' +</p> + +<p> +And there it stopped dead, leaving me so sick, my God, so sick, that I could +hardly snatch my robes about me to fly, fly, fly, soft-footed, murmuring in +pain, down the steps, down like a sneaking thief, but quick, snatching myself +away, then wrestling with the cruel catch of the door which she would not let +me open, feeling her all the time behind me, watching me. And when I did get +out, I was away up the length of the street, trailing my long <i>jubbah</i>, +glancing backward, panting, for I thought that she might dare to follow, with +her daring evil will. And all that night I lay on a common bench in the +wind-tossed and dismal Park. +</p> + +<hr /> + +<p> +The first thing which I did when the sun was up was to return to that place: +and I returned with hard and masterful brow. +</p> + +<p> +Approaching Peters' house I saw now, what the darkness had hidden from me, that +on his balcony was someone—quite alone there. The balcony is a slight open-work +wrought-iron structure, connected to a small roof by three slender voluted +pillars, two at the ends, one in the middle: and at the middle one I saw +someone, a woman—kneeling—her arms clasped tight about the pillar, and her face +rather upward-looking. Never did I see aught more horrid: there were the +gracious curves of the woman's bust and hips still well preserved in a clinging +dress of red cloth, very faded now; and her reddish hair floated loose in a +large flimsy cloud about her; but her face, in that exposed position, had been +quite eaten away by the winds to a noseless skeleton, which grinned from ear to +ear, with slightly-dropped under-jaw—most horrid in contrast with the body, and +frame of hair. I meditated upon her a long time that morning from the opposite +pavement. An oval locket at her throat contained, I knew, my likeness: for +eight years previously I had given it her. It was Clodagh, the poisoner. +</p> + +<p> +I thought that I would go into that house, and walk through it from top to +bottom, and sit in it, and spit in it, and stamp in it, in spite of any one: +for the sun was now high. I accordingly went in again, and up the stairs to the +spot where I had been frightened, and had heard the words. And here a great +rage took me, for I at once saw that I had been made the dupe of the malign +wills that beset me, and the laughing-stock of Those for whom I care not a fig. +From a little mahogany table there I had knocked sideways to the ground, in my +stumble, a small phonograph with a great 25-inch japanned-tin horn, which, the +moment that I now noticed it, I took and flung with a great racket down the +stairs: for that this it was which had addressed me I did not doubt; it being +indeed evident that its clock-work mechanism had been stopped by the volcanic +scoriae in the midst of the delivery of a record, but had been started into a +few fresh oscillations by the shock of the fall, making it utter those thirteen +words, and stop. I was sufficiently indignant at the moment, but have since +been glad, for I was thereby put upon the notion of collecting a number of +cylinders with records, and have been touched with indescribable sensations, +sometimes thrilled, at hearing the silence of this Eternity broken by those +singing and speaking voices, so life-like, yet most ghostly, of the old dead. +</p> + +<hr /> + +<p> +Well, the most of that same day I spent in a high chamber at Woolwich, dusting +out, and sometimes oiling, time-fuses: a work in which I acquired such facility +in some hours, that each finally occupied me no more than ninety to a hundred +seconds, so that by evening I had, with the previous day's work, close on 600. +The construction of these little things is very simple, and, I believe, +effective, so that I should have no difficulty in making them myself in large +numbers, if it were necessary. Most contain a tiny dry battery, which sends a +current along a bell or copper wire at the running-down moment, the clocks +being contrived to be set for so many days, hours, and minutes, while others +ignite by striking. I arranged in rows in the covered van those which I had +prepared, and passed the night in an inn near the Barracks. I had brought +candle-sticks from London in the morning, and arranged the furniture—a settee, +chest-of-drawers, basin-stand, table, and a number of chairs—in +three-quarter-circle round the bed, so getting a triple-row altar of lights, +mixed with vases of the house containing small palms and evergreens; with this +I mingled a smell of ambergris from the scattered contents of some Turkish +sachets which I had; in the bed a bottle of sweet Chypre-wine, with +<i>bonbons</i>, nuts, and Havannas. As I lay me down, I could not but reflect, +with a smile which I knew to be evil, upon that steady, strong, smouldering +lust within me which was urging me through all those pains at the Arsenal, I +who shirked every labour as unkingly. So, however, it was: and the next morning +I was at it again after an early breakfast, my fingers at first quite stiff +with cold, for it blew a keen and January gale. By nine I had 820 fuses; and +judging those sufficient to commence with, got into the motor, and took it +round to a place called the East Laboratory, a series of detached buildings, +where I knew that I should find whatever I wanted: and I prepared my mind for a +day's labour. In this place I found incredible stores: mountains of +percussion-caps, more chambers of fuses, small-arm cartridges, shells, and all +those murderous explosive mixtures, a-making and made, with which modern +savagery occupied its leisure in exterminating itself: or, at least, savagery +civilised in its top-story only: for civilisation was apparently from the head +downwards, and never once grew below the neck in all those centuries, those +people being certainly much more mental than cordial, though I doubt if they +were genuinely mental either—reminding one rather of that composite image of +Nebuchadnezzar, head of gold, breast brazen, feet of clay—head man-like, heart +cannibal, feet bestial—like aegipeds, and mermaids, and puzzling undeveloped +births. However, it is of no importance: and perhaps I am not much better than +the rest, for I, too, after all, am of them. At any rate, their lyddites, +melanites, cordites, dynamites, powders, jellies, oils, marls, and civilised +barbarisms and obiahs, came in very well for their own destruction: for by two +o'clock I had so worked, that I had on the first cart the phalanx of fuses; on +the second a goodly number of kegs, cartridge-cases and cartridge-boxes, full +of powder, explosive cottons and gelatines, and liquid nitro-glycerine, and +earthy dynamite, with some bombs, two reels of cordite, two pieces of tarred +cloth, a small iron ladle, a shovel, and a crow-bar; the cab came next, +containing a considerable quantity of loose coal; and lastly, in the private +carriage lay four big cans of common oil. And first, in the Laboratory, I +connected a fuse-conductor with a huge tun of blasting-gelatine, and I set the +fuse on the ground, timed for the midnight of the twelfth day thence; and after +that I visited the Main Factory, the Carriage Department, the Ordnance Store +Department, the Royal Artillery Barracks, and the Powder Magazines in the +Marshes, traversing, as it seemed to me, miles of building; and in some I laid +heaps of oil-saturated coal with an explosive in suitable spots on the +ground-floor near wood-work, and in some an explosive alone: and all I timed +for ignition at midnight of the twelfth day. Hot now, and black as ink, I +proceeded through the town, stopping with perfect system at every hundredth +door: and I laid the faggots of a great burning: and timed them all for +ignition at midnight of the twelfth day. +</p> + +<hr /> + +<p> +Whatever door I found closed against me I drove at it with a maniac malice. +</p> + +<hr /> + +<p> +Shall I commit the whole dark fact to paper?—that deep, deep secret of the +human organism? +</p> + +<p> +As I wrought, I waxed wicked as a demon! And with lowered neck, and forward +curve of the lower spine, and the blasphemous strut of tragic play-actors, I +went. For here was no harmless burning which I did—but the crime of arson; and +a most fiendish, though vague, malevolence, and the rage to burn and raven and +riot, was upon me like a dog-madness, and all the mood of Nero, and +Nebuchadnezzar: and from my mouth proceeded all the obscenities of the slum and +of the gutter, and I sent up such hisses and giggles of challenge to Heaven +that day as never yet has man let out. But this way lies a spinning frenzy.... +</p> + +<hr /> + +<p> +I have taken a dead girl with wild huggings to my bosom; and I have touched the +corrupted lip, and spat upon her face, and tossed her down, and crushed her +teeth with my heel, and jumped and jumped upon her breast, like the +snake-stamping zebra, mad, mad...! +</p> + +<hr /> + +<p> +I was desolated, however, that first day of the faggot-laying, even in the +midst of my sense of omnipotence, by one thing, which made me give some kicks +to the motor: for it was only crawling, so that a good part of the way I was +stalking by its side; and when I came to that hill near the Old Dover Road, the +whole thing stopped, and refused to move, the weight of the train being too +great for my horse-power traction. I did not know what to do, and stood there +in angry impotence a full half-hour, for the notion of setting up an electric +station, with or without automatic stoking-gear, presented so hideous a picture +of labour to me, that I would not entertain it. After a time, however, I +thought that I remembered that there was a comparatively new power station in +St. Paneras driven by turbines: and at once, I uncoupled the motor, covered the +drays with the tarpaulins, and went driving at singing speed, choosing the +emptier by-streets, and not caring whom I crushed. After some trouble I found, +in fact, the station in an obscure by-street made of two long walls, and went +in by a window, a rage upon me to have my will quickly accomplished. I ran up +some stairs, across two rooms, into a gallery containing a switch-board, and in +the room below saw the works, all very neat-looking, but, as I soon found, very +dusty. I went down, and fixed upon a generating set—there were three—that would +give a decent load, and then saw that the switch-gear belonging to this +particular generator was in order. I then got some cloths and thoroughly +cleaned the dust off the commutators; ran next—for I was in a strange fierce +haste—and turned the water into the turbines, and away went the engine; I +hurried to set the lubricators running on the bearings, and in a couple of +minutes had adjusted the speed, and the brushes of the generators, and switched +the current on to the line. By this time, however, I saw that it was getting +dark, and feared that little could be done that day; still, I hurried out, the +station still running, got into the car, and was off to look for a good +electric one, of which there are hosts in the streets, in order at least to +clean up and adjust the motor that night. I drove down three by-streets, till I +turned into Euston Road: but I had no sooner reached it than I pulled up—with +sudden jerk—with a shout of astonishment. +</p> + +<p> +That cursed street was all lighted up and gay! and three shimmering electric +globes, not far apart, illuminated every feature of a ghastly battle-field of +dead. +</p> + +<p> +And there was a thing there, the grinning impression of which I shall carry to +my grave: a thing which spelled and spelled at me, and ceased, and began again, +and ceased, and spelled at me. For, above a shop which faced me was a flag, a +red flag with white letters, fluttering on the gale the words: 'Metcalfe's +Stores'; and beneath the flag, stretched right across the house, was the thing +which spelled, letter by letter, in letters of light: and it spelled two words, +deliberately, coming to the end, and going back to recommence: +</p> + +<p class="center"> +<i>Drink</i><br/> +ROBORAL. +</p> + +<p> +And that was the last word of civilised Man to me, Adam Jeffson—its final +counsel—its ultimate gospel and message—to <i>me</i>, my good God! <i>Drink +Roboral!</i> +</p> + +<p> +I was put into such a passion of rage by this blatant ribaldry, which affected +me like the laughter of a skeleton, that I rushed from the car, with the +intention, I believe, of seeking stones to stone it: but no stones were there: +and I had to stand impotently enduring that rape of my eyes, its +victoriously-dogged iteration, its taunting leer, its Drink Roboral—D, R, I, N, +K R, O, B, O, R, A, L. +</p> + +<p> +It was one of those electrical spelling-advertisements, worked by a small motor +commutator driven by a works-motor, and I had now set it going: for on some +night before that Sabbath of doom the chemist must have set it to work, but +finding the works abandoned, had not troubled to shut it down again. At any +rate, this thing stopped my work for that day, for when I went to shut down the +works it was night; and I drove to the place which I had made my home in sullen +and weary mood: for I knew that Roboral would not cure the least of all my +sores. +</p> + +<hr /> + +<p> +The next morning I awoke in quite another frame of mind, disposed to idle, and +let things go. After rising, dressing, washing in cold diluted rose-water, and +descending to the <i>salle-à-manger</i>, where I had laid my morning-meal the +previous evening, I promenaded an hour the only one of these long sombrous +tufted corridors in which there were not more than two dead, though behind the +doors on either hand, all of which I had locked, I knew that they lay in +plenty. When I was warmed, I again went down, looked into my motor, got three +cylinders from one of a number of motors standing near, lit up, and drove +away—to Woolwich, as I thought at first: but instead of crossing the river by +Blackfriars, I went more eastward; and having passed from Holborn into +Cheapside, which was impassable, unless I crawled, was about to turn, when I +noticed a phonograph-shop: into this I got by a side-door, suddenly seized by +quite a curiosity to hear what I might hear. I took a good one with microphone +diaphragm, and a number of record-cylinders in a brass-handled box, and I put +them into the car, for there was still a very strong peach-odour in this closed +shop, which displeased me. I then proceeded southward and westward through +by-streets, seeking some probable house into which to go from the rough cold +winds, when I saw the Parliament-house, and thither, turning river-ward by +Westminster Hall to Palace Yard, I went, and with my two parcels, one weighting +each arm, walked into this old place along a line of purple-dusted busts; I +deposited my boxes on a table beside a massive brass thing lying there, which, +I suppose, must be what they called the Mace; and I sat to hear. +</p> + +<p> +Unfortunately, the phonograph was a clock-work one, and when I wound it, it +would not go: so that I got very angry at my absurdity in not bringing an +electric mechanism, as I could with much less trouble have put in a chemical +than cleaned the clock-work; and this thing put me into such a rage, that I +nearly tore it to pieces, and was half for kicking it: but there was a man +sitting in an old straight-backed chair quite near me, which they called the +Speaker's Chair, who was in such a pose, that he had, every time I glanced +suddenly at him, precisely the air of bending forward with interest to watch +what I was doing, a Mohrgrabim kind of man, almost black, with Jewish nose, +crinkled hair, keffie, and flowing robe, probably, I should say, an Abyssinian +Galla; with him were only five or six people about the benches, mostly leaning +forward with rested head, so that this place had quite a void sequestered mood. +At all events, this Galla, or Bedouin, with his grotesque interest in my +doings, restrained my hands: and, finally, by dint of peering, poking, dusting, +and adjusting, in an hour's time I got the phonograph to go very well. +</p> + +<p> +And all that morning, and far into late afternoon, forgetful of food, and of +the cold which gradually possessed me, I sat there listening, musing—cylinder +after cylinder: frivolous songs, orchestras, voices of famous men whom I had +spoken with, and shaken their solid hands, speaking again to me, but +thick-tongued, with hoarse effort and gurgles, from out the vague void beyond +the grave: most strange, most strange. And the third cylinder that I put on, +ah, I knew, with a fearful start, that voice of thunder, I knew it well: it was +the preacher, Mackay's; and many, many times over I heard those words of his +that day, originally spoken, it seems, when the cloud had just passed the +longitude of Vienna; and in all that torrent of speech not one single word of +'I told you so': but he cries: +</p> + +<p> +'...praise Him, O Earth, for He is He: and if He slay me, I will laugh raillery +at His Sword, and banter Him to His face: for His Sword is sharp Mercy, and His +poisons kill my death. Fear not, therefore, little flock of Man! but take my +comfort to your heart to-night, and my sweets to your tongue: for though ye +have sinned, and hardened yourselves as brass, and gone far, far astray in +these latter wildernesses, yet He is infinitely greater than your sin, and will +lead you back. Break not, break not, poor broken heart of Earth: for from Him I +run herald to thee this night with the sweet and secret message, that of old He +chose thee, and once mixed conjugally with thee in an ancient sleep, O +Afflicted: and He is thou, and thou art He, flesh of His flesh, and bone of His +bone; and if thou perish utterly, it is that He has perished utterly, too: for +thou art He. Hope, therefore, most, and cheeriest smile, at the very apsis and +black nadir of Despair: for He is nimble as a weasel, and He twists like +Proteus, and His solstices and equinoxes, His tropics and turning-points and +recurrences are innate in Being, and when He falls He falls like harlequin and +shuttlecocks, shivering plumb to His feet, and each third day, lo, He is risen +again, and His defeats are but the stepping-stones and rough scaffolding from +which He builds His Parthenons, and from the densest basalt gush His rills, and +the last end of this Earth shall be no poison-cloud, I say to you, but Carnival +and Harvest-home ... though ye have sinned, poor hearts ...' +</p> + +<hr /> + +<p> +So Mackay, with thick-tongued metallic effort. I found this brown room of the +Commons-house, with its green benches, and grilled galleries, so agreeable to +my mood, that I went again the next morning, and listened to more records, till +they tired me: for what I had was a prurient itch to hear secret scandals, and +revelations of the festering heart, but these cylinders, gathered from a shop, +divulged nothing. I then went out to make for Woolwich, but in the car saw the +poet's note-book in which I had written: and I took it, went back, and was +writing an hour, till I was tired of that, too; and judging it too late for +Woolwich that day, wandered about the dusty committee-rooms and recesses of +this considerable place. In one room another foolishness suddenly seized upon +me, shewing how my slightest whim has become more imperious within me than all +the Jaws of the Medes and Persians: for in that room, Committee Room No. 15, I +found an apparently young policeman lying flat on his back, who pleased me: his +helmet tilted under his head, and near one white-gloved hand a blue official +envelope; the air of that stagnant quiet room was still perceptibly +peach-scented, and he gave not the slightest odour that I could detect, though +he had been corporal and stalwart, his face now the colour of dark ashes, in +each hollow cheek a ragged hole about the size of a sixpence, the flimsy +vaulted eye-lids well embedded in their caverns, from under whose fringe of +eye-lash seemed whispered the word: '<i>Eternity.</i>' His hair seemed very +long for a policeman, or perhaps it had grown since death; but what interested +me about him, was the envelope at his hand: for 'what,' I asked myself, 'was +this fellow doing here with an envelope at three o'clock on a Sunday +afternoon?' This made me look closer, and then I saw by a mark at the left +temple that he had been shot, or felled; whereupon I was thrown into quite a +great rage, for I thought that this poor man was killed in the execution of his +duty, when many of his kind perhaps, and many higher than he, had fled their +post to pray or riot. So, after looking at him a long time, I said to him: +'Well, D. 47, you sleep very well: and you did well, dying so: I am pleased +with you, and to mark my favour, I decree that you shall neither rot in the +common air, nor burn in the common flames: for by my own hand shall you be +distinguished with burial.' And this wind so possessed me, that I at once went +out: with the crow-bar from the car I broke the window of a near iron-monger's +in Parliament Street, got a spade, and went into Westminster Abbey. I soon +prised up a grave-slab of some famous man in the north transept, and commenced +to shovel: but, I do not know how, by the time I had digged a foot the whole +impulse passed from me: I left off the work, promising to resume it: but +nothing was ever done, for the next day I was at Woolwich, and busy enough +about other matters. +</p> + +<hr /> + +<p> +During the next nine days I worked with a fever on me, and a map of London +before me. +</p> + +<p> +There were places in that city!—secrets, vastnesses, horrors! In the +wine-vaults at London Docks was a vat which must certainly have contained +between twenty and thirty thousand gallons: and with dancing heart I laid a +train there; the tobacco-warehouse must have covered eighty acres: and there I +laid a fuse. In a house near Regent's Park, standing in a garden, and shut from +the street by a high wall, I saw a thing...! and what shapes a great city hid I +now first know. +</p> + +<hr /> + +<p> +I left no quarter unremembered, taking a train, no longer of four, but of +eight, vehicles, drawn by an electric motor which I re-charged every morning, +mostly from the turbine station in St. Pancras, once from a steam-station with +very small engine and dynamo, found in the Palace Theatre, which gave little +trouble, and once from a similar little station in a Strand hotel. With these I +visited West Ham and Kew, Finchley and Clapham, Dalston and Marylebone; I +exhausted London; I deposited piles in the Guildhall, in Holloway Gaol, in the +new pillared Justice-hall of Newgate, in the Tower, in the Parliament-house, in +St. Giles' Workhouse, in the Crypt and under the organ of St. Paul's, in the +South Kensington Museum, in the Royal Agricultural Society, in Whiteley's +place, in the Trinity House, in Liverpool Street, in the Office of Works, in +the secret recesses of the British Museum; in a hundred inflammable warehouses, +in five hundred shops, in a thousand private dwellings. And I timed them all +for ignition at midnight of the 23rd April. +</p> + +<p> +By five in the afternoon of the 22nd, when I left my train in Maida Vale, and +drove alone to the solitary house on high ground near Hampstead Heath which I +had chosen, the work was well finished. +</p> + +<hr /> + +<p> +The great morning dawned, and I was early a-stir: for I had much to do that +day. +</p> + +<p> +I intended to make for the sea-shore the next morning, and had therefore to +choose a good petrol motor, store it, and have it in a place of safety; I had +also to drag another vehicle after me, stored with trunks of time-fuses, books, +clothes, and other little things. +</p> + +<p> +My first journey was to Woolwich, whence I took all that I might ever require +in the way of mechanism; thence to the National Gallery, where I cut from their +frames the 'Vision of St. Helena,' Murillo's 'Boy Drinking,' and 'Christ at the +Column'; and thence to the Embassy to bathe, anoint myself, and dress. +</p> + +<p> +As I had anticipated, and hoped, a blustering spring gale was blowing from the +north. +</p> + +<p> +Even as I set out from Hampstead, about 9 A.M., I had been able to guess that +some of my fuses had somehow anticipated the appointed hour: for I saw three +red hazes at various points in the air, and heard the far vague booming of an +occasional explosion; and by 11 A.M. I felt sure that a large region of +north-eastern London must be in flames. With the solemn feelings of bridegrooms +and marriage-mornings—with a flinching, a flinching heart, God knows, yet a +heart up-buoyed on thrilling joys—I went about making preparations for the +Gargantuan orgy of the night. +</p> + +<hr /> + +<p> +The house at Hampstead, which no doubt still stands, is of rather pleasing +design in quite a stone and rural style, with good breadths of wall-surface, +two plain coped gables, mullioned windows, and oversailing slate verge roofs, +but, rather spoiling it, a high square three-storied tower at the south-east +angle, on the topmost floor of which I had slept the previous night. There I +had provided myself with a jar of pale tobacco mixed with rose-leaves and +opium, found in a foreign house in Seymour Street, also a genuine Saloniki +hookah, together with the best wines, nuts, and so on, and a gold harp of the +musician Krasinski, stamped with his name, taken from his house in Portland +Street. +</p> + +<p> +But so much did I find to do that day, and so many odd things turned up which I +thought that I would take with me, that it was not till near six that I drove +finally northward through Camden Town. And now an ineffable awe possessed my +soul at the solemn noise which everywhere encompassed me, an ineffable awe, a +blissful terror. Never, never could I have dreamed of aught so great and +potent. All above my head there rushed southward with wide-spread wing of haste +a sparkling smoke; and mixed with the immense roaring I heard mysterious +hubbubs of tumblings and rumblings, which I could not at all comprehend, like +the moving-about of furniture in the houses of Titans; while pervading all the +air was a most weird and tearful sound, as it were threnody, and a wild wail of +pain, and dying swan-songs, and all lamentations and tribulations of the world. +Yet I was aware that, at an hour so early, the flames must be far from general; +in fact, they had not well commenced. +</p> + +<hr /> + +<p> +As I had left a good semicircular region of houses, with a radius of four +hundred yards, without combustibles to the south of the isolated house which I +was to occupy, and as the wind was so strongly from the north, I simply left my +two vehicles at the door of the house, without fear of any injury: nor did any +occur. I then went up to the top of the tower, lit the candles, and ate +voraciously of the dinner which I had left ready, for since the morning I had +taken nothing; and then, with hands and heart that quivered, I arranged the +clothes of the low spring-bed upon which to throw my frame in the morning +hours. Opposite the wall, where lay the bed, was a Gothic window, pretty large, +with low sill, hung with poppy-figured muslin, and looking directly south, so +that I could recline at ease in the red-velvet easy-chair, and see. It had +evidently been a young lady's room: for on the toilette were cut-glass bottles, +a plait of brown hair, powders, <i>rouge-aux-lèvres,</i> one little bronze +slipper, and knick-knacks, and I loved her and hated her, though I did not see +her anywhere. About half-past eight I sat at the window to watch, all being +arranged and ready at my right hand, the candles extinguished in the red room: +for the theatre was opened, was opened: and the atmosphere of this earth seemed +turned into Hell, and Hell was in my soul. +</p> + +<hr /> + +<p> +Soon after midnight there was a sudden and very visible increase in the +conflagration. On all hands I began to see blazing structures soar, with grand +hurrahs, on high. In fives and tens, in twenties and thirties, all between me +and the remote limit of my vision, they leapt, they lingered long, they fell. +My spirit more and more felt, and danced—deeper mysteries of sensation, sweeter +thrills. I sipped exquisitely, I drew out enjoyment leisurely. Anon, when some +more expansive angel of flame would arise from the Pit with steady aspiration, +and linger with outspread arms, and burst, I would lift a little from the +chair, leaning forward to clap, as at some famous acting; or I would call to +them in shouts of cheer, giving them the names of Woman. For now I seemed to +see nothing but some bellowing pandemonic universe through crimson glasses, and +the air was wildly hot, and my eye-balls like theirs that walk staring in the +inner midst of burning fiery furnaces, and my skin itched with a fierce and +prickly itch. Anon I touched the chords of the harp to the air of Wagner's +'Walküren-ritt.' +</p> + +<p> +Near three in the morning, I reached the climax of my guilty sweets. My drunken +eye-lids closed in a luxury of pleasure, and my lips lay stretched in a smile +that dribbled; a sensation of dear peace, of almighty power, consoled me: for +now the whole area which through streaming tears I surveyed, mustering its ten +thousand thunders, and brawling beyond the stars the voice of its +southward-rushing torment, billowed to the horizon one grand Atlantic of +smokeless and flushing flame; and in it sported and washed themselves all the +fiends of Hell, with laughter, shouts, wild flights, and holiday; and I—first +of my race—had flashed a signal to the nearer planets.... +</p> + +<hr /> <hr /> + +<p> +Those words: 'signal to the nearer planets' I wrote nearly fourteen months ago, +some days after the destruction of London, I being then on board the old +<i>Boreal</i>, making for the coast of France: for the night was dark, though +calm, and I was afraid of running into some ship, yet not sleepy, so I wrote to +occupy my fingers, the ship lying still. The book in which I wrote has been +near me: but no impulse to write anything has visited me, till now I continue; +not, however, that I have very much to put down. +</p> + +<p> +I had no intention of wearing out my life in lighting fires every morning to +warm myself in the inhospitable island of Britain, and set out to France with +the view of seeking some palace in the Riviera, Spain, or perhaps Algiers, +there, for the present at least, to make my home. +</p> + +<p> +I started from Calais toward the end of April, taking my things along, the +first two days by train, and then determining that I was in no hurry, and a +petrol motor easier, took one, and maintained a generally southern and somewhat +eastern direction, ever-anew astonished at the wildness of the forest +vegetation which, within so short a space since the disappearance of man, +chokes this pleasant land, even before the definite advent of summer. +</p> + +<p> +After three weeks of very slow travelling—for though I know several countries +very well, France with her pavered villages, hilly character, vines, forests, +and primeval country-manner, is always new and charming to me—after three weeks +I came unexpectedly to a valley which had never entered my head; and the moment +that I saw it, I said: 'Here I will live,' though I had no idea what it was, +for the monastery which I saw did not look at all like a monastery, according +to my ideas: but when I searched the map, I discovered that it must be La +Chartreuse de Vauclaire in Périgord. +</p> + +<p> +It is my belief that this word 'Vauclaire' is nothing else than a corruption of +the Latin <i>Vallis Clara,</i> or Bright Valley, for <i>l'</i>s and <i>u'</i>s +did interchange about in this way, I remember: <i>cheval</i> becoming +<i>chevau(x)</i> in the plural, like 'fool' and 'fou,' and the rest: which +proves the dear laziness of French people, for the 'l' was too much trouble for +them to sing, and when they came to <i>two</i> 'l's' they quite succumbed, +shying that vault, or vo<i>u</i>te, and calling it some <i>y</i>. But at any +rate, this Vauclaire, or Valclear, was well named: for here, if anywhere, is +Paradise, and if anyone knew how and where to build and brew liqueurs, it was +those good old monks, who followed their Master with <i>entrain</i> in that +Cana miracle, and in many other things, I fancy, but aesthetically shirked to +say to any mountain: 'Be thou removed.' +</p> + +<hr /> + +<p> +The general hue of the vale is a deep cerulean, resembling that blue of the +robes of Albertinelli's Madonnas; so, at least, it strikes the eye on a clear +forenoon of spring or summer. The monastery consists of an oblong space, or +garth, around three sides of which stand sixteen small houses, with regular +intervals between, all identical, the cells of the fathers; between the oblong +space and the cells come the cloisters, with only one opening to the exterior; +in the western part of the oblong is a little square of earth under a large +cypress-shade, within which, as in a home of peace, it sleeps: and there, +straight and slanting, stand little plain black crosses over graves.... +</p> + +<p> +To the west of the quadrangle is the church, with the hostelry, and an +asphalted court with some trees and a fountain; and beyond, the entrance-gate. +</p> + +<p> +All this stands on a hill of gentle slope, green as grass; and it is backed +close against a steep mountain-side, of which the tree-trunks are conjectural, +for I never saw any, the trees resembling rather one continuous leafy tree-top, +run out high and far over the extent of the mountain. +</p> + +<hr /> + +<p> +I was there four months, till something drove me away. I do not know what had +become of the fathers and brothers, for I only found five, four of whom I took +in two journeys in the motor beyond the church of Saint Martial d'Artenset, and +left them there; and the fifth remained three weeks with me, for I would not +disturb him in his prayer. He was a bearded brother of forty years or +thereabouts, who knelt in his cell robed and hooded in all his phantom white: +for in no way different from whatever is most phantom, visionary and eerie must +a procession of these people have seemed by gloaming, or dark night This +particular brother knelt, I say, in his small chaste room, glaring upward at +his Christ, who hung long-armed in a little recess between the side of three +narrow bookshelves and a projection of the wall; and under the Christ a gilt +and blue Madonna; the books on the three shelves few, leaning different ways. +His right elbow rested on a square plain table, at which was a wooden chair; +behind him, in a corner, the bed: a bed all enclosed in dark boards, a broad +perpendicular board along the foot, reaching the ceiling, a horizontal board at +the side over which he got into bed, another narrower one like it at the +ceiling for fringe and curtain, and another perpendicular one hiding the +pillow, making the clean bed within a very shady and cosy little den, on the +wall of this den being another smaller Christ and a little picture. On the +perpendicular board at the foot hung two white garments, and over a second +chair at the bed-side another: all very neat and holy. He was a large stern +man, blond as corn, but with some red, too, in his hairy beard; and appalling +was the significance of those eyes that prayed, and the long-drawn cavity of +those saffron cheeks. I cannot explain to myself my deep reverence for this +man; but I had it, certainly. Many of the others, it is clear, had fled: but +not he: and to the near-marching cloud he opposed the Cross, holding one real +as the other—he alone among many. For Christianity was an <i>élite</i> +religion, in which all were called, but few chosen, differing from +Mohammedanism and Buddhism, which grasped and conquered all within their reach: +the effect of Christ rather resembling Plato's and Dante's, it would seem: but +Mahomet's more like Homer's and Shakespeare's. +</p> + +<p> +It was my way to plant at the portal the big, carved chair from the chancel on +the hot days, and rest my soul, refusing to think of anything, drowsing and +smoking for hours. All down there in the plain waved gardens of delicious fruit +about the prolonged silver thread of the river Isle, whose course winds +loitering quite near the foot of the monastery-slope. This slope dominates a +tract of distance that is not only vast, but looks immense, although the +horizon is bounded by a semicircle of low hills, rather too stiff and uniform +for perfect beauty; the interval of plain being occupied by yellow ploughed +lands which were never sown, weedy now, and crossed and recrossed by +vividly-green ribbons of vine, with stretches of pale-green lucerne, orchards, +and the white village of Monpont near the railway, all embowered, the Isle +drawing its mercurial streams through the village-meadow, which is dark with +shades of oaks: and to have played there a boy, and used it familiarly from +birth as one's own hand or foot, must have been very sweet and homely; after +this, the river divides, and takes the shape of a heart; and very far away are +visible the grey banks of the Gironde. On the semicircle of hills, when there +was little distance-mist, I saw the ruins of some seigneurial château, for the +seigneurs, too, knew where to build; and to my left, between a clump of oaks +and an avenue of poplars, the bell-tower of the village—church of Saint Martial +d'Artenset—a very ancient type of tower, I believe, and common in France, +rather ponderous, consisting of a square mass with a smaller square mass stuck +on, the latter having large Gothic windows; and behind me the west face of the +monastery-church, over the door being the statue of Saint Bruno. +</p> + +<p> +Well, one morning after four months, I opened my eyes in my cell to the +piercing consciousness that I had burned Monpont over-night: and so overcome +was I with regret for this poor inoffensive little place, that for two days, +hardly eating, I paced between the oak and walnut pews of the nave, massive +stalls they are, separated by grooved Corinthian pilasters, wondering what was +to become of me, and if I was not already mad; and there are some little angels +with extraordinarily human Greuze-like faces, supporting the nerves of the +apse, which, after a time, every time I passed them, seemed conscious of me and +my existence there; and the wood-work which ornaments the length of the nave, +and of the choir also, elaborate with carved marguerites and roses, here and +there took in my eyes significant forms from certain points of view; and there +is a partition—for the nave is divided into two chapels, one for the brothers +and one for the fathers, I conclude—and in this partition a massive door, which +yet looks quite light and graceful, carved with oak and acanthus leaves, and +every time I passed through I had the impression that the door was a sentient +thing, subconscious of me; and the delicate Italian-Renaissance brick vault +which springs from the vast nave seemed to look upon me with a gloomy knowledge +of me, and of the heart within me; and at about four in the afternoon of the +second day, after pacing the church for hours, I fell down at one of the two +altars near that carved door of the screen, praying God to have mercy upon my +soul; and in the very midst of my praying, I was up and away, the devil in me, +and I got into the motor, and did not come back to Vauclaire for another month, +and came leaving great tracts of burned desolation behind me, towns and +forests, Bordeaux burned, Lebourne burned, Bergerac burned. +</p> + +<hr /> + +<p> +I returned to Vauclaire, for it seemed now my home; and there I experienced a +true, a deep repentance; and I humbled myself before my Maker. And while in +this state, sitting one bright day in front of the monastery-gate, something +said to me: 'You will never be a good man, nor permanently escape Hell and +Frenzy, unless you have an aim in life, devoting yourself heart and soul to +some great work, which will exact all your science, your thought, your +ingenuity, your knowledge of modern things, your strength of body and will, +your skill of head and hand: otherwise you are bound to succumb. Do this, +therefore, beginning, not to-morrow nor this afternoon, but now: for though no +man will see your work, there is still the Almighty God, who is also something, +in His way: and He will see how you strive, and try, and groan: and perhaps, +seeing, He may have mercy upon you.' +</p> + +<hr /> + +<p> +In this way arose the idea of the Palace—an idea, indeed, which had entered my +brain before, but merely as a bombastic and visionary outcome of my raving +moods: now, however, in a very different way, soberly, and soon concerning +itself with details, difficulties, means, limitations, and every kind of +practical matter-of-fact; and every obstruction which, one by one, I foresaw +was, one by one, as the days passed, over-borne by the vigour with which that +thought, rapidly becoming a mania, possessed me. After a week of incessant +meditation, I decided Yes: and I said: I will build a palace, which shall be +both a palace and a temple: the first human temple worthy the King of Heaven, +and the only human palace worthy the King of Earth. +</p> + +<hr /> + +<p> +After this decision I remained at Vauclaire another week, a very different man +to the lounger it had seen, strenuous, converted, humble, making plans of this +and of that, of the detail, and of the whole, drawing, multiplying, dividing, +adding, conic sections and the rule-of-three, totting up the period of +building, which came out at a little over twelve years, estimating the +quantities of material, weight and bulk, my nights full of nightmare as to the +<i>sort</i>, deciding as to the size and structure of the crane, forge, and +work-shop, and the necessarily-limited weights of their component parts, making +a list of over 2,400 objects, and finally, up to the third week after my +departure from Vauclaire, skimming through the topography of nearly the whole +earth, before fixing upon the island of Imbros for my site. +</p> + +<hr /> + +<p> +I returned to England, and, once more, to the hollow windows and strewn streets +of black, burned-out and desolate London: for its bank-vaults, etc., contained +the necessary complement of the gold brought from Paris, and then lying in the +<i>Speranza</i> at Dover; nor had I sufficient familiarity with French +industries and methods to find, even with the aid of <i>Bottins</i>, one half +of the 4,000 odd objects which I had now catalogued. My ship was the +<i>Speranza</i>, which brought me from Havre, for at Calais, to which I first +went, I could find nothing suitable for all purposes, the <i>Speranza</i> being +an American yacht, very palatially fitted, three-masted, air-driven, with a +carrying capacity of 2,000 tons, Tobin-bronzed, in good condition, containing +sixteen interacting tanks, with a five-block pulley-arrangement amid-ships that +enables me to lift very considerable weights without the aid of the hoisting +air-engine, high in the water, sharp, handsome, containing a few tons only of +sand-ballast, and needing when I found her only three days' work at the +water-line and engines to make her decent and fit. I threw out her dead, backed +her from the Outer to the Inner Basin to my train on the quai, took in the +twenty-three hundred-weight bags of gold, and the half-ton of amber, and with +this alone went to Dover, thence to Canterbury by motor, and thence in a long +train, with a store of dynamite from the Castle for blasting possible +obstructions, to London: meaning to make Dover my <i>dépôt</i>, and the London +rails my thoroughfare from all parts of the country. +</p> + +<p> +Instead of three months, as I had calculated, it took me nine: a harrowing +slavery. I had to blast no less than forty-three trains from the path of my +loaded wagons, several times blasting away the metals as well, and then having +to travel hundreds of yards without metals: for the labour of kindling the +obstructing engines, to shunt them down sidings perhaps distant, was a thing +which I would not undertake. However, all's well that ends well, though if I +had it to go through again, certainly I should not. The <i>Speranza</i> is now +lying seven miles off Cape Roca, a heavy mist on the still water, this being +the 19th of June at 10 in the night: no wind, no moon: cabin full of mist: and +I pretty listless and disappointed, wondering in my heart why I was such a fool +as to take all that trouble, nine long servile months, my good God, and now +seriously thinking of throwing the whole vile thing to the devil; she pretty +deep in the water, pregnant with the palace. When the thirty-three ... +</p> + +<hr /> <hr /> <hr /> <hr /> <hr /> + +<p> +Those words: 'when the thirty-three' were written by me over seventeen years +since—long years—seventeen in number, nor have I now any idea to what they +refer. The book in which I wrote I had lost in the cabin of the +<i>Speranza</i>, and yesterday, returning to Imbros from an hour's aimless +cruise, discovered it there behind a chest. +</p> + +<p> +I find now considerable difficulty in guiding the pencil, and these few lines +now written have quite an odd look, like the handwriting of a man not very +proficient in the art: it is seventeen years, seventeen, seventeen ... ah! And +the expression of my ideas is not fluent either: I have to think for the word a +minute, and I should not be surprised if the spelling of some of them is queer. +My brain has been thinking inarticulately perhaps, all these years: and the +English words and letters, as they now stand written, have rather an improbable +and foreign air to me, as a Greek or Russian book might look to a man who has +not so long been learning those languages as to forget the impossibly foreign +impression received from them on the first day of tackling them. Or perhaps it +is only my fancy: for that I have fancies I know. +</p> + +<p> +But what to write? The history of those seventeen years could not be put down, +my good God: at least, it would take me seventeen more to do it. If I were to +detail the building of the palace alone, and how it killed me nearly, and how I +twice fled from it, and had to return, and became its bounden slave, and +dreamed of it, and grovelled before it, and prayed, and raved, and rolled; and +how I forgot to make provision on the west side for the contraction and +expansion of the gold in the colder weather and the heats of summer, and had to +break down nine months' work, and how I cursed Thee, how I cursed Thee; and how +the lake of wine evaporated faster than the conduits replenished it, and the +three journeys which I had to take to Constantinople for shiploads of wine, and +my frothing despairs, till I had the thought of placing the reservoir in the +platform; and how I had then to break down the south side of the platform to +the very bottom, and of the month-long nightmare of terror that I had lest the +south side of the palace would undergo subsidence; and how the petrol failed, +and of the three-weeks' search for petrol along the coast; and how, after +list-rubbing all the jet, I found that I had forgotten the necessary rouge for +polishing; and how, in the third year, I found the fluate, which I had for +water-proofing the pores of the platform-stone, nearly all leaked away in the +<i>Speranza's</i> hold, and I had to get silicate of soda at Gallipoli; and +how, after two years' observation, I had to come to the conclusion that the +lake was leaking, and discovered that this Imbros sand was not suitable for +mixing with the skin of Portland cement which covered the cement concrete, and +had to substitute sheet-bitumen in three places; and how I did all, all for the +sake of God, thinking: 'I will work, and be a good man, and cast Hell from me: +and when I see it stand finished, it will be an Altar and a Testimony to me, +and I shall find peace, and be well': and how I have been cheated—seventeen +years, long years of my life—for there is no God; and how my plasterers'-hair +failed me, and I had to use flock, hessian, scrym, wadding, wood-street +paving-blocks, and whatever I could find, for filling the interspaces between +the platform cross-walls; and of the espagnolette bolts, how a number of them +mysteriously disappeared, as if snatched to Hell by harpies, and I had to make +them; and how the crane-chain would not reach two of the silver-panel castings +when they were finished, and they were too heavy for me to lift, and the +wringing of the hands of my despair, and my biting of the earth, and the +transport of my fury; and how, for a whole wild week, I searched in vain for +the text-book which describes the ambering process; and how, when all was +nearly over, in the blasting away of the forge and crane with dynamite, a long +crack appeared down the gold of the east platform-steps, and how I would not be +consoled, but mourned and mourned; and how, in spite of all my tribulations, it +was sweetly interesting to watch my power slowly grow from the first feeble +beginnings of the landing of materials and unloading them from the motor, a +hundred-weight at a time, till I could swing four tons—see the solid metals +flow—enjoy the gliding sounds of the handle, crank-shaft, and system of levers, +forcing inwards the mould-end, and the upper and lower plungers, for pressing +the material—build at ease in a travelling-cage—and watch from my hut-door +through sleepless hours, under the electric moonlight of this land, the three +piles of gold stones, the silver panels, the two-foot squares of jet, and be +comforted; and how the putty-wash—but it is past, it is past: and not to live +over again that vulgar nightmare of means and ends have I taken to this writing +again—but to put down something else, if I dare. +</p> + +<p> +Seventeen years, my good God, of that delusion! I could write down no sort of +explanation for all those groans and griefs, at which a reasoning being would +not shriek with laughter. I should have lived at ease in some palace of the +Middle-Orient, and burned my cities: but no, I must be 'a good man'—vain +thought. The words of a wild madman, that preaching man in England who +prophesied what happened, were with me, where he says: 'the defeat of Man is +<i>His</i> defeat'; and I said to myself: 'Well, the last man shall not be +quite a fiend, just to spite That Other.' And I worked and groaned, saying: 'I +will be a good man, and burn nothing, nor utter aught unseemly, nor debauch +myself, but choke back the blasphemies that Those Others shriek through my +throat, and build and build, with moils and groans.' And it was Vanity: though +I do love the house, too, I love it well, for it is my home on the waste earth. +</p> + +<p> +I had calculated to finish it in twelve years, and I should undoubtedly have +finished it in fourteen, instead of in sixteen and seven months, but one day, +when the south, north, and east platform-steps were already finished—it was in +the July of the third year, and near sunset—as I left off work, instead of +going to the tent where my dinner lay ready, I walked down to the ship—most +strangely—in a daft, mechanical sort of way, without saying a word to myself, +an evil-meaning smile of malice on my lips; and at midnight I was lying off +Mitylene, thirty miles to the south, having bid, as I thought, a last farewell +to all those toils. I was going to burn Athens. +</p> + +<p> +I did not, however: but kept on my way westward round Cape Matapan, intending +to destroy the forests and towns of Sicily, if I found there a suitable motor +for travelling, for I had not been at the pains to take the motor on board at +Imbros; otherwise I would ravage parts of southern Italy. But when I came +thereabouts, I was confronted with an awful horror: for no southern Italy was +there, and no Sicily was there, unless a small new island, probably not five +miles long, was Sicily; and nothing else I saw, save the still-smoking crater +of Stromboli. I cruised northward, searching for land, and for a long time +would not believe the evidence of the instruments, thinking that they wilfully +misled me, or I stark mad. But no: no Italy was there, till I came to the +latitude of Naples, it, too, having disappeared, engulfed, engulfed, all that +stretch. From this monstrous thing I received so solemn a shock and mood of +awe, that the evil mind in me was quite chilled and quelled: for it was, and +is, my belief that a wide-spread re-arrangement of the earth's surface is being +purposed, and in all that drama, O my God, how shall <i>I</i> be found? +</p> + +<p> +However, I went on my way, but more leisurely, not daring for a long time to do +anything, lest I might offend anyone; and, in this foolish cowering mind, +coasted all the western coast of Spain and France during five weeks, in that +prolonged intensity of calm weather which now alternates with storms that +transcend all thought, till I came again to Calais: and there, for the first +time, landed. +</p> + +<p> +Here I would no longer contain myself, but burned; and that magnificent stretch +of forest that lay between Agincourt and Abbéville, covering five square miles, +I burned; and Abbéville I burned; and Amiens I burned; and three forests +between Amiens and Paris I burned; and Paris I burned; burning and burning +during four months, leaving behind me smoking districts, a long tract of +ravage, like some being of the Pit that blights where pass his flaming wings. +</p> + +<hr /> + +<p> +This of city-burning has now become a habit with me more enchaining—and +infinitely more debased—than ever was opium to the smoker, or alcohol to the +drunkard. I count it among the prime necessaries of my life: it is my brandy, +my bacchanal, my secret sin. I have burned Calcutta, Pekin, and San Francisco. +In spite of the restraining influence of this palace, I have burned and burned. +I have burned two hundred cities and countrysides. Like Leviathan disporting +himself in the sea, so I have rioted in this earth. +</p> + +<hr /> + +<p> +After an absence of six months, I returned to Imbros: for I was for looking +again upon the work which I had done, that I might mock myself for all that +unkingly grovelling: and when I saw it, standing there as I had left it, +frustrate and forlorn, and waiting its maker's hand, some pity and instinct to +build took me—for something of God was in Man—and I fell upon my knees, and +spread my arms to God, and was converted, promising to finish the palace, with +prayers that as I built so He would build my soul, and save the last man from +the enemy. And I set to work that day to list-rub the last few dalles of the +jet. +</p> + +<hr /> + +<p> +I did not leave Imbros after that during four years, except for occasional +brief trips to the coast—to Kilid-Bahr, Gallipoli, Lapsaki, Gamos, Rodosto, +Erdek, Erekli, or even once to Constantinople and Scutari—if I happened to want +anything, or if I was tired of work: but without once doing the least harm to +anything, but containing my humours, and fearing my Maker. And full of peaceful +charm were those little cruises through this Levantic world, which, truly, is +rather like a light sketch in water-colours done by an angel than like the dun +real earth; and full of self-satisfaction and pious contentment would I return +to Imbros, approved of my conscience, for that I had surmounted temptation, and +lived tame and stainless. +</p> + +<p> +I had set up the southern of the two closed-lotus pillars, and the platform-top +was already looking as lovely as heaven, with its alternate two-foot squares of +pellucid gold and pellucid jet, when I noticed one morning that the +<i>Speranza's</i> bottom was really now too foul, and the whim took me then and +there to leave all, and clean her as far as I could. I at once went on board, +descended to the hold, took off my sudeyrie, and began to shift the ballast +over to starboard, so as to tilt up her port bottom to the scraper. This was +wearying labour, and about noon I was sitting on a bag, resting in the almost +darkness, when something seemed to whisper to me these words: '<i>You dreamed +last night that there is an old Chinaman alive in Pekin.</i>' Horridly I +started: I <i>had</i> dreamed something of the sort, but, from the moment of +waking, till then, had forgotten it: and I leapt livid to my feet. +</p> + +<p> +I cleaned no <i>Speranza</i> that day, nor for four days did I anything, but +sat on the cabin-house and mused, my supporting palm among the hairy draperies +of my chin: for the thought of such a thing, if it could by any possibility be +true, was detestable as death to me, changing the colour of the sun, and the +whole aspect of the world: and anon, at the outrage of that thing, my brow +would flush with wrath, and my eyes blaze: till, on the fourth afternoon, I +said to myself: 'That old Chinaman in Pekin is likely to get burned to death, I +think, or blown to the clouds!' +</p> + +<p> +So, a second time, on the 4th March, the poor palace was left to build itself. +For, after a short trip to Gallipoli, where I got some young lime-twigs in +boxes of earth, and some preserved limes and ginger, I set out for a long +voyage to the East, passing through the Suez Canal, and visiting Bombay, where +I was three weeks, and then destroyed it. +</p> + +<hr /> + +<p> +I had the thought of going across Hindustan by engine, but did not like to +leave my ship, to which I was very attached, not sure of finding anything so +suitable and good at Calcutta; and, moreover, I was afraid to abandon my petrol +motor, which I had taken on board with the air-windlass, since I was going to +uncivilised land. I therefore coasted down western Hindustan. +</p> + +<p> +All that northern shore of the Arabian Sea has at the present time an odour +which it wafts far over the water, resembling odours of happy vague +dream-lands, sweet to smell in the early mornings as if the earth were nothing +but a perfume, and life an inhalation. +</p> + +<p> +On that voyage, however, I had, from beginning to end, twenty-seven fearful +storms, or, if I count that one near the Carolines, then twenty-eight. But I do +not wish to write of these rages: they were too inhuman: and how I came alive +through them against all my wildest hope, Someone, or Something, only knows. +</p> + +<p> +I will write down here a thing: it is this, my God—something which I have +observed: a definite obstreperousness in the mood of the elements now, when +once roused, which grows, which grows continually. Tempests have become very +very far more wrathful, the sea more truculent and unbounded in its insolence; +when it thunders, it thunders with a venom new to me, cracking as though it +would split the firmament, and bawling through the heaven of heavens, as if +roaring to devour all things; in Bombay once, and in China thrice, I was shaken +by earthquakes, the second and third marked by a certain extravagance of +agitation, that might turn a man grey. Why should this be, my God? I remember +reading very long ago that on the American prairies, which from time immemorial +had been swept by great storms, the storms gradually subsided when man went to +reside permanently there. If this be true, it would seem that the mere presence +of man had a certain subduing or mesmerising effect upon the native turbulence +of Nature, and his absence now may have removed the curb. It is my belief that +within fifty years from now the huge forces of the earth will be let fully +loose to tumble as they will; and this planet will become one of the undisputed +playgrounds of Hell, and the theatre of commotions stupendous as those +witnessed on the face of Saturn. +</p> + +<hr /> + +<p> +The Earth is all on my brain, on my brain, O dark-minded Mother, with thy +passionate cravings after the Infinite, thy regrets, and mighty griefs, and +comatose sleeps, and sinister coming doom, O Earth: and I, poor man, though a +king, sole witness of thy bleak tremendous woes. Upon her I brood, and do not +cease, but brood and brood—the habit, if I remember right, first becoming fixed +and fated during that long voyage eastward: for what is in store for her God +only knows, and I have seen in my broodings long visions of her future, which, +if a man should see with the eye of flesh, he would spread the arms, and wheel +and wheel through the mazes of a hiccuping giggling frenzy, for the vision only +is the very verge of madness. If I might cease but for one hour that perpetual +brooding upon her! But I am her child, and my mind grows and grows to her like +the off-shoots of the banyan-tree, that take root downward, and she sucks and +draws it, as she draws my feet by gravitation, and I cannot take wing from her: +for she is greater than I, and there is no escaping her; and at the last, I +know, my soul will dash itself to ruin, like erring sea-fowl upon +pharos-lights, against her wild and mighty bosom. Often a whole night through I +lie open-eyed in the dark, with bursting brain, thinking of that hollow Gulf of +Mexico, how identical in shape and size with the protuberance of Africa just +opposite, and how the protuberance of the Venezuelan and Brazilian coast fits +in with the in-curve of Africa: so that it is obvious to me—it is quite +<i>obvious</i>—that they once were one; and one night rushed so far apart; and +the wild Atlantic knew that thing, and ran gladly, hasting in between: and how +if eye of flesh had been there to see, and ear to hear that cruel thundering, +my God, my God—what horror! And if now they meet again, so long apart ...but +that way fury lies. Yet one cannot help but think: I lie awake and think, for +she fills my soul, and absorbs it, with all her moods and ways. She has +meanings, secrets, plans. Strange, strange, for instance, that similarity +between the scheme of Europe and the scheme of Asia: each with three southern +peninsulas pointing south: Spain corresponding with Arabia, Italy with India, +the Morea and Greece, divided by the Gulf of Corinth, corresponding with the +Malay Peninsula and Annam, divided by the Gulf of Siam; each with two northern +peninsulas pointing south, Sweden and Norway, and Korea and Kamschatka; each +with two great islands similarly placed, Britain and Ireland, and the Japanese +Hondo and Yezo; the Old World and the New has each a peninsula pointing +north—Denmark and Yucatan: a forefinger with long nail—and a thumb—pointing to +the Pole. What does she mean? What can she mean, O Ye that made her? Is she +herself a living being, with a will and a fate, as sailors said that ships were +living entities? And that thing that wheeled at the Pole, wheels it still +yonder, yonder, in its dark ecstasy? Strange that volcanoes are all near the +sea: I don't know why; I don't think that anyone ever knew. This fact, in +connection with submarine explosions, used to be cited in support of the +chemical theory of volcanoes, which supposed the infiltration of the sea into +ravines containing the materials which form the fuel of eruptions: but God +knows if that is true. The lofty ones are intermittent—a century, two, ten, of +silent waiting, and then their talk silenced for ever some poor district; the +low ones are constant in action. Who could know the dark way of the world? +Sometimes they form a linear system, consisting of several vents which extend +in one direction, near together, like chimneys of some long foundry beneath. In +mountains, a series of serrated peaks denotes the presence of dolomites; +rounded heads mean calcareous rocks; and needles, crystalline schists. The +preponderance of land in the northern hemisphere denotes the greater intensity +there of the causes of elevation at a remote geologic epoch: that is all that +one can say about it: but whence that greater intensity? I have some knowledge +of the earth for only ten miles down: but she has eight thousand miles: and +whether through all that depth she is flame or fluid, hard or soft, I do not +know, I do not know. Her method of forming coal, geysers and hot +sulphur-springs, and the jewels, and the atols and coral reefs; the metamorphic +rocks of sedimentary origin, like gneiss, the plutonic and volcanic rocks, +rocks of fusion, and the unstratified masses which constitute the basis of the +crust; and harvests, the burning flame of flowers, and the passage from the +vegetable to the animal: I do not know them, but they are of her, and they are +like me, molten in the same furnace of her fiery heart. She is dark and moody, +sudden and ill-fated, and rends her young like a cannibal lioness; and she is +old and wise, and remembers Hur of the Chaldees which Uruk built, and that +Temple of Bel which rose in seven pyramids to symbolise the planets, and +Birs-i-Nimrud, and Haran, and she bears still, as a thing of yesterday, old +Persepolis and the tomb of Cyrus, and those cloister-like vihârah-temples of +the ancient Buddhists, cut from the Himalayan rock; and returning from the Far +East, I stopped at Ismailia, and so to Cairo, and saw where Memphis was, and +stood one bright midnight before that great pyramid of Shafra, and that dumb +Sphynx, and, seated at the well of one of the rock-tombs, looked till tears of +pity streamed down my cheeks: for great is the earth, and her Ages, but man +'passeth away.' These tombs have pillars extremely like the two palace-pillars, +only that these are round, and mine are square: for I chose it so: but the same +band near the top, then over this the closed lotus-flower, then the small +square plinth, which separates them from the architrave, only mine have no +architrave; the tombs consist of a little outer temple or court, then comes a +well, and inside another chamber, where, I suppose, the dead were, a +ribbon-like astragal surrounding the walls, which are crowned with +boldly-projecting cornices, surmounted by an abacus. And here, till the +pressing want of food drove me back, I remained: for more and more the earth +over-grows me, wooes me, assimilates me; so that I ask myself this question: +'Must I not, in time, cease to be a man, and become a small earth, precisely +her copy, extravagantly weird and fierce, half-demoniac, half-ferine, wholly +mystic—morose and turbulent—fitful, and deranged, and sad—like her?' +</p> + +<hr /> + +<p> +A whole month of that voyage, from May the 15th to June the 13th, I wasted at +the Andaman Islands near Malay: for that any old Chinaman could be alive in +Pekin began, after some time, to seem the most quixotic notion that ever +entered a human brain; and these jungled islands, to which I came after a +shocking vast orgy one night at Calcutta, when I fired not only the city but +the river, pleased my fancy to such an extent, that at one time I intended to +abide there. I was at the one called in the chart 'Saddle Hill,' the smallest +of them, I think: and seldom have I had such sensations of peace as I lay a +whole burning day in a rising vale, deeply-shaded in palm and tropical +ranknesses, watching thence the <i>Speranza</i> at anchor: for there was a +little offing here at the shore whence the valley arose, and I could see one of +its long peaks lined with cocoanut-trees, and all cloud burned out of the sky +except the flimsiest lawn-figments, and the sea as absolutely calm as a lake +roughened with breezes, yet making a considerable noise in its breaking on the +shore, as I have noticed in these sorts of places: I do not know why. These +poor Andaman people seem to have been quite savage, for I met a number of them +in roaming the island, nearly skeletons, yet with limbs and vertebrae still, in +general, cohering, and in some cases dry-skinned and mummified relics of flesh, +and never anywhere a sign of clothes: a very singular thing, considering their +nearness to high old civilisations all about them. They looked small and black, +or almost; and I never found a man without finding on or near him a spear and +other weapons: so that they were eager folk, and the wayward dark earth was in +them, too, as she should be in her children. They had in many cases some +reddish discoloration, which may have been the traces of betel-nut stains: for +betel-nuts abound there. And I was so pleased with these people, that I took on +board with the gig one of their little tree-canoes: which was my foolishness: +for gig and canoe were only three nights later washed from the decks into the +middle of the sea. +</p> + +<hr /> + +<p> +I passed down the Straits of Malacca, and in that short distance between the +Andaman Islands, and the S.W. corner of Borneo I was thrice so mauled, that at +times it seemed quite out of the question that anything built by man could +escape such unfettered cataclysms, and I resigned myself, but with bitter +reproaches, to perish darkly. The effect of the third upon me, when it was +over, was the unloosening afresh of all my evil passion: for I said: 'Since +they mean to slay me, death shall find me rebellious'; and for weeks I could +not sight some specially happy village, or umbrageous spread of woodland, that +I did not stop the ship, and land the materials for their destruction; so that +nearly all those spicy lands about the north of Australia will bear the traces +of my hand for many a year: for more and more my voyage became dawdling and +zigzaged, as the merest whim directed it, or the movement of the pointer on the +chart; and I thought of eating the lotus of surcease and nepenthe in some +enchanted nook of this bowering summer, where from my hut-door I could see +through the pearl-hues of opium the sea-lagoon slaver lazily upon the old coral +atol, and the cocoanut-tree would droop like slumber, and the bread-fruit tree +would moan in sweet and weary dream, and I should watch the <i>Speranza</i> lie +anchored in the pale atol-lake, year after year, and wonder what she was, and +whence, and why she dozed so deep for ever, and after an age of melancholy +peace and burdened bliss, I should note that sun and moon had ceased revolving, +and hung inert, opening anon a heavy lid to doze and drowse again, and God +would sigh 'Enough,' and nod, and Being would swoon to sleep: for that any old +Chinaman should be alive in Pekin was a thing so fantastically maniac, as to +draw from me at times sudden fits of wild red laughter that left me faint. +</p> + +<p> +During a space of four months, from the 18th June to the 23rd October, I +visited the Fijis, where I saw skulls still surrounded with remnants of +extraordinary haloes of stiff hair, women clad in girdles made of thongs fixed +in a belt, and, in Samoa near, bodies crowned with coronets of nautilus-shell, +and traces of turmeric-paint and tattooing, and in one townlet a great +assemblage of carcasses, suggesting by their look some festival, or dance: so +that I believe that these people were overthrown without the least +fore-knowledge of anything. The women of the Maoris wore an abundance of +green-jade ornaments, and I found a peculiar kind of shell-trumpet, one of +which I have now, also a tattooing chisel, and a nicely-carved wooden bowl. The +people of New Caledonia, on the other hand, went, I should think, naked, +confining their attention to the hair, and in this resembling the Fijians, for +they seemed to wear an artificial hair made of the fur of some creature like a +bat, and also they wore wooden masks, and great rings—for the ear, no +doubt—which must have fallen to the shoulders: for the earth was in them all, +and made them wild, perverse and various like herself. I went from one to the +other without any system whatever, searching for the ideal resting-place, and +often thinking that I had found it: but only wearying of it at the thought that +there was a yet deeper and dreamier in the world. But in this search I received +a check, my God, which chilled me to the marrow, and set me flying from these +places. +</p> + +<hr /> + +<p> +One evening, the 29th November, I dined rather late—at eight—sitting, as was my +custom in calm weather, cross-legged on the cabin-rug at the port aft corner, a +small semicircle of <i>Speranza</i> gold-plate before me, and near above me the +red-shaded lamp with green conical reservoir, whose creakings never cease in +the stillest mid-sea, and beyond the plates the array of preserved soups, +meat-extracts, meats, fruit, sweets, wines, nuts, liqueurs, coffee on the +silver spirit-tripod, glasses, cruet, and so on, which it was always my first +care to select from the store-room, open, and lay out once for all in the +morning on rising. I was late, seven being my hour: for on that day I had been +engaged in the occasionally necessary, but always deferred, task of overhauling +the ship, brushing here a rope with tar, there a board with paint, there a +crank with oil, rubbing a door-handle, a brass-fitting, filling the three +cabin-lamps, dusting mirrors and furniture, dashing the great neat-joinered +plains of deck with bucketfulls, or, high in air, chopping loose with its +rigging the mizzen top-mast, which since a month was sprained at the clamps, +all this in cotton drawers under loose <i>quamis</i>, bare-footed, my beard +knotted up, the sun a-blaze, the sea smooth and pale with the smooth pallor of +strong currents, the ship still enough, no land in sight, yet great tracts of +sea-weed making eastward—I working from 11 A.M. till near 7, when sudden +darkness interrupted: for I wished to have it all over in one obnoxious day. I +was therefore very tired when I went down, lit the central chain-lever lamp and +my own two, washed and dressed in my bedroom, and sat to dinner in the +dining-hall corner. I ate voraciously, with sweat, as usual, pouring down my +eager brow, using knife or spoon in the right hand, but never the Western fork, +licking the plates clean in the Mohammedan manner, and drinking pretty freely. +Still I was tired, and went upon deck, where I had the threadbare blue-velvet +easy-chair with the broken left arm before the wheel, and in it sat smoking +cigar after cigar from the Indian D box, half-asleep, yet conscious. The moon +came up into a pretty cloudless sky, and she was bright, but not bright enough +to out-shine the enlightened flight of the ocean, which that night was one +continuous swamp of Jack-o'-lantern phosphorescence, a wild but faint +luminosity mingled with stars and flashes of brilliance, the whole trooping +unanimously eastward, as if in haste with elfin momentous purpose, a boundless +congregation, in the sweep of a strong oceanic current. I could hear it, in my +slumbrous lassitude, struggling and gurgling at the tied rudder, and making wet +sloppy noises under the sheer of the poop; and I was aware that the +<i>Speranza</i> was gliding along pretty fast, drawn into that procession, +probably at the rate of four to six knots: but I did not care, knowing very +well that no land was within two hundred miles of my bows, for I was in +longitude 173°, in the latitude of Fiji and the Society Islands, between +those two: and after a time the cigar drooped and dropped from my mouth, and +sleep overcame me, and I slept there, in the lap of the Infinite. +</p> + +<hr /> + +<p> +So that something preserves me, Something, Someone: <i>and for what?</i> ... If +I had slept in the cabin, I must most certainly have perished: for lying there +on the poop, I dreamed a dream which once I had dreamed on the ice, far, far +yonder in the forgotten hyperborean North: that I was in an Arabian paradise, a +Garden of Peaches; and I had a very long vision of it, for I walked among the +trees, and picked the fruit, and pressed the blossoms to my nostrils with +breathless inhalations of love: till a horrible sickness woke me: and when I +opened my eyes, the night was black, the moon gone down, everything wet with +dew, the sky arrayed with most glorious stars like a thronged bazaar of tiaraed +rajahs and begums with spangled trains, and all the air fragrant with that +mortal scent; and high and wide uplifted before me—stretching from the northern +to the southern limit—a row of eight or nine inflamed smokes, as from the +chimneys of some Cyclopean foundry a-work all night, most solemn, most great +and dreadful in the solemn night: eight or nine, I should say, or it might be +seven, or it might be ten, for I did not count them; and from those craters +puffed up gusts of encrimsoned material, here a gust and there a gust, with +tinselled fumes that convolved upon themselves, and sparks and flashes, all +veiled in a garish haze of light: for the foundry worked, though languidly; and +upon a rocky land four miles ahead, which no chart had ever marked, the +<i>Speranza</i> drove straight with the current of the phosphorus sea. +</p> + +<p> +As I rose, I fell flat: and what I did thereafter I did in a state of existence +whose acts, to the waking mind, appear unreal as dream. I must at once, I +think, have been conscious that here was the cause of the destruction of +mankind; that it still surrounded its own neighbourhood with poisonous fumes; +and that I was approaching it. I must have somehow crawled, or dragged myself +forward. There is an impression on my mind that it was a purple land of pure +porphyry; there is some faint memory, or dream, of hearing a long-drawn booming +of waves upon its crags: I do not know whence I have them. I think that I +remember retching with desperate jerks of the travailing intestines; also that +I was on my face as I moved the regulator in the engine-room: but any +recollection of going down the stairs, or of coming up again, I have not. +Happily, the wheel was tied, the rudder hard to port, and as the ship moved, +she must, therefore, have turned; and I must have been back to untie the wheel +in good time, for when my senses came, I was lying there, my head against the +under gimbal, one foot on a spoke of the wheel, no land in sight, and morning +breaking. +</p> + +<p> +This made me so sick, that for either two or three days I lay without eating in +the chair near the wheel, only rarely waking to sufficient sense to see to it +that she was making westward from that place; and on the morning when I finally +roused myself I did not know whether it was the second or the third morning: so +that my calendar, so scrupulously kept, may be a day out, for to this day I +have never been at the pains to ascertain whether I am here writing now on the +5th or the 6th of June. +</p> + +<hr /> + +<p> +Well, on the fourth, or the fifth, evening after this, just as the sun was +sinking beyond the rim of the sea, I happened to look where he hung motionless +on the starboard bow: and there I saw a clean-cut black-green spot against his +red—a most unusual sight here and now—a ship: a poor thing, as it turned out +when I got near her, without any sign of mast, heavily water-logged, some +relics of old rigging hanging over, even her bowsprit apparently broken in the +middle (though I could not see it), and she nothing more than a hirsute green +mass of old weeds and sea-things from bowsprit-tip to poop, and from bulwarks +to water-line, stout as a hedgehog, only awaiting there the next high sea to +founder. +</p> + +<p> +It being near my dinner-hour and night's rest, I stopped the <i>Speranza</i> +some fifteen yards from her, and commenced to pace my spacious poop, as usual, +before eating; and as I paced, I would glance at her, wondering at her destiny, +and who were the human men that had lived on her, their Christian names, and +family names, their age, and thought, and way of life, and beards; till the +desire arose within me to go to her, and see; and I threw off my outer +garments, uncovered and unroped the cedar cutter—the only boat, except the +air-pinnace, left to me intact—and got her down by the mizzen five-block +pulley-system. But it was a ridiculous nonsense, for having paddled to her, I +was thrown into paroxysms of rage by repeated failures to scale her bulwarks, +low as they were; my hands, indeed, could reach, but I found no hold upon the +slimy mass, and three rope-ends which I caught were also untenably slippery: so +that I jerked always back into the boat, my clothes a mass of filth, and the +only thought in my blazing brain a twenty-pound charge of guncotton, of which I +had plenty, to blow her to uttermost Hell. I had to return to the +<i>Speranza</i>, get a half-inch rope, then back to the other, for I would not +be baulked in such a way, though now the dark was come, only slightly tempered +by a half-moon, and I getting hungry, and from minute to minute more fiendishly +ferocious. Finally, by dint of throwing, I got the rope-loop round a +mast-stump, drew myself up, and made fast the boat, my left hand cut by some +cursed shell: and all for what? the imperiousness of a whim. The faint +moonlight shewed an ample tract of deck, invisible in most parts under rolled +beds of putrid seaweed, and no bodies, and nothing but a concave, large +esplanade of seaweed. She was a ship of probably 1,500 tons, three-masted, and +a sailer. I got aft (for I had on thick outer babooshes), and saw that only +four of the companion-steps remained; by a small leap, however, I could descend +into that desolation, where the stale sea-stench seemed concentrated into a +very essence of rankness. Here I experienced a singular ghostly awe and +timorousness, lest she should sink with me, or something: but striking matches, +I saw an ordinary cabin, with some fungoids, skulls, bones and rags, but not +one cohering skeleton. In the second starboard berth was a small table, and on +the floor a thick round ink-pot, whose continual rolling on its side made me +look down; and there I saw a flat square book with black covers, which curved +half-open of itself, for it had been wet and stained. This I took, and went +back to the <i>Speranza</i>: for that ship was nothing but an emptiness, and a +stench of the crude elements of life, nearly assimilated now to the rank deep +to which she was wedded, and soon to be absorbed into its nature and being, to +become a sea in little, as I, in time, my God, shall be nothing but an earth in +little. +</p> + +<p> +During dinner, and after, I read the book, with some difficulty, for it was +pen-written in French, and discoloured, and it turned out to be the journal of +someone, a passenger and voyager, I imagine, who called himself Albert Tissu, +and the ship the <i>Marie Meyer</i>. There was nothing remarkable in the +narrative that I could see—common-place descriptions of South Sea scenes, +records of weather, cargoes, and the like—till I came to the last written page: +and that was remarkable enough. It was dated the 13th of April—strange thing, +my good God, incredibly strange—that same day, twenty long years ago, when I +reached the Pole; and the writing on that page was quite different from the +neat look of the rest, proving immoderate excitement, wildest haste; and he +heads it '<i>Cinq Heures</i>,'—I suppose in the evening, for he does not say: +and he writes: 'Monstrous event! phenomenon without likeness! the witnesses of +which must for ever live immortalised in the annals of the universe, an event +which will make even Mama, Henri and Juliette admit that I was justified in +undertaking this most eventful voyage. Talking with Captain Tombarel on the +poop, when a sudden exclamation from him—"<i>Mon Dieu!</i>" His visage whitens! +I follow the direction of his gaze to eastward! I behold! eight kilomètres +perhaps away—, <i>ten monstrous waterspouts</i>, reaching up, up, high +enough—all apparently in one straight line, with intervals of nine hundred +<i>mètres</i>, very regularly placed. They do not wander, dance, nor waver, as +waterspouts do; nor are they at all lily-shaped, like waterspouts: but ten hewn +pillars of water, with uniform diameter from top to bottom, only a little +twisted here and there, and, as I divine, fifty <i>mètres</i> in girth. Five, +ten, stupendous minutes we look, Captain Tombarel mechanically repeating and +repeating under his breath "<i>Mon Dieu!</i>" "<i>Mon Dieu!</i>" the whole crew +now on the poop, I agitated, but collected, watch in hand. And suddenly, all is +blotted out: the pillars of water, doubtless still there, can no more be seen: +for the ocean all about them is steaming, hissing higher than the pillars a +dense white vapour, vast in extent, whose venomous sibilation we at this +distance can quite distinctly hear. It is affrighting, it is intolerable! the +eyes can hardly bear to watch, the ears to hear! it seems unholy travail, +monstrous birth! But it lasts not long: all at once the <i>Marie Meyer</i> +commences to pitch and roll violently, and the sea, a moment since calm, is now +rough! and at the same time, through the white vapour, we see a dark shadow +slowly rising—the shadow of a mighty back, a new-born land, bearing upwards ten +flames of fire, slowly, steadily, out of the sea, into the clouds. At the +moment when that sublime emergence ceases, or seems to cease, the grand thought +that smites me is this: "I, Albert Tissu, am immortalised: my name shall never +perish from among men!" I rush down, I write it. The latitude is 16° 21' +13" South; the longitude 176° 58' 19" West<a +href="#note-2"><small><sup>1</sup></small></a>. There is a great deal of +running about on the decks—they are descending. There is surely a strange odour +of almonds—I only hope—it is so dark, <i>mon D</i>——' +</p> + +<p> +So the Frenchman, Tissu. +</p> + +<p class="footnote"> +<a name="note-2"></a><sup>1</sup> [This must be French reckoning, from meridian +of Paris.] +</p> + +<hr /> + +<p> +With all that region I would have no more to do: for all here, it used to be +said, lies a great sunken continent; and I thought it would be rising and +shewing itself to my eyes, and driving me stark mad: for the earth is full of +these contortions, sudden monstrous grimaces and apparitions, which are like +the face of Medusa, affrighting a man into spinning stone; and nothing could be +more appallingly insecure than living on a planet. +</p> + +<p> +I did not stop till I had got so far northward as the Philippine Islands, where +I was two weeks—exuberant, odorous places, but so hilly and rude, that at one +place I abandoned all attempt at travelling in the motor, and left it in a +valley by a broad, shallow, noisy river, full of mossy stones: for I said: +'Here I will live, and be at peace'; and then I had a fright, for during three +days I could not re-discover the river and the motor, and I was in the greatest +despair, thinking: 'When shall I find my way out of these jungles and +vastnesses?' For I was where no paths were, and had lost myself in deeps where +the lure of the earth is too strong and rank for a single man, since in such +places, I suppose, a man would rapidly be transformed into a tree, or a snake, +or a tiger. At last, however, I found the place, to my great joy, but I would +not shew that I was glad, and to hide it, fell upon a front wheel of the car +with some kicks. I could not make out who the people were that lived here: for +the relics of some seemed quite black, like New Zealand races, and I could +still detect the traces of tattooing, while others suggested Mongolian types, +and some looked like pigmies, and some like whites. But I cannot detail the +two-years' incidents of that voyage: for it is past, and like a dream: and not +to write of that—of all that—have I taken this pencil in hand after seventeen +long, long years. +</p> + +<hr /> + +<p> +Singular my reluctance to put it on paper. I will write rather of the voyage to +China, and how I landed the motor on the wharf at Tientsin, and went up the +river through a maize and rice-land most charming in spite of intense cold, I +thick with clothes as an Arctic traveller; and of the three dreadful +earthquakes within two weeks; and how the only map which I had of the city gave +no indication of the whereabouts of its military depositories, and I had to +seek for them; and of the three days' effort to enter them, for every gate was +solid and closed; and how I burned it, but had to observe its flames, without +deep pleasure, from beyond the walls to the south, the whole place being one +cursed plain; yet how, at one moment, I cried aloud with wild banterings and +glad laughters of Tophet to that old Chinaman still alive within it; and how I +coasted, and saw the hairy Ainus, man and woman hairy alike; and how, lying one +midnight awake in my cabin, the <i>Speranza</i> being in a still glassy water +under a cliff overhung by drooping trees—it was the harbour of Chemulpo—to me +lying awake came the thought: 'Suppose now you should hear a step walking to +and fro, leisurely, on the poop above you—<i>just suppose'</i>; and the night +of horrors which I had, for I could not help supposing, and at one time really +thought that I heard it: and how the sweat rolled and poured from my brow; and +how I went to Nagasaki, and burned it; and how I crossed over the great Pacific +deep to San Francisco, for I knew that Chinamen had been there, too, and one of +them might be alive; and how, one calm day, the 15th or the 16th April, I, +sitting by the wheel in the mid-Pacific, suddenly saw a great white hole that +ran and wheeled, and wheeled and ran, in the sea, coming toward me, and I was +aware of the hot breath of a reeling wind, and then of the hot wind itself, +which deep-groaned the sound of the letter <i>V</i>, humming like a billion +spinning-tops, and the <i>Speranza</i> was on her side, sea pouring over her +port-bulwarks, and myself in the corner between deck and taffrail, drowning +fast, but unable to stir; but all was soon past and the white hole in the sea, +and the hot spinning-top of wind, ran wheeling beyond, to the southern horizon, +and the <i>Speranza</i> righted herself: so that it was clear that someone +wished to destroy me, for that a typhoon of such vehemence ever blew before I +cannot think; and how I came to San Francisco, and how I burned it, and had my +sweets: for it was mine; and how I thought to pass over the great +trans-continental railway to New York, but would not, fearing to leave the +<i>Speranza</i>, lest all the ships in the harbour there should be wrecked, or +rusted, and buried under sea-weed, and turned unto the sea; and how I went +back, my mind all given up now to musings upon the earth and her ways, and a +thought in my soul that I would return to those deep places of the Filipinas, +and become an autochthone—a tree, or a snake, or a man with snake-limbs, like +the old autochthones: but I would not: for Heaven was in man, too: Earth and +Heaven; and how as I steamed round west again, another winter come, and I now +in a mood of dismal despondencies, on the very brink of the inane abyss and +smiling idiotcy, I saw in the island of Java the great temple of Boro Budor: +and like a tornado, or volcanic event, my soul was changed: for my recent +studies in the architecture of the human race recurred to me with interest, and +three nights I slept in the temple, examining it by day. It is vast, with that +look of solid massiveness which above all characterises the Japanese and +Chinese building, my measurement of its width being 529 feet, and it rises +terrace-like in six stories to a height of about 120 or 130 feet: here Buddhist +and Brahmin forms are combined into a most richly-developed whole, with a +voluptuousness of tracery that is simply intoxicating, each of the five +off-sets being divided up into an innumerable series of external niches, +containing each a statue of the sitting Boodh, all surmounted by a number of +cupolas, and the whole crowned by a magnificent dagop: and when I saw this, I +had the impulse to return to my home after so long wandering, and to finish the +temple of temples, and the palace of palaces; and I said: 'I will return, and +build it as a testimony to God.' +</p> + +<hr /> + +<p> +Save for a time, near Cairo, I did not once stop on that homeward voyage, but +turned into the little harbour at Imbros at a tranquil sunset on the 7th of +March (as I reckon), and I moored the <i>Speranza</i> to the ring in the little +quay, and I raised the battered motor from the hold with the middle air-engine +(battered by the typhoon in the mid-Pacific, which had broken it from the +rope-fastenings and tumbled it head-over-heels to port), and I went through the +windowless village-street, and up through the plantains and cypresses which I +knew, and the Nile mimosas, and mulberries, and Trebizond palms, and pines, and +acacias, and fig-trees, till the thicket stopped me, and I had to alight: for +in those two years the path had finally disappeared; and on, on foot, I made my +way, till I came to the board-bridge, and leant there, and looked at the rill; +and thence climbed the steep path in the sward toward that rolling table-land +where I had built with many a groan; and half-way up, I saw the tip of the +crane-arm, then the blazing top of the south pillar, then the shed-roof, then +the platform, a blinking blotch of glory to the watery eyes under the setting +sun. But the tent, and nearly all that it contained, was gone. +</p> + +<hr /> + +<p> +For four days I would do nothing, simply lying and watching, shirking a load so +huge: but on the fifth morning I languidly began something: and I had not +worked an hour, when a fever took me—to finish it, to finish it—and it lasted +upon me, with only three brief intervals, nearly seven years; nor would the end +have been so long in coming, but for the unexpected difficulty of getting the +four flat roofs water-tight, for I had to take down half the east one. Finally, +I made them of gold slabs one-and-a-quarter inch thick, smooth on both sides, +on each beam double gutters being fixed along each side of the top flange to +catch any leakage at the joints, which are filled with slaters'-cement. The +slabs are clamped to the top flanges by steel clips, having bolts set with +plaster-of-Paris in holes drilled in the slabs. These clips are 1-1/2 in. by +3/17 in., and are 17 in. apart. The roofs are slightly pitched to the front +edges, where they drain into gold-plated copper-gutters on plated wrought-iron +brackets, with one side flashed up over the blocks, which raise the slabs from +the beam-tops, to clear the joint gutters.... But now I babble again of that +base servitude, which I would forget, but cannot: for every measurement, bolt, +ring, is in my brain, like a burden: but it is past, it is past—and it was +vanity. +</p> + +<hr /> + +<p> +Six months ago to-day it was finished: six months more protracted, desolate, +burdened, than all those sixteen years in which I built. +</p> + +<p> +I wonder what a man—another man—some Shah, or Tsar, of that far-off past, would +say now of me, if eye could rest upon me! With what awe would he certainly +shrink before the wild majesty of these eyes; and though I am not lunatic—for I +am not, I am not—how would he fly me with the exclamation: 'There is the very +lunacy of Pride!' +</p> + +<p> +For there would seem to him—it must be so—in myself, in all about me, something +extravagantly royal, touched with terror. My body has fattened, and my girth +now fills out to a portly roundness its broad Babylonish girdle of crimson +cloth, minutely gold-embroidered, and hung with silver, copper and gold coins +of the Orient; my beard, still black, sweeps in two divergent sheaves to my +hips, flustered by every wind; as I walk through this palace, the +amber-and-silver floor reflects in its depths my low-necked, short-armed robe +of purple, blue, and scarlet, a-glow with luminous stones. I am ten times +crowned Lord and Emperor; I sit a hundred times enthroned in confirmed, obese +old Majesty. Challenge me who will—challenge me who dare! Among those myriad +worlds upon which I nightly pore, I may have my Peers and Compeers and +Fellow-denizens ... but <i>here</i> I am Sole; Earth acknowledges my ancient +sway and hereditary sceptre: for though she draws me, not yet, not yet, am I +hers, but she is mine. It seems to me not less than a million million aeons +since other beings, more or less resembling me, walked impudently in the open +sunlight on this planet, which is rightly mine—I can indeed no longer picture +to myself, nor even credit, that such a state of things—so fantastic, so +far-fetched, so infinitely droll—could have existed: though, at bottom, I +suppose, I know that it must have been really so. Up to ten years ago, in fact, +I used frequently to dream that there were others. I would see them walk in the +streets like ghosts, and be troubled, and start awake: but never now could such +a thing, I think, occur to me in sleep: for the wildness of the circumstance +would certainly strike my consciousness, and immediately I should know that the +dream was a dream. For now, at least, I am sole, I am lord. The golden walls of +this palace which I have built look down, enamoured of their reflection, into a +lake of the choicest, purplest wine. +</p> + +<p> +Not that I made it of wine because wine is rare; nor the walls of gold because +gold is rare: that would have been too childish: but because I would match for +beauty a human work with the works of those Others: and because it happens, by +some persistent freak of the earth, that precisely things most rare and costly +are generally the most beautiful. +</p> + +<p> +The vision of glorious loveliness which is this palace now risen before my eyes +cannot be described by pen and paper, though there <i>may</i> be words in the +lexicons of language which, if I sought for them with inspired wit for sixteen +years, as I have built for sixteen years, might as vividly express my thought +on paper, as the stones-of-gold, so grouped and built, express it to the eye: +but, failing such labours and skill, I suppose I could not give, if there were +another man, and I tried to give, the faintest conception of its celestial +charm. +</p> + +<p> +It is a structure positively as clear as the sun, and as fair as the moon—the +sole great human work in the making of which no restraining thought of cost has +played a part: one of its steps alone being of more cost than all the temples, +mosques and besestins, the palaces, pagodas and cathedrals, built between the +ages of the Nimrods and the Napoleons. +</p> + +<p> +The house itself is very small—only 40 ft. long, by 35 broad, by 27 high: yet +the structure as a whole is sufficiently enormous, high uplifted: the rest of +the bulk being occupied by the platform, on which the house stands, each side +of this measuring at its base 480 ft., its height from top to bottom 130 ft, +and its top 48 ft. square, the elevation of the steps being just nearly 30 +degrees, and the top reached from each of the four points of the compass by 183 +low long steps, very massively overlaid with smooth molten gold—not forming a +continuous flight, but broken into threes and fives, sixes and nines, with +landings between the series, these from the top looking like a great terraced +parterre of gold. It is thus an Assyrian palace in scheme: only that the +platform has steps on all sides, instead of on one. The platform-top, from its +edge to the golden walls of the house, is a mosaic consisting of squares of the +glassiest clarified gold, and squares of the glassiest jet, corner to corner, +each square 2 ft. wide. Around the edge of the platform on top run 48 square +plain gold pilasters, 12 on each side, 2 ft. high, tapering upwards, and topped +by a knob of solid gold, pierced with a hole through which passes a lax +inch-and-a-half silver chain, hung with little silver balls which strike +together in the breeze. The mansion consists of an outer court, facing east +toward the sea, and the house proper, which encloses an inner court. The outer +court is a hollow oblong 32 ft. wide by 8 ft. long, the summit of its three +walls being battlemented; they are 18-1/2 ft. in height, or 8-1/2 ft. lower +than the house; around their gold sides, on inside and outside, 3 ft. from the +top, runs a plain flat band of silver, 1 ft. wide, projecting 2/3 in., and at +the gate, which is a plain Egyptian entrance, facing eastwards, 2-1/2 ft. +narrower at top than at bottom, stand the two great square pillars of massive +plain gold, tapering upwards, 45 ft. high, with their capital of band, closed +lotus, and thin plinth; in the outer court, immediately opposite the gate, is +an oblong well, 12 ft. by 3 ft, reproducing in little the shape of the court, +its sides, which are gold-lined, tapering downward to near the bottom of the +platform, where a conduit of 1/8 in. diameter automatically replenishes the +ascertained mean evaporation of the lake during the year, the well containing +105,360 litres when nearly full, and the lake occupying a circle round the +platform of 980 ft. diameter, with a depth of 3-1/2 ft. Round the well run +pilasters connected by silver chains with little balls, and it communicates by +a 1/8 in. conduit with a pool of wine let into the inner court, this being fed +from eight tall and narrow golden tanks, tapering upwards, which surround it, +each containing a different red wine, sufficient on the whole to last for all +purposes during my lifetime. The ground of the outer court is also a mosaic of +jet and gold: but thenceforth the jet-squares give place throughout to squares +of silver, and the gold-squares to squares of clear amber, clear as solidified +oil. The entrance is by an Egyptian doorway 7 ft. high, with folding-doors of +gold-plated cedar, opening inwards, surrounded by a very large projecting +coping of plain silver, 3-1/2 ft. wide, severe simplicity of line throughout +enormously multiplying the effect of richness of material. The interior +resembles, I believe, rather a Homeric, than an Assyrian or Egyptian +house—except for the 'galleries,' which are purely Babylonish and Old Hebrew. +The inner court, with its wine-pool and tanks, is a small oblong of 8 ft. by 9 +ft., upon which open four silver-latticed window-oblongs in the same +proportion, and two doors, before and behind, oblongs in the same proportion. +Round this run the eight walls of the house proper, the inner 10 ft. from the +outer, each parallel two forming a single long corridor-like chamber, except +the front (east) two, which are divided into three apartments; in each side of +the house are six panels of massive plain silver, half-an-inch thinner in their +central space, where are affixed paintings, 22 or else 21 taken at the burning +of Paris from a place called 'The Louvre,' and 2 or else 3 from a place in +England: so that the panels have the look of frames, and are surrounded by oval +garlands of the palest amethyst, topaz, sapphire, and turquoise which I could +find, each garland being of only one kind of stone, a mere oval ring two feet +wide at the sides and narrowing to an inch at the top and bottom, without +designs. The galleries are five separate recesses in the outer walls under the +roofs, two in the east façade, and one in the north, south, and west, +hung with pavilions of purple, blue, rose and white silk on rings and rods of +gold, with gold pilasters and banisters, each entered by four steps from the +roof, to which lead, north and south, two spiral stairs of cedar. On the east +roof stands the kiosk, under which is the little lunar telescope; and from that +height, and from the galleries, I can watch under the bright moonlight of this +climate, which is very like lime-light, the for-ever silent blue hills of +Macedonia, and where the islands of Samothraki, Lemnos, Tenedos slumber like +purplish fairies on the Aegean Sea: for, usually, I sleep during the day, and +keep a night-long vigil, often at midnight descending to bathe my coloured +baths in the lake, and to disport myself in that strange intoxication of +nostrils, eyes, and pores, dreaming long wide-eyed dreams at the bottom, to +return dazed, and weak, and drunken. Or again—<i>twice</i> within these last +void and idle six months—I have suddenly run, bawling out, from this temple of +luxury, tearing off my gaudy rags, to hide in a hut by the shore, smitten for +one intense moment with realisation of the past of this earth, and moaning: +'alone, alone ... all alone, alone, alone ... alone, alone....' For events +precisely resembling eruptions take place in my brain; and one spangled +midnight—ah, how spangled!—I may kneel on the roof with streaming, uplifted +face, with outspread arms, and awe-struck heart, adoring the Eternal: the next, +I may strut like a cock, wanton as sin, lusting to burn a city, to wallow in +filth, and, like the Babylonian maniac, calling myself the equal of Heaven. +</p> + +<hr /> + +<p> +But it was not to write of this—of all this—! +</p> + +<p> +Of the furnishing of the palace I have written nothing.... But why I hesitate +to admit to myself what I <i>know</i>, is not clear. If They speak to me, I may +surely write of Them: for I do not fear Them, but am Their peer. +</p> + +<p> +Of the island I have written nothing: its size, climate, form, vegetation.... +There are two winds: a north and a south wind; the north is cool, and the south +is warm; and the south blows during the winter months, so that sometimes on +Christmas-day it is quite hot; and the north, which is cool, blows from May to +September, so that the summer is hardly ever oppressive, and the climate was +made for a king. The mangal-stove in the south hall I have never once lit. +</p> + +<p> +The length, I should say, is 19 miles; the breadth 10, or thereabouts; and the +highest mountains should reach a height of some 2,000 ft., though I have not +been all over it. It is very densely wooded in most parts, and I have seen +large growths of wheat and barley, obviously degenerate now, with currants, +figs, valonia, tobacco, vines in rank abundance, and two marble quarries. From +the palace, which lies on a sunny plateau of beautifully-sloping swards, dotted +with the circular shadows thrown by fifteen huge cedars, and seven planes, I +can see on all sides an edge of forest, with the gleam of a lake to the north, +and in the hollow to the east the rivulet with its little bridge, and a few +clumps and beds of flowers. I can also spy right through—— +</p> + +<hr /> + +<p> +It shall be written now: +</p> + +<p> +I have this day heard within me the contention of the Voices. +</p> + +<hr /> + +<p> +I thought that they were done with me! That all, all, all, was ended! I have +not heard them for twenty years! +</p> + +<p> +But to-day—distinctly—breaking in with brawling impassioned suddenness upon my +consciousness.... I heard. +</p> + +<p> +This late <i>far niente</i> and vacuous inaction here have been undermining my +spirit; this inert brooding upon the earth; this empty life, and bursting +brain! Immediately after eating at noon to-day, I said to myself: +</p> + +<p> +'I have been duped by the palace: for I have wasted myself in building, hoping +for peace, and there is no peace. Therefore now I shall fly from it, to +another, sweeter work—not of building, but of destroying—not of Heaven, but of +Hell—not of self-denial, but of reddest orgy. Constantinople—beware!' I tossed +the chair aside, and with a stamp was on my feet: and as I stood—again, again—I +heard: the startlingly sudden wrangle, the fierce, vulgar outbreak and voluble +controversy, till my consciousness could not hear its ears: and one urged: 'Go! +go!' and the other: 'Not there...! where you like, ... but not there...! for +your life!' +</p> + +<p> +I did not—for I could not—go: I was so overcome. I fell upon the couch +shivering. +</p> + +<p> +These Voices, or impulses, plainly as I felt them of old, quarrel within me now +with an openness new to them. Lately, influenced by my long scientific habit of +thought, I have occasionally wondered whether what I used to call 'the two +Voices' were not in reality two strong instinctive movements, such as most men +may have felt, though with less force. But to-day doubt is past, doubt is past: +nor, unless I be very mad, can I ever doubt again. +</p> + +<hr /> + +<p> +I have been thinking, thinking of my life: there is a something which I cannot +understand. +</p> + +<p> +There was a man whom I met once in that dark backward and abysm of time, when I +must have been very young—I fancy at some college or school in England, and his +name now is far enough beyond scope of my memory, lost in the vast limbo of +past things. But he used to talk continually about certain 'Black' and 'White' +Powers, and of their strife for this world. He was a short man with a Roman +nose, and lived in fear of growing a paunch. His forehead a-top, in profile, +was more prominent than the nose-end, he parted his hair in the middle, and had +the theory that the male form was more beautiful than the female. I forget what +his name was—the dim clear-obscure being. Very profound was the effect of his +words upon me, though, I think, I used to make a point of slighting them. This +man always declared that 'the Black' would carry off the victory in the end: +and so he has, so he has. +</p> + +<p> +But assuming the existence of this 'Black' and this 'White' being—and supposing +it to be a fact that my reaching the Pole had any connection with the +destruction of my race, according to the notions of that extraordinary Scotch +parson—then it must have been the power of '<i>the Black</i>' which carried me, +in spite of all obstacles, to the Pole. So far I can understand. +</p> + +<p> +But <i>after</i> I had reached the Pole, what further use had either White or +Black for me? Which was it—White or Black—that preserved my life through my +long return on the ice—and <i>why</i>? It <i>could</i> not have been 'the +Black'! For I readily divine that from the moment when I touched the Pole, the +only desire of the Black, which had previously preserved, must have been to +destroy me, with the rest. It must have been 'the White,' then, that led me +back, retarding me long, so that I should not enter the poison-cloud, and then +openly presenting me the <i>Boreal</i> to bring me home to Europe. But his +motive? And the significance of these recommencing wrangles, after such a +silence? This I do not understand! +</p> + +<p> +Curse Them, curse Them, with their mad tangles! I care nothing for Them! Are +there any White Idiots and Black Idiots—<i>at all</i>? Or are these Voices that +I hear nothing but the cries of my own strained nerves, and I all mad and +morbid, morbid and mad, mad, my good God? +</p> + +<p> +This inertia here is <i>not good</i> for me! This stalking about the palace! +and long thinkings about Earth and Heaven, Black and White, White and Black, +and things beyond the stars! My brain is like bursting through the walls of my +poor head. +</p> + +<p> +To-morrow, then, to Constantinople. +</p> + +<hr /> + +<p> +Descending to go to the ship, I had almost reached the middle of the east +platform-steps, when my foot slipped on the smooth gold: and the fall, though I +was not walking carelessly, had, I swear, all the violence of a fall caused by +a push. I struck my head, and, as I rolled downward, swooned. When I came to +myself, I was lying on the very bottom step, which is thinly washed by the +wine-waves: another roll and I suppose I must have drowned. I sat there an +hour, lost in amazement, then crossed the causeway, came down to the +<i>Speransa</i> with the motor, went through her, spent the day in work, slept +on her, worked again to-day, till four, at both ship and time-fuses (I with +only 700 fuses left, and in Stamboul alone must be 8,000 houses, without +counting Galata, Tophana, Kassim-pacha, Scutari, and the rest), started out at +5.30, and am now at 11 P.M. lying motionless two miles off the north coast of +the island of Marmora, with moonlight gloating on the water, a faint north +breeze, and the little pale land looking immensely stretched-out, solemn and +great, as if that were the world, and there were nothing else; and the tiny +island at its end immense, and the <i>Speranza</i> vast, and I only little. +To-morrow at 11 A.M. I will moor the <i>Speranza</i> in the Golden Horn at the +spot where there is that low damp nook of the bagnio behind the naval magazines +and that hill where the palace of the Capitan Pacha is. +</p> + +<hr /> + +<p> +I found that great tangle of ships in the Golden Horn wonderfully preserved, +many with hardly any moss-growths. This must be due, I suppose, to the little +Ali-Bey and Kezat-Hanah, which flow into the Horn at the top, and made no doubt +a constant current. +</p> + +<p> +Ah, I remember the place: long ago I lived here some months, or, it may be, +years. It is the fairest of cities—and the greatest. I believe that London in +England was larger: but no city, surely, ever <i>seemed</i> so large. But it is +flimsy, and will burn like tinder. The houses are made of light timber, with +interstices filled by earth and bricks, and some of them look ruinous already, +with their lovely faded tints of green and gold and red and blue and yellow, +like the hues of withered flowers: for it is a city of paints and trees, and +all in the little winding streets, as I write, are volatile almond-blossoms, +mixed with maple-blossoms, white with purple. Even the most splendid of the +Sultan's palaces are built in this combustible way: for I believe that they had +a notion that stone-building was presumptuous, though I have seen some very +thick stone-houses in Galata. This place, I remember, lived in a constant state +of sensation on account of nightly flares-up; and I have come across several +tracts already devastated by fires. The ministers-of-state used to attend them, +and if the fire would not go out, the Sultan himself was obliged to be there, +in order to encourage the firemen. Now it will burn still better. +</p> + +<p> +But I have been here six weeks, and still no burning: for the place seems to +plead with me, it is so ravishing, so that I do not know why I did not live +here, and spare my toils during those sixteen nightmare years; for two whole +weeks the impulse to burn was quieted; and since then there has been an +irritating whisper at my ear which said: 'It is not really like the great King +that you are, this burning, but like a foolish child, or a savage, who liked to +see fireworks: or at least, if you must burn, do not burn poor Constantinople, +which is so charming, and so very old, with its balsamic perfumes, and the +blossomy trees of white and light-purple peeping over the walls of the +cloistered painted houses, and all those lichened tombs—those granite menhirs +and regions of ancient marble tombs between the quarters, Greek tombs, +Byzantine, Jew, Mussulman tombs, with their strange and sacred +inscriptions—overwaved by their cypresses and vast plane-trees.' And for weeks +I would do nothing: but roamed about, with two minds in me, under the tropic +brilliance of the sky by day, and the vast dreamy nights of this place that are +like nights seen through azure-tinted glasses, and in each of them is not one +night, but the thousand-and-one long crowded nights of glamour and fancy: for I +would sit on the immense esplanade of the Seraskierat, or the mighty grey +stones of the porch of the mosque of Sultan Mehmed-fatih, dominating from its +great steps all old Stamboul, and watch the moon for hours and hours, so +passionately bright she soared through clear and cloud, till I would be smitten +with doubt of my own identity, for whether I were she, or the earth, or myself, +or some other thing or man, I did not know, all being so silent alike, and all, +except myself, so vast, the Seraskierat, and the Suleimanieh, and Stamboul, and +the Marmora Sea, and the earth, and those argent fields of the moon, all large +alike compared with me, and measure and space were lost, and I with them. +</p> + +<hr /> + +<p> +These proud Turks died stolidly, many of them. In streets of Kassim-pacha, in +crowded Taxim on the heights of Pera, and under the long Moorish arcades of +Sultan-Selim, I have seen the open-air barber's razor with his bones, and with +him the half-shaved skull of the faithful, and the long two-hours' narghile +with traces of burnt tembaki and haschish still in the bowl. Ashes now are they +all, and dry yellow bone; but in the houses of Phanar and noisy old Galata, and +in the Jew quarter of Pri-pacha, the black shoe and head-dress of the Greek is +still distinguishable from the Hebrew blue. It was a mixed ritual of colours +here in boot and hat: yellow for Mussulman, red boots, black calpac for +Armenian, for the Effendi a white turban, for the Greek a black. The Tartar +skull shines from under a high taper calpac, the Nizain-djid's from a +melon-shaped head-piece; the Imam's and Dervish's from a grey conical felt; and +there is here and there a Frank in European rags. I have seen the towering +turban of the Bashi-bazouk, and his long sword, and some softas in the domes on +the great wall of Stamboul, and the beggar, and the street-merchant with large +tray of water-melons, sweetmeats, raisins, sherbet, and the bear-shewer, and +the Barbary organ, and the night-watchman who evermore cried 'Fire!' with his +long lantern, two pistols, dirk, and wooden javelin. Strange how all that old +life has come back to my fancy now, pretty vividly, and for the first time, +though I have been here several times lately. I have gone out to those plains +beyond the walls with their view of rather barren mountain-peaks, the city +looking nothing but minarets shooting through black cypress-tops, and I seemed +to see the wild muezzin at some summit, crying the midday prayer: '<i>Mohammed +Resoul Allah!</i>'—the wild man; and from that great avenue of cypresses which +traverses the cemetery of Scutari, the walled city of Stamboul lay spread +entire up to Phanar and Eyoub in their cypress-woods before me, the whole +embowered now in trees, all that complexity of ways and dark alleys with +overhanging balconies of old Byzantine houses, beneath which a rider had to +stoop the head, where old Turks would lose their way in mazes of the +picturesque; and on the shaded Bosphorus coast, to Foundoucli and beyond, some +peeping yali, snow-white palace, or old Armenian cot; and the Seraglio by the +sea, a town within a town; and southward the Sea of Marmora, blue-and-white, +and vast, and fresh as a sea just born, rejoicing at its birth and at the +jovial sun, all brisk, alert, to the shadowy islands afar: and as I looked, I +suddenly said aloud a wild, mad thing, my God, a wild and maniac thing, a +shrieking maniac thing for Hell to laugh at: for something said with my tongue: +'<i>This city is not quite dead.</i>' +</p> + +<hr /> <hr /> + +<p> +Three nights I slept in Stamboul itself at the palace of some sanjak-bey or +emir, or rather dozed, with one slumbrous eye that would open to watch my +visitors Sinbad, and Ali Baba, and old Haroun, to see how they slumbered and +dozed: for it was in the small luxurious chamber where the bey received those +speechless all-night visits of the Turks, long rosy hours of perfumed romance, +and drunkenness of the fancy, and visionary languor, sinking toward morning +into the yet deeper peace of dreamless sleep; and there, still, were the white +<i>yatags</i> for the guests to sit cross-legged on for the waking dream, and +to fall upon for the final swoon, and the copper brazier still scenting of +essence-of-rose, and the cushions, rugs, hangings, the monsters on the wall, +the haschish-chibouques, narghiles, hookahs, and drugged pale cigarettes, and a +secret-looking lattice beyond the door, painted with trees and birds; and the +air narcotic and grey with the pastilles which I had burned, and the scented +smokes which I had smoked; and I all drugged and mumbling, my left eye +suspicious of Ali there, and Sinbad, and old Haroun, who dozed. And when I had +slept, and rose to wash in a room near the overhanging latticed balcony of the +façade, before me to the north lay old Galata in sunshine, and that +steep large street mounting to Pera, once full at every night-fall of divans on +which grave dervishes smoked narghiles, and there was no space for passage, for +all was divans, lounges, almond-trees, heaven-high hum, chibouques in forests, +the dervish, and the innumerable porter, the horse-hirer with his horse from +Tophana, and arsenal-men from Kassim, and traders from Galata, and +artillery-workmen from Tophana; and on the other side of the house, the south +end, a covered bridge led across a street, which consisted mostly of two +immense blind walls, into a great tangled wilderness of flowers, which was the +harem-garden, where I passed some hours; and here I might have remained many +days, many weeks perhaps, but that, dozing one fore-day with those fancied +others, it was as if there occurred a laugh somewhere, and a thing said: 'But +this city is not quite dead!' waking me from deeps of peace to startled +wakefulness. And I thought to myself: 'If it be not quite dead, it <i>will</i> +be soon—and with some suddenness!' And the next morning I was at the Arsenal. +</p> + +<hr /> + +<p> +It is long since I have so deeply enjoyed, even to the marrow. It may be 'the +White' who has the guardianship of my life: but assuredly it is 'the Black' who +reigns in my soul. +</p> + +<p> +Grandly did old Stamboul, Galata, Tophana, Kassim, right out beyond the walls +to Phanar and Eyoub, blaze and burn. The whole place, except one little region +of Galata, was like so much tinder, and in the five hours between 8 P.M. and 1 +A.M. all was over. I saw the tops of those vast masses of cemetery-cypresses +round the tombs of the Osmanlis outside the walls, and those in the cemetery of +Kassim, and those round the sacred mosque of Eyoub, shrivel away +instantaneously, like flimsy hair caught by a flame; I saw the Genoese tower of +Galata go heading obliquely on an upward curve, like Sir Roger de Coverley and +wild rockets, and burst high, high, with a report; in pairs, and threes, and +fours, I saw the blue cupolas of the twelve or fourteen great mosques give in +and subside, or soar and rain, and the great minarets nod the head, and topple; +and I saw the flames reach out and out across the empty breadth of the +Etmeidan—three hundred yards—to the six minarets of the Mosque of Achmet, +wrapping the red Egyptian-granite obelisk in the centre; and across the breadth +of the Serai-Meidani it reached to the buildings of the Seraglio and the +Sublime Porte; and across those vague barren stretches that lie between the +houses and the great wall; and across the seventy or eighty great arcaded +bazaars, all-enwrapping, it reached; and the spirit of fire grew upon me: for +the Golden Horn itself was a tongue of fire, crowded, west of the +galley-harbour, with exploding battleships, Turkish frigates, corvettes, +brigs—and east, with tens of thousands of feluccas, caiques, gondolas and +merchantmen aflame. On my left burned all Scutari; and between six and eight in +the evening I had sent out thirty-seven vessels under low horse-powers of air, +with trains and fuses laid for 11 P.M., to light with their wandering fires the +Sea of Marmora. By midnight I was encompassed in one great furnace and fiery +gulf, all the sea and sky inflamed, and earth a-flare. Not far from me to the +left I saw the vast Tophana barracks of the Cannoniers, and the +Artillery-works, after long reluctance and delay, take wing together; and three +minutes later, down by the water, the barrack of the Bombardiers and the +Military School together, grandly, grandly; and then, to the right, in the +valley of Kassim, the Arsenal: these occupying the sky like smoky suns, and +shedding a glaring day over many a mile of sea and land; I saw the two lines of +ruddier flaring where the barge-bridge and the raft-bridge over the Golden Horn +made haste to burn; and all that vastness burned with haste, quicker and +quicker—to fervour—to fury—to unanimous rabies: and when its red roaring +stormed the infinite, and the might of its glowing heart was Gravitation, +Being, Sensation, and I its compliant wife—then my head nodded, and with +crooked lips I sighed as it were my last sigh, and tumbled, weak and drunken, +upon my face. +</p> + +<hr /> <hr /> + +<p> +O wild Providence! Unfathomable madness of Heaven! that ever I should write +what now I write! I will not write it.... +</p> + +<hr /> + +<p> +The hissing of it! It is only a crazy dream! a tearing-out of the hair by the +roots to scatter upon the raving storms of Saturn! My hand will not write it! +</p> + +<hr /> + +<p> +In God's name——! During four nights after the burning I slept in a house—French +as I saw by the books, &c., probably the Ambassador's, for it has very +large gardens and a beautiful view over the sea, situated on the rapid east +declivity of Pera; it is one of the few large houses which, for my safety, I +had left standing round the minaret whence I had watched, this minaret being at +the top of the old Mussulman quarter on the heights of Taxim, between Pera +proper and Foundoucli. At the bottom, both at the quay of Foundoucli, and at +that of Tophana, I had left under shelter two caiques for double safety, one a +Sultan's gilt craft, with gold spur at the prow, and one a boat of those +zaptias that used to patrol the Golden Horn as water-police: by one or other of +these I meant to reach the <i>Speranza</i>, she being then safely anchored some +distance up the Bosphorus coast. So, on the fifth morning I set out for the +Tophana quay; but a light rain had fallen over-night, and this had re-excited +the thin grey smoke resembling quenched steam, which, as from some reeking +province of Abaddon, still trickled upward over many a square mile of blackened +tract, though of flame I could see no sign. I had not accordingly advanced far +over every sort of <i>débris</i>, when I found my eyes watering, my throat +choked, and my way almost blocked by roughness: whereupon I said: 'I will turn +back, cross the region of tombs and barren waste behind Pera, descend the hill, +get the zaptia boat at the Foundoucli quay, and so reach the <i>Speranza</i>.' +</p> + +<p> +Accordingly, I made my way out of the region of smoke, passed beyond the limits +of smouldering ruin and tomb, and soon entered a rich woodland, somewhat +scorched at first, but soon green and flourishing as the jungle. This cooled +and soothed me, and being in no hurry to reach the ship, I was led on and on, +in a somewhat north-western direction, I fancy. Somewhere hereabouts, I +thought, was the place they called 'The Sweet Waters,' and I went on with the +vague notion of coming upon them, thinking to pass the day, till afternoon, in +the forest. Here nature, in only twenty years has returned to an exuberant +savagery, and all was now the wildest vegetation, dark dells, rills wimpling +through deep-brown shade of sensitive mimosa, large pendulous fuchsia, palm, +cypress, mulberry, jonquil, narcissus, daffodil, rhododendron, acacia, fig. +Once I stumbled upon a cemetery of old gilt tombs, absolutely overgrown and +lost, and thrice caught glimpses of little trellised yalis choked in boscage. +With slow and listless foot I went, munching an almond or an olive, though I +could swear that olives were not formerly indigenous to any soil so northern: +yet here they are now, pretty plentiful, though elementary, so that +modifications whose end I cannot see are certainly proceeding in everything, +some of the cypresses which I met that day being immense beyond anything I ever +heard of: and the thought, I remember, was in my head, that if a twig or leaf +should change into a bird, or a fish with wings, and fly before my eyes, what +then should I do? and I would eye a branch suspiciously anon. After a long time +I penetrated into a very sombre grove. The day outside the wood was brilliant +and hot, and very still, the leaves and flowers here all motionless. I seemed, +as it were, to hear the vacant silence of the world, and my foot treading on a +twig, produced the report of pistols. I presently reached a glade in a thicket, +about eight yards across, that had a scent of lime and orange, where the +just-sufficient twilight enabled me to see some old bones, three skulls, and +the edge of a tam-tam peeping from a tuft of wild corn with corn-flowers, and +here and there some golden champac, and all about a profusion of musk-roses. I +had stopped—<i>why</i> I do not recollect—perhaps thinking that if I was not +getting to the Sweet Waters, I should seriously set about finding my way out. +And as I stood looking about me, I remember that some cruising insect trawled +near my ear its lonely drone. +</p> + +<p> +Suddenly, God knows, I started, I started. +</p> + +<p> +I imagined—I dreamed—that I saw a pressure in a bed of moss and violets, +<i>recently made!</i> And while I stood gloating upon that impossible thing, I +imagined—I dreamed—the lunacy of it!—that I heard a laugh...! the laugh, my +good God, of a human soul. +</p> + +<p> +Or it seemed half a laugh, and half a sob: and it passed from me in one +fleeting instant. +</p> + +<p> +Laughs, and sobs, and idiot hallucinations, I had often heard before, feet +walking, sounds behind me: and even as I had heard them, I had known that they +were nothing. But brief as was this impression, it was yet so thrillingly +<i>real</i>, that my poor heart received, as it were, the very shock of death, +and I fell backward into a mass of moss, supported on the right palm, while the +left pressed my working bosom; and there, toiling to catch my breath, I lay +still, all my soul focussed into my ears. But now I could hear no sound, save +only the vast and audible hum of the silence of the universe. +</p> + +<p> +There was, however, the foot-print. If my eye and ear should so conspire +against me, that, I thought, was hard. +</p> + +<p> +Still I lay, still, in that same pose, without a stir, sick and dry-mouthed, +infirm and languishing, with dying breaths: but keen, keen—and malign. +</p> + +<p> +I would wait, I said to myself, I would be artful as snakes, though so woefully +sick and invalid: I would make no sound.... +</p> + +<p> +After some minutes I became conscious that my eyes were leering—leering in one +fixed direction: and instantly, the mere fact that I had a sense of direction +proved to me that I must, <i>in truth</i>, have heard something! I strove—I +managed—to raise myself: and as I stood upright, feebly swaying there, not the +terrors of death alone were in my breast, but the authority of the monarch was +on my brow. +</p> + +<p> +I moved: I found the strength. +</p> + +<p> +Slow step by slow step, with daintiest noiselessness, I moved to a thread of +moss that from the glade passed into the thicket, and along its winding way I +stepped, in the direction of the sound. Now my ears caught the purling noise of +a brooklet, and following the moss-path, I was led into a mass of bush only two +or three feet higher than my head. Through this, prowling like a stealthy cat, +I wheedled my painful way, emerged upon a strip of open long-grass, and now was +faced, three yards before me, by a wall of acacia-trees, prickly-pear and +pichulas, between which and a forest beyond I spied a gleam of running water. +</p> + +<p> +On hands and knees I crept toward the acacia-thicket, entered it a little, and +leaning far forward, peered. And there—at once—ten yards to my right—I saw. +</p> + +<p> +Singular to say, my agitation, instead of intensifying to the point of apoplexy +and death, now, at the actual sight, subsided to something very like calmness. +With malign and sullen eye askance I stood, and steadily I watched her there. +</p> + +<hr /> + +<p> +She was on her knees, her palms lightly touching the ground, supporting her. At +the edge of the streamlet she knelt, and she was looking with a species of +startled shy astonishment at the reflexion of her face in the limpid brown +water. And I, with sullen eye askance regarded her a good ten minutes' space. +</p> + +<hr /> + +<p> +I believe that her momentary laugh and sob, which I had heard, was the result +of surprise at seeing her own image; and I firmly believe, from the expression +of her face, that this was the first time that she had seen it. +</p> + +<hr /> + +<p> +Never, I thought, as I stood moodily gazing, had I seen on the earth a creature +so fair (though, analysing now at leisure, I can quite conclude that there was +nothing at all remarkable about her good looks). Her hair, somewhat lighter +than auburn, and frizzy, was a real garment to her nakedness, covering her +below the hips, some strings of it falling, too, into the water: her eyes, a +dark blue, were wide in a most silly expression of bewilderment. Even as I eyed +and eyed her, she slowly rose: and at once I saw in all her manner an air of +unfamiliarity with the world, as of one wholly at a loss what to do. Her pupils +did not seem accustomed to light; and I could swear that that was the first day +in which she had seen a tree or a stream. +</p> + +<p> +Her age appeared eighteen or twenty. I guessed that she was of Circassian +blood, or, at least, origin. Her skin was whitey-brown, or old ivory-white. +</p> + +<hr /> + +<p> +She stood up motionless, at a loss. She took a lock of her hair, and drew it +through her lips. There was some look in her eyes, which I could plainly see +now, somehow indicating wild hunger, though the wood was full of food. After +letting go her hair, she stood again feckless and imbecile, with sideward-hung +head, very pitiable to see I think now, though no faintest pity touched me +then. It was clear that she did not at all know what to make of the look of +things. Finally, she sat on a moss-bank, reached and took a musk-rose on her +palm, and looked hopelessly at it. +</p> + +<hr /> + +<p> +One minute after my first actual sight of her my extravagance of agitation, I +say, died down to something like calm. The earth was mine by old right: I felt +that: and this creature a mere slave upon whom, without heat or haste, I might +perform my will: and for some time I stood, coolly enough considering what that +will should be. +</p> + +<p> +I had at my girdle the little cangiar, with silver handle encrusted with coral, +and curved blade six inches long, damascened in gold, and sharp as a razor; the +blackest and the basest of all the devils of the Pit was whispering in my +breast with calm persistence: 'Kill, kill—and eat.' +</p> + +<p> +<i>Why</i> I should have killed her I do not know. That question I now ask +myself. It must be true, true that it is '<i>not good</i>' for man to be alone. +There was a religious sect in the Past which called itself 'Socialist': and +with these must have been the truth, man being at his best and highest when +most social, and at his worst and lowest when isolated: for the Earth gets hold +of all isolation, and draws it, and makes it fierce, base, and materialistic, +like sultans, aristocracies, and the like: but Heaven is where two or three are +gathered together. It may be so: I do not know, nor care. But I know that after +twenty years of solitude on a planet the human soul is more enamoured of +solitude than of life, shrinking like a tender nerve from the rough intrusion +of Another into the secret realm of Self: and hence, perhaps, the bitterness +with which solitary castes, Brahmins, patricians, aristocracies, always +resisted any attempt to invade their slowly-acquired domain of privileges. +Also, it may be true, it may, it may, that after twenty years of solitary +selfishness, a man becomes, without suspecting it—not at all noticing the slow +stages—a real and true beast, a horrible, hideous beast, mad, prowling, like +that King of Babylon, his nails like birds' claws, and his hair like eagles' +feathers, with instincts all inflamed and fierce, delighting in darkness and +crime for their own sake. I do not know, nor care: but I know that, as I drew +the cangiar, the basest and the slyest of all the devils was whispering me, +tongue in cheek: 'Kill, kill—and be merry.' +</p> + +<p> +With excruciating slowness, like a crawling glacier, tender as a nerve of the +touching leaves, I moved, I stole, obliquely toward her through the wall of +bush, the knife behind my back. Once only there was a restraint, a check: I +felt myself held back: I had to stop: for one of the ends of my divided beard +had caught in a limb of prickly-pear. +</p> + +<p> +I set to disentangling it: and it was, I believe, at the moment of succeeding +that I first noticed the state of the sky, a strip of which I could see across +the rivulet: a minute or so before it had been pretty clear, but now was busy +with hurrying clouds. It was a sinister muttering of thunder which had made me +glance upward. +</p> + +<p> +When my eyes returned to the sitting figure, she was looking foolishly about +the sky with an expression which almost proved that she had never before heard +that sound of thunder, or at least had no idea what it could bode. My fixed +regard lost not one of her movements, while inch by inch, not breathing, +careful as the poise of a balance, I crawled. And suddenly, with a rush, I was +out in the open, running her down.... +</p> + +<p> +She leapt: perhaps two, perhaps three, paces she fled: then stock still she +stood—within some four yards of me—with panting nostrils, with enquiring face. +</p> + +<p> +I saw it all in one instant, and in one instant all was over. I had not checked +the impetus of my run at her stoppage, and I was on the point of reaching her +with uplifted knife, when I was suddenly checked and smitten by a stupendous +violence: a flash of blinding light, attracted by the steel which I held, +struck tingling through my frame, and at the same time the most passionate +crash of thunder that ever shocked a poor human ear felled me to the ground. +The cangiar, snatched from my hand, fell near the girl's foot. +</p> + +<p> +I did not entirely lose consciousness, though, surely, the Powers no longer +hide themselves from me, and their close contact is too intolerably rough and +vigorous for a poor mortal man. During, I should think, three or four minutes, +I lay so astounded under that bullying cry of wrath, that I could not move a +finger. When at last I did sit up, the girl was standing near me, with a sort +of smile, holding out to me the cangiar in a pouring rain. +</p> + +<p> +I took it from her, and my doddering fingers dropped it into the stream. +</p> + +<hr /> + +<p> +Pour, pour came the rain, raining as it can in this place, not long, but a +deluge while it lasts, dripping in thick-liquidity, like a profuse sweat, +through the forest, I seeking to get back by the way I had come, flying, but +with difficulty and slowness, and a feeling in me that I was being tracked. And +so it proved: for when I struck into more open space, nearly opposite the west +walls, but now on the north side of the Golden Horn, where there is a flat +grassy ground somewhere between the valley of Kassim and Charkoi, with horror I +saw that <i>protégée</i> of Heaven, or of someone, not ten yards behind, +following me like a mechanical figure, it being now near three in the +afternoon, and the rain drenching me through, and I tired and hungry, and from +all the ruins of Constantinople not one whiff of smoke ascending. +</p> + +<p> +I trudged on wearily till I came to the quay of Foundoucli, and the zaptia +boat; and there she was with me still, her hair nothing but a thin drowned +string down her back. +</p> + +<hr /> + +<p> +Not only can she not speak to me in any language that I know: but she can speak +in <i>no</i> language: it is my firm belief that she has <i>never</i> spoken. +</p> + +<p> +She never saw a boat, or water, or the world, till now—I could swear it. She +came into the boat with me, and sat astern, clinging for dear life to the +gunwale by her finger-nails, and I paddled the eight hundred yards to the +<i>Speranza</i>, and she came up to the deck after me. When she saw the open +water, the boat, the yalis on the coast, and then the ship, astonishment was +imprinted on her face. But she appears to know little fear. She smiled like a +child, and on the ship touched this and that, as if each were a living thing. +</p> + +<p> +It was only here and there that one could see the ivory-brown colour of her +skin: the rest was covered with dirt, like old bottles long lying in cellars. +</p> + +<p> +By the time we reached the <i>Speranza</i>, the rain suddenly stopped: I went +down to my cabin to change my clothes, and had to shut the door in her face to +keep her out. When I opened it, she was there, and she followed me to the +windlass, when I went to set the anchor-engine going. I intended, I suppose, to +take her to Imbros, where she might live in one of the broken-down houses of +the village. But when the anchor was not yet half up, I stopped the engine, and +let the chain run again. For I said, 'No, I will be alone, I am not a child.' +</p> + +<p> +I knew that she was hungry by the look in her eyes: but I cared nothing for +that. I was hungry, too: and that was all I cared about. +</p> + +<p> +I would not let her be there with me another instant. I got down into the boat, +and when she followed, I rowed her back all the way past Foundoucli and the +Tophana quay to where one turns into the Golden Horn by St. Sophia, around the +mouth of the Horn being a vast semicircle of charred wreckage, carried out by +the river-currents. I went up the steps on the Galata side before one comes to +where the barge-bridge was. When she had followed me on to the embankment, I +walked up one of those rising streets, very encumbered now with +stone-<i>débris</i> and ashes, but still marked by some standing black +wall-fragments, it being now not far from night, but the air as clear and +washed as the translucency of a great purple diamond with the rain and the +afterglow of the sun, and all the west aflame. +</p> + +<p> +When I was about a hundred yards up in this old mixed quarter of Greeks, Turks, +Jews, Italians, Albanians, and noise and cafedjis and wine-bibbing, having +turned two corners, I suddenly gathered my skirts, spun round, and, as fast as +I could, was off at a heavy trot back to the quay. She was after me, but being +taken by surprise, I suppose, was distanced a little at first. However, by the +time I could scurry myself down into the boat, she was so near, that she only +saved herself from the water by a balancing stoppage at the brink, as I pushed +off. I then set out to get back to the ship, muttering: 'You can have Turkey, +if you like, and I will keep the rest of the world.' +</p> + +<p> +I rowed sea-ward, my face toward her, but steadily averted, for I would not +look her way to see what she was doing. However, as I turned the point of the +quay, where the open sea washes quite rough and loud, to go northward and +disappear from her, I heard a babbling cry—the first sound which she had +uttered. I did look then: and she was still quite near me, for the silly maniac +had been running along the embankment, following me. +</p> + +<p> +'Little fool!' I cried out across the water, 'what are you after now?' And, oh +my good God, shall I ever forget that strangeness, that wild strangeness, of my +own voice, addressing on this earth another human soul? +</p> + +<p> +There she stood, whimpering like an abandoned dog after me. I turned the boat, +rowed, came to the first steps, landed, and struck her two stinging slaps, one +on each cheek. While she cowered, surprised no doubt, I took her by the hand, +led her back to the boat, landed on the Stamboul side, and set off, still +leading her, my object being to find some sort of possible edifice near by, not +hopelessly burned, in which to leave her: for in all Galata there was plainly +none, and Pera, I thought, was too far to walk to. But it would have been +better if I had gone to Pera, for we had to walk quite three miles from +Seraglio Point all along the city battlements to the Seven-towers, she picking +her bare-footed way after me through the great Sahara of charred stuff, and +night now well arrived, and the moon a-drift in the heaven, making the desolate +lonesomeness of the ruins tenfold desolate, so that my heart smote me then with +bitterness and remorse, and I had a vision of myself that night which I will +not put down on paper. At last, however, pretty late in the evening, I spied a +large mansion with green lattice-work façade, and shaknisier, and +terrace-roof, which had been hidden from me by the arcades of a bazaar, a vast +open space at about the centre of Stamboul, one of the largest of the bazaars, +I should think, in the middle of which stood the mansion, probably the home of +pasha or vizier: for it had a very distinguished look in that place. It seemed +very little hurt, though the vegetation that had apparently choked the great +open space was singed to a black fluff, among which lay thousands of calcined +bones of man, horse, ass, and camel, for all was distinct in the bright, yet so +pensive and forlorn, moonlight, which was that Eastern moonlight of pure astral +mystery which illumines Persepolis, and Babylon, and ruined cities of the old +Anakim. +</p> + +<p> +The house, I knew, would contain divans, <i>yatags</i>, cushions, foods, wines, +sherbets, henna, saffron, mastic, raki, haschish, costumes, and a hundred +luxuries still good. There was an outer wall, but the foliage over it had been +singed away, and the gate all charred. It gave way at a push from my palm. The +girl was close behind me. I next threw open a little green lattice-door in the +façade under the shaknisier, and entered. Here it was dark, and the +moment that she, too, was within, I slipped out quickly, slammed the door in +her face, and hooked it upon her by a little hook over the latch. +</p> + +<p> +I now walked some yards beyond the court, then stopped, listening for her +expected cry: but all was still: five minutes—ten—I waited: but no sound. I +then continued my morose and melancholy way, hollow with hunger, intending to +start that night for Imbros. +</p> + +<p> +But this time I had hardly advanced twenty steps, when I heard a frail and +strangled cry, apparently in mid-air behind me, and glancing, saw the creature +lying at the gateway, a white thing in black stubble-ashes. She had evidently +jumped, well outward, from a small casement of lattice on a level with the +little shaknisier grating, through which once peeped bright eyes, thirty feet +aloft. +</p> + +<p> +I hardly believe that she was conscious of any danger in jumping, for all the +laws of life are new to her, and, having sought and found the opening, she may +have merely come with blind instinctiveness after me, taking the first way open +to her. I walked back, pulled at her arm, and found that she could not stand. +Her face was screwed with silent pain—she did not moan. Her left foot, I could +see, was bleeding: and by the wounded ankle I took her, and dragged her so +through the ashes across the narrow court, and tossed her like a little dog +with all my force within the door, cursing her. +</p> + +<p> +Now I would not go back the long way to the ship, but struck a match, and went +lighting up girandoles, cressets, candelabra, into a confusion of lights among +great numbers of pale-tinted pillars, rose and azure, with verd-antique, olive, +and Portoro marble, and serpentine. The mansion was large, I having to traverse +quite a desert of embroidered brocade-hangings, slender columns, and Broussa +silks, till I saw a stair-case doorway behind a Smyrna <i>portière</i>, went +up, and wandered some time in a house of gilt-barred windows, with very little +furniture, but palatial spaces, solitary huge pieces of <i>faïence</i> of +inestimable age, and arms, my footfalls quite stifled in the Persian carpeting. +I passed through a covered-in hanging-gallery, with one window-grating +overlooking an inner court, and by this entered the harem, which declared +itself by a greater luxury, bric-à-bracerie, and profusion of manner. Here, +descending a short curved stair behind a <i>portière</i>, I came into a +marble-paved sort of larder, in which was an old negress in blue dress, her +hair still adhering, and an infinite supply of sweetmeats, French preserved +foods, sherbets, wines, and so on. I put a number of things into a pannier, +went up again, found some of those exquisite pale cigarettes which drunken in +the hollow of an emerald, also a jewelled two-yard-long chibouque, and tembaki: +and with all descended by another stair, and laid them on the steps of a little +raised kiosk of green marble in a corner of the court; went up again, and +brought down a still-snowy <i>yatag</i> to sleep on; and there, by the +kiosk-step, ate and passed the night, smoking for several hours in a state of +languor. In the centre of the court is a square marble well, looking white +through a rankness of wild vine, acacias in flower, weeds, jasmines, and roses, +which overgrew it, as well as the kiosk and the whole court, climbing even the +four-square arcade of Moorish arches round the open space, under one of which I +had deposited a long lantern of crimson silk: for here no breath of the fire +had come. About two in morning I fell to sleep, a deeper peace of shadow now +reigning where so long the melancholy silver of the moon had lingered. +</p> + +<hr /> + +<p> +About eight in the morning I rose and made my way to the front, intending that +that should be my last night in this ruined place: for all the night, sleeping +and waking, the thing which had happened filled my brain, growing from one +depth of incredibility to a deeper, so that at last I arrived at a sort of +certainty that it could be nothing but a drunken dream: but as I opened my eyes +afresh, the deep-cutting realisation of that impossibility smote like a pang of +lightning-stroke through my being: and I said: 'I will go again to the far +Orient, and forget': and I started out from the court, not knowing what had +become of her during the night, till, having reached the outer chamber, with a +wild start I saw her lying there at the door in the very spot where I had flung +her, asleep sideways, head on arm ... Softly, softly, I stept over her, got +out, and went running at a cautious clandestine trot. The morning was in high +<i>fête</i>, most fresh and pure, and to breathe was to be young, and to see +such a sunlight lighten even upon ruin so vast was to be blithe. After running +two hundred yards to one of the great broken bazaar-portals, I looked back to +see if I was followed: but all that space was desolately empty. I then walked +on past the arch, on which a green oblong, once inscribed, as usual, with some +text in gilt hieroglyphs, is still discernible; and, emerging, saw the great +panorama of destruction, a few vast standing walls, with hollow Oriental +windows framing deep sky beyond, and here and there a pillar, or half-minaret, +and down within the walls of the old Seraglio still some leafless, branchless +trunks, and in Eyoub and Phanar leafless forests, and on the northern horizon +Pera with the steep upper-half of the Iani-Chircha street still there, and on +the height the European houses, and all between blackness, stones, a rolling +landscape of ravine, like the hilly pack-ice of the North if its snow were ink, +and to the right Scutari, black, laid low, with its vast region of tombs, and +rare stumps of its forests, and the blithe blue sea, with the widening +semicircle of floating <i>débris</i>, looking like brown foul scum at some +points, congested before the bridgeless Golden Horn: for I stood pretty high in +the centre of Stamboul somewhere in the region of the Suleimanieh, or of +Sultan-Selim, as I judged, with immense purviews into abstract distances and +mirage. And to me it seemed too vast, too lonesome, and after advancing a few +hundred yards beyond the bazaar, I turned again. +</p> + +<hr /> + +<p> +I found the girl still asleep at the house-door, and stirring her with my foot, +woke her. She leapt up with a start of surprise, and a remarkable sinuous +agility, and gazed an astounded moment at me, till, separating reality from +dream and habit, she realised me: but immediately subsided to the floor again, +being in evident pain. I pulled her up, and made her limp after me through +several halls to the inner court, and the well, where I set her upon the weedy +margin, took her foot in my lap, examined it, drew water, washed it, and +bandaged it with a strip torn from my caftan-hem, now and again speaking +gruffly to her, so that she might no more follow me. +</p> + +<p> +After this, I had breakfast by the kiosk-steps, and when I was finished, put a +mass of truffled <i>foie gras</i> on a plate, brushed through the thicket to +the well, and gave it her. She took it, but looked foolish, not eating. I then, +with my forefinger, put a little into her mouth, whereupon she set hungrily to +eat it all. I also gave her some ginger-bread, a handful of bonbons, some +Krishnu wine, and some anisette. +</p> + +<p> +I then started out afresh, gruffly bidding her stay there, and left her sitting +on the well, her hair falling down the opening, she peering after me through +the bushes. But I had not half reached the ogival bazaar-portal, when looking +anxiously back, I saw that she was limping after me. So that this creature +tracks me in the manner of a nutshell following about in the wake of a ship. +</p> + +<p> +I turned back with her to the house, for it was necessary that I should plan +some further method of eluding her. That was five days ago, and here I have +stayed: for the house and court are sufficiently agreeable, and form a museum +of real <i>objets d'art</i>. It is settled, however, that to-morrow I return to +Imbros. +</p> + +<hr /> + +<p> +It seems certain that she never wore, saw, nor knew of, clothes. +</p> + +<p> +I have dressed her, first sousing her thoroughly with sponge and soap in +luke-warm rose-water in the silver cistern of the harem-bath, which is a +circular marbled apartment with a fountain and the complicated ceilings of +these houses, and frescoes, and gilt texts of the Koran on the walls, and pale +rose-silk hangings. On the divan I had heaped a number of selected garments, +and having shewed her how to towel herself, I made her step into a pair of the +trousers called <i>shintiyan</i> made of yellow-striped white-silk; this, by a +running string, I tied loosely round the upper part of her hips; then, drawing +up the bottoms to her knees, tied them there, so that their voluminous baggy +folds, overhanging still to the ankles, have rather the look of a skirt; over +this I put upon her a blue-striped chiffon chemise, or quamis, reaching a +little below the hips; I then put on a short jacket or vest of scarlet satin, +thickly embroidered in gold and precious stones, reaching somewhat below the +waist, and pretty tight-fitting; and, making her lie on the couch, I put upon +her little feet little yellow baboosh-slippers, then anklets, on her fingers +rings, round her neck a necklace of sequins, finally dyeing her nails, which I +cut, with henna. There remained her head, but with this I would have nothing to +do, only pointing to the tarboosh which I had brought, to a square kerchief, to +some corals, and to the fresco of a woman on the wall, which, if she chose, she +might copy. Lastly, I pierced her ears with the silver needles which they used +here: and after two hours of it left her. +</p> + +<p> +About an hour afterwards I saw her in the arcade round the court, and, to my +great surprise, she had a perfect plait down her back, and over her head and +brows a green-silk feredjeh, or hood, precisely as in the picture. +</p> + +<hr /> + +<p> +Here is a question, the answer to which would be interesting to me: Whether or +not for twenty years—or say rather twenty centuries, twenty eternal aeons—I +have been stark mad, a raving maniac; and whether or not I am now suddenly +sane, sitting here writing in my right mind, my whole mood and tone changed, or +rapidly changing? And whether such change can be due to the presence of only +one other being in the world with me? +</p> + +<hr /> + +<p> +This singular being! Where she has lived—and how—is a problem to which not the +faintest solution is conceivable. She had, I say, never seen clothes: for when +I began to dress her, her perplexity was unbounded; also, during her twenty +years, she has never seen almonds, figs, nuts, liqueurs, chocolate, conserves, +vegetables, sugar, oil, honey, sweetmeats, orange-sherbet, mastic, salt, raki, +tobacco, and many such things: for she showed perplexity at all these, +hesitation to eat them: but she has known and tasted <i>white wine</i>: I could +see that. Here, then, is a mystery. +</p> + +<hr /> + +<p> +I have not gone to Imbros, but remained here some days longer observing her. +</p> + +<p> +I have allowed her to sit in a corner at meal-time, not far from where I eat, +and I have given her food. +</p> + +<p> +She is wonderfully clever! I continually find that, after an incredibly short +time, she has most completely adapted herself to this or that. Already she +wears her outfit as coquettishly as though born to clothes. Without at all +seeming observant—for, on the contrary, she gives an impression of great +flightiness—she watches me, I am convinced, with pretty exact observation. She +knows precisely when I am speaking roughly, bidding her go, bidding her come, +tired of her, tolerant of her, scorning her, cursing her. If I wish her to the +devil, she quickly divines it by my face, and will disappear. Yesterday I +noticed something queer about her, and soon discovered that she had been +staining her lids with black kohol, like the <i>hanums</i>, so that, having +found a box, she must have guessed its use from the pictures. Wonderfully +clever!—imitative as a mirror. Two mornings ago I found an old mother-of-pearl +kittur, and sitting under the arcade, touched the strings, playing a simple +air; I could just see her behind one of the arch-pillars on the opposite side, +and she was listening with apparent eagerness, and, I fancied, panting. Well, +returning from a walk beyond the Phanar walls in the afternoon, I heard the +same air coming out from the house, for she was repeating it pretty faultlessly +by ear. +</p> + +<p> +Also, during the forenoon of the previous day, I came upon her—for footsteps +make no sound in this house—in the pacha's visitors'-hall: and what was she +doing?—copying the poses of three dancing-girls frescoed there! So that she +would seem to have a character as light as a butterfly's, and is afraid of +nothing. +</p> + +<hr /> + +<p> +Now I know. +</p> + +<p> +I had observed that at the beginning of every meal she seemed to have something +on her mind, going toward the door, hesitating as if to see whether I would +follow, and then returning. At length yesterday, after sitting to eat, she +jumped up, and to my infinite surprise, said her first word: said it with a +most quaint, experimental effort of the tongue, as a fledgling trying the air: +the word '<i>Come</i>.' +</p> + +<p> +That morning, meeting her in the court, I had told her to repeat some words +after me: but she had made no attempt, as if shy to break the long silence of +her life; and now I felt some sort of foolish pleasure in hearing her utter +that word, often no doubt heard from me: and after hurriedly eating, I went +with her, saying to myself: 'She must be about to shew me the food to which she +is accustomed: and perhaps that will solve her origin.' +</p> + +<p> +And so it has proved. I have now discovered that to the moment when she saw me, +she had tasted only her mother's milk, dates, and that white wine of Ismidt +which the Koran permits. +</p> + +<p> +As it was getting dark, I lit and took with me the big red-silk lantern, and we +set out, she leading, and walking confoundedly fast, slackening when I swore at +her, and getting fast again: and she walks with a certain levity, flightiness, +and liberated <i>furore</i>, very hard to describe, as though space were a +luxury to be revelled in. By what instinctive cleverness, or native vigour of +memory, she found her way I cannot tell, but she led me such a walk that night, +miles, miles, till I became furious, darkness having soon fallen with only a +faint moon obscured by cloud, and a drizzle which haunted the air, she without +light climbing and picking her thinly-slippered steps over mounds of +<i>débris</i> and loosely-strewn masonry with unfailing agility, I occasionally +splashing a foot with horror into one of those little ponds which always marked +the Stamboul streets. When I was nearer her, I would see her peer across and +upward toward Pera, as if that were a remembered land-mark, and would note the +perpetual aspen oscillations of the long coral drops in her ears, and the +nimble ply of her limbs, wondering with a groan if Pera was our goal. +</p> + +<p> +Our goal was even beyond Pera. When we came to the Golden Horn, she pointed to +my caique which lay at the Old Seraglio steps, and over the water we went, she +lying quite at ease now, with her face at the level of the water in the centre +of the crescent-shape, as familiarly as a <i>hanum</i> of old engaged in some +escapade through the crowded Babel of Galata and that north side of the Horn. +</p> + +<p> +Through Galata we passed, I already cursing the journey: and, following the +line of the coast and the great steep thoroughfare of Pera, we came at last, +almost in the country, to a great wall, and the entrance to an immense terraced +garden, whose limits were invisible, many of the trees and avenues being still +intact. +</p> + +<p> +I knew it at once: I had lain a special fuse-train in the great palace at the +top of the terraces: it was the royal palace, Yildiz. +</p> + +<p> +Up and up we went through the grounds, a few unburned old bodies in rags of +uniform still discernible here and there as the lantern swung past them, a +musician in sky-blue, a fantassin and officer-of-the-guard in scarlet, forming +a cross, with domestics of the palace in red-and-orange. +</p> + +<p> +The palace itself was quite in ruins, together with all its surrounding +barracks, mosque, and seraglio, and, as we reached the top of the grounds, +presented a picture very like those which I have seen of the ruins of +Persepolis, only that here the columns, both standing and fallen, were +innumerable, and all more or less blackened; and through doorless doors we +passed, down immensely-wide short flights of steps, and up them, and over +strewed courtyards, by tottering fragments of arcades, all roofless, and tracts +of charcoal between interrupted avenues of pillars, I following, expectant, and +she very eager now. Finally, down a flight of twelve or fourteen rather steep +and narrow steps, very dislocated, we went to a level which, I thought, must be +the floor of the palace vaults: for at the bottom of the steps we stood on a +large plain floor of plaster, which bore the marks of the flames; and over this +the girl ran a few steps, pointed with excited recognition to a hole in it, ran +further, and disappeared down the hole. +</p> + +<p> +When I followed, and lowered the lantern a little, I saw that the drop down was +about eight feet, made less than six feet by a heap of stone-rubbish below, the +falling of which had caused the hole: and it was by standing on this +rubbish-heap, I knew at once, that she must have been enabled to climb out into +the world. +</p> + +<p> +I dropped down, and found myself in a low flat-roofed cellar, with a floor of +black earth, very fusty and damp, but so very vast in extent that even in the +day-time, I suppose, I could not have discerned its boundaries; I fancy, +indeed, that it extends beneath the whole palace and its environs—an enormous +stretch of space: with the lantern I could only see a very limited portion of +its area. She still led me eagerly on, and I presently came upon a whole region +of flat boxes, each about two feet square, and nine inches high, made of very +thin laths, packed to the roof; and about a-hundred-and-fifty feet from these I +saw, where she pointed, another region of bottles, fat-bellied bottles in +chemises of wicker-work, stretching away into gloom and total darkness. The +boxes, of which a great number lay broken open, as they can be by merely +pulling with the fingers at a pliant crack, contain dates; and the bottles, of +which many thousands lay empty, contain, I saw, old Ismidt wine. Some fifty or +sixty casks, covered with mildew, some old pieces of furniture, and a great +cube of rotting, curling parchments, showed that this cellar had been more or +less loosely used for the occasional storage of superfluous stores and +knick-knacks. +</p> + +<p> +It was also more or less loosely used as a domestic prison. For in the lane +between the region of boxes and the region of bottles, near the former, there +lay on the ground the skeleton of a woman, the details of whose costume were +still appreciable, with thin brass gyves on her wrists: and when I had examined +her well, I knew the whole history of the creature standing silent by my side. +</p> + +<p> +She is the daughter of the Sultan, as I assumed when I had once determined that +the skeleton is both the skeleton of her mother, and the skeleton of the +Sultana. +</p> + +<p> +That the skeleton was her mother is clear: for the cloud occurred just +twenty-one years since, and the dead woman was, of course, at that moment in +the prison, which must have been air-tight, and with her the girl: but since +the girl is quite certainly not much more than twenty—she looks younger—she +must at that time have been either unborn or a young babe: but a babe would +hardly be imprisoned with another than its own mother. I am rather inclined to +think that the girl was unborn at the moment of the cloud, and was born in the +cellar. +</p> + +<p> +That the mother was the Sultana is clear from her fragments of dress, and the +symbolic character of her every ornament, crescent earrings, heron-feather, and +the blue campaca enamelled in a bracelet. This poor woman, I have thought, may +have been the victim of some unbounded fit of imperial passion, incurred by +some domestic crime, real or imagined, which may have been pardoned in a day +had not death overtaken her master and the world. +</p> + +<p> +There are four steep stone steps at about the centre of the cellar, leading up +to a locked iron trap-door, apparently the only opening into this great hole: +and this trap-door must have been so nearly air-tight as to bar the intrusion +of the poison in anything like deadly quantity. +</p> + +<p> +But how rare—how strange—the coincidence of chances here. For, if the trap-door +was absolutely air-tight, I cannot think that the supply of oxygen in the +cellar, large as it was, would have been sufficient to last the girl twenty +years, to say nothing of what her mother used up before death: for I imagine +that the woman must have continued to live some time in her dungeon, +sufficiently long, at least, to teach her child to procure its food of dates +and wine; so that the door must have been only just sufficiently hermetic to +bar the poison, yet admit some oxygen; or else, the place may have been +absolutely air-tight at the time of the cloud, and some crack, which I have not +seen, opened to admit oxygen after the poison was dispersed: in any case—the +all-but-infinite rarity of the chance! +</p> + +<p> +Thinking these things I climbed out, and we walked to Pera, where I slept in a +great white-stone house in five or six acres of garden overlooking the cemetery +of Kassim, having pointed out to the girl another house in which to sleep. +</p> + +<p> +This girl! what a history! After existing twenty years in a sunless world +hardly three acres wide, she one day suddenly saw the only sky which she knew +collapse at one point! a hole appeared into yet a world beyond! It was I who +had come, and kindled Constantinople, and set her free. +</p> + +<hr /> + +<p> +Ah, I see something now! I see! it was for this that I was preserved: I to be a +sort of new-fangled Adam—and this little creature to be my Eve! That is it! +<i>The White</i> does not admit defeat: he would recommence the Race again! At +the last, the eleventh hour—in spite of all—he would turn defeat into victory, +and outwit that Other. +</p> + +<p> +However, if this be so—and I seem to see it quite clearly—then in that White +scheme is a singular flaw: at <i>one point</i>, it is obvious, that elaborate +Forethought fails: for I have a free will—and I refuse, I refuse. +</p> + +<p> +Certainly, in this matter I am on the side of the Black: and since it depends +absolutely upon me, this time Black wins. +</p> + +<p> +No more men on the earth after me, ye Powers! To <i>you</i> the question may be +nothing more than a gambling excitement as to the final outcome of your aërial +squabble: but to the poor men who had to bear the wrongs, Inquisitions, +rack-rents, Waterloos, unspeakable horrors, it was hard earnest, you know! Oh +the wretchedness—the deep, deep pain—of that bungling ant-hill, happily wiped +out, my God! My sweetheart Clodagh ... she was not an ideal being! There was a +man called Judas who betrayed the gentle Founder of the Christian Faith, and +there was some Roman king named Galba, a horrid dog, and there was a French +devil, Gilles de Raiz: and the rest were all much the same, much the same. Oh +no, it was not a good race, that small infantry which called itself Man: and +here, falling on my knees before God and Satan as I write, I swear, I swear: +Never through me shall it spring and fester again. +</p> + +<hr /> + +<p> +I cannot realise her! Not at all, at all, at all! If she is out of my sight and +hearing ten minutes, I fall to doubting her reality. If I lose her for half a +day, all the old feelings, resembling certainties, come back, that I have only +been dreaming—that this appearance cannot be an actual objective fact of life, +since the impossible is impossible. +</p> + +<p> +Seventeen long years, seventeen long years, of madness.... +</p> + +<hr /> + +<p> +To-morrow I start for Imbros: and whether this girl chooses to follow me, or +whether she stays behind, I will see her from the moment I land no more. +</p> + +<hr /> + +<p> +She must rise very early. I who am now regularly on the palace-roof at dawn, +sometimes from between the pavilion-curtains of the galleries, or from the +steps of the telescope-kiosk, may spy her far down below, a dainty microscopic +figure, generally running about the sward, or gazing up in wonder at the palace +from the lake-edge. +</p> + +<p> +It is now three months since she came with me to Imbros. +</p> + +<p> +I left her the first night in that pale-yellow house with the two green +jalousies facing the beach, where there was everything that she would need; but +I knew that, like all the houses there now, it leaked profusely, and the next +day I went down to the curving stair, cut through the rock at the back and +south of the village, climbed, and half a mile beyond found that park and villa +with gables, which I had noted from the sea. The villa is almost intact, very +strongly built of purplish marble, though small, and very like a Western house, +with shingles, and three gables, so that I think it must have been the yali of +some Englishman, for it contains a number of English books, though the only +body I saw there was what looked like an Aararat Kurd, with spiral string wound +down his turban, yellow ankle-pantaloons, and flung red shoulder-cloak; and all +in the heavily-wooded park, and all about the low rock-steps up the hill, +profusions of man-dragora; and from the rock-steps to the house a narrow long +avenue of acacias, mossy underfoot, that mingle overhead, the house standing +about four yards from the edge of the perpendicular sea-cliff, whence one can +see the <i>Speranzas</i> main top-mast, and broken mizzen-mast-head, in her +quiet haven. After examining the place I went down again to the village, and +her house: but she was not there: and two hours long I paced about among the +weeds of these amateur little alleys and flat-roofed windowless houses (though +some have terrace-roofs, and a rare aperture), whose once-raw yellows, greens, +and blues look now like sunset tints when the last flush is gone, and they fade +dun. When at last she came running with open mouth, I took her up the +rock-steps, and into the house, and there she has lived, one of the gable-tips, +I now find (that overlooking the sea), being just visible from the north-east +corner of the palace-roof, two miles from it. +</p> + +<p> +That night again, when I was leaving her, she made an attempt to follow me. But +I was resolved to end it, then: and cutting a sassafras-whip I cut her deep, +three times, till she ran, crying. +</p> + +<hr /> + +<p> +So, then, what is my fate henceforth?—to think always, from sun to moon, and +from moon to sun, of one only thing—and that thing an object for the +microscope?—to become a sneaking Paul Pry to spy upon the silly movements of +one little sparrow, like some fatuous motiveless gossip of old, his occupation +to peep, his one faculty to scent, his honey and his achievement to unearth the +infinitely unimportant? I would kill her first! +</p> + +<hr /> + +<p> +I am convinced that she is no stay-at-home, but roams continually over the +island: for thrice, wandering myself, I have come upon her. +</p> + +<p> +The first time she was running with flushed face, intent upon striking down a +butterfly with a twig held in the left hand (for both hands she uses with +dexterity). It was at about nine in the morning, in her park, near the bottom +where there are high grass-growths and ferny luxuriance between the close +tree-trunks, and shadow, and the broken wall of an old funeral-kiosk sunk +aslant under moss, creepers, and wild flowers, behind which I peeped hidden and +wet with dew. She has had the assurance to modify the dress I put upon her, and +was herself a butterfly, for instead of the shintiyan, she had on a zouave, +hardly reaching to the waist, of saffron satin, no feredjé, but a scarlet fez +with violet tassel, and baggy pantaloons of azure silk; down her back the long +auburn plait, quite neat, but all her front hair loose and wanton, the fez +cocked backward, while I caught glimpses of her fugitive heels lifting out of +the dropping slipper-sole. She is pretty clever, but not clever enough, for +that butterfly escaped, and in one instant I saw her change into weary and sad, +for on this earth is nothing more fickle than that Proteus face, which +resembles a landscape swept with cloud-shadows on a bright day. Fast beat my +heart that morning, owing to the consciousness that, while I saw, I was unseen, +yet might be seen. +</p> + +<p> +Another noontide, three weeks afterwards, I came upon her a good way up yonder +to the west of the palace, sleeping on her arm in an alley between overgrown +old trellises, where rioting wild vine buried her in gloom: but I had not been +peeping through the bushes a minute, when she started up and looked wildly +about, her quick consciousness, I imagine, detecting a presence: though I think +that I managed to get away unseen. She keeps her face very dirty: all about her +mouth was dry-stained with a polychrome of grape, <i>mûrs</i>, and other +coloured juices, like slobbering <i>gamins</i> of old. I could also see that +her nose and cheeks are now sprinkled with little freckles. +</p> + +<p> +Four days since I saw her a third time, and then found that the primitive +instinct to represent the world in pictures has been working in her: for she +was drawing. It was down in the middle one of the three east-and-west village +streets, for thither I had strolled toward evening, and coming out upon the +street from between an old wall and a house, saw her quite near. I pulled up +short—and peered. She was lying on her face all among grasses, a piece of +yellow board before her, and in her fingers a chalk-splinter: and very intently +she drew, her tongue-tip travelling along her short upper-lip from side to +side, regularly as a pendulum, her fez tipped far back, and the left foot +swinging upward from the knee. She had drawn her yali at the top, and now, as I +could see by peering well forward, was drawing underneath the palace—from +memory, for where she lay it is all hidden: yet the palace it was, for there +were the waving lines meant for the steps, the two slanting pillars, the +slanting battlements of the outer court, and before the portal, with turban +reaching above the roof, and my two whisks of beard sweeping below the +knees—myself. +</p> + +<p> +Something spurred me, and I could not resist shouting a sudden "Hi!" whereupon +she scrambled like a spring-bok to her feet, I pointing to the drawing, +smiling. +</p> + +<p> +This creature has a way of mincing her pressed lips, while she shakes the head, +intensely cooing a fond laugh: and so she did then. +</p> + +<p> +"You are a clever little wretch, you know," said I, she cocking her eye, trying +to divine my meaning with vague smile. +</p> + +<p> +'Oh, yes, a clever little wretch,' I went on in a gruff voice, 'clever as a +serpent, no doubt: for in the first case it was the Black who used the serpent, +but now it is the White. But it will not do, you know. Do you know what you are +to me, you? You are my Eve!—a little fool, a little piebald frog like you. But +it will not do at all, at all! A nice race it would be with you for mother, and +me for father, wouldn't it?—half-criminal like the father, half-idiot like the +mother: just like the last, in short. They used to say, in fact, that the +offspring of a brother and sister was always weak-headed: and from such a +wedlock certainly came the human race, so no wonder it was what it was: and so +it would have to be again now. Well no—unless we have the children, and cut +their throats at birth: and <i>you</i> would not like that at all, I know, and, +on the whole, it would not work, for the White would be striking a poor man +dead with His lightning, if I attempted that. No, then: the modern Adam is some +eight to twenty thousand years wiser than the first—you see? less instinctive, +more rational. The first disobeyed by commission: I shall disobey by omission: +only his disobedience was a sin, mine is a heroism. I have not been a +particularly ideal sort of beast so far, you know: but in me, Adam Jeffson—I +swear it—the human race shall at last attain a true nobility, the nobility of +self-extinction. I shall turn out trumps: I shall prove myself stronger than +Tendency, World-Genius, Providence, Currents of Fate, White Power, Black Power, +or whatever is the name for it. No more Clodaghs, Lucrezia Borgias, +Semiramises, Pompadours, Irish Landlords, Hundred-Years' Wars—you see?' +</p> + +<p> +She kept her left eye obliquely cocked like a little fool, wondering, no doubt, +what I was saying. +</p> + +<p> +'And talking of Clodagh,' I went on, 'I shall call you that henceforth, to keep +me reminded. So that is your name—not Eve—but Clodagh, who was a Poisoner, you +see? She poisoned a poor man who trusted her: and that is your name now—not +Eve, but Clodagh—to remind me, you most dangerous little speckled viper! And in +order that I may no more see your foolish little pretty face, I decree that, +for the future, you wear a <i>yashmak</i> to cover up your lips, which, I can +see, were meant to be seductive, though dirty; and you can leave the blue eyes, +and the little white-skinned freckled nose uncovered, if you like, they being +commonplace enough. Meantime, if you care to see how to draw a palace—I will +show you.' +</p> + +<p> +Before I stretched my hand, she was presenting the board—so that she had +guessed something of my meaning! But some hard tone in my talk had wounded her, +for she presented it looking very glum, her under-lip pushing a little +obliquely out, very pathetically, I must say, as always when she is just ready +to cry. +</p> + +<p> +In a few strokes I drew the palace, and herself standing at the portal between +the pillars: and now great was her satisfaction, for she pointed to the +sketched figure, and to herself, interrogatively: and when I nodded 'yes,' she +went cooing her fond murmurous laugh, with pressed and mincing lips: and it is +clear that, in spite of my beatings, she is in no way afraid of me. +</p> + +<p> +Before I could move away, I felt some rain-drops, and down in some seconds +rushed a shower. I looked, saw that the sky was rapidly darkening, and ran into +the nearest of the little cubical houses, leaving her glancing sideways upward, +with the quaintest artlessness of interest in the downpour: for she is not yet +quite familiarised with the operations of nature, and seems to regard them with +a certain amiable inquisitive seriousness, as though they were living beings, +comrades as good as herself. She presently joined me, but even then stretched +her hand out to feel the drops. +</p> + +<p> +Now there came a thunder-clap, the wind was rising, and rain spattering about +me: for the panes of these houses, made, I believe, of paper saturated in +almond-oil, have long disappeared, and rains, penetrating by roof and rare +window, splash the bones of men. I gathered up my skirts to run toward other +shelter, but she was before me, saying in her strange experimental voice that +word of hers: "<i>Come</i>." +</p> + +<p> +She ran in advance, and I, with the outer robe over my head, followed, urging +flinching way against the whipped rain-wash. She took the way by the stone +horse-pond, through an alley to the left between two blind walls, then down a +steep path through wood to the rock-steps, and up we ran, and along the hill, +to her yali, which is a mile nearer the village than the palace, though by the +time we pelted into its dry shelter we were wet to the skin. +</p> + +<p> +Sudden darkness had come, but she quickly found some matches, lit one, looking +at it with a certain meditative air, and applied it to a candle and to a bronze +Western lamp on the table, which I had taught her to oil and light. Near a +Western fire-place was a Turkish mangal, like one which she had seen me light +to warm bath-waters in Constantinople, and when I pointed to it, she ran to the +kitchen, returned with some chopped wood, and very cleverly lit it. And there +for several hours I sat that night, reading (the first time for many years): it +was a book by the poet Milton, found in a glazed book-case on the other side of +the fire-place: and most strange, most novel, I found those august words about +warring angels that night, while the storm raved: for this man had evidently +taken no end of pains with his book, and done it gallantly well, too, making +the thing hum: and I could not conceive why he should have been at that +trouble—unless it were for the same reason that I built the palace, because +some spark bites a man, and he would be like—but that is all vanity, and +delusion. +</p> + +<p> +Well, there is a rage in the storms of late years which really transcends +bounds; I do not remember if I have noted it in these sheets before: but I +never could have conceived a turbulence so huge. Hour after hour I sat there +that night, smoking a chibouque, reading, and listening to the batteries and +lamentations of that haunted air, shrinking from it, fearing even for the +<i>Speranza</i> by her quay in the sequestered harbour, and for the +palace-pillars. But what astonished me was that girl: for, after sitting on the +ottoman to my left some time, she fell sideways asleep, not the least fear +about her, though I should have thought that nervousness at such a turmoil +would be so natural to her: and whence she has this light confidence in the +world into which she has so abruptly come I do not know, for it is as though +someone inspired her with the mood of nonchalance, saying: 'Be of good cheer, +and care not a pin about anything: for God is God.' +</p> + +<p> +I heard the ocean swing hoarse like heavy ordnance against the cliffs below, +where they meet the outer surface of the southern of the two claws of land that +form the harbour: and the thought came into my mind: 'If now I taught her to +speak, to read, I could sometimes make her read a book to me.' +</p> + +<p> +The winds seemed wilfully struggling for the house to snatch and wing it away +into the drear Eternities of the night: and I could not but heave the sigh: +'Alas for us two poor waifs and castaways of our race, little bits of flotsam +and seaweed-hair cast up here a moment, ah me, on this shore of the Ages, soon +to be dragged back, O turgid Eternity, into thy abysmal gorge; and upon what +strand—who shall say?—shall she next be flung, and I, divided then perhaps by +all the stretch of the trillion-distanced astral gulf?' And such a pity, and a +wringing of the heart, seemed in things, that a tear fell from my eyes that +ominous midnight. +</p> + +<p> +She started up at a gust of more appalling volume, rubbing her eyes, with +dishevelled hair (it must have been about midnight), listening a minute, with +that demure, droll interest of hers, to the noise of the elements, and then +smiled to me; rose then, left the room, and presently returned with a +pomegranate and some almonds on a plate, also some delicious old sweet wine in +a Samian cruche, and an old silver cup, gilt inside, standing in a zarf. These +she placed on the table near me, I murmuring: 'Hospitality.' +</p> + +<p> +She looked at the book, which I read as I ate, with lowered left eye-lid, +seeking to guess its use, I suppose. Most things she understands at once, but +this must have baffled her: for to see one looking fixedly at a thing, and not +know what one is looking at it for, must be very disconcerting. +</p> + +<p> +I held it up before her, saying: +</p> + +<p> +"Shall I teach you to read it? If I did, how would you repay me, you Clodagh?" +</p> + +<p> +She cocked her eyes, seeking to comprehend. God knows, at that moment I pitied +the poor dumb waif, alone in all the whole round earth with me. The +candle-flame, moved by the wind like a slow-painting brush, flickered upon her +face, though every cranny was closed. +</p> + +<p> +"Perhaps, then," I said, "I will teach you. You are a pitiable little derelict +of your race, you know: and two hours every day I will let you come to the +palace, and I will teach you. But be sure, be careful. If there be danger, I +will kill you: assuredly—without fail. And let me begin with a lesson now: say +after me: 'White.'" +</p> + +<p> +I took her hand, and got her to understand that I wanted her to repeat after +me. +</p> + +<p> +"White," said I. +</p> + +<p> +"Hwhite," said she. +</p> + +<p> +'Power,' said I. +</p> + +<p> +'Pow-wer,' said she. +</p> + +<p> +'White Power,' said I. +</p> + +<p> +'Hwhite Pow-wer,' said she. +</p> + +<p> +'Shall not,' said I. +</p> + +<p> +'Sall not,' said she. +</p> + +<p> +'White Power shall not,' said I. +</p> + +<p> +'Hwhite Pow-wer sall not,' said she. +</p> + +<p> +'Prevail,' said I. +</p> + +<p> +'Fffail,' said she, pronouncing the 'v' with a long fluttering 'f'-sound. +</p> + +<p> +'Pre-vail,' said I. +</p> + +<p> +'Pe-vvvail,' said she. +</p> + +<p> +'White Power shall not prevail,' said I. +</p> + +<p> +'Hwhite Pow-wer sall not—fffail,' said she. +</p> + +<p> +A thunder which roared as she said it seemed to me to go laughing through the +universe, and a minute I looked upon her face with positive shrinking fear; +till, starting up, I thrust her with violence from my path, and dashed forth to +re-seek the palace and my bed. +</p> + +<p> +Such was the ingratitude and fatality which my first attempt, four nights +since, to teach her met with. It remains to be seen whether my pity for her +dumbness, or some servile tendency toward fellowship in myself, will result in +any further lesson. Certainly, I think not: for though I have given my word, +the most solemnly-pledged word may be broken. +</p> + +<p> +Surely, surely, her presence in the world with me—for I suppose it is that—has +wrought some profound changes in my mood: for gone now apparently are those +turbulent hours when, stalking like a peacock, I flaunted my monarchy in the +face of the Eternal Powers, with hissed blasphemies; or else dribbled, shaking +my body in a lewd dance; or was off to fire some vast city and revel in redness +and the chucklings of Hell; or rolled in the drunkenness of drugs. It was mere +frenzy!—I see it now—it was 'not good,' 'not good.' And it rather looks as if +it were past—or almost. I have clipped my beard and hair, removed the earrings, +and thought of modifying my attire. I will just watch to see whether she comes +loitering down there about the gate of the lake. +</p> + +<hr /> + +<p> +Her progress is like.... +</p> + +<hr /> + +<p> +It is nine months since I have written, on these sheets, those words, 'Her +progress is like....' being the beginning of some narrative in which something +interrupted me: and since then I have had no impulse to write. +</p> + +<p> +But I was thinking just now of the curious tricks and uncertainties of my +memory, and seeing the sheets, will record it here. I have lately been trying +to recall the name of a sister of mine—some perfectly simple name, I know—and +the name of my old home in England: and they have completely passed out of my +cognizance, though she was my only sister, and we grew up closely together: +some quite simple name, I forget it now. Yet I can't say that my memory is bad: +there are things—quite unexpected, unimportant things—which come up in my mind +with considerable clearness. For instance, I remember to have met in Paris (I +think), long before the poison-cloud, a little Brazilian boy of the colour of +weak coffee-and-milk, of whom she now constantly reminds me. He wore his hair +short like a convict's, so that one could spy the fish-white flesh beneath, and +delighted to play solitary about the stairs of the hotel, dressed up in the +white balloon-dress of a Pierrot. I have the impression now that he must have +had very large ears. Clever as a flea he was, knowing five or six languages, as +it were by nature, without having any suspicion that that was at all +extraordinary. She has that same light, unconscious, and nonchalant cleverness, +and easy way of life. It is little more than a year since I began to teach her, +and already she can speak English with a quite considerable vocabulary, and +perfect correctness (except that she does not pronounce the letter 'r'); she +has also read, or rather devoured, a good many books; and can write, draw, and +play the harp. And all she does without effort: rather with the flighty +naturalness with which a bird takes to the wing. +</p> + +<p> +What made me teach her to read was this: One afternoon, fourteen months or so +ago, I from the roof-kiosk saw her down at the lake-rim, a book in hand; and as +she had seen me looking steadily at books, so she was looking steadily at it, +with pathetic sideward head: so that I burst into laughter, for I saw her +clearly through the glass, and whether she is the simplest little fool, or the +craftiest serpent that ever breathed, I am not yet sure. If I thought that she +has the least design upon my honour, it would be ill for her. +</p> + +<p> +I went to Gallipoli for two days in the month of May, and brought back a very +pretty little caique, a perfect slender crescent of the colour of the moon, +though I had two days' labour in cutting through bush-thicket for the passage +of the motor in bringing it up to the lake. It has pleased me to see her lie +among the silk cushions of the middle, while I, paddling, taught her her first +words and sentences between the hours of eight and ten in the evening, though +later they became 10 A.M. to noon, when the reading began, we sitting on the +palace-steps before the portal, her mouth invariably well covered with the +yashmak, the lesson-book being a large-lettered old Bible found at her yali. +<i>Why</i> she must needs wear the yashmak she has never once asked; and how +much she divines, knows, or intends, I have no idea, continually questioning +myself as to whether she is all simplicity, or all cunning. +</p> + +<p> +That she is conscious of some profound difference in our organisation I cannot +doubt: for that I have a long beard, and she none at all, is among the most +patent of facts. +</p> + +<hr /> + +<p> +I have thought that a certain <i>Western-ness</i>—a growing modernity of +tone—may be the result, as far as I am concerned, of her presence with me? I do +not know.... +</p> + +<hr /> + +<p> +There is the gleam of a lake-end just visible in the north forest from the +palace-top, and in it a good number of fish like carp, tench, roach, etc., so +in May I searched for a tackle-shop in the Gallipoli Fatmeh-bazaar, and got +four 12-foot rods, with reels, silk-line, quill-floats, a few yards of +silk-worm gut, with a packet of No. 7 and 8 hooks, and split-shot for sinkers; +and since red-worms, maggots and gentles are common on the island, I felt sure +of a great many more fish than the number I wanted, which was none at all. +However, for the mere amusement, I fished several times, lying at my length in +a patch of long-grass over-waved by an enormous cedar, where the bank is steep, +and the water deep. And one mid-afternoon she was suddenly there with me, +questioned me with her eyes, and when I consented, stayed: and presently I said +I would teach her bottom-angling, and sent her flying up to the palace for +another rod and tackle. +</p> + +<p> +That day she did nothing, for after teaching her to thread the worm, and put +the gentles on the smaller hooks, I sent her to hunt for worms to chop up for +ground-baiting the pitch for the next afternoon; and when this was done it was +dinner-time, and I sent her home, for by then I was giving the reading-lessons +in the morning. +</p> + +<p> +The next day I found her at the bank, taught her to take the sounding for +adjusting the float, and she lay down not far from me, holding the rod. So I +said to her: +</p> + +<p> +'Well, this is better than living in a dark cellar twenty years, with nothing +to do but walk up and down, sleep, and consume dates and Ismidt wine.' +</p> + +<p> +'Yes!' says she. +</p> + +<p> +'Twenty years!' said I: 'How did you bear it?' +</p> + +<p> +'I was not closs,' says she. +</p> + +<p> +'Did you never suspect that there was a world outside that cellar?' said +</p> + +<p class="center"> +I. +</p> + +<p> +'Never,' says she, 'or lather, yes: but I did not suppose that it was +<i>this</i> world, but another where he lived.' +</p> + +<p> +'He who?' +</p> + +<p> +'He who spoke with me.' +</p> + +<p> +'Who was that?' +</p> + +<p> +'Oh! a bite!' she screamed gladly. +</p> + +<p> +I saw her float bob under, and started up, rushed to her, and taught her how to +strike and play it, though it turned out when landed to be nothing but a tiny +barbel: but she was in ecstasies, holding it on her palm, murmuring her fond +coo. +</p> + +<p> +She re-baited, and we lay again. I said: +</p> + +<p> +'But what a life: no exit, no light, no prospect, no hope—' +</p> + +<p> +'Plenty of <i>hope</i>!' says she. +</p> + +<p> +'Good Heavens! hope of what?' +</p> + +<p> +'I knew vely well that something was lipening over the cellar, or under, or +alound it, and would come to pass at a certain fixed hour, and that I should +see it, and feel it, and it would be vely nice.' +</p> + +<p> +'Ah, well, you had to wait for it, at any rate. Didn't those twenty years seem +<i>long</i>?' +</p> + +<p> +'No—at least sometimes—not often. I was always so occupied.' +</p> + +<p> +'Occupied in doing what?' +</p> + +<p> +'In eating, or dlinking, or lunning, or talking.' +</p> + +<p> +'Talking to your<i>self</i>?' +</p> + +<p> +'Not myself.' +</p> + +<p> +'To whom, then?' +</p> + +<p> +'To the one who told me when I was hungly, and put the dates to satisfy my +hunger.' +</p> + +<p> +'I see. Don't wriggle about in that way, or you will never catch any fish. The +maxim of angling is: "Study to be quiet"—' +</p> + +<p> +'O! another bite!' she called, and this time, all alone, very agilely landed a +good-sized bream. +</p> + +<p> +'But do you mean that you were never sad?' said I when she was re-settled. +</p> + +<p> +'Sometimes I would sit and cly,' says she—'I did not know why. But if that was +"sadness," I was never miserlable, never, never. And if I clied, it did not +last long, and I would soon fall to sleep, for he would lock me in his lap, and +kiss me, and wipe all my tears away.' +</p> + +<p> +'He who?' +</p> + +<p> +'Why, what a question! he who told me when I was hungly, and of the thing that +was lipening outside the cellar, which would be so nice.' +</p> + +<p> +'I see, I see. But in all that dingy place, and thick gloom, were you never at +all afraid?' +</p> + +<p> +'Aflaid! <i>I</i>! of what?' +</p> + +<p> +'Of the unknown.' +</p> + +<p> +'I do not understand you. How could I be <i>aflaid</i>? The known was the very +opposite of tellible: it was merely hunger and dates, thirst and wine, the +desire to lun and space to lun in, the desire to sleep and sleep: there was +nothing tellible in that: and the unknown was even less tellible than the +known: for it was the nice thing that was lipening outside the cellar. I do not +understand—' +</p> + +<p> +'Ah, yes,' said I, 'you are a clever little being: but your continual +fluttering about is fatal to all angling. Isn't it in your nature to keep still +a minute? And with regard now to your habits in the cellar—?' +</p> + +<p> +'<i>Another!</i>' she cried with happy laugh, and landed a young chub. And that +afternoon she caught seven, and I none. +</p> + +<hr /> + +<p> +Another day I took her from the pitch to one of the kitchens in the village +with some of the fish, till then always thrown away, and taught her cooking: +for the only cooking-implement in the palace is the silver alcohol-lamp for +coffee and chocolate. We both scrubbed the utensils, and boil and fry I taught +her, and the making of a sauce from vinegar, bottled olives, and the tinned +American butter from the <i>Speranza</i>, and the boiling of rice mixed with +flour for ground-baiting our pitch. And she, at first astonished, was soon all +deft housewifeliness, breathless officiousness, and behind my back, of her own +intuitiveness, grated some dry almonds found there, and with them sprinkled the +fried tench. And we ate them, sitting on the floor together: the first new +food, I suppose, tasted by me for twenty-one years: nor did I find it +disagreeable. +</p> + +<p> +The next day she came up to the palace reading a book, which turned out to be a +cookery-book in English, found at her yali; and a week later, she appeared, out +of hours, presenting me a yellow-earthenware dish containing a mess of gorgeous +colours—a boiled fish under red peppers, bits of saffron, a greenish sauce, and +almonds: but I turned her away, and would have none of her, or her dish. +</p> + +<hr /> + +<p> +About a mile up to the west of the palace is a very old ruin in the deepest +forest, I think of a mosque, though only three truncated internal pillars under +ivy, and the weedy floor, with the courtyard and portal-steps remain, before it +being a long avenue of cedars, gently descending from the steps, the path +between the trees choked with long-grass and wild rye reaching to my middle. +Here I saw one day a large disc of old brass, bossed in the middle, which may +have been either a shield or part of an ancient cymbal, with concentric rings +graven round it, from centre to circumference. The next day I brought some +nails, a hammer, a saw, and a box of paints from the <i>Speranza</i>; and I +painted the rings in different colours, cut down a slim lime-trunk, nailed the +thin disc along its top, and planted it well, before the steps: for I said I +would make a bull's-eye, and do rifle and revolver practice before it, from the +avenue. And this the next evening I was doing at four hundred feet, startling +the island, it seemed, with that unusual noise, when up she came peering with +enquiring face: at which I was very angry, because my arm, long unused, was +firing wide: but I was too proud to say anything, and let her look, and soon +she understood, laughing every time I made a considerable miss, till at last I +turned upon her saying: 'If you think it so easy, you may try.' +</p> + +<p> +She had been wanting to try, for she came eagerly to the offer, and after I had +opened and showed her the mechanism, the cartridges, and how to shoot, I put +into her hands one of the <i>Speranza</i> Colt's. She took her bottom-lip +between her teeth, shut her left eye, vaulted out the revolver like an old shot +to the level of her intense right eye, and sent a ball through the geometrical +centre of the boss. +</p> + +<p> +However, it was a fluke-shot, for I had the satisfaction of seeing her miss +every one of the other five, except the last, which hit the black. That, +however, was three weeks since, and now my hitting record is forty per cent., +and hers ninety-six—most extraordinary: so that it is clear that this creature +is the <i>protégée</i> of someone, and favouritism is in the world. +</p> + +<hr /> + +<p> +Her book of books is the Old Testament. Sometimes, at noon or afternoon, I may +look abroad from the roof or galleries, and see a remote figure sitting on the +sward under the shade of plane or black cypress: and I always know that the +book she cons there is the Bible—like an old Rabbi. She has a passion for +stories: and there finds a store. +</p> + +<p> +Three nights since when it was pretty late, and the moon very splendid, I saw +her passing homewards close to the lake, and shouted down to her, meaning to +say 'Good-night'; but she thought that I had called her, and came: and sitting +out on the top step we talked for hours, she without the yashmak. +</p> + +<p> +We fell to talking about the Bible. And says she: 'What did Cain to Abel?' +</p> + +<p> +'He knocked him over,' I replied, liking sometimes to use such idioms, with the +double object of teaching and perplexing her. +</p> + +<p> +'Over what?' says she. +</p> + +<p> +'Over his heels,' said I. +</p> + +<p> +'I do not complehend!' +</p> + +<p> +'He killed him, then.' +</p> + +<p> +'That I know. But how did Abel feel when he was killed? What is it to be +<i>killed</i>?' +</p> + +<p> +'Well,' said I, 'you have seen bones all around you, and the bones of your +mother, and you can feel the bones in your fingers. Your fingers will become +mere bone after you are dead, as die you must. Those bones which you see around +you, are, of course, the bones of the men of whom we often speak: and the same +thing happened to them which happens to a fish or a butterfly when you catch +them, and they lie all still.' +</p> + +<p> +'And the men and the butterfly feel the same after they are dead?' +</p> + +<p> +'Precisely the same. They lie in a deep drowse, and dream a nonsense-dream.' +</p> + +<p> +'That is not dleadful. I thought that it was much more dleadful. I should not +mind dying.' +</p> + +<p> +'Ah!... so much the better: for it is possible that you may have to die a great +deal sooner than you think.' +</p> + +<p> +'I should not mind. Why were men so vely aflaid to die?' +</p> + +<p> +'Because they were all such shocking cowards.' +</p> + +<p> +'Oh, not all! not all!' +</p> + +<p> +(This girl, I know not with what motive, has now definitely set herself up +against me as the defender of the dead race. With every chance she is at it.) +</p> + +<p> +'Nearly all,' said I: 'tell me one who was not afraid—' +</p> + +<p> +'There was Isaac,' says she: 'when Ablaham laid him on the wood to kill him, he +did not jump up and lun to hide.' +</p> + +<p> +'Isaac was a great exception,' said I: 'in the Bible and such books, you +understand, you read of only the best sorts of people; but there were millions +and millions of others—especially about the time of the poison-cloud—on a very +much lower level—putrid wretches—covetous, false, murderous, mean, selfish, +debased, hideous, diseased, making the earth a very charnel of festering vices +and crimes.' +</p> + +<p> +This, for several minutes, she did not answer, sitting with her back half +toward me, cracking almonds, continually striking one step with the ball of her +outstretched foot. In the clarid gold of the platform I saw her fez and corals +reflected as an elongated blotch of florid red. She turned and drank some wine +from the great gold Jarvan goblet which I had brought from the temple of Boro +Budor, her head quite covered in by it. Then, the little hairs at her +lip-corners still wet, says she: +</p> + +<p> +'Vices and climes, climes and vices. Always the same. What were these climes +and vices?' +</p> + +<p> +'Robberies of a hundred sorts, murders of ten hundred—' +</p> + +<p> +'But what made them <i>do</i> them?' +</p> + +<p> +'Their evil nature—their base souls.' +</p> + +<p> +'But <i>you</i> are one of them, <i>I</i> am another: yet you and I live here +together, and we do no vices and climes.' +</p> + +<p> +Her astounding shrewdness! Right into the inmost heart of a matter does her +simple wit seem to pierce! +</p> + +<p> +'No,' I said, 'we do no vices and crimes, because we lack <i>motive</i>. There +is no danger that we should hate each other, for we have plenty to eat and +drink, dates, wines, and thousands of things. (Our danger is rather the other +way.) But <i>they</i> hated and schemed, because they were very numerous, and +there arose a question among them of dates and wine.' +</p> + +<p> +'Was there not, then, enough land to grow dates and wine for all?' +</p> + +<p> +'There was—yes: much more than enough, I fancy. But some got hold of a vast lot +of it, and as the rest felt the pinch of scarcity, there arose, naturally, a +pretty state of things—including the vices and crimes.' +</p> + +<p> +'Ah, but then,' says she, 'it was not to their bad souls that the vices and +climes were due, but only to this question of land. It is certain that if there +had been no such question, there would have been no vices and climes, because +you and I, who are just like them, do no vices and climes here, where there is +no such question.' +</p> + +<p> +The clear limelight of her intelligence! She wriggled on her seat in her effort +of argument. +</p> + +<p> +'I am not going to argue the matter,' I said. 'There <i>was</i> that question +of dates and wine, you see. And there always must be on an earth where millions +of men, with varying degrees of cunning, reside.' +</p> + +<p> +'Oh, not at all necessalily!' she cries with conviction: 'not at all, at all: +since there are much more dates and wine than are enough for all. If there +should spling up more men now, having the whole wisdom, science, and expelience +of the past at their hand, and they made an allangement among themselves that +the first man who tlied to take more than he could work for should be killed, +and sent to dleam a nonsense-dleam, the question could never again alise!' +</p> + +<p> +'It arose before—it would arise again.' +</p> + +<p> +'But no! I can guess clearly how it alose before: it alose thlough the sheer +carelessness of the first men. The land was at first so vely, vely much more +than enough for all, that the men did not take the tlouble to make an +allangement among themselves; and afterwards the habit of carelessness was +confirmed; till at last the vely oliginal carelessness must have got to have +the look of an allangement; and so the stleam which began in a little long +ended in a big long, the long glowing more and more fixed and fatal as the +stleam lolled further flom the source. I see it clearly, can't you? But now, if +some more men would spling, they would be taught—' +</p> + +<p> +'Ah, but no more men will <i>spling</i>, you see—!' +</p> + +<p> +'There is no telling. I sometimes feel as if they must, and shall. The tlees +blossom, the thunder lolls, the air makes me lun and leap, the glound is full +of lichness, and I hear the voice of the Lord God walking all among the tlees +of the folests.' +</p> + +<p> +As she said this, I saw her under-lip push out and tremble, as when she is near +to crying, and her eyes moisten: but a moment after she looked at me full, and +smiled, so mobile is her face: and as she looked, it suddenly struck me what a +noble temple of a brow the creature has, almost pointed at the uplifted summit, +and widening down like a bell-curved Gothic arch, draped in strings of frizzy +hair which anon she shakes backward with her head. +</p> + +<p> +'Clodagh,' I said after some minutes—'do you know why I called you Clodagh?' +</p> + +<p> +'No? Tell me?' +</p> + +<p> +'Because once, long ago before the poison-cloud, I had a lover called Clodagh: +and she was a....' +</p> + +<p> +'But tell me first,' cries she: 'how did one know one's lover, or one's wife, +flom all the others?' +</p> + +<p> +'Well, by their faces....' +</p> + +<p> +'But there must have been many faces—all alike—' +</p> + +<p> +'Not all alike. Each was different from the rest.' +</p> + +<p> +'Still, it must have been vely clever to tell. I can hardly conceive any face, +except yours and mine.' +</p> + +<p> +'Ah, because you are a little goose, you see.' +</p> + +<p> +'What was a goose like?' +</p> + +<p> +'It was a thing like a butterfly, only larger, and it kept its toes always +spread out, with a skin stretched between.' +</p> + +<p> +'Leally? How caplicious! And am I like that?—but what were you saying that your +lover, Clodagh, was?' +</p> + +<p> +'She was a Poisoner.' +</p> + +<p> +'Then why call me Clodagh, since <i>I</i> am not a poisoner?' +</p> + +<p> +'I call you so to remind me: lest you—lest you—should become my—lover, too.' +</p> + +<p> +'I am your lover already: for I love you.' +</p> + +<p> +'What, girl?' +</p> + +<p> +'Do I not love you, who are mine?' +</p> + +<p> +'Come, come, don't be a little maniac!' I went. 'Clodagh was a +<i>poisoner</i>....' +</p> + +<p> +'Why did she poison? Had she not enough dates and wine?' +</p> + +<p> +'She had, yes: but she wanted more, more, more, the silly idiot.' +</p> + +<p> +'So that the vices and climes were not confined to those that lacked things, +but were done by the others, too?' +</p> + +<p> +'By the others chiefly.' +</p> + +<p> +'Then I see how it was!' +</p> + +<p> +'How was it?' +</p> + +<p> +'The others had got <i>spoiled</i>. The vices and climes must have begun with +those who lacked things, and then the others, always seeing vices and climes +alound them, began to do them, too—as when one rotten olive is in a bottle, the +whole mass soon becomes collupted: but originally they were not rotten, but +only became so. And all though a little carelessness at the first. I am sure +that if more men could spling now—' +</p> + +<p> +'But I <i>told</i> you, didn't I, that no more men will spring? You understand, +Clodagh, that originally the earth produced men by a long process, beginning +with a very low type of creature, and continually developing it, until at last +a man stood up. But that can never happen again: for the earth is old, old, and +has lost her producing vigour now. So talk no more of men <i>splinging</i>, and +of things which you do not understand. Instead, go inside—stop, I will tell you +a secret: to-day in the wood I picked some musk-roses and wound them into a +wreath, meaning to give them you for your head when you came to-morrow: and it +is inside on the pearl tripod in the second room to the left: go, therefore, +and put it on, and bring the harp, and play to me, my dear.' +</p> + +<p> +She ran quick with a little cry, and coming again, sat crowned, incarnadine in +the blushing depths of the gold. Nor did I send her home to her lonely yali, +till the pale and languished moon, weary of all-night beatitudes, sank down +soft-couched in quilts of curdling opals to the Hesperian realms of her rest. +</p> + +<p> +So sometimes we speak together, she and I, she and I. +</p> + +<hr /> + +<p> +That ever I should write such a thing! I am driven out from Imbros! +</p> + +<p> +I was walking up in a wood yesterday to the west—it was a calm clear evening +about seven, the sun having just set. I had the book in which I have written so +far in my hand, for I had thought of making a sketch of an old windmill to the +north-west to show her. Twenty minutes before she had been with me, for I had +chanced to meet her, and she had come, but kept darting on ahead after peeping +fruit, gathering armfuls of amaranth, nenuphar, and red-berried asphodel, till, +weary of my life, I had called to her: 'Go away! out of my sight'—and she, with +suddenly pushed under-lip, had walked off. +</p> + +<p> +Well, I was continuing my stroll, when I seemed to feel some quaking of the +ground, and before one could count twenty, it was as if the island was bent +upon wracking itself to pieces. My first thought was of her, and in great scare +I went running, calling in the direction which she had gone, staggering as on +the deck of some labouring ship, falling, picking myself up, running again. The +air was quite full of uproar, and the land waving like the sea: and as I went +plunging, not knowing whither, I saw to my right some three or four acres of +forest droop and sink into a gulf which opened to receive them. Up I flung my +arms, crying out: 'Good God! save the girl!' and a minute later rushed out, to +my surprise, into open space on a hill-side. On the lower ground I could see +the palace, and beyond it, a small space of white sea which had the awful +appearance of being higher than the land. Down the hill-side I staggered, +driven by the impulse to fly somewhither, but about half way down was startled +afresh by a shrill pattering like musical hail, and the next moment saw the +entire palace rush with the jangling clatter of a thousand bells into the +heaving lake. +</p> + +<p> +Some seconds after this, the earthquake, having lasted fully ten minutes, began +to lull, and soon ceased. I found her an hour later standing among the ruins of +her little yali. +</p> + +<hr /> + +<p> +Well, what a thing! Probably every building on the island has been destroyed; +the palace-platform, all cracked, leans half-sunken askew into the lake, like a +huge stranded ark, while of the palace itself no trace remains, except a mound +of gold stones emerging above the lake to the south. Gone, gone—sixteen years +of vanity and vexation. But from a practical point of view, what is a worst +calamity of all is that the <i>Speranza</i> now lies high-and-dry in the +village: for she was bodily picked up from the quay by the tidal wave, and +driven bow-foremost into a street not half her width, and there now lies, +looking huge enough in the little village, wedged for ever, smashed in at the +nip like a frail match-box, a most astonishing spectacle: her bows forty feet +up the street, ten feet above the ground at the stem, rudder resting on the +inner edge of the quay, foremast tilted forward, the other two masts all right, +and that bottom, which has passed through seas so far, buried in every sort of +green and brown seaweed, the old <i>Speranza</i>. Her steps were there, and by +a slight leap I could catch them underneath and go up hand-over-hand, till I +got foothold; this I did at ten the same night when the sea-water had mostly +drained back from the land, leaving everything very swampy, however; she there +with me, and soon following me upon the ship. I found most things cracked into +tiny fragments, twisted, disfigured out of likeness, the house-walls themselves +displaced a little at the nip, the bow of the cedar skiff smashed in to her +middle against the aft starboard corner of the galley; and were it not for the +fact that the air-pinnace had not broken from her heavy ropings, and one of the +compasses still whole, I do not know what I should have done: for the four old +water-logged boats in the cove have utterly disappeared. +</p> + +<p> +I made her sleep on the cabin-floor amid the <i>débris</i> of berth and +everything, and I myself slept high up in the wood to the west. I am writing +now lying in the long-grass the morning after, the sun rising, though I cannot +see him. My plan for to-day is to cut three or four logs with the saw, lay them +on the ground by the ship, lower the pinnace upon them, so get her gradually +down into the water, and by evening bid a long farewell to Imbros, which drives +me out in this way. Still, I look forward with pleasure to our hour's run to +the Mainland, when I shall teach her to steer by the compass, and manipulate +liquid-air, as I have taught her to dress, to talk, to cook, to write, to +think, to live. For she is my creation, this creature: as it were, a 'rib from +my side.' +</p> + +<p> +But what is the design of this expulsion? And what was it that she called it +last night?—'this new going out flom Halan'! 'Haran,' I believe, being the +place from which Abraham went out, when 'called' by God. +</p> + +<hr /> + +<p> +We apparently felt only the tail of the earthquake at Imbros: for it has +ravaged Turkey! And we two poor helpless creatures put down here in the theatre +of all these infinite violences: it is too bad, too bad. For the rages of +Nature at present are perfectly astonishing, and what it may come to I do not +know. When we came to the Macedonian coast in good moonlight, we sailed along +it, and up the Dardanelles, looking out for village, yali, or any habitation +where we might put up: but everything has apparently been wrecked. We saw +Kilid-Bahr, Chanak-Kaleh, Gallipoli, Lapsaki in ruins; at the last place I +landed, leaving her in the boat, and walked a little way, but soon went back +with the news that there was not even a bazaar-arch left standing whole, in +most parts even the line of the streets being obliterated, for the place had +fallen like a house of dice, and had then been shaken up and jumbled. Finally +we slept in a forest on the other side of the strait, beyond Gallipoli, taking +our few provisions, and having to wade at some points through morass a foot +deep before we reached dry woodland. +</p> + +<p> +Here, the next morning, I sat alone—for we had slept separated by at least half +a mile—thinking out the question of whither I should go: my choice would have +been to remain either in the region where I was, or to go Eastward: but the +region where I was offered no dwelling that I could see; and to go any distance +Eastward, I needed a ship. Of ships I had seen during the night only wrecks, +nor did I know where to find one in all these latitudes. I was thus, like her +'Ablaham,' urged Westward. +</p> + +<p> +In order, then, to go Westward, I first went a little further Eastward, once +more entered the Golden Horn, and once more mounted the scorched Seraglio +steps. Here what the wickedness of man had spared, the wickedness of Nature had +destroyed, and the few houses which I had left standing round the upper part of +Pera I now saw low as the rest; also the house near the Suleimanieh, where we +had lived our first days, to which I went as to a home, I found without a +pillar standing; and that night she slept under the half-roof of a little +funeral-kiosk in the scorched cypress-wood of Eyoub, and I a mile away, at the +edge of the forest where first I saw her. +</p> + +<p> +The next morning, having met, as agreed, at the site of the Prophet's mosque, +we traversed together the valley and cemetery of Kassim by the quagmires up to +Pera, all the landscape having to me a rather twisted unfamiliar aspect. We had +determined to spend the morning in searching for supplies among the +earthquake-ruins of Pera; and as I had decided to collect sufficient in one day +to save us further pains for some time, we passed a good many hours in this +task, I confining myself to the great white house in the park overlooking +Kassim, where I had once slept, losing myself in the huge obliquities of its +floors, roofs and wall-fragments, she going to the old Mussulman quarter of +Djianghir near, on the heights of Taxim, where were many shops, and thence +round the brow of the hill to the great French Embassy-house, overlooking +Foundoucli and the sea, both of us having large Persian carpet-bags, and all in +the air of that wilderness of ruin that morning a sweet, strong, permanent +odour of maple-blossom. +</p> + +<p> +We met toward evening, she quivering under such a load, that I would not let +her carry it, but abandoned my day's labour, which was lighter, and took hers, +which was quite enough: we went back Westward, seeking all the while some +shelter from the saturating night-dews of this place: and nothing could we +find, till we came again, quite late, to her broken funeral-kiosk at the +entrance to the immense cemetery-avenue of Eyoub. There without a word I left +her among the shattered catafalques, for I was weary; but having gone some +distance, turned back, thinking that I might take some more raisins from the +bag; and after getting them, said to her, shaking her little hand where she sat +under the roof-shadow on a stone: +</p> + +<p> +'Good-night, Clodagh.' +</p> + +<p> +She did not answer promptly: and her answer, to my surprise, was a protest +against her name: for a rather sulky, yet gentle, voice came from the darkness, +saying: +</p> + +<p> +'I am <i>not</i> a Poisoner!' +</p> + +<p> +'Well,' said I, 'all right: tell me whatever you like that I should call you, +and henceforth I will call you that.' +</p> + +<p> +'Call me Eve,' says she. +</p> + +<p> +'Well, no,' said I, 'not Eve, anything but that: for <i>my</i> name is Adam, +and if I called you Eve, that would be simply absurd, and we do not want to be +ridiculous in each other's eyes. But I will call you anything else that you +like.' +</p> + +<p> +'Call me Leda,' says she. +</p> + +<p> +'And why Leda?' said I. +</p> + +<p> +'Because Leda sounds something like Clodagh,' says she, 'and you are al-leady +in the habit of calling me Clodagh; and I saw the name Leda in a book, and +liked it: but Clodagh is most hollible, most bitterly hollible!' +</p> + +<p> +'Well, then,' said I, 'Leda it shall be, and I shan't forget, for I like it, +too, and it suits you, and you ought to have a name beginning with an "L." +Good-night, my dear, sleep well, and dream, dream.' +</p> + +<p> +'And to you, too, my God give dleams of peace and pleasantness,' says she; and +I went. +</p> + +<p> +And it was only when I had lain myself upon leaves for my bed, my head on my +caftan, a rill for my lullaby, and two stars, which alone I could see out of +the heavenful, for my watch-lights; and only when my eyes were already closed +toward slumber, that a sudden strong thought pierced and woke me: for I +remembered that Leda was the name of a Greek woman who had borne twins. In +fact, I should not be surprised if this Greek word Leda is the same word +etymologically as the Hebrew Eve, for I have heard of <i>v's</i>, and +<i>b's</i>, and <i>d's</i> interchanging about in this way, and if <i>Di</i>, +meaning God, or Light, and <i>Bi</i>, meaning Life, and Io<i>v</i>e, and +Iho<i>v</i>ah and Go<i>d</i>, meaning much the same, are all one, that would be +nothing astonishing to me, as wi<i>d</i>ow, and veu<i>v</i>e, are one: and +where it says, 'truly the Light is Good (<i>tob, b</i>on),' this is as if it +said, 'truly the Di is Di.' Such, at any rate, is the fatality that attends me, +even in the smallest things: for this Western Eve, or Greek Leda, had twins. +</p> + +<hr /> + +<p> +Well, the next morning we crossed by the ruins of old Greek Phanar across the +triple Stamboul-wall, which still showed its deep-ivied portal, and made our +way, not without climbing, along the Golden Horn to the foot of the Old +Seraglio, where I soon found signs of the railway. And that minute commenced +our journey across Turkey, Bulgaria, Servia, Bosnia, Croatia, to Trieste, +occupying no day or two as in old times, but four months, a long-drawn +nightmare, though a nightmare of rich happiness, if one may say so, leaving on +the memory a vague vast impression of monstrous ravines, ever-succeeding +profundities, heights and greatnesses, jungles strange as some moon-struck +poet's fantasy, everlasting glooms, and a sound of mighty unseen rivers, +cataracts, and slow cumbered rills whose bulrushes never see the sun, with +largesse everywhere, secrecies, profusions, the unimaginable, the unspeakable, +a savagery most lush and fierce and gaudy, and vales of Arcadie, and remote +mountain-peaks, and tarns shy as old-buried treasure, and glaciers, and we two +human folk pretty small and drowned and lost in all that amplitude, yet moving +always through it. +</p> + +<p> +We followed the lines that first day till we came to a steam train, and I found +the engine fairly good, and everything necessary to move it at my hand: but the +metals in such a condition of twisted, broken, vaulted, and buried confusion, +due to the earthquake, that, having run some hundreds of yards to examine them, +I saw that nothing could be done in that way. At first this threw me into a +condition like despair, for what we were to do I did not know: but after +persevering on foot for four days along the deep-rusted track, which is of that +large-gauge type peculiar to Eastern Europe, I began to see that there were +considerable sound stretches, and took heart. +</p> + +<p> +I had with me land-charts and compass, but nothing for taking +altitude-observations: for the <i>Speranza</i> instruments, except one compass, +had all been broken-up by her shock. However, on getting to the town of +Silivri, about thirty miles from our start, I saw in the ruins of a +half-standing bazaar-shop a number of brass objects, and there found several +good sextants, quadrants, and theodolites. Two mornings later, we came upon an +engine in mid-country, with coals in it, and a stream near; I had a goat-skin +of almond-oil in the bag, and found the machinery serviceable after an hour's +careful inspection, having examined the boiler with a candle through the +manhole, and removed the autoclaves of the heaters. All was red with rust, and +the shaft of the connecting-rod in particular seemed so frail, that at one +moment I was very dubious: I decided, however, and, except for a slight leakage +at the tubulure which led the steam to the valve-chest, all went very well; at +a pressure never exceeding three-and-a-half atmospheres, we travelled nearly a +hundred and twenty miles before being stopped by a head-to-head block on the +line, when we had to abandon our engine; we then continued another seven miles +a-foot, I all the time mourning my motor, which I had had to leave at Imbros, +and hoping at every townlet to find a whole one, but in vain. +</p> + +<hr /> + +<p> +It was wonderful to see the villages and towns going back to the earth, already +invaded by vegetation, and hardly any longer breaking the continuity of pure +Nature, the town now as much the country as the country, and that which is +not-Man becoming all in all with a certain <i>furore</i> of vigour. A whole day +in the southern gorges of the Balkan Mountains the slow train went tearing its +way through many a mile of bind-weed tendrils, a continuous curtain, flaming +with large flowers, but sombre as the falling shades of night, rather +resembling jungles of Ceylon and the Filipinas; and she, that day, lying in the +single car behind, where I had made her a little yatag-bed from Tatar +Bazardjik, continually played the kittur, barely touching the strings, and +crooning low, low, in her rich contralto, eternally the same air, over and over +again, crooning, crooning, some melancholy tune of her own dreaming, just +audible to me through the slow-travailing monotony of the engine; till I was +drunken with so sweet a woe, my God, a woe that was sweet as life, and a dolour +that lulled like nepenthe, and a grief that soothed like kisses, so sweet, so +sweet, that all that world of wood and gloom lost locality and realness for me, +and became nothing but a charmed and pensive Heaven for her to moan and lullaby +in; and from between my fingers streamed plenteous tears that day, and all that +I could keep on mourning was 'O Leda, O Leda, O Leda,' till my heart was near +to break. +</p> + +<p> +The feed-pump eccentric-shaft of this engine, which was very poor and flaky, +suddenly gave out about five in the afternoon, and I had to stop in a hurry, +and that sweet invisible mechanism which had crooned and crooned about my ears +in the air, and followed me whithersoever I went, stopped too. Down she jumped, +calling out: +</p> + +<p> +'Well, I had a plesentiment that something would happen, and I am so glad, for +I was tired!' +</p> + +<p> +Seeing that nothing could be done with the feed-water pump, I got down, took +the bag, and parting before us the continuous screen, we went pioneering to the +left between a rock-cleft, stepping over large stones that looked black with +moss-growths, no sky, but hundreds of feet of impenetrable leafage overhead, +and everywhere the dew-dabbled profusion of dim ferneries, dishevelled +maidenhairs mixed with a large-leaved mimosa, wild vine, white briony, and a +smell of cedar, and a soft rushing of perpetual waters that charmed the +gloaming. The way led slightly upwards three hundred feet, and presently, after +some windings, and the climbing of five huge steps almost regular, yet +obviously natural, the gorge opened in a roundish space, fifty feet across, +with far overhanging edges seven hundred feet high; and there, behind a curtain +which fell from above, its tendrils defined and straight like a Japanese +bead-hanging, we spread the store of foods, I opening the wines, fruits, +vegetables and meats, she arranging them in order with the gold plate, and +lighting both the spirit-lamp and the lantern: for here it was quite dark. Near +us behind the curtain of tendrils was a small green cave in the rock, and at +its mouth a pool two yards wide, a black and limpid water that leisurely +wheeled, discharging a little rivulet from the cave: and in it I saw three +owl-eyed fish, a finger long, loiter, and spur themselves, and gaze. Leda, who +cannot be still in tongue or limb, chattered in her glib baby manner as we ate, +and then, after smoking a cigarette, said that she would go and 'lun,' and +went, and left me darkling, for she is the sun and the moon and the host of the +stars, I occupying myself that night in making a calendar at the end of this +book in which I have written, for my almanack and many things that I prized +were lost with the palace—making a calendar, counting the days in my head—but +counting them across my thoughts of her. +</p> + +<p> +She came again to tell me good-night, and then went down to the train to sleep; +and I put out the lantern, and stooped within the cave, and made my simple +couch beside the little rivulet, and slept. +</p> + +<p> +But a fitful sleep, and soon again I woke; and a long time I lay so, gradually +becoming conscious of a slow dripping at one spot in the cave: for at a +minute's interval it darkly splashed, regularly, very deliberately; and it +seemed to grow always louder and sadder, and the splash at first was 'Leesha,' +but it became 'Leda' to my ears, and it sobbed her name, and I pitied myself, +so sad was I. And when I could no longer bear the anguished melancholy of its +spasm and its sobbing, I arose and went softly, softly, lest she should hear in +that sounding silence of the hushed and darksome night, going more slow, more +soft, as I went nearer, a sob in my throat, my feet leading me to her, till I +touched the carriage. And against it a long time I leant my clammy brow, a sob +aching in my poor throat, and she all mixed up in my head with the suspended +hushed night, and with the elfin things in the air that made the silence so +musically a-sound to the vacant ear-drum, and with the dripping splash in the +cave. And softly I turned the door-handle, and heard her breathe in Asleep, her +head near me; and I touched her hair with my lips, and close to her ear I +said—for I heard her breathe as if in sleep—'Little Leda, I have come to you, +for I could not help it, Leda: and oh, my heart is full of the love of you, for +you are mine, and I am yours: and to live with you, till we die, and after we +are dead to be near you still, Leda, with my broken heart near your heart, +little Leda—' +</p> + +<p> +I must have sobbed, I think; for as I spoke close at her ears, with +passionately dying eyes of love, I was startled by an irregularity in her +breathing; and with cautious hurry I shut the door, and quite back to the cave +I stole in haste. +</p> + +<p> +And the next morning when we met I thought—but am not now sure—that she smiled +singularly: I thought so. She may, she <i>may</i>, have heard—But I cannot +tell. +</p> + +<hr /> + +<p> +Twice I was obliged to abandon engines on account of forest-tree obstructions +right across the line, which, do what I might, I could not move, and these were +the two bitterest incidents of the pilgrimage; and at least thirty times I +changed from engine to engine, when other trains blocked. As for the extent of +the earthquake, it is pretty certain that it was universal over the Peninsula, +and at many points exhibited extreme violence, for up to the time that we +entered upon Servian territory, we occasionally came upon stretches of the +lines so dislocated, that it was impossible to proceed upon them, and during +the whole course I never saw one intact house or castle; four times, where the +way was of a nature to permit of it, I left the imbedded metals and made the +engine travel the ground till I came upon other metals, when I always succeeded +in driving it upon them. It was all very leisurely, for not everywhere, nor +every day, could I get a nautical observation, and having at all times to go at +low pressures for fear of tube and boiler weakness, crawling through tunnels, +and stopping when total darkness came on, we did not go fast, nor much cared +to. Once, moreover, for three days, and once for four, we were overtaken by +hurricanes of such vast inclemency, that no thought of travelling entered our +heads, our only care being to hide our poor cowering bodies as deeply and +darkly as possible. Once I passed through a city (Adrianople) doubly +devastated, once by the hellish arson of my own hand, and once by the +earthquake: and I made haste to leave that place behind me. +</p> + +<p> +Finally, three months and twenty-seven days from the date of the earthquake, +having traversed only 900 odd English miles, I let go in the Venice lagoon, in +the early morning of the 10th September, the lateen sail and stone anchor of a +Maltese <i>speronare</i>, which I had found, and partially cleaned, at Trieste; +and thence I passed up the Canalazzo in a gondola. For I said to Leda: 'In +Venice will I pitch my Patriarch tent.' +</p> + +<p> +But to will and to do are not the same thing, and still further Westward was I +driven. For the stagnant upper canals of this place are now mere miasmas of +pestilence: and within two days I was rolling with fever in the Old Procurazie +Palace, she standing in pale wonderment at my bed-side, sickness quite a novel +thing to her: and, indeed, this was my first serious illness since my twentieth +year or thereabouts, when I had over-worked my brain, and went a voyage to +Constantinople. I could not move from bed for some weeks, but happily did not +lose my senses, and she brought me the whole pharmacopoeia from the shops, from +which to choose my medicines. I guessed the cause of this illness, though not a +sign of it came near her, and as soon as my trembling knees could bear me, I +again set out—always Westward—enjoying now a certain luxury in travelling +compared with that Turkish difficulty, for here were no twisted metals, more +and better engines, in the cities as many good petrol motors as I chose, and +Nature markedly less savage. +</p> + +<p> +I do not know why I did not stop at Verona or Brescia, or some other +neighbourhood of the Italian lakes, since I was fond of water: but I had, I +think, the thought in my head to return to Vauclaire in France, where I had +lived, and there live: for I thought that she might like those old monks. At +all events, we did not remain long in any place till we came to Turin, where we +spent nine days, she in the house opposite mine, and after that, at her own +suggestion, went on still, passing by train into the valley of the Isère, and +then into that of the Western Rhone, till we came to the old town of Geneva +among some very great mountains peaked with snow, the town seated at the head +of a long lake which the earth has made in the shape of the crescent moon, and +like the moon it is a thing of much beauty and many moods, suggesting a +creature under the spell of charms and magics. However, with this idea of +Vauclaire still in my head, we left Geneva in the motor which had brought us at +four in the afternoon of the 17th May, I intending to reach the town called +Bourg that night about eight, and there sleep, so to go on to Lyons the next +morning by train, and so, by the Bordeaux route, make Vauclaire. But by some +chance for which I cannot to this hour account (unless the rain was the cause), +I missed the chart-road, which should have been fairly level, and found myself +on mountain tracks, unconscious of my whereabouts, while darkness fell, and a +windless downpour that had a certain sullen venom in its superabundance +drenched us. I stopped several times, looking about for château, chalet, or +village, but none did I see, though I twice came upon railway lines; and not +till midnight did we run down a rather steep pass upon the shore of a lake, +which, from its apparent vastness in the moonless obscurity, I could only +suppose to be the Lake of Geneva once again. About two hundred yards to the +left we saw through the rain a large pile, apparently risen straight out of the +lake, looking ghostly livid, for it was of white stone, not high, but an old +thing of complicated white little turrets roofed with dark red candle +extinguishers, and oddities of Gothic nooks, window slits, and outline, very +like a fanciful picture. Round to this we went, drowned as rats, Leda sighing +and bedraggled, and found a narrow spit of low land projecting into the lake, +where we left the car, walked forward with the bag, crossed a small wooden +drawbridge, and came upon a rocky island with a number of thick-foliaged trees +about the castle. We quickly found a small open portal, and went throughout the +place, quite gay at the shelter, everywhere lighting candles which we found in +iron sconces in the rather queer apartments: so that, as the castle is far seen +from the shores of the lake, it would have appeared to one looking thence a +place suddenly possessed and haunted. We found beds, and slept: and the next +day it turned out to be the antique Castle of Chillon, where we remained five +long and happy months, till again, again, Fate overtook us. +</p> + +<hr /> + +<p> +The morning after our coming, we had breakfast—our last meal together—on the +first floor in a pentagonal room approached from a lower level by three little +steps. In it is a ponderous oak table pierced with a multitude of worm eaten +tunnels, also three mighty high backed chairs, an old oak desk covered still +with papers, arras on the walls, and three dark religious oil paintings, and a +grandfathers clock: it is at about the middle of the château, and contains two +small, but deep, three faced oriels, in each face four compartments with white +stone shafts between, these looking south upon shrubs and the rocky edge of the +island, then upon the deep blue lake, then upon another tiny island containing +four trees in a jungle of flowers, then upon the shore of the lake interrupted +by the mouths of a river which turned out to be the Rhone, then upon a white +town on the slopes which turned out to be Villeneuve, then upon the great +mountains back of Bouveret and St. Gingolph, all having the surprised air of a +resurrection just completed, everything new washed in dyes of azure, +ultramarine, indigo, snow, emerald, that fresh morning: so that one had to call +it the best and holiest place in the world. These five old room walls, and oak +floor, and two oriels, became specially mine, though it was really common +ground to us both, and there I would do many little things. The papers on the +desk told that it had been the <i>bureau</i> of one R.E. Gaud, '<i>Grand +Bailli</i>,' whose residence the place no doubt had been. +</p> + +<p> +She asked me while eating that morning to stay here, and I said that I would +see, though with misgiving: so together we went all about the house, and +finding it unexpectedly spacious, I consented to stop. At both ends are suites, +mostly small rooms, infinitely quaint and cosy, furnished with heavy Henri +Quatre furniture and bed draperies; and there are separate, and as it were +secret, spiral stairs for exit to each: so we decided that she should have the +suite overlooking the length of the lake, the mouths of the Rhone, Bouveret and +Villeneuve; and I should have that overlooking the spit of land behind and the +little drawbridge, shore cliffs, and elmwood which comes down to the shore, +giving at one point a glimpse of the diminutive hamlet of Chillon; and, that +decided, I took her hand in mine, and I said: +</p> + +<p> +'Well, then, here we stay, both under the same roof—for the first time. Leda, I +will not explain why to you, but it is dangerous, so much so that it <i>may</i> +mean the death of one or other of us: deadly, deadly dangerous, my poor girl. +You do not understand, but that is the fact, believe me, for I know it very +well, and I would not tell you false. Well, then, you will easily comprehend, +that this being so, you must never on any account come near my part of the +house, nor will I come near yours. Lately we have been very much together, but +then we have been active, full of purpose and occupation: here we shall be +nothing of the kind, I can see. You do not understand at all—but things are so. +We must live perfectly separate lives, then. You are nothing to me, really, nor +I to you, only we live on the same earth, which is nothing at all—a mere +chance. Your own food, clothes, and everything that you want, you will procure +for yourself: it is perfectly easy: the shores are crowded with mansions, +castles, towns and villages; and I will do the same for myself. The motor down +there I set apart for your private use: if I want another, I will get one; and +to-day I will set about looking you up a boat and fishing tackle, and cut a +cross on the bow of yours, so that you may know yours, and never use mine. All +this is very necessary: you cannot dream how much: but I know how much. Do not +run any risks in climbing, now, or with the motor, or in the boat ... little +Leda ...' +</p> + +<p> +I saw her under-lip push, and I turned away in haste, for I did not care +whether she cried or not. In that long voyage, and in my illness at Venice, she +had become too near and dear to me, my tender love, my dear darling soul; and I +said in my heart: 'I will be a decent being: I will turn out trumps.' +</p> + +<hr /> + +<p> +Under this castle is a sort of dungeon, not narrow, nor very dark, in which are +seven stout dark-grey pillars, and an eighth, half-built into the wall; and one +of them which has an iron ring, as well as the ground around it, is all worn +away by some prisoner or prisoners once chained there; and in the pillar the +word 'Byron' engraved. This made me remember that a poet of that name had +written something about this place, and two days afterwards I actually came +upon three volumes of the poet in a room containing a great number of books, +many of them English, near the Grand Bailli's <i>bureau</i>: and in one I read +the poem, which is called 'The Prisoner of Chillon.' I found it very affecting, +and the description good, only I saw no seven rings, and where he speaks of the +'pale and livid light,' he should speak rather of the dun and brownish gloom, +for the word 'light' disconcerts the fancy, and of either pallor or blue there +is there no sign. However, I was so struck by the horror of man's cruelty to +man, as depicted in this poem, that I determined that she should see it; went +up straight to her rooms with the book, and, she being away, ferreted among her +things to see what she was doing, finding all very neat, except in one room +where were a number of prints called <i>La Mode</i>, and <i>débris</i> of +snipped cloth, and medley. When, after two hours, she came in, and I suddenly +presented myself, 'Oh!' she let slip, and then fell to cooing her laugh; and I +took her down through a big room stacked with every kind of rifle, with +revolvers, cartridges, powder, swords, bayonets—evidently some official or +cantonal magazine—and then showed her the worn stone in the dungeon, the ring, +the narrow deep slits in the wall, and I told the tale of cruelty, while the +splashing of the lake upon the rock outside was heard with a strange and tragic +sound, and her mobile face was all one sorrow. +</p> + +<p> +'How cruel they must have been!' cries she with tremulous lip, her face at the +same time reddened with indignation. +</p> + +<p> +'They were mere beastly monsters,' said I: 'it is nothing surprising if +monsters were cruel.' +</p> + +<p> +And in the short time while I said that, she was looking up with a new-born +smile. +</p> + +<p> +'Some others came and set the plisoner flee!' cries she. +</p> + +<p> +'Yes,' said I, 'they did, but—' +</p> + +<p> +'That was good of them,' says she. +</p> + +<p> +'Yes,' said I, 'that was all right, so far as it went.' +</p> + +<p> +'And it was a time when men had al-leady become cluel,' says she: 'if those who +set him flee were so good when all the lest were cluel, what would they have +been at a time when all the lest were kind? They would have been just like +Angels....!' +</p> + +<hr /> + +<p> +At this place fishing, and long rambles, were the order of the day, both for +her and for me, especially fishing, though a week rarely passed which did not +find me at Bouveret, St. Gingolph, Yvoire, Messery, Nyon, Ouchy, Vevay, +Montreux, Geneva, or one of the two dozen villages, townlets, or towns, that +crowd the shores, all very pretty places, each with its charm, and mostly I +went on foot, though the railway runs right round the forty odd miles of the +lake's length. One noon-day I was walking through the main-street of Vevay +going on to the Cully-road when I had a fearful shock, for in a shop just in +front of me to the right I heard a sound—an unmistakable indication of life—as +of clattering metals shaken together. My heart leapt into my mouth, I was +conscious of becoming bloodlessly pale, and on tip-toe of exquisite caution I +stole up to the open door—peeped in—and it was she standing on the counter of a +jeweller's shop, her back turned to me, with head bent low over a tray of +jewels in her hands, which she was rummaging for something. I went +<i>'Hoh!'</i> for I could not help it, and all that day, till sunset, we were +very dear friends, for I could not part from her, we walking together by +vor-alpen, wood, and shore all the way to Ouchy, she just like a creature crazy +that day with the bliss of living, rolling in grasses and perilous flowery +declines, stamping her foot defiantly at me, arrogant queen that she is, and +then running like mad for me to catch her, with laughter, <i>abandon</i>, +carolling railleries, and the levity of the wild ass's colt on the hills, +entangling her loose-flung hair with Bacchic tendril and blossom, and drinking, +in the passage through Cully, more wine, I thought, than was good: and the +flaming darts of lightning that shot and shocked me that day, and the inner +secret gleams and revelations of Beauty which I had, and the pangs of white-hot +honey that tortured my soul and body, and were too much for me, and made me +sick, oh Heaven, what tongue could express all that deep world of things? And +at Ouchy with a backward wave of my arm I silently motioned her from me, for I +was dumb, and weak, and I left her there: and all that long night her power was +upon me, for she is stronger than gravitation, which may be evaded, and than +all the forces of life combined, and the sun and the moon and the earth are +nothing compared with her; and when she was gone from me I was like a fish in +the air, or like a bird in the deep, for she is my element of life, made for me +to breathe in, and I drown without her: so that for many hours I lay on that +grassy hill leading to the burial-ground outside Ouchy that night, like a man +sore wounded, biting the grass. +</p> + +<p> +What made things worse for me was her adoption of European clothes since coming +to this place: I believe that, in her adroit way, she herself made some of her +dresses, for one day I saw in her apartments a number of coloured +fashion-plates, with a confusion like dress-making; or she may have been only +modifying finished things from the shops, for her Western dressing is not quite +like what I remember of the modern female style, but is really, I should say, +quite her own, rather resembling the Greek, or the eighteenth century. At any +rate, the airs and graces are as natural to her as feathers to parrots; and she +has changes like the moon; never twice the same, and always transcending her +last phase and revelation: for I could not have conceived of anyone in whom +<i>taste</i> was a faculty so separate as in her, so positive and salient, like +smelling or sight—more like <i>smelling</i>: for it is the faculty, half +Reason, half Imagination, by which she fore-scents precisely what will suit +exquisitely with what; so that every time I saw her, I received the impression +of a perfectly novel, completely bewitching, work of Art: the special quality +of works of Art being to produce the momentary conviction that anything else +whatever could not possibly be so good. +</p> + +<p> +Occasionally, from my window I would see her in the wood beyond the drawbridge, +cool and white in green shade, with her Bible probably, training her skirt like +a court-lady, and looking much taller than before. I believe that this new +dressing produced a separation between us more complete than it might have +been; and especially after that day between Vevay and Ouchy I was very careful +not to meet her. The more I saw that she bejewelled herself, powdered herself, +embalmed herself like sachets of sweet scents, chapleted her Greek-dressed head +with gold fillets, the more I shunned her. Myself, somehow, had now resumed +European dress, and, ah me, I was greatly changed, greatly changed, God knows, +from the portly inflated monarch-creature that strutted and groaned four years +previously in the palace at Imbros: so that my manner of life and thought might +once more now have been called modern and Western. +</p> + +<p> +All the more was my sense of responsibility awful: and from day to day it +seemed to intensify. An arguing Voice never ceased to remonstrate within me, +nor left me peace, and the curse of unborn hosts appeared to menace me. To +strengthen my fixity I would often overwhelm myself, and her, with muttered +opprobriums, calling myself 'convict,' her 'lady-bird'; asking what manner of +man was I that I should dare so great a thing; and as for her, what was she to +be the Mother of a world?—a versatile butterfly with a woman's brow! And +continually now in my fiercer moods I was meditating either my death—or hers. +</p> + +<p> +Ah, but the butterfly did not let me forget her brow! To the south-west of +Villeneuve, between the forest and the river is a well-grown gentian field, and +returning from round St. Gingolph to the Château one day in the third month +after an absence of three days, I saw, as I turned a corner in the descent of +the mountain, some object floating in the air above the field. Never was I more +startled, and, above all, perplexed: for, beside the object soaring there like +a great butterfly, I could see nothing to account for it. It was not long, +however, before I came to the conclusion that she has re-invented <i>the +kite</i>—for she had almost certainly never seen one—and I presently sighted +her holding the string in the midfield. Her invention resembles the kind called +'swallow-tail' of old. +</p> + +<hr /> + +<p> +But mostly it was on the lake that I saw her, for there we chiefly lived, and +occasionally there were guilty approaches and <i>rencontres</i>, she in her +boat, I in mine, both being slight clinker-built Montreux pleasure-boats, which +I had spent some days in overhauling and varnishing, mine with jib, +fore-and-aft mainsail, and spanker, hers rather smaller, one-masted, with an +easy-running lug-sail. It was no uncommon thing for me to sail quite to Geneva, +and come back from a seven-days' cruise with my soul filled and consoled with +the lake and all its many moods of bright and darksome, serene and pensive, +dolorous and despairing and tragic, at morning, at noon, at sunset, at +midnight, a panorama that never for an instant ceased to unroll its +transformations, I sometimes climbing the mountains as high as the goat-herd +region of hoch-alpen, once sleeping there. And once I was made very ill by a +two-weeks' horror which I had: for she disappeared in her skiff, I being at the +Château, and she did not come back; and while she was away there was a tempest +that turned the lake into an angry ocean, and, ah my good God, she did not +come. At last, half-crazy at the vacant days of misery which went by and by, +and she did not come, I set out upon a wild-goose quest, of her—of all the +hopeless things the most hopeless, for the world is great—and I sought and did +not find her; and after three days I turned back, recognising that I was mad to +search the infinite, and coming near the Château, I saw her wave her +handkerchief from the island-edge, for she divined that I had gone to seek her, +and she was watching for me: and when I took her hand, what did she say to me, +the Biblical simpleton?—'Oh you of little Faith!' says she. And she had +adventures to lisp, with all the <i>r</i>'s liquefied into <i>l</i>'s, and I +was with her all that day again. +</p> + +<p> +Once a month perhaps she would knock at my outermost door, which I mostly kept +locked when at home, bringing me a sumptuously-dressed, highly-spiced red trout +or grayling, which I had not the heart to refuse, and exquisitely she does +them, all hot and spiced, applying apparently to their preparation the taste +which she applies to dress; and her extraordinary luck in angling did not fail +to supply her with the finest specimens, though, for that matter, this lake, +with its old fish-hatcheries and fish-ladders, is not miserly in that way, +swarming now with the best lake trout, river trout, red trout, and with salmon, +of which last I have brought in one with the landing-net of, I should say, +thirty-five to forty pounds. As the bottom goes off very rapidly from the two +islands to a depth of eight to nine hundred feet, we did not long confine +ourselves to bottom-fishing, but gradually advanced to every variety of +manoeuvre, doing middle-water spinning with three-triangle flights and sliding +lip-hook for jack and trout, trailing with the sail for salmon, live-baiting +with the float for pike, daping with blue-bottles, casting with artificial +flies, and I could not say in which she became the most carelessly adept, for +all soon seemed as old and natural to her as an occupation learned from birth. +</p> + +<hr /> + +<p> +On the 21st October I attained my forty-sixth birthday in excellent health: a +day destined to end for me in bloodshed and tragedy, alas. I forget now what +circumstance had caused me to mention the date long beforehand in, I think, +Venice, not dreaming that she would keep any count of it, nor was I even sure +that my calendar was not faulty by a day. But at ten in the morning of what I +called the 21st, descending by my private spiral in flannels with some trout +and par bait, and tackle—I met her coming up, my God, though she had no earthly +right to be there. With her cooing murmur of a laugh, yet pale, pale, and with +a most guilty look, she presented me a large bouquet of wild flowers. +</p> + +<p> +I was at once thrown into a state of great agitation. She was dressed in rather +a frippery of <i>mousseline de soie</i>, all cream-laced, with wide-hanging +short sleeves, a large diamond at the low open neck, the ivory-brown skin there +contrasting with the powdered bluish-white of her face, where, however, the +freckles were not quite whited out; on her feet little pink satin slippers, +without any stockings—a divinely pale pink; and well back on her hair a plain +thin circlet of gold; and she smelled like heaven, God knows. +</p> + +<p> +I could not speak. She broke an awkward silence, saying, very faint and pallid: +</p> + +<p> +'It is the day!' +</p> + +<p> +'I—perhaps—' I said, or some incoherency like that. +</p> + +<p> +I saw the touch of enthusiasm which she had summoned up quenched by my manner. +</p> + +<p> +'I have not done long again?' she asked, looking down, breaking another +silence. +</p> + +<p> +'No, no, oh no,' said I hurriedly: 'not done wrong again. Only, I could not +suppose that you would count up the days. You are ... considerate. +Perhaps—but—' +</p> + +<p> +'Tell Leda?' +</p> + +<p> +'Perhaps.... I was going to say ... you might come fishing with me....' +</p> + +<p> +'O luck!' she went softly. +</p> + +<p> +I was pierced by a sense of my base cowardice, my incredible weakness: but I +could not at all help it. +</p> + +<p> +I took the flowers, and we went down to the south side, where my boat lay; I +threw out some of the fish from the well; arranged the tackle, and then the +stern cushions for her; got up the sails; and out we went, she steering, I in +the bows, with every possible inch of space between us, receiving delicious +intermittent whiffs from her of ambergris, frangipane, or some blending of +perfumes, the morning being bright and hot, with very little breeze on the +water, which looked mottled, like colourless water imperfectly mixed with +indigo-wash, we making little headway; so it was some time before I moved +nearer her to get the par for fixing on the three-triangle flight, for I was +going to trail for salmon or large lake-trout; and during all that time we +spoke not a word together. +</p> + +<p> +Afterwards I said: +</p> + +<p> +'Who told you that flowers are proper to birthdays? or that birthdays are of +any importance?' +</p> + +<p> +'I suppose that nothing can happen so important as birth,' says she: 'and +perfumes must be ploper to birth, because the wise men blought spices to the +young Jesus.' +</p> + +<p> +This <i>naïveté</i> was the cause of my immediate recovery: for to laugh is to +be saved: and I laughed right out, saying: +</p> + +<p> +'But you read the Bible too much! all your notions are biblical. You should +read the quite modern books.' +</p> + +<p> +'I have tlied,' says she: 'but I cannot lead them long, nor often. The whole +world seems to have got so collupted. It makes me shudder.' +</p> + +<p> +'Ah, well now, you see, you quite come round to my point of view,' said I. +</p> + +<p> +'Yes, and no,' says she: 'they had got so <i>spoiled</i>, that is all. +Everlybody seems to have become quite dull-witted—the plainest tluths they +could not see. I can imagine that those faculties which aided them in their +stlain to become lich themselves, and make the lest more poor, must have been +gleatly sharpened, while all the other faculties withered: as I can imagine a +person with one eye seeing double thlough it, and quite blind on the other +side.' +</p> + +<p> +'Ah,' said I, 'I do not think they even <i>wanted</i> to see on the other side. +There were some few tolerably good and clear-sighted ones among them, you know: +and these all agreed in pointing out how, by changing one or two of their old +man-in-the-moon Bedlam arrangements, they could greatly better themselves: but +they heard with listless ears: I don't know that they ever made any +considerable effort. For they had become more or less unconscious of their +misery, so miserable were they: like the man in Byron's "Prisoner of Chillon," +who, when his deliverers came, was quite indifferent, for he says: +</p> + +<p class="poem"> +"It was at length the same to me<br/> +Fettered or fetterless to be:<br/> + I had learned to love Despair."' +</p> + +<p> +'Oh my God,' she went, covering her face a moment, 'how dleadful! And it is +tlue, it seems tlue:—they had learned to love Despair, to be even ploud of +Despair. Yet all the time, I feel <i>sure</i> flom what I have lead, flom what +I scent, that the individual man was stluggling to see, to live light, but +without power, like one's leg when it is asleep: that is so pletty of them all! +that they meant well—everly one. But they were too tloubled and sad, too +awfully burdened: they had no chance at all. Such a queer, unnatulal feeling it +gives me to lead of all that world: I can't desclibe it; all their motives seem +so tainted, their life so lopsided. Tluely, the whole head was sick, and the +whole heart faint.' +</p> + +<p> +'Quite so,' said I: 'and observe that this was no new thing: in the very +beginning of the Book we read how God saw that the wickedness of man was great +on the earth, and every imagination of his heart evil....' +</p> + +<p> +'Yes,' she interrupted, 'that is tlue: but there must have been some +<i>cause!</i> We can be quite <i>sure</i> that it was not natulal, because you +and I are men, and our hearts are not evil.' +</p> + +<p> +This was her great argument which she always trotted out, because she found +that I had usually no answer to give to it. But this time I said: +</p> + +<p> +'Our hearts not evil? Say yours: but as to mine you know nothing, Leda.' +</p> + +<p> +The semicircles under her eyes had that morning, as often, a certain moist, +heavy, pensive and weary something, as of one fresh from a revel, very sweet +and tender: and, looking softly at me with it, she answered: +</p> + +<p> +'I know my own heart, and it is not evil: not at all: not even in the very +least: and I know yours, too.' +</p> + +<p> +'You know <i>mine!</i>' cried I, with a half-laugh of surprise. +</p> + +<p> +'Quite well,' says she. +</p> + +<p> +I was so troubled by this cool assurance, that I said not a word, but going to +her, handed her the baited flight, swivel-trace, and line, which she paid out; +then I got back again almost into the bows. +</p> + +<p> +After a ten-minutes I spoke again: +</p> + +<p> +'So this is news to me: you know all about my heart. Well, come, tell me what +is in it!' +</p> + +<p> +Now she was silent, pretending to be busy with the trail, till she said, +speaking with low-bent face, and a voice that I could only just hear: +</p> + +<p> +'I will tell you what is in it: in it is a lebellion which you think good, but +is not good. If a stleam will just flow, neither tlying to climb upward, nor +over-flowing its banks, but lunning modestly in its fated channel just wherever +it is led, then it will finally leach the sea—the mighty ocean—and lose itself +in fulness.' +</p> + +<p> +'Ah,' said I, 'but that counsel is not new. It is what the philosophers used to +call "yielding to Destiny," and "following Nature." And Destiny and Nature, I +give you my word, often led mankind quite wrong—' +</p> + +<p> +'Or <i>seemed</i> to,' says she—'for a time: as when a stleam flows north a +little, and the sea is to the south: but it is bound for the sea all the time, +and will turn again. Destiny never could, and cannot yet, be judged, for it is +not finished: and our lace should follow blindly whither it points, sure that +thlough many curves it leads the world to our God.' +</p> + +<p> +'Our God indeed!' I cried, getting very excited: 'girl! you talk speciously, +but falsely! whence have you these thoughts in that head of yours? Girl! you +talk of "our race"! But there are only two of us left? Are you talking +<i>at</i> me, Leda? Do not <i>I</i> follow Destiny?' +</p> + +<p> +'You?' she sighed, with down-bent face: 'ah, poor me!' +</p> + +<p> +'What should I do if I followed it?' said I, with a crazy curiosity. +</p> + +<p> +Her face hung lower, paler, in trouble: and she said: +</p> + +<p> +'You would come now and sit near me here. You would not be there where you are. +You would be always and for ever near me....' +</p> + +<p> +My good God! I felt my face redden. +</p> + +<p> +'Oh, I could not <i>tell</i> you...!' I cried: 'you talk the most +disastrous...! you lack all responsibility...! Never, never...!' +</p> + +<p> +Her face now was covered with her left hand, her right on the tiller: and +bitingly she said, with a touch of venom: +</p> + +<p> +'I could <i>make</i> you come—<i>now</i>, if I chose: but I will not: I will +wait upon my God....' +</p> + +<p> +'<i>Make</i> me!' I cried: 'Leda! How make me?' +</p> + +<p> +'I could cly before you, as I cly often and often ... in seclet ... for my +childlen....' +</p> + +<p> +'<i>You</i> cry in secret? This is news—' +</p> + +<p> +'Yes, yes, I cly. Is not the burden of the world heavy upon me, too? and the +work I have to do <i>vely, vely</i> gleat? And often and often I cly in seclet, +thinking of it: and I could cly now if I chose, for you love your little girl +so much, that you could not lesist me one minute....' +</p> + +<p> +Now I saw the push and tortion and trembling of her poor little under-lip, +boding tears: and at once a flame was in me which was altogether beyond +control; and crying out: 'why, my poor dear,' I found myself in the act of +rushing through the staggering boat to take her to me. +</p> + +<p> +Mid-way, however, I was saved: a whisper, intense as lightning, arrested me: +'Forward is no escape, nor backward, but <i>sideward</i> there may be a way!' +And at a sudden impulse, before I knew what I was doing, I was in the water +swimming. +</p> + +<p> +The smaller of the islands was two hundred yards away, and thither I swam, +rested some minutes, and thence to the Castle. I did not once look behind me. +</p> + +<hr /> + +<p> +Well, from 11 A.M. till five in the afternoon, I thought it all out, lying in +the damp flannels on my face on the sofa in the recess beside my bed, where it +was quite dark behind the tattered piece of arras: and what things I suffered +that day, and what deeps I sounded, and what prayers I prayed, God knows. What +infinitely complicated the awful problem was this thought in my head: that to +kill her would be far more merciful to her than to leave her alone, having +killed myself: and, Heaven knows, it was for her alone that I thought, not at +all caring for myself. To kill her was better: but to kill her with my own +hands—that was too hard to expect of a poor devil like me, a poor common son of +Adam, after all, and never any sublime self-immolator, as two or three of them +were. And hours I lay there with brows convulsed in an agony, groaning only +those words: 'To kill her! to kill her!' thinking sometimes that I should be +merciful to myself too, and die, and let her live, and not care, since, after +my death, I would not see her suffer, for the dead know not anything: and to +expect me to kill her with my own hand was a little too much. Yet that one or +other of us must die was perfectly certain, for I knew that I was just on the +brink of failing in my oath, and matters here had reached an obvious crisis: +unless we could make up our minds to part...? putting the width of the earth +between us? That conception occurred to me: and in the turmoil of my thoughts +it seemed a possibility. Finally, about 5 P.M., I resolved upon something: and +first I leapt up, went down and across the house into the arsenal, chose a +small revolver, fitted it with cartridge, took it up-stairs, lubricated it with +lamp-oil, went down and out across the drawbridge, walked two miles beyond the +village, shot the revolver at a tree, found its action accurate, and started +back. When I came to the Castle, I walked along the island to the outer end, +and looked up: there were her pretty cream Valenciennes, put up by herself, +waving inward before the light lake-breeze at one open oriel; and I knew that +she was in the Castle, for I felt it: and always, always, when she was within, +I knew, for I felt her with me; and always when she was away, I knew, I felt, +for the air had a dreadful drought, and a barrenness, in it. And I looked up +for a time to see if she would come to the window, and then I called, and she +appeared. And I said to her: 'Come down here.' +</p> + +<hr /> + +<p> +Just here there is a little rock-path to the south, going down to the water +between rocks mixed with shrub-like little trees, three yards long: a path, or +a lane, one might call it, for at the lower end the rocks and trees reach well +over a tall man's head. There she had tied my boat to a slender linden-trunk: +and sadder now than Gethsemane that familiar boat seemed to my eyes, for I knew +very well that I should never enter it more. I walked up and down the path, +awaiting her: and from the jacket-pocket in which lay the revolver I drew a box +of Swedish matches, from it took two matches, and broke off a bit from the +plain end of one; and the two I held between my left thumb and forefinger +joint, the phosphorus ends level and visible, the other ends invisible: and I +awaited her, pacing fast, and my brow was as stern as Azrael and Rhadamanthus. +</p> + +<p> +She came, very pale, poor thing, and flurried, breathing fast. And 'Leda,' I +said, meeting her in the middle of the lane, and going straight to the point, +'we are to part, as you guess—for ever, as you guess—for I see very well by +your face that you guess. I, too, am very sorry, my little child, and heavy is +my heart. To leave you ... alone ... in the world ... is—death for me. But it +must, ah it must, be done.' +</p> + +<p> +Her face suddenly turned as sallow as the dead were, when the shroud was +already on, and the coffin had become a stale added piece of room-furniture by +the bed-side; but in recording that fact, I record also this other: that, +accompanying this mortal sallowness, which painfully shewed up her poor +freckles, was a steady smile, a little turned-down: a smile of steady, of +slightly disdainful—Confidence. +</p> + +<p> +She did not say anything: so I went on. +</p> + +<p> +'I have thought long,' said I, 'and I have made a plan—a plan which cannot be +effective without <i>your</i> consent and co-operation: and the plan is this: +we go from this place together—this same night—to some unknown spot, some town, +say a hundred miles hence—by train. There I get two motors, and I in one, and +you in the other, we separate, going different ways. We shall thus never be +able, however much we may want to, to rediscover each other in all this wide +world. That is my plan.' +</p> + +<p> +She looked me in the face, smiling her smile: and the answer was not long in +coming. +</p> + +<p> +'I will go in the tlain with you,' says she with slow decisiveness: 'but where +you leave me, there I will stay, till I die; and I will patiently wait till my +God convert you, and send you back to me.' +</p> + +<p> +'That means that you refuse to do what I say?' +</p> + +<p> +'Yes,' said she, bowing the head with great dignity. +</p> + +<p> +'Well, you speak, not like a girl, Leda,' said I, 'but like a full woman now. +But still, reflect a minute.... O reflect! If you stayed where I left you, I +<i>should</i> go back to you, and pretty soon, too: I know that I should. Tell +me, then—reflect well, and tell me—do you definitely refuse to part with me?' +</p> + +<p> +The answer was pretty prompt, cool, and firm: +</p> + +<p> +'Yes; I lefuse.' +</p> + +<p> +I left her then, took a turn down the path, and came back. +</p> + +<p> +'Then,' said I, 'here are two matches in my grasp: be good enough to draw one.' +</p> + +<p> +<i>Now</i> she was hit to the heart: I saw her eyes widen to the width of +horror, with a glassy stare: she had read of the drawing of lots in the Bible: +she knew that it meant death for me, or for her. +</p> + +<p> +But she obeyed without a word, after one backward start and then a brief +hovering in decision of thumb and forefinger over my held-out hand. I had fixed +it in my mind that if she drew the shorter of the matches, then she should die; +if the longer, then I should die. +</p> + +<p> +She drew the shorter.... +</p> + +<hr /> + +<p> +This was only what I should have expected: for I knew that God loved her, and +hated me. +</p> + +<p> +But instantly upon the first shock of the enormity that I should be her +executioner, I made my resolve: to drop shot, too, at the moment after she +dropped shot, so disposing my body, that it would fall half upon her, and half +by her, so that we might be close always: and that would not be so bad, after +all. +</p> + +<p> +With a sudden movement I snatched the revolver from my pocket: she did not +move, except her white lips, which, I think, whispered: +</p> + +<p> +'<i>Not yet</i>....' +</p> + +<p> +I stood with hanging arm, forefinger on trigger, looking at her. I saw her +glance once at the weapon, and then she fixed her eyes upwards upon my face: +and now that same smile, which had disappeared, was on her lips again, meaning +confidence, meaning disdain. +</p> + +<p> +I waited for her to open her mouth to say something—to stop that smile—that I +might shoot her quick and sudden: and she would not, knowing that I could not +kill her while she was smiling; and suddenly, all my pity and love for her +changed into a strange resentment and rage against her, for she was purposely +making hard for me what I was doing for her sake: and the bitter thought was in +my mind: 'You are nothing to me: if you want to die, you do your own killing; +and I will do my own killing.' And without one word to her, I strode away, and +left her there. +</p> + +<p> +I see now that this whole drawing of lots was nothing more than a farce: I +never could have killed her, smiling, or no smiling: for to each thing and man +is given a certain strength: and a thing cannot be stronger than its strength, +strive as it may: it is so strong, and no stronger, and there is an end of the +matter. +</p> + +<p> +I walked up to the Grand Bailli's <i>bureau</i>, a room about twenty-five feet +from the ground. By this time it was getting pretty dark, but I could see, by +peering, the face of a grandfather's-clock which I had long since set going, +and kept wound. It is on the north side of the room, over the writing-desk +opposite the oriels. It then pointed to half-past six, and in order to fix some +definite moment for the bitter effort of the mortal act, I said: 'At Seven.' I +then locked the door which opens upon three little steps near the desk, and +also the stair-door; and I began to pace the chamber. There was not a breath of +air here, and I was hot; I seemed to be stifling, tore open my shirt at the +throat, and opened the lower half of the central mullion-space of one oriel. +Some minutes later, at twenty-five to seven, I lit two candles on the desk, and +sat to write to her, the pistol at my right hand; but I had hardly begun, when +I thought that I heard a sound at the three-step door, which was only four feet +to my left: a sound which resembled a scraping of her slipper; I stole to the +door, and crouched, listening: but I could hear nothing further. I then +returned to the desk, and set to writing, giving her some last directions for +her life, telling her why I died, how I loved her, much better than my own +soul, begging her to love me always, and to live on to please me, but if she +<i>would</i> die, then to be sure to die near me. Tears were pouring down my +face, when, turning, I saw her standing in a terrified pose hardly two feet +behind me. The absolute stealth which had brought and put her there, unknown to +me, was like miracle: for the ladder, whose top I saw intruding into the open +oriel, I knew well, having often seen it in a room below, and its length was +quite thirty feet, nor could its weight be trifling: yet I had heard not one +hint of its impact upon the window. But there, at all events, she was, wan as a +ghost. +</p> + +<p> +Immediately, as my consciousness realised her, my hand instinctively went out +to secure the weapon: but she darted upon it, and was an instant before me. I +flew after her to wrench it away, but she flew, too: and before I caught her, +had thrown it cleanly through two rungs of the ladder and the window. I dashed +to the window, and after a hurried peer thought that I saw it below at the foot +of a rock; away I flew to the stair-door, wrung open the lock, and down the +stairs, three at a time, I ran to recover it. I remember being rather surprised +that she did not follow, forgetting all about the ladder. +</p> + +<p> +But with a horrid shock I was reminded of it the moment I reached the bottom, +before ever I had passed from the house: for I heard the report of the +weapon—that crack, my God! and crying out: 'Well, Lord, she has died for me, +then!' I tottered forward, and tumbled upon her, where she lay under the +incline of the ladder in her blood. +</p> + +<hr /> + +<p> +That night! what a night it was! of fingers shivering with haste, of +harum-scarum quests and searches, of groans, and piteous appeals to God. For +there were no surgical instruments, lint, anaesthetics, nor antiseptics that I +knew of in the Château; and though I knew of a house in Montreux where I could +find them, the distance was quite infinite, and the time an eternity in which +to leave her all alone, bleeding to death; and, to my horror, I remembered that +there was barely enough petrol in the motor, and the store usually kept in the +house exhausted. However, I did it, leaving her there unconscious on her bed: +but <i>how</i> I did it, and lived sane afterwards, that is another matter. +</p> + +<p> +If I had not been a medical man, she must, I think, have died: for the bullet +had broken the left fifth rib, had been deflected, and I found it buried in the +upper part of the abdominal wall. I did not go from her bed-side: I did not +sleep, though I nodded and staggered: for all things were nothing to me, but +her: and for a frightfully long time she remained comatose. While she was still +in this state I took her to a chalet beyond Villeneuve, three miles away on the +mountain-side, a homely, but very salubrious place which I knew, imbedded in +verdures, for I was desperate at her long collapse, and had hope in the higher +air. And there after three more days, she opened her eyes, and smiled with me. +</p> + +<p> +It was then that I said to myself: 'This is the noblest, sagest, and also the +most loveable, of the creatures whom God has made in heaven or earth. She has +won my life, and I will live.... But at least, to save myself, I will put the +broadest Ocean that there is between her and me: for I wish to be a decent +being, for the honour of my race, being the last, and to turn out trumps ... +though I do love my dear, God knows....' +</p> + +<p> +And thus, after only fifty-five days at the chalet, were we forced still +further Westward. +</p> + +<hr /> + +<p> +I wished her to remain at Chillon, intending, myself, to start for the +Americas, whence any sudden impulse to return to her could not be easily +accomplished: but she refused, saying that she would come with me to the coast +of France: and I could not say her no. +</p> + +<p> +And at the coast, after thirteen days we arrived, three days before the New +Year, traversing France by steam, air, and petrol traction. +</p> + +<p> +We came to Havre—infirm, infirm of will that I was: for in my deep heart was +the secret, hidden away from my own upper self, that, she being at Havre, and I +at Portsmouth, we could still speak together. +</p> + +<p> +We came humming into the dark town of Havre in a four-seat motor-car about ten +in the evening of the 29th December: a raw bleak night, she, it was clear, poor +thing, bitterly cramped with cold. I had some recollection of the place, for I +had been there, and drove to the quays, near which I stopped at the +<i>Maire's</i> large house, a palatial place overlooking the sea, in which she +slept, I occupying another near. +</p> + +<p> +The next morning I was early astir, searched in the <i>mairie</i> for a map of +the town, where I also found a <i>Bottin</i>: I could thus locate the Telephone +Exchange. In the <i>Maire's</i> house, which I had fixed upon to be her home, +the telephone was set up in an alcove adjoining a very stately <i>salon</i> +Louis Quinze; and though I knew that these little dry batteries would not be +run down in twenty odd years, yet, fearing any weakness, I broke open the box, +and substituted a new one from the Company's stores two streets away, at the +same time noting the exchange-number of the instrument. This done, I went down +among the ships by the wharves, and fixed upon the first old green air-boat +that seemed fairly sound, broke open a near shop, procured some buckets of oil, +and by three o'clock had tested and prepared my ship. It was a dull and +mournful day, drizzling, chilly. I returned then to the <i>mairie</i>, where +for the first time I saw her, and she was heavy of heart that day: but when I +broke the news that she would be able to speak to me, every day, all day, first +she was all incredulous astonishment, then, for a moment, her eyes turned white +to Heaven, then she was skipping like a kid. We were together three precious +hours, examining the place, and returning with stores of whatever she might +require, till I saw darkness coming on, and we went down to the ship. +</p> + +<p> +And when those long-dead screws awoke and moved, bearing me toward the Outer +Basin, I saw her stand darkling, lonely, on the Quai through heart-rending murk +and drizzly inclemency: and oh my God, the gloomy under-look of those red eyes, +and the piteous out-push of that little lip, and the hurried burying of that +face! My heart broke, for I had not given her even one little, last kiss, and +she had been so good, quietly acquiescing, like a good wife, not attempting to +force her presence upon me in the ship; and I left her there, all widowed, +alone on the Continent of Europe, watching after me: and I went out to the +bleak and dreary fields of the sea. +</p> + +<hr /> + +<p> +Arriving at Portsmouth the next morning, I made my residence in the first house +in which I found an instrument, a spacious dwelling facing the Harbour Pier. I +then hurried round to the Exchange, which is on the Hard near the Docks, a +large red building with facings of Cornish moor-stone, a bank on the +ground-floor, and the Exchange on the first. Here I plugged her number on to +mine, ran back, rang—and, to my great thanksgiving, heard her speak. (This +instrument, however, did not prove satisfactory: I broke the box, and put in +another battery, and still the voice was muffled: finally, I furnished the +middle room at the Exchange with a truckle-bed, stores, and a few things, and +here have taken up residence.) +</p> + +<p> +I believe that she lives and sleeps under the instrument, as I here live and +sleep, sleep and live, under it. My instrument is quite near one of the +harbour-windows, so that, hearing her, I can gaze out toward her over the +expanse of waters, yet see her not; and she, too, looking over the sea toward +me, can hear a voice from the azure depths of nowhere, yet see me not. +</p> + +<hr /> + +<p> +I this morning early to her: +</p> + +<p> +'Good morning! Are you there?' +</p> + +<p> +'Good morning! No: I am there,' says she. +</p> + +<p> +'Well, that was what I asked—"are you there"?' +</p> + +<p> +'But I not here, I am there,' says she. +</p> + +<p> +'I know very well that you are not "here,"' said I, 'for I do not see you: but +I asked if you were there, and you say "No," and then "Yes."' +</p> + +<p> +'It is the paladox of the heart,' says she. +</p> + +<p> +'The what?' +</p> + +<p> +'The paladox,' says she. +</p> + +<p> +'But still I do not understand: how can you be both there and not there?' +</p> + +<p> +'If my ear is here, and I elsewhere?' says she. +</p> + +<p> +'An operation?' +</p> + +<p> +'Yes!' says she. +</p> + +<p> +'What doctor?' +</p> + +<p> +'A specialist!' says she. +</p> + +<p> +'An ear-specialist?' +</p> + +<p> +'A heart!' says she. +</p> + +<p> +'And you let a heart-specialist operate on your ear?' +</p> + +<p> +'On myself he operlated, and left the ear behind!' says she. +</p> + +<p> +'Well, and how are you after it?' +</p> + +<p> +'Fairly well. Are you?' says she. +</p> + +<p> +'Quite well. Did you sleep well?' +</p> + +<p> +'Except when you lang me up at midnight. I have had such a dleam ...' +</p> + +<p> +'What?' +</p> + +<p> +'I dleamed that I saw two little boys of the same age—only I could not see +their faces, I never can see anybody's face, only yours and mine, mine and +yours always—of the same age—playing in a wood....' +</p> + +<p> +'Ah, I hope that one of them was not called Cain, my poor girl.' +</p> + +<p> +'Not at all! neither of them! Suppose I tell a stoly, and say that one was +called Caius and the other Tibelius, or one John and the other Jesus?' +</p> + +<p> +'Ah. Well, tell me the <i>dleam</i>....' +</p> + +<p> +'Now you do not deserve.' +</p> + +<p> +'Well, what will you do to-day?' +</p> + +<p> +'I? It is a lovely day ... have you nice weather in England?' +</p> + +<p> +'Very.' +</p> + +<p> +'Well, between eleven and twelve I will go out and gather Spling-flowers in the +park, and cover the salon deep, deep. Wouldn't you like to be here?' +</p> + +<p> +'Not I.' +</p> + +<p> +'You would!' +</p> + +<p> +'Why should I? I prefer England.' +</p> + +<p> +'But Flance is nice too: and Flance wants to be fliends with England, and is +waiting, oh waiting, for England to come over, and be fliends. Couldn't some +<i>lapplochement</i> be negotiated?' +</p> + +<p> +'Good-bye. This talking spoils my morning smoke....' +</p> + +<p> +So we speak together across the sea, my God. +</p> + +<hr /> + +<p> +On the morning of the 8th April, when I had been separated thirteen weeks from +her, I boarded several ships in the Inner Port, a lunacy in my heart, and +selected what looked like a very swift boat, one of the smaller Atlantic +air-steamers called the <i>Stettin</i>, which seemed to require the least +labour in oiling, &c., in order to fit her for the sea: for the boat in +which I had come to England was a mere tub, though sound, and I pined for the +wings of a dove, that I might fly away to her, and be at rest. +</p> + +<p> +I toiled with fluttering hands that day, and I believe that I was of the colour +of ashes to my very lips. By half-past two o'clock I was finished, and by three +was coasting down Southampton Water by Netley Hospital and the Hamble-mouth, +having said not one word about anything at the telephone, or even to my own +guilty heart not a word. But in the silent depths of my being I felt this fact: +that this must be a 35-knot boat, and that, if driven hard, hard, in spite of +the heavy garment of seaweed which she trailed, she would do 30; also that +Havre was 120 miles away, and at 7 P.M. I should be on its quay. +</p> + +<p> +And when I was away, and out on the bright and breezy sea, I called to her, +crying out: '<i>I am coming!</i>' And I knew that she heard me, and that her +heart leapt to meet me, for mine leapt, too, and felt her answering. +</p> + +<p> +The sun went down: it set. I was tired of the day's work, and of standing at +the high-set wheel; and I could not yet see the coast of France. And a thought +smote me, and after another ten minutes I turned the ship's head back, my face +screwed with pain, God knows, like a man whose thumbs are ground between the +screws, and his body drawn out and out on the rack to tenuous length, and his +flesh massacred with pincers: and I fell upon the floor of the bridge contorted +with anguish: for I could not go to her. But after a time that paroxysm passed, +and I rose up sullen and resentful, and resumed my place at the wheel, steering +back for England: for a fixed resolve was in my breast, and I said: 'Oh no, no +more. If I could bear it, I would, I would ... but if it is impossible, how can +I? To-morrow night as the sun sets—without fail—so help me God—I will kill +myself.' +</p> + +<hr /> + +<p> +So it is finished, my good God. +</p> + +<p> +On the early morning of the next day, the 9th, I having come back to Portsmouth +about eleven the previous night, when I bid her 'Good morning' through the +telephone, she said 'Good morning,' and not another word. I said: +</p> + +<p> +'I got my hookah-bowl broken last night, and shall be trying to mend it +to-day.' +</p> + +<p> +No answer. +</p> + +<p> +'Are you there?' said I. +</p> + +<p> +'Yes,' says she. +</p> + +<p> +'Then why don't you answer?' said I. +</p> + +<p> +'Where were you all yesterday?' says she. +</p> + +<p> +'I went for a little cruise in the basin,' said I. +</p> + +<p> +Silence for three minutes: then she says: +</p> + +<p> +'What is the matter?' +</p> + +<p> +'Matter?' said I, 'nothing!' +</p> + +<p> +'<i>Tell me!</i>' she says—with such an intensity and rage, as to make me +shudder. +</p> + +<p> +'There is nothing to tell, Leda!' +</p> + +<p> +'Oh, but how can you be so <i>cluel</i> to me?' she cries, and ah, there was +anguish in that voice! 'There is something to tell—there <i>is!</i> Don't I +know it vely well by your voice?' +</p> + +<p> +Ah, the thought took me then, how, on the morrow, she would ring, and have no +answer; and she would ring again, and have no answer; and she would ring all +day, and ring, and ring; and for ever she would ring, with white-flowing hair +and the staring eye-balls of frenzy, battering reproaches at the doors of God, +and the Universe would cry back to her howls and ravings only one eternal +answer of Silence, of Silence. And as I thought of that—for very pity, for very +pity, my God—I could not help sobbing aloud: +</p> + +<p> +'May God pity you, woman!' +</p> + +<p> +I do not know if she heard it: she <i>must</i>, I think, have heard: but no +reply came; and there I, shivering like the sheeted dead, stood waiting for her +next word, waiting long, dreading, hoping for, her voice, thinking that if she +spoke and sobbed but once, I should drop dead, dead, where I stood, or bite my +tongue through, or shriek the high laugh of distraction. But when at last, +after quite thirty or forty minutes she spoke, her voice was perfectly firm and +calm. She said: +</p> + +<p> +'Are you there?' +</p> + +<p> +'Yes,' said I, 'yes, Leda.' +</p> + +<p> +'What was the color,' says she, 'of the poison-cloud which destroyed the +world?' +</p> + +<p> +'Purple, Leda,' said I. +</p> + +<p> +'And it had a smell like almonds or peach blossoms, did it not?' says she. +</p> + +<p> +'Yes,' said I, 'yes.' +</p> + +<p> +'Then,' says she, 'there is <i>another</i> eruption. Every now and again I seem +to scent strange whiffs like that ... and there is a purple vapour in the East +which glows and glows ... just see if you can see it....' +</p> + +<p> +I flew across the room to an east window, threw up the grimy sash, and looked. +But the view was barred by the plain brick back of a tall warehouse. I rushed +back, gasped to her to wait, rushed down the two stairs, and out upon the Hard. +For a minute I ran dodging wildly about, seeking a purview to the East, and +finally ran up the dockyard, behind the storehouses to the Semaphore, and +reached the top, panting for life. I looked abroad. The morning sky, but for a +bank of cloud to the north-west, was cloudless, the sun blazing in a region of +clear azure pallor. And back again I flew. +</p> + +<p> +'I cannot see it...!' I cried. +</p> + +<p> +'Then it has not tlavelled far enough to the north-west yet,' she said with +decision. +</p> + +<p> +'My wife!' I cried: 'you are my wife now!' +</p> + +<p> +'Am I?' says she: 'at last? Are you glad?... But shall I not soon die?' +</p> + +<p> +'No! You can escape! My home! My heart! If only for an hour or two, then +death—just think, together—on the same couch, for ever, heart to heart—how +sweet!' +</p> + +<p> +'Yes! how sweet! But how escape?' +</p> + +<p> +'It travelled slowly before. Get quick—will you?—into one of the smaller boats +by the quay—there is one just under the crane that is an air-boat—you have seen +me turn on the air, haven't you?—that handle on the right as you descend the +steps under the dial-thing—get first a bucket of oil from the shop next to the +clock-tower in the quay-street, and throw it over everything that you see +rusted. Only, spend no time—for me, my heaven! You can steer by the tiller and +compass: well, the wheel is quite the same, only just the opposite. First +unmoor, then to the handle, then to the wheel. The course is directly +North-East by North. I will meet you on the sea—go now—' +</p> + +<p> +I was wild with bliss. I thought that I should take her between my arms, and +have the little freckles against my face, and taste her short firm-fleshed +upper-lip, and moan upon her, and whimper upon her, and mutter upon her, and +say 'My wife.' And even when I knew that she was gone from the telephone, I +still stood there, hoarsely calling after her: 'My wife! My wife!' +</p> + +<hr /> + +<p> +I flew down to where the steamer lay moored that had borne me the previous day. +Her joint speed with the speed of Leda's boat would be forty knots: in three +hours we must meet. I had not the least fear of her dying before I saw her: +for, apart from the deliberate movement of the vapour that first time, I +fore-tasted and trusted my love, that she would surely come, and not fail: as +dying saints fore-tasted and trusted Eternal Life. +</p> + +<p> +I was no sooner on board the <i>Stettin</i> than her engines were straining +under what was equivalent to forced draught. On the previous day it would have +little surprised me at any moment, while I drove her, to be carried to the +clouds in an explosion from her deep-rusted steel tanks: but this day such a +fear never crossed my mind: for I knew very well that I was immortal till I saw +her. +</p> + +<p> +The sea was not only perfectly smooth, but placid, as on the previous day: only +it seemed far placider, and the sun brighter, and there was a levity in the +breezes that frilled the sea in fugitive dark patches, like <i>frissons</i> of +tickling; and I thought that the morning was a true marriage-morning, and +remembered that it was a Sabbath; and sweet odours our wedding would not lack +of peach and almond, though, looking eastward, I could see no faintest sign of +any purple cloud, but only rags of chiffon under the sun; and it would be an +eternal wedding, for one day in our sight would be as a thousand years, and our +thousand years of bliss would be but one day, and in the evening of all that +eternity death would come and sweetly lay its finger upon our languid lids, and +we should die of weary bliss; and all manner of dancings and singings—fandango +and light galliard, corantoes and the solemn gavotte—were a-tune in my heart +that happy day; and running by the chart-house to the wheel, I saw under the +table a great roll of old flags, and presently they were flying in a long curve +of gala from the main; and the sea rumpled in a long tract of tumbling milk +behind me; and I hasted homeward, to meet my heart. +</p> + +<hr /> + +<p> +No purple cloud could I see as, on and on, for two hours, I tore southward: but +at hot noon, on the weather beam I spied through the glass across the water +something else which moved, and it was you who came to me, Oh Leda, my spirit's +breath! +</p> + +<p> +I bore down upon her, waving: and soon I saw her stand like an ancient mariner, +but in white muslins that fluttered, at her wheel on the bridge—it was one of +those little old Havre-Antwerp craft very high in the bows—and she waved a +little white thing. And we came nearer, till I could spy her face, her smile, +and I shouted her to stop, and in a minute stopped myself, and by happy +steering came with slowing headway to a slight crash by her side, and ran down +the trellised steps to her, and led her up; and on the deck, without saying a +word, I fell to my knees before her, and I bowed my brow to the floor, with +obeisance, and I worshipped her there as Heaven. +</p> + +<p> +And we were wedded: for she, too, bowed the knee with me under the jovial blue +sky; and under her eyes were the little moist semicircles of dreamy pensive +fatigue, so dear and wifish: and God was there, and saw her kneel: for He loves +the girl. +</p> + +<p> +And I got the two ships apart, and they rested there some yards divided all the +day, and we were in the main-deck cabin, where I had locked a door, so that no +one might come in to be with my love and me. +</p> + +<hr /> + +<p> +I said to her: +</p> + +<p> +'We will fly west to one of the Somersetshire coal-mines, or to one of the +Cornwall tin-mines, and we will barricade ourselves against the cloud, and +provision ourselves for six months—for it is perfectly feasible, and we have +plenty of time, and no crowds to break down our barricades—and there in the +deep earth we will live sweetly together, till the danger is overpast.' +</p> + +<p> +And she smiled, and drew her hand across my face, and said: +</p> + +<p> +'No, no: don't you tlust in my God? do you think He would leally let me die?' +</p> + +<p> +For she has appropriated the Almighty God to herself, naming Him '<i>my</i> +God'—the impudence: though she generally knows what she is saying, too. And she +would not fly the cloud. +</p> + +<p> +And I am now writing three weeks later at a little place called +Château-les-Roses, and no poison-cloud, and no sign of any poison-cloud, has +come. And this I do not understand. +</p> + +<p> +It may be that she divined that I was about to destroy myself ... she may be +quite capable.... But no, I do not understand, and shall never ask her. +</p> + +<p> +But <i>this</i> I understand: that it is <i>the White</i> who is Master here: +that though he wins but by a hair, yet he wins, he wins: and since he wins, +dance, dance, my heart. +</p> + +<p> +I look for a race that shall resemble its Mother: nimble-witted, light-minded, +pious—like her; all-human, ambidextrous, ambicephalous, two-eyed—like her; and +if, like her, they talk the English language with all the r's turned into l's, +I shall not care. +</p> + +<p> +They will be vegetable-eaters, I suppose, when all the meat now extant is eaten +up: but it is not certain that meat is good for men: and if it is really good, +then they will <i>invent</i> a meat: for they will be <i>her</i> sons, and she, +to the furthest cycle in which the female human mind is permitted to orbit, is, +I swear, all-wise. +</p> + +<p> +There was a preaching man—a Scotchman he was, named Macintosh, or something +like that—who said that the last end of Man shall be well, and very well: and +she says the same: and the agreement of these two makes a Truth. And to that I +now say: Amen, Amen. +</p> + +<p> +For I, Adam Jeffson, second Parent of the world, hereby lay down, ordain, and +decree for all time, clearly perceiving it now: That the one Motto and +Watch-word essentially proper to each human individual, and to the whole Race +of Man, as distinct from other races in heaven or in earth, was always, and +remains, even this: 'Though He slay me, yet will I trust in Him.' +</p> + +<p class="center"> +THE END. +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div style='display:block; margin-top:4em'>*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE PURPLE CLOUD ***</div> +<div style='text-align:left'> + +<div style='display:block; margin:1em 0'> +Updated editions will replace the previous one—the old editions will +be renamed. +</div> + +<div style='display:block; margin:1em 0'> +Creating the works from print editions not protected by U.S. copyright +law means that no one owns a United States copyright in these works, +so the Foundation (and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United +States without permission and without paying copyright +royalties. 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You may copy it, give it away or +re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included +with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org + + +Title: The Purple Cloud + +Author: M.P. Shiel + +Release Date: February 22, 2004 [EBook #11229] + +Language: English + +Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1 + +*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE PURPLE CLOUD *** + + + + +Produced by Suzanne Shell, Garrett Alley, Maria Khomenko and PG +Distributed Proofreaders + + + + + +THE PURPLE CLOUD + +By + +M.P. Shiel + +1901 + + + + +[Greek: estai kai Samos ammos, eseitai Daelos adaelos] + +_Sibylline Prophecy_ + + + + +INTRODUCTION + + +About three months ago--that is to say, toward the end of May of this +year of 1900--the writer whose name appears on the title-page received +as noteworthy a letter, and packet of papers, as it has been his lot to +examine. They came from a very good friend of mine, whose name there is +no reason that I should now conceal--Dr. Arthur Lister Browne, M.A. +(Oxon.), F.R.C.P. It happened that for two years I had been spending +most of my time in France, and as Browne had a Norfolk practice, I had +not seen him during my visits to London. Moreover, though our friendship +was of the most intimate kind, we were both atrocious correspondents: so +that only two notes passed between us during those years. + +Till, last May, there reached me the letter--and the packet--to which I +refer. The packet consisted of four note-books, quite crowded +throughout with those giddy shapes of Pitman's shorthand, whose +_ensemble_ so resembles startled swarms hovering in flighty poses on the +wing. They were scribbled in pencil, with little distinction between +thick and thin strokes, few vowels: so that their slow deciphering, I +can assure the reader, has been no holiday. The letter also was +pencilled in shorthand; and this letter, together with the second of the +note-books which I have deciphered (it was marked 'III.'), I now +publish. + +[I must say, however, that in some five instances there will occur +sentences rather crutched by my own guess-work; and in two instances the +characters were so impossibly mystical, that I had to abandon the +passage with a head-ache. But all this will be found immaterial to the +general narrative.] + +The following is Browne's letter: + +'DEAR OLD SHIEL,--I have just been lying thinking of you, and wishing +that you were here to give one a last squeeze of the hand before +I--"_go_": for, by all appearance, "going" I am. Four days ago, I began +to feel a soreness in the throat, and passing by old Johnson's surgery +at Selbridge, went in and asked him to have a look at me. He muttered +something about membranous laryngitis which made me smile, but by the +time I reached home I was hoarse, and not smiling: before night I had +dyspnoca and laryngeal stridor. I at once telegraphed to London for +Morgan, and, between him and Johnson, they have been opening my trachea, +and burning my inside with chromic acid and the galvanic cautery. The +difficulty as to breathing has subsided, and it is wonderful how little +I suffer: but I am much too old a hand not to know what's what: the +bronchi are involved--_too far_ involved--and as a matter of absolute +fact, there isn't any hope. Morgan is still, I believe, fondly dwelling +upon the possibility of adding me to his successful-tracheotomy +statistics, but prognosis was always my strong point, and I say No. The +very small consolation of my death will be the beating of a specialist +in his own line. So we shall see. + +'I have been arranging some of my affairs this morning, and remembered +these notebooks. I intended letting you have them months ago, but my +habit of putting things off, and the fact that the lady was alive from +whom I took down the words, prevented me. Now she is dead, and as a +literary man, and a student of life, you should be interested, if you +can manage to read them. You may even find them valuable. + +'I am under a little morphia at present, propped up in a nice little +state of languor, and as I am able to write without much effort, I will +tell you in the old Pitman's something about her. Her name was Miss Mary +Wilson; she was about thirty when I met her, forty-five when she died, +and I knew her intimately all those fifteen years. Do you know anything +about the philosophy of the hypnotic trance? Well, that was the relation +between us--hypnotist and subject. She had been under another man before +my time, but no one was ever so successful with her as I. She suffered +from _tic douloureux_ of the fifth nerve. She had had most of her teeth +drawn before I saw her, and an attempt had been made to wrench out the +nerve on the left side by the external scission. But it made no +difference: all the clocks in hell tick-tacked in that poor woman's jaw, +and it was the mercy of Providence that ever she came across _me_. My +organisation was found to have almost complete, and quite easy, control +over hers, and with a few passes I could expel her Legion. + +'Well, you never saw anyone so singular in personal appearance as my +friend, Miss Wilson. Medicine-man as I am, I could never behold her +suddenly without a sensation of shock: she suggested so inevitably what +we call "the _other_ world," one detecting about her some odour of the +worm, with the feeling that here was rather ghost than woman. And yet I +can hardly convey to you the why of this, except by dry details as to +the contours of her lofty brow, meagre lips, pointed chin, and ashen +cheeks. She was tall and deplorably emaciated, her whole skeleton, +except the thigh-bones, being quite visible. Her eyes were of the bluish +hue of cigarette smoke, and had in them the strangest, feeble, unearthly +gaze; while at thirty-five her paltry wisp of hair was quite white. + +'She was well-to-do, and lived alone in old Wooding Manor-house, five +miles from Ash Thomas. As you know, I was "beginning" in these parts at +the time, and soon took up my residence at the manor. She insisted that +I should devote myself to her alone; and that one patient constituted +the most lucrative practice which I ever had. + +'Well, I quickly found that, in the state of trance, Miss Wilson +possessed very remarkable powers: remarkable, I mean, not, of course, +because peculiar to herself in _kind_, but because they were so +constant, reliable, exact, and far-reaching, in degree. The veriest +fledgling in psychical science will now sit and discourse finically to +you about the reporting powers of the mind in its trance state--just as +though it was something quite new! This simple fact, I assure you, which +the Psychical Research Society, only after endless investigation, admits +to be scientific, has been perfectly well known to every old crone since +the Middle Ages, and, I assume, long previously. What an unnecessary air +of discovery! The certainty that someone in trance in Manchester can +tell you what is going on in London, or in Pekin, was not, of course, +left to the acumen of an office in Fleet Street; and the society, in +establishing the fact beyond doubt for the general public, has not gone +one step toward explaining it. They have, in fact, revealed nothing that +many of us did not, with absolute assurance, know before. + +'But talking of poor Miss Wilson, I say that her powers were +_remarkable_, because, though not exceptional in _genre_, they were so +special in quantity,--so "constant," and "far-reaching." I believe it to +be a fact that, _in general_, the powers of trance manifest themselves +more particularly with regard to space, as distinct from time: the +spirit roams in the present--it travels over a plain--it does not +_usually_ attract the interest of observers by great ascents, or by +great descents. I fancy that is so. But Miss Wilson's gift was special +to this extent, that she travelled in every direction, and easily in all +but one, north and south, up and down, in the past, the present, and the +future. + +This I discovered, not at once, but gradually. She would emit a stream +of sounds in the trance state--I can hardly call it _speech_, so +murmurous, yet guttural, was the utterance, mixed with puffy +breath-sounds at the languid lips. This state was accompanied by an +intense contraction of the pupils, absence of the knee-jerk, +considerable rigor, and a rapt and arrant expression. I got into the +habit of sitting long hours at her bed-side, quite fascinated by her, +trying to catch the import of that opiate and visionary language which +came puffing and fluttering in deliberate monotone from her lips. +Gradually, in the course of months, my ear learned to detect the words; +"the veil was rent" for me also; and I was able to follow somewhat the +course of her musing and wandering spirit. + +At the end of six months I heard her one day repeat some words which +were familiar to me. They were these: "Such were the arts by which the +Romans extended their conquests, and attained the palm of victory; and +the concurring testimony of different authors enables us to describe +them with precision..." I was startled: they are part of Gibbon's +"Decline and Fall," which I easily guessed that she had never read. + +I said in a stern voice: "Where are you?" + +She replied, "Us are in a room, eight hundred and eleven miles above. A +man is writing. Us are reading." + +I may tell you two things: first, that in trance she never spoke of +herself as "I," nor even as "we," but, for some unknown reason, in the +_objective_ way, as "_us_": "us are," she would say--"us will," "us +went"; though, of course, she was an educated lady, and I don't think +ever lived in the West of England, where they say "us" in that way; +secondly, when wandering in the past, she always represented herself as +being "_above_" (the earth?), and higher the further back in time she +went; in describing present events she appears to have felt herself _on_ +(the earth); while, as regards the future, she invariably declared that +"_us_" were so many miles "within" (the earth). + +To her excursions in this last direction, however, there seemed to exist +certain fixed limits: I say seemed, for I cannot be sure, and only mean +that, in spite of my efforts, she never, in fact, went far in this +direction. Three, four thousand "miles" were common figures on her lips +in describing her distance "above"; but her distance "within" never got +beyond sixty-three. Usually, she would say twenty, twenty-five. She +appeared, in relation to the future, to resemble a diver in the deep +sea, who, the deeper he strives, finds a more resistant pressure, till, +at no great depth, resistance becomes prohibition, and he can no further +strive. + +'I am afraid I can't go on: though I had a good deal to tell you about +this lady. During fifteen years, off and on, I sat listening by her dim +bed-side to her murmuring trances! At last my expert ear could detect +the sense of her faintest sigh. I heard the "Decline and Fall" from +beginning to end. Some of her reports were the most frivolous nonsense: +over others I have hung in a horror of interest. Certainly, my friend, I +have heard some amazing words proceed from those wan lips of Mary +Wilson. Sometimes I could hitch her repeatedly to any scene or subject +that I chose by the mere exercise of my will; at others, the flighty +waywardness of her spirit eluded and baffled me: she resisted--she +disobeyed: otherwise I might have sent you, not four note-books, but +twenty, or forty. About the fifth year it struck me that it would be +well to jot down her more connected utterances, since I knew shorthand. + +The note-book marked "I.," [1] which seems to me the most curious, +belongs to the seventh year. Its history, like those of the other three, +is this: I heard her one afternoon murmuring in the intonation used when +_reading_; the matter interested me; I asked her where she was. She +replied: "Us are forty-five miles within: us read, and another writes"; +from which I concluded that she was some fifteen to thirty years in the +future, perusing an as yet unpublished work. After that, during some +weeks, I managed to keep her to the same subject, and finally, I fancy, +won pretty well the whole work. I believe you would find it striking, +and hope you will be able to read my notes. + +'But no more of Mary Wilson now. Rather let us think a little of A.L. +Browne, F.R.C.P.!--with a breathing-tube in his trachea, and Eternity +under his pillow...' [Dr. Browne's letter then continues on a subject of +no interest here.] + +[The present writer may add that Dr. Browne's prognosis of his own case +proved correct, for he passed away two days after writing the above. My +transcription of the shorthand book marked 'III.' I now proceed to give +without comment, merely reminding the reader that the words form the +substance of a book or document to be written, or to be motived +(according to Miss Wilson) in that Future, which, no less than the Past, +substantively exists in the Present--though, like the Past, we see it +not. I need only add that the title, division into paragraphs, &c., have +been arbitrarily contrived by myself for the sake of form and +convenience.] + + +[Footnote 1: This I intend to publish under the title of 'The Last +Miracle; 'II.' will bear that of 'The Lord of the Sea'; the present book +is marked 'III.' The perusal of 'IV.' I have yet finished, but so far do +not consider it suitable for publication.] + + + + +(_Here begins the note-book marked 'III.'_) + + + + +THE PURPLE CLOUD + + +Well, the memory seems to be getting rather impaired now, rather weak. +What, for instance, was the name of that parson who preached, just +before the _Boreal_ set out, about the wickedness of any further attempt +to reach the North Pole? I have forgotten! Yet four years ago it was +familiar to me as my own name. + +Things which took place before the voyage seem to be getting a little +cloudy in the memory now. I have sat here, in the loggia of this Cornish +villa, to write down some sort of account of what has happened--God +knows why, since no eye can ever read it--and at the very beginning I +cannot remember the parson's name. + +He was a strange sort of man surely, a Scotchman from Ayrshire, big and +gaunt, with tawny hair. He used to go about London streets in shough +and rough-spun clothes, a plaid flung from one shoulder. Once I saw him +in Holborn with his rather wild stalk, frowning and muttering to +himself. He had no sooner come to London, and opened chapel (I think in +Fetter Lane), than the little room began to be crowded; and when, some +years afterwards, he moved to a big establishment in Kensington, all +sorts of men, even from America and Australia, flocked to hear the +thunderstorms that he talked, though certainly it was not an age apt to +fly into enthusiasms over that species of pulpit prophets and +prophecies. But this particular man undoubtedly did wake the strong dark +feelings that sleep in the heart; his eyes were very singular and +powerful; his voice from a whisper ran gathering, like snow-balls, and +crashed, as I have heard the pack-ice in commotion far yonder in the +North; while his gestures were as uncouth and gawky as some wild man's +of the primitive ages. + +Well, this man--what _was_ his name?--Macintosh? Mackay? I think--yes, +that was it! _Mackay_. Mackay saw fit to take offence at the new attempt +to reach the Pole in the _Boreal_; and for three Sundays, when the +preparations were nearing completion, stormed against it at Kensington. + +The excitement of the world with regard to the North Pole had at this +date reached a pitch which can only be described as _fevered_, though +that word hardly expresses the strange ecstasy and unrest which +prevailed: for the abstract interest which mankind, in mere desire for +knowledge, had always felt in this unknown region, was now, suddenly, a +thousand and a thousand times intensified by a new, concrete interest--a +tremendous _money_ interest. + +And the new zeal had ceased to be healthy in its tone as the old zeal +was: for now the fierce demon Mammon was making his voice heard in this +matter. + +Within the ten years preceding the _Boreal_ expedition, no less than +twenty-seven expeditions had set out, and failed. + +The secret of this new rage lay in the last will and testament of Mr. +Charles P. Stickney of Chicago, that king of faddists, supposed to be +the richest individual who ever lived: he, just ten years before the +_Boreal_ undertaking, had died, bequeathing 175 million dollars to the +man, of whatever nationality, who first reached the Pole. + +Such was the actual wording of the will--_'the man who first reached'_: +and from this loose method of designating the person intended had +immediately burst forth a prolonged heat of controversy in Europe and +America as to whether or no the testator meant _the Chief_ of the first +expedition which reached: but it was finally decided, on the highest +legal authority, that, in any case, the actual wording of the document +held good: and that it was the individual, whatever his station in the +expedition, whose foot first reached the 90th degree of north latitude, +who would have title to the fortune. + +At all events, the public ferment had risen, as I say, to a pitch of +positive fever; and as to the _Boreal_ in particular, the daily progress +of her preparations was minutely discussed in the newspapers, everyone +was an authority on her fitting, and she was in every mouth a bet, a +hope, a jest, or a sneer: for now, at last, it was felt that success was +probable. So this Mackay had an acutely interested audience, if a +somewhat startled, and a somewhat cynical, one. + +A truly lion-hearted man this must have been, after all, to dare +proclaim a point-of-view so at variance with the spirit of his age! One +against four hundred millions, they bent one way, he the opposite, +saying that they were wrong, all wrong! People used to call him 'John +the Baptist Redivivus': and without doubt he did suggest something of +that sort. I suppose that at the time when he had the face to denounce +the _Boreal_ there was not a sovereign on any throne in Europe who, but +for shame, would have been glad of a subordinate post on board. + +On the third Sunday night of his denunciation I was there in that +Kensington chapel, and I heard him. And the wild talk he talked! He +seemed like a man delirious with inspiration. + +The people sat quite spell-bound, while Mackay's prophesying voice +ranged up and down through all the modulations of thunder, from the +hurrying mutter to the reverberant shock and climax: and those who came +to scoff remained to wonder. + +Put simply, what he said was this: That there was undoubtedly some sort +of Fate, or Doom, connected with the Poles of the earth in reference to +the human race: that man's continued failure, in spite of continual +efforts, to reach them, abundantly and super-abundantly proved this; and +that this failure constituted a lesson--_and a warning_--which the race +disregarded at its peril. + +The North Pole, he said, was not so very far away, and the difficulties +in the way of reaching it were not, on the face of them, so very great: +human ingenuity had achieved a thousand things a thousand times more +difficult; yet in spite of over half-a-dozen well-planned efforts in +the nineteenth century, and thirty-one in the twentieth, man had never +reached: always he had been baulked, baulked, by some seeming +chance--some restraining Hand: and herein lay the lesson--_herein the +warning_. Wonderfully--really _wonderfully_--like the Tree of +Knowledge in Eden, he said, was that Pole: all the rest of earth lying +open and offered to man--but _That_ persistently veiled and 'forbidden.' +It was as when a father lays a hand upon his son, with: 'Not here, my +child; wheresoever you will--but not here.' + +But human beings, he said, were free agents, with power to stop their +ears, and turn a callous consciousness to the whispers and warning +indications of Heaven; and he believed, he said, that the time was now +come when man would find it absolutely in his power to stand on that +90th of latitude, and plant an impious right foot on the head of the +earth--just as it had been given into the absolute power of Adam to +stretch an impious right hand, and pluck of the Fruit of Knowledge; but, +said he--his voice pealing now into one long proclamation of awful +augury--just as the abuse of that power had been followed in the one +case by catastrophe swift and universal, so, in the other, he warned the +entire race to look out thenceforth for nothing from God but a lowering +sky, and thundery weather. + +The man's frantic earnestness, authoritative voice, and savage gestures, +could not but have their effect upon all; as for me, I declare, I sat as +though a messenger from Heaven addressed me. But I believe that I had +not yet reached home, when the whole impression of the discourse had +passed from me like water from a duck's back. The Prophet in the +twentieth century was not a success. John Baptist himself, camel-skin +and all, would, have met with only tolerant shrugs. I dismissed Mackay +from my mind with the thought: 'He is behind his age, I suppose.' + +But haven't I thought differently of Mackay since, my God...? + + * * * * * + +Three weeks--it was about that--before that Sunday night discourse, I +was visited by Clark, the chief of the coming expedition--a mere visit +of friendship. I had then been established about a year at No. II, +Harley Street, and, though under twenty-five, had, I suppose, as _lite_ +a practice as any doctor in Europe. + +_lite_--but small. I was able to maintain my state, and move among the +great: but now and again I would feel the secret pinch of +moneylessness. Just about that time, in fact, I was only saved from +considerable embarrassment by the success of my book, 'Applications of +Science to the Arts.' + +In the course of conversation that afternoon, Clark said to me in his +light hap-hazard way: + +'Do you know what I dreamed about you last night, Adam Jeffson? I +dreamed that you were with us on the expedition.' + +I think he must have seen my start: on the same night I had myself +dreamed the same thing; but not a word said I about it now. There was a +stammer in my tongue when I answered: + +'Who? I?--on the expedition?--I would not go, if I were asked.' + +'Oh, you would.' + +'I wouldn't. You forget that I am about to be married.' + +'Well, we need not discuss the point, as Peters is not going to die,' +said he. 'Still, if anything did happen to him, you know, it is you I +should come straight to, Adam Jeffson.' + +'Clark, you jest,' I said: 'I know really very little of astronomy, or +magnetic phenomena. Besides, I am about to be married....' + +'But what about your botany, my friend? _There's_ what we should be +wanting from you: and as for nautical astronomy, poh, a man with your +scientific habit would pick all that up in no time.' + +'You discuss the matter as gravely as though it were a possibility, +Clark,' I said, smiling. 'Such a thought would never enter my head: +there is, first of all, my _fiance_----' + +'Ah, the all-important Countess, eh?--Well, but she, as far as I know +the lady, would be the first to force you to go. The chance of stamping +one's foot on the North Pole does not occur to a man every day, my son.' + +'Do talk of something else!' I said. 'There is Peters....' + +'Well, of course, there is Peters. But believe me, the dream I had was +so clear----' + +'Let me alone with your dreams, and your Poles!' I laughed. + +Yes, I remember: I pretended to laugh loud! But my secret heart knew, +even _then_, that one of those crises was occurring in my life which, +from my youth, has made it the most extraordinary which any creature of +earth ever lived. And I knew that this was so, firstly, because of the +two dreams, and secondly, because, when Clark was gone, and I was +drawing on my gloves to go to see my _fiance_, I heard distinctly the +old two Voices talk within me: and One said: 'Go not to see her now!' +and the Other: 'Yes, go, go!' + +The two Voices of my life! An ordinary person reading my words would +undoubtedly imagine that I mean only two ordinary contradictory +impulses--or else that I rave: for what modern man could comprehend how +real-seeming were those voices, how loud, and how, ever and again, I +heard them contend within me, with a nearness 'nearer than breathing,' +as it says in the poem, and 'closer than hands and feet.' + +About the age of seven it happened first to me. I was playing one summer +evening in a pine-wood of my father's; half a mile away was a +quarry-cliff; and as I played, it suddenly seemed as if someone said to +me, inside of me: 'Just take a walk toward the cliff'; and as if someone +else said: 'Don't go that way at all'--mere whispers then, which +gradually, as I grew up, seemed to swell into cries of wrathful +contention! I did go toward the cliff: it was steep, thirty feet high, +and I fell. Some weeks later, on recovering speech, I told my astonished +mother that 'someone had pushed me' over the edge, and that someone else +'had caught me' at the bottom! + +One night, soon after my eleventh birthday, lying in bed, the thought +struck me that my life must be of great importance to some thing or +things which I could not see; that two Powers, which hated each other, +must be continually after me, one wishing for some reason to kill me, +and the other for some reason to keep me alive, one wishing me to do so +and so, and the other to do the opposite; that I was not a boy like +other boys, but a creature separate, special, marked for--something. +Already I had notions, touches of mood, passing instincts, as occult and +primitive, I verily believe, as those of the first man that stepped; so +that such Biblical expressions as 'The Lord spake to So-and-so, saying' +have hardly ever suggested any question in my mind as to how the Voice +was heard: I did not find it so very difficult to comprehend that +originally man had more ears than two; nor should have been surprised to +know that I, in these latter days, more or less resembled those primeval +ones. + +But not a creature, except perhaps my mother, has ever dreamed me what I +here state that I was. I seemed the ordinary youth of my time, bow in my +'Varsity eight, cramming for exams., dawdling in clubs. When I had to +decide as to a profession, who could have suspected the conflict that +transacted itself in my soul, while my brain was indifferent to the +matter--that agony of strife with which the brawling voices shouted, the +one: 'Be a scientist--a doctor,' and the other: 'Be a lawyer, an +engineer, an artist--be _anything_ but a doctor!' + +A doctor I became, and went to what had grown into the greatest of +medical schools--Cambridge; and there it was that I came across a man, +named Scotland, who had a rather odd view of the world. He had rooms, I +remember, in the New Court at Trinity, and a set of us were generally +there. He was always talking about certain 'Black' and 'White Powers, +till it became absurd, and the men used to call him +'black-and-white-mystery-man,' because, one day, when someone said +something about 'the black mystery of the universe,' Scotland +interrupted him with the words: 'the black-and-white mystery.' + +Quite well I remember Scotland now--the sweetest, gentle soul he was, +with a passion for cats, and Sappho, and the Anthology, very short in +stature, with a Roman nose, continually making the effort to keep his +neck straight, and draw his paunch in. He used to say that the universe +was being frantically contended for by two Powers: a White and a Black; +that the White was the stronger, but did not find the conditions on our +particular planet very favourable to his success; that he had got the +best of it up to the Middle Ages in Europe, but since then had been +slowly and stubbornly giving way before the Black; and that finally the +Black would win--not everywhere perhaps, but _here_--and would carry +off, if no other earth, at least _this_ one, for his prize. + +This was Scotland's doctrine, which he never tired of repeating; and +while others heard him with mere toleration, little could they divine +with what agony of inward interest, I, cynically smiling there, drank in +his words. Most profound, most profound, was the impression they made +upon me. + + * * * * * + +But I was saying that when Clark left me, I was drawing on my gloves to +go to see my _fiance_, the Countess Clodagh, when I heard the two +voices most clearly. + +Sometimes the urgency of one or other impulse is so overpowering, that +there is no resisting it: and it was so then with the one that bid me +go. + +I had to traverse the distance between Harley Street and Hanover Square, +and all the time it was as though something shouted at my physical ear: +'Since you go, breathe no word of the _Boreal_, and Clark's visit'; and +another shout: 'Tell, tell, hide nothing!' + +It seemed to last a month: yet it was only some minutes before I was in +Hanover Square, and Clodagh in my arms. + +She was, in my opinion, the most superb of creatures, Clodagh--that +haughty neck which seemed always scorning something just behind her left +shoulder. Superb! but ah--I know it now--a godless woman, Clodagh, a +bitter heart. + +Clodagh once confessed to me that her favourite character in history was +Lucrezia Borgia, and when she saw my horror, immediately added: 'Well, +no, I am only joking!' Such was her duplicity: for I see now that she +lived in the constant effort to hide her heinous heart from me. Yet, now +I think of it, how completely did Clodagh enthral me! + +Our proposed marriage was opposed by both my family and hers: by mine, +because her father and grandfather had died in lunatic asylums; and by +hers, because, forsooth, I was neither a rich nor a noble match. A +sister of hers, much older than herself, had married a common country +doctor, Peters of Taunton, and this so-called _msalliance_ made the +so-called _msalliance_ with me doubly detestable in the eyes of her +relatives. But Clodagh's extraordinary passion for me was to be stemmed +neither by their threats nor prayers. What a flame, after all, was +Clodagh! Sometimes she frightened me. + +She was at this date no longer young, being by five years my senior, as +also, by five years, the senior of her nephew, born from the marriage of +her sister with Peters of Taunton. This nephew was Peter Peters, who was +to accompany the _Boreal_ expedition as doctor, botanist, and +meteorological assistant. + +On that day of Clark's visit to me I had not been seated five minutes +with Clodagh, when I said: + +'Dr. Clark--ha! ha! ha!--has been talking to me about the Expedition. He +says that if anything happened to Peters, I should be the first man he +would run to. He has had an absurd dream...' + +The consciousness that filled me as I uttered these words was the +_wickedness_ of me--the crooked wickedness. But I could no more help it +than I could fly. + +Clodagh was standing at a window holding a rose at her face. For quite a +minute she made no reply. I saw her sharp-cut, florid face in profile, +steadily bent and smelling. She said presently in her cold, rapid way: + +'The man who first plants his foot on the North Pole will certainly be +ennobled. I say nothing of the many millions... I only wish that I was +a man!' + +'I don't know that I have any special ambition that way,' I rejoined. 'I +am very happy in my warm Eden with my Clodagh. I don't like the outer +Cold.' + +'Don't let me think little of you!' she answered pettishly. + +'Why should you, Clodagh? I am not bound to desire to go to the North +Pole, am I?' + +'But you _would_ go, I suppose, if you could?' + +'I might--I--doubt it. There is our marriage....' + +'Marriage indeed! It is the one thing to transform our marriage from a +sneaking difficulty to a ten times triumphant event.' + +'You mean if _I_ personally were the first to stand at the Pole. But +there are many in an expedition. It is very unlikely that _I_, +personally--' + +'For _me_ you will, Adam--' she began. + +'"_Will_," Clodagh?' I cried. 'You say "_will_"? there is not even the +slightest shadow of a probability--!' + +'But why? There are still three weeks before the start. They say...' + +She stopped, she stopped. + +'They say what?' + +Her voice dropped: + +'That Peter takes atropine.' + +Ah, I started then. She moved from the window, sat in a rocking-chair, +and turned the leaves of a book, without reading. We were silent, she +and I; I standing, looking at her, she drawing the thumb across the +leaf-edges, and beginning again, contemplatively. Then she laughed dryly +a little--a dry, mad laugh. + +'Why did you start when I said that?' she asked, reading now at random. + +'_I_! I did not start, Clodagh! What made you think that I started? I +did not start! Who told you, Clodagh, that Peters takes atropine?' + +'He is my nephew: I should know. But don't look dumbfoundered in that +absurd fashion: I have no intention of poisoning him in order to see you +a multimillionaire, and a Peer of the Realm....' + +'My dearest Clodagh!' + +'I easily might, however. He will be here presently. He is bringing Mr. +Wilson for the evening.' (Wilson was going as electrician of the +expedition.) + +'Clodagh.' I said, 'believe me, you jest in a manner which does not +please me.' + +'Do I really?' she answered with that haughty, stiff half-turn of her +throat: 'then I must be more exquisite. But, thank Heaven, it is only a +jest. Women are no longer admired for doing such things.' + +'Ha! ha! ha!--no--no longer admired, Clodagh! Oh, my good Lord! let us +change this talk....' + +But now she could talk of nothing else. She got from me that afternoon +the history of all the Polar expeditions of late years, how far they +reached, by what aids, and why they failed. Her eyes shone; she listened +eagerly. Before this time, indeed, she had been interested in the +_Boreal_, knew the details of her outfitting, and was acquainted with +several members of the expedition. But now, suddenly, her mind seemed +wholly possessed, my mention of Clark's visit apparently setting her +well a-burn with the Pole-fever. + +The passion of her kiss as I tore myself from her embrace that day I +shall not forget. I went home with a pretty heavy heart. + +The house of Dr. Peter Peters was three doors from mine, on the opposite +side of the street. Toward one that night, his footman ran to knock me +up with the news that Peters was very ill. I hurried to his bed-side, +and knew by the first glance at his deliriums and his staring pupils +that he was poisoned with atropine. Wilson, the electrician, who had +passed the evening with him at Clodagh's in Hanover Square, was there. + +'What on earth is the matter?' he said to me. + +'Poisoned,' I answered. + +'Good God! what with?' + +'Atropine.' + +'Good Heavens!' + +'Don't be frightened: I think he will recover.' + +'Is that certain?' + +'Yes, I think--that is, if he leaves off taking the drug, Wilson.' + +'What! it is he who has poisoned himself?' + +I hesitated, I hesitated. But I said: + +'He is in the habit of taking atropine, Wilson.' + +Three hours I remained there, and, God knows, toiled hard for his life: +and when I left him in the dark of the fore-day, my mind was at rest: he +would recover. + +I slept till 11 A.M., and then hurried over again to Peters. In the room +were my two nurses, and Clodagh. + +My beloved put her forefinger to her lips, whispering: + +'Sh-h-h! he is asleep....' + +She came closer to my ear, saying: + +'I heard the news early. I am come to stay with him, till--the last....' + +We looked at each other some time--eye to eye, steadily, she and I: but +mine dropped before Clodagh's. A word was on my mouth to say, but I said +nothing. + +The recovery of Peters was not so steady as I had expected. At the end +of the first week he was still prostrate. It was then that I said to +Clodagh: + +'Clodagh, your presence at the bed-side here somehow does not please me. +It is so unnecessary.' + +'Unnecessary certainly,' she replied: 'but I always had a genius for +nursing, and a passion for watching the battles of the body. Since no +one objects, why should you?' + +'Ah!... I don't know. This is a case that I dislike. I have half a mind +to throw it to the devil.' + +'Then do so.' + +'And you, too--go home, go home, Clodagh!' + +'But _why_?--if one does no harm. In these days of "the corruption of +the upper classes," and Roman decadence of everything, shouldn't every +innocent whim be encouraged by you upright ones who strive against the +tide? Whims are the brakes of crimes: and this is mine. I find a +sensuous pleasure, almost a sensual, in dabbling in delicate drugs--like +Helen, for that matter, and Medea, and Calypso, and the great antique +women, who were all excellent chymists. To study the human ship in a +gale, and the slow drama of its foundering--isn't that a quite thrilling +distraction? And I want you to get into the habit at once of letting me +have my little way----' + +Now she touched my hair with a lofty playfulness that soothed me: but +even then I looked upon the rumpled bed, and saw that the man there was +really very sick. + +I have still a nausea to write about it! Lucrezia Borgia in her own age +may have been heroic: but Lucrezia in this late century! One could retch +up the heart... + +The man grew sick on that bed, I say. The second week passed, and only +ten days remained before the start of the expedition. + +At the end of that second week, Wilson, the electrician, was one evening +sitting by Peter's bedside when I entered. + +At the moment, Clodagh was about to administer a dose to Peters; but +seeing me, she put down the medicine-glass on the night table, and came +toward me; and as she came, I saw a sight which stabbed me: for Wilson +took up the deposited medicine-glass, elevated it, looked at it, +smelled into it: and he did it with a kind of hurried, light-fingered +stealth; and he did it with an under-look, and a meaningness of +expression which, I thought, proved mistrust.... + +Meantime, Clark came each day. He had himself a medical degree, and +about this time I called him in professionally, together with Alleyne of +Cavendish Square, to consultation over Peters. The patient lay in a +semi-coma broken by passionate vomitings, and his condition puzzled us +all. I formally stated that he took atropine--had been originally +poisoned by atropine: but we saw that his present symptoms were not +atropine symptoms, but, it almost seemed, of some other vegetable +poison, which we could not precisely name. + +'Mysterious thing,' said Clark to me, when we were alone. + +'_I_ don't understand it,' I said. + +'Who are the two nurses?' + +'Oh, highly recommended people of my own.' + +'At any rate, my dream about you comes true, Jeffson. It is clear that +Peters is out of the running now.' + +I shrugged. + +'I now formally invite you to join the expedition,' said Clark: 'do you +consent?' + +I shrugged again. + +'Well, if that means consent,' he said, 'let me remind you that you have +only eight days, and all the world to do in them.' + +This conversation occurred in the dining-room of Peters' house: and as +we passed through the door, I saw Clodagh gliding down the passage +outside--rapidly--away from us. + +Not a word I said to her that day about Clark's invitation. Yet I asked +myself repeatedly: Did she not know of it? Had she not _listened_, and +heard? + +However that was, about midnight, to my great surprise, Peters opened +his eyes, and smiled. By noon the next day, his fine vitality, which so +fitted him for an Arctic expedition, had re-asserted itself. He was then +leaning on an elbow, talking to Wilson, and except his pallor, and +strong stomach-pains, there was now hardly a trace of his late approach +to death. For the pains I prescribed some quarter-grain tablets of +sulphate of morphia, and went away. + +Now, David Wilson and I never greatly loved each other, and that very +day he brought about a painful situation as between Peters and me, by +telling Peters that I had taken his place in the expedition. Peters, a +touchy fellow, at once dictated a letter of protest to Clark; and Clark +sent Peters' letter to me, marked with a big note of interrogation in +blue pencil. + +Now, all Peters' preparations were made, mine not; and he had six days +in which to recover himself. I therefore wrote to Clark, saying that the +changed circumstances of course annulled my acceptance of his offer, +though I had already incurred the inconvenience of negotiating with a +_locum tenens_. + +This decided it: Peters was to go, I stay. The fifth day before the +departure dawned. It was a Friday, the 15th June. Peters was now in an +arm-chair. He was cheerful, but with a fevered pulse, and still the +stomach-pains. I was giving him three quarter-grains of morphia a day. +That Friday night, at 11 P.M., I visited him, and found Clodagh there, +talking to him. Peters was smoking a cigar. + +'Ah,' Clodagh said, 'I was waiting for you, Adam. I didn't know whether +I was to inject anything to-night. Is it Yes or No?' + +'What do you think, Peters?' I said: 'any more pains?' + +'Well, perhaps you had better give us another quarter,' he answered: +'there's still some trouble in the tummy off and on.' + +'A quarter-grain, then, Clodagh, 'I said. + +As she opened the syringe-box, she remarked with a pout: + +'Our patient has been naughty! He has taken some more atropine.' + +I became angry at once. + +'Peters,' I cried, 'you know you have no right to be doing things like +that without consulting me! Do that once more, and I swear I have +nothing further to do with you!' + +'Rubbish,' said Peters: 'why all this unnecessary heat? It was a mere +flea-bite. I felt that I needed it.' + +'He injected it with his own hand...' remarked Clodagh. + +She was now standing at the mantel-piece, having lifted the syringe-box +from the night-table, taken from its velvet lining both the syringe and +the vial containing the morphia tablets, and gone to the mantel-piece to +melt one of the tablets in a little of the distilled water there. Her +back was turned upon us, and she was a long time. I was standing; Peters +in his arm-chair, smoking. Clodagh then began to talk about a Charity +Bazaar which she had visited that afternoon. + +She was long, she was long. The crazy thought passed through some dim +region of my soul: 'Why is she so _long_?' + +'Ah, that was a pain!' went Peters: 'never mind the bazaar, aunt--think +of the morphia.' + +Suddenly an irresistible impulse seized me--to rush upon her, to dash +syringe, tabloids, glass, and all, from her hands. I _must_ have obeyed +it--I was on the tip-top point of obeying--my body already leant prone: +but at that instant a voice at the opened door behind me said: + +'Well, how is everything?' + +It was Wilson, the electrician, who stood there. With lightning +swiftness I remembered an under-look of mistrust which I had once seen +on his face. Oh, well, I would not, and could not!--she was my love--I +stood like marble... + +Clodagh went to meet Wilson with frank right hand, in the left being the +fragile glass containing the injection. My eyes were fastened on her +face: it was full of reassurance, of free innocence. I said to myself: +'I must surely be mad!' + +An ordinary chat began, while Clodagh turned up Peters' sleeve, and, +kneeling there, injected his fore-arm. As she rose, laughing at +something said by Wilson, the drug-glass dropped from her hand, and her +heel, by an apparent accident, trod on it. She put the syringe among a +number of others on the mantel-piece. + +'Your friend has been naughty, Mr. Wilson,' she said again with that +same pout: 'he has been taking more atropine.' + +'Not really?' said Wilson. + +'Let me alone, the whole of you,' answered Peters: 'I ain't a child.' + +These were the last intelligible words he ever spoke. He died shortly +before 1 A.M. He had been poisoned by a powerful dose of atropine. + +From that moment to the moment when the _Boreal_ bore me down the +Thames, all the world was a mere tumbling nightmare to me, of which +hardly any detail remains in my memory. Only I remember the inquest, and +how I was called upon to prove that Peters had himself injected himself +with atropine. This was corroborated by Wilson, and by Clodagh: and the +verdict was in accordance. + +And in all that chaotic hurry of preparation, three other things only, +but those with clear distinctness now, I remember. + +The first--and chief--is that tempest of words which I heard at +Kensington from that big-mouthed Mackay on the Sunday night. What was it +that led me, busy as I was, to that chapel that night? Well, perhaps I +know. + +There I sat, and heard him: and most strangely have those words of his +peroration planted themselves in my brain, when, rising to a passion of +prophecy, he shouted: 'And as in the one case, transgression was +followed by catastrophe swift and universal, so, in the other, I warn +the entire race to look out thenceforth for nothing from God but a +lowering sky, and thundery weather.' + +And this second thing I remember: that on reaching home, I walked into +my disordered library (for I had had to hunt out some books), where I +met my housekeeper in the act of rearranging things. She had apparently +lifted an old Bible by the front cover to fling it on the table, for as +I threw myself into a chair my eye fell upon the open print near the +beginning. The print was very large, and a shaded lamp cast a light upon +it. I had been hearing Mackay's wild comparison of the Pole with the +tree of Eden, and that no doubt was the reason why such a start +convulsed me: for my listless eyes had chanced to rest upon some words. + +'The woman gave me of the tree, and I did eat....' + +And a third thing I remember in all that turmoil of doubt and flurry: +that as the ship moved down with the afternoon tide a telegram was put +into my hand; it was a last word from Clodagh; and she said only this: + +'Be first--for Me.' + + * * * * * + +The _Boreal_ left St. Katherine's Docks in beautiful weather on the +afternoon of the 19th June, full of good hope, bound for the Pole. + +All about the docks was one region of heads stretched far in innumerable +vagueness, and down the river to Woolwich a continuous dull roar and +murmur of bees droned from both banks to cheer our departure. + +The expedition was partly a national affair, subvented by Government: +and if ever ship was well-found it was the _Boreal_. She had a frame +tougher far than any battle-ship's, capable of ramming some ten yards of +drift-ice; and she was stuffed with sufficient pemmican, codroe, +fish-meal, and so on, to last us not less than six years. + +We were seventeen, all told, the five Heads (so to speak) of the +undertaking being Clark (our Chief), John Mew (commander), Aubrey +Maitland (meteorologist), Wilson (electrician), and myself (doctor, +botanist, and assistant meteorologist). + +The idea was to get as far east as the 100, or the 120, of longitude; +to catch there the northern current; to push and drift our way +northward; and when the ship could no further penetrate, to leave her +(either three, or else four, of us, on ski), and with sledges drawn by +dogs and reindeer make a dash for the Pole. + +This had also been the plan of the last expedition--that of the +_Nix_--and of several others. The _Boreal_ only differed from the _Nix_, +and others, in that she was a thing of nicer design, and of more +exquisite forethought. + +Our voyage was without incident up to the end of July, when we +encountered a drift of ice-floes. On the 1st August we were at Kabarova, +where we met our coal-ship, and took in a little coal for emergency, +liquid air being our proper motor; also forty-three dogs, four reindeer, +and a quantity of reindeer-moss; and two days later we turned our bows +finally northward and eastward, passing through heavy 'slack' ice under +sail and liquid air in crisp weather, till, on the 27th August, we lay +moored to a floe off the desolate island of Taimur. + +The first thing which we saw here was a bear on the shore, watching for +young white-fish: and promptly Clark, Mew, and Lamburn (engineer) went +on shore in the launch, I and Maitland following in the pram, each party +with three dogs. + +It was while climbing away inland that Maitland said to me: + +'When Clark leaves the ship for the dash to the Pole, it is three, not +two, of us, after all, that he is going to take with him, making a party +of four.' + +_I_: 'Is that so? Who knows?' + +_Maitland_: 'Wilson does. Clark has let it out in conversation with +Wilson.' + +_I_: 'Well, the more the merrier. Who will be the three?' + +_Maitland_: 'Wilson is sure to be in it, and there may be Mew, making +the third. As to the fourth, I suppose _I_ shall get left out in the +cold.' + +_I_: 'More likely I.' + +_Maitland_: 'Well, the race is between us four: Wilson, Mew, you and I. +It is a question of physical fitness combined with special knowledge. +You are too lucky a dog to get left out, Jeffson.' + +_I_: 'Well, what does it matter, so long as the expedition as a whole is +successful? That is the main thing.' + +_Maitland_: 'Oh yes, that's all very fine talk, Jeffson! But is it quite +sincere? Isn't it rather a pose to affect to despise $175,000,000? _I_ +want to be in at the death, and I mean to be, if I can. We are all more +or less self-interested.' + +'Look,' I whispered--'a bear.' + +It was a mother and cub: and with determined trudge she came wagging her +low head, having no doubt smelled the dogs. We separated on the +instant, doubling different ways behind ice-boulders, wanting her to go +on nearer the shore, before killing; but, passing close, she spied, and +bore down at a trot upon me. I fired into her neck, and at once, with a +roar, she turned tail, making now straight in Maitland's direction. I +saw him run out from cover some hundred yards away, aiming his long-gun: +but no report followed: and in half a minute he was under her fore-paws, +she striking out slaps at the barking, shrinking dogs. Maitland roared +for my help: and at that moment, I, poor wretch, in far worse plight +than he, stood shivering in ague: for suddenly one of those wrangles of +the voices of my destiny was filling my bosom with loud commotion, one +urging me to fly to Maitland's aid, one passionately commanding me be +still. But it lasted, I believe, some seconds only: I ran and got a shot +into the bear's brain, and Maitland leapt up with a rent down his face. + +But singular destiny! Whatever I did--if I did evil, if I did good--the +result was the same: tragedy dark and sinister! Poor Maitland was doomed +that voyage, and my rescue of his life was the means employed to make +his death the more certain. + +I think that I have already written, some pages back, about a man +called Scotland, whom I met at Cambridge. He was always talking about +certain 'Black' and 'White' beings, and their contention for the earth. +We others used to call him the black-and-white mystery-man, because, one +day--but that is no matter now. Well, with regard to all that, I have a +fancy, a whim of the mind--quite wide of the truth, no doubt--but I have +it here in my brain, and I will write it down now. It is this: that +there may have been some sort of arrangement, or understanding, between +Black and White, as in the case of Adam and the fruit, that, should +mankind force his way to the Pole and the old forbidden secret biding +there, then some mishap should not fail to overtake the race of man; +that the White, being kindly disposed to mankind, did not wish this to +occur, and intended, for the sake of the race, to destroy our entire +expedition before it reached; and that the Black, knowing that the White +meant to do this, and by what means, used me--_me_!--to outwit this +design, first of all working that I should be one of the party of four +to leave the ship on ski. + +But the childish attempt, my God, to read the immense riddle of the +world! I could laugh loud at myself, and at poor Black-and-White +Scotland, too. The thing can't be so simple. + +Well, we left Taimur the same day, and good-bye now to both land and +open sea. Till we passed the latitude of Cape Chelyuskin (which we did +not sight), it was one succession of ice-belts, with Mew in the +crow's-nest tormenting the electric bell to the engine-room, the anchor +hanging ready to drop, and Clark taking soundings. Progress was slow, +and the Polar night gathered round us apace, as we stole still onward +and onward into that blue and glimmering land of eternal frore. We now +left off bed-coverings of reindeer-skin and took to sleeping-bags. Eight +of the dogs had died by the 25th September, when we were experiencing +19 of frost. In the darkest part of our night, the Northern Light +spread its silent solemn banner over us, quivering round the heavens in +a million fickle gauds. + +The relations between the members of our little crew were +excellent--with one exception: David Wilson and I were not good friends. + +There was a something--a tone--in the evidence which he had given at the +inquest on Peters, which made me mad every time I thought of it. He had +heard Peters admit just before death that he, Peters, had administered +atropine to himself: and he had had to give evidence of that fact. But +he had given it in a most half-hearted way, so much so, that the coroner +had asked him: 'What, sir, are you hiding from me?' Wilson had replied: +'Nothing. I have nothing to tell.' + +And from that day he and I had hardly exchanged ten words, in spite of +our constant companionship in the vessel; and one day, standing alone on +a floe, I found myself hissing with clenched fist: 'If he dared suspect +Clodagh of poisoning Peters, I could _kill_ him!' + +Up to 78 of latitude the weather had been superb, but on the night of +the 7th October--well I remember it--we experienced a great storm. Our +tub of a ship rolled like a swing, drenching the whimpering dogs at +every lurch, and hurling everything on board into confusion. The +petroleum-launch was washed from the davits; down at one time to 40 +below zero sank the thermometer; while a high aurora was whiffed into a +dishevelled chaos of hues, resembling the smeared palette of some +turbulent painter of the skies, or mixed battle of long-robed seraphim, +and looking the very symbol of tribulation, tempest, wreck, and +distraction. I, for the first time, was sick. + +It was with a dizzy brain, therefore, that I went off watch to my bunk. +Soon, indeed, I fell asleep: but the rolls and shocks of the ship, +combined with the heavy Greenland anorak which I had on, and the state +of my body, together produced a fearful nightmare, in which I was +conscious of a vain struggle to move, a vain fight for breath, for the +sleeping-bag turned to an iceberg on my bosom. Of Clodagh was my gasping +dream. I dreamed that she let fall, drop by drop, a liquid, coloured +like pomegranate-seeds, into a glass of water; and she presented the +glass to Peters. The draught, I knew, was poisonous as death: and in a +last effort to break the bands of that dark slumber, I was conscious, as +I jerked myself upright, of screaming aloud: + +'Clodagh! Clodagh! _Spare the man...!_' + +My eyes, starting with horror, opened to waking; the electric light was +shining in the cabin; and there stood David Wilson looking at me. + +Wilson was a big man, with a massively-built, long face, made longer by +a beard, and he had little nervous contractions of the flesh at the +cheek-bones, and plenty of big freckles. His clinging pose, his smile of +disgust, his whole air, as he stood crouching and lurching there, I can +shut my eyes, and see now. + +What he was doing in my cabin I did not know. To think, my good God, +that he should have been led there just then! This was one of the +four-men starboard berths: _his_ was a-port: yet there he was! But he +explained at once. + +'Sorry to interrupt your innocent dreams, says he: 'the mercury in +Maitland's thermometer is frozen, and he asked me to hand him his +spirits-of-wine one from his bunk...' + +I did not answer. A hatred was in my heart against this man. + +The next day the storm died away, and either three or four days later +the slush-ice between the floes froze definitely. The _Boreal's_ way was +thus blocked. We warped her with ice-anchors and the capstan into the +position in which she should lay up for her winter's drift. This was in +about 79 20' N. The sun had now totally vanished from our bleak sky, +not to reappear till the following year. + +Well, there was sledging with the dogs, and bear-hunting among the +hummocks, as the months, one by one, went by. One day Wilson, by far our +best shot, got a walrus-bull; Clark followed the traditional pursuit of +a Chief, examining Crustacea; Maitland and I were in a relation of close +friendship, and I assisted his meteorological observations in a snow-hut +built near the ship. Often, through the twenty-four hours, a clear blue +moon, very spectral, very fair, suffused all our dim and livid clime. + +It was five days before Christmas that Clark made the great +announcement: he had determined, he said, if our splendid northward +drift continued, to leave the ship about the middle of next March for +the dash to the Pole. He would take with him the four reindeer, all the +dogs, four sledges, four kayaks, and three companions. The companions +whom he had decided to invite were: Wilson, Mew, and Maitland. + +He said it at dinner; and as he said it, David Wilson glanced at my wan +face with a smile of pleased malice: for _I_ was left out. + +I remember well: the aurora that night was in the sky, and at its edge +floated a moon surrounded by a ring, with two mock-moons. But all shone +very vaguely and far, and a fog, which had already lasted some days, +made the ship's bows indistinct to me, as I paced the bridge on my +watch, two hours after Clark's announcement. + +For a long time all was very still, save for the occasional whine of a +dog. I was alone, and it grew toward the end of my watch, when Maitland +would succeed me. My slow tread tolled like a passing-bell, and the +mountainous ice lay vague and white around me, its sheeted ghastliness +not less dreadfully silent than eternity itself. + +Presently, several of the dogs began barking together, left off, and +began again. + +I said to myself; 'There is a bear about somewhere.' + +And after some five minutes I saw--I thought that I saw--it. The fog +had, if anything thickened; and it was now very near the end of my +watch. + +It had entered the ship, I concluded, by the boards which slanted from +an opening in the port bulwarks down to the ice. Once before, in +November, a bear, having smelled the dogs, had ventured on board at +midnight: but _then_ there had resulted a perfect hubbub among the dogs. +_Now_, even in the midst of my excitement, I wondered at their +quietness, though some whimpered--with fear, I thought. I saw the +creature steal forward from the hatchway toward the kennels a-port; and +I ran noiselessly, and seized the watch-gun which stood always loaded by +the companionway. + +By this time, the form had passed the kennels, reached the bows, and now +was making toward me on the starboard side. I took aim. Never, I +thought, had I seen so huge a bear--though I made allowance for the +magnifying effect of the fog. + +My finger was on the trigger: and at that moment a deathly shivering +sickness took me, the wrangling voices shouted at me, with 'Shoot!' +'Shoot not!' 'Shoot!' Ah well, that latter shout was irresistible. I +drew the trigger. The report hooted through the Polar night. + +The creature dropped; both Wilson and Clark were up at once: and we +three hurried to the spot. + +But the very first near glance showed a singular kind of bear. Wilson +put his hand to the head, and a lax skin came away at his touch.... It +was Aubrey Maitland who was underneath it, and I had shot him dead. + +For the past few days he had been cleaning skins, among them the skin of +the bear from which I had saved him at Taimur. Now, Maitland was a born +pantomimist, continually inventing practical jokes; and perhaps to +startle me with a false alarm in the very skin of the old Bruin which +had so nearly done for him, he had thrown it round him on finishing its +cleaning, and so, in mere wanton fun, had crept on deck at the hour of +his watch. The head of the bear-skin, and the fog, must have prevented +him from seeing me taking aim. + +This tragedy made me ill for weeks. I saw that the hand of Fate was upon +me. When I rose from bed, poor Maitland was lying in the ice behind the +great camel-shaped hummock near us. + +By the end of January we had drifted to 80 55'; and it was then that +Clark, in the presence of Wilson, asked me if I would make the fourth +man, in the place of poor Maitland, for the dash in the spring. As I +said 'Yes, I am willing,' David Wilson spat with a disgusted emphasis. A +minute later he sighed, with 'Ah, poor Maitland...' and drew in his +breath with a _tut! tut!_ + +God knows, I had an impulse to spring then and there at his throat, and +strangle him: but I curbed myself. + +There remained now hardly a month before the dash, and all hands set to +work with a will, measuring the dogs, making harness and seal-skin shoes +for them, overhauling sledges and kayaks, and cutting every possible +ounce of weight. But we were not destined, after all, to set out that +year. About the 20th February, the ice began to pack, and the ship was +subjected to an appalling pressure. We found it necessary to make +trumpets of our hands to shout into one another's ears, for the whole +ice-continent was crashing, popping, thundering everywhere in terrific +upheaval. Expecting every moment to see the _Boreal_ crushed to +splinters, we had to set about unpacking provisions, and placing +sledges, kayaks, dogs and everything in a position for instant flight. +It lasted five days, and was accompanied by a tempest from the north, +which, by the end of February, had driven us back south into latitude +79 40'. Clark, of course, then abandoned the thought of the Pole for +that summer. + +And immediately afterwards we made a startling discovery: our stock of +reindeer-moss was found to be somehow ridiculously small. Egan, our +second mate, was blamed; but that did not help matters: the sad fact +remained. Clark was advised to kill one or two of the deer, but he +pig-headedly refused: and by the beginning of summer they were all dead. + +Well, our northward drift recommenced. Toward the middle of February we +saw a mirage of the coming sun above the horizon; there were flights of +Arctic petrels and snow-buntings; and spring was with us. In an ice-pack +of big hummocks and narrow lanes we made good progress all the summer. + +When the last of the deer died, my heart sank; and when the dogs killed +two of their number, and a bear crushed a third, I was fully expecting +what actually came; it was this: Clark announced that he could now take +only two companions with him in the spring: and they were Wilson and +Mew. So once more I saw David Wilson's pleased smile of malice. + +We settled into our second winter-quarters. Again came December, and all +our drear sunless gloom, made worse by the fact that the windmill would +not work, leaving us without the electric light. + +Ah me, none but those who have felt it could dream of one half the +mental depression of that long Arctic night; how the soul takes on the +hue of the world; and without and within is nothing but gloom, gloom, +and the reign of the Power of Darkness. + +Not one of us but was in a melancholic, dismal and dire mood; and on the +13th December Lamburn, the engineer, stabbed Cartwright, the old +harpooner, in the arm. + +Three days before Christmas a bear came close to the ship, and then +turned tail. Mew, Wilson, I and Meredith (a general hand) set out in +pursuit. After a pretty long chase we lost him, and then scattered +different ways. It was very dim, and after yet an hour's search, I was +returning weary and disgusted to the ship, when I saw some shadow like a +bear sailing away on my left, and at the same time sighted a man--I did +not know whom--running like a handicapped ghost some little distance to +the right. So I shouted out: + +'There he is--come on! This way!' + +The man quickly joined me, but as soon as ever he recognised me, stopped +dead. The devil must have suddenly got into him, for he said: + +'No, thanks, Jeffson: alone with you I am in danger of my life....' + +It was Wilson. And I, too, forgetting at once all about the bear, +stopped and faced him. + +'I see,' said I. 'But, Wilson, you are going to explain to me _now_ what +you mean, you hear? What _do_ you mean, Wilson?' + +'What I say,' he answered deliberately, eyeing me up and down: 'alone +with you I am in danger of my life. Just as poor Maitland was, and just +as poor Peters was. Certainly, you are a deadly beast.' + +Fury leapt, my God, in my heart. Black as the tenebrous Arctic night was +my soul. + +'Do you mean,' said I, 'that I want to put you out of the way in order +to go in your place to the Pole? Is that your meaning, man?' + +'That's about my meaning, Jeffson,' says he: 'you are a deadly beast, +you know.' + +'Stop!' I said, with blazing eye. 'I am going to kill _you_, Wilson--as +sure as God lives: but I want to hear first. Who _told_ you that I +killed Peters?' + +'Your lover killed him--with _your_ collusion. Why, I heard you, man, in +your beastly sleep, calling the whole thing out. And I was pretty sure +of it before, only I had no proofs. By God, I should enjoy putting a +bullet into you, Jeffson!' + +'You wrong me--you, you wrong me!' I shrieked, my eyes staring with +ravenous lust for his blood; 'and now I am going to pay you well for it. +_Look out, you!_' + +I aimed my gun for his heart, and I touched the trigger. He held up his +left hand. + +'Stop,' he said, 'stop.' (He was one of the coolest of men ordinarily.) +'There is no gallows on the _Boreal_, but Clark could easily rig one for +you. I want to kill you, too, because there are no criminal courts up +here, and it would be doing a good action for my country. But not +here--not now. Listen to me--don't shoot. Later we can meet, when all is +ready, so that no one may be the wiser, and fight it all out.' + +As he spoke I let the gun drop. It was better so. I knew that he was +much the best shot on the ship, and I an indifferent one: but I did not +care, I did not care, if I was killed. + +It is a dim, inclement land, God knows: and the spirit of darkness and +distraction is there. + +Twenty hours later we met behind the great saddle-shaped hummock, some +six miles to the S.E. of the ship. We had set out at different times, so +that no one might suspect. And each brought a ship's-lantern. + +Wilson had dug an ice-grave near the hummock, leaving at its edge a +heap of brash-ice and snow to fill it. We stood separated by an interval +of perhaps seventy yards, the grave between us, each with a lantern at +his feet. + +Even so we were mere shadowy apparitions one to the other. The air +glowered very drearily, and present in my inmost soul were the frills of +cold. A chill moon, a mere abstraction of light, seemed to hang far +outside the universe. The temperature was at 55 below zero, so that we +had on wind-clothes over our anoraks, and heavy foot-bandages under our +Lap boots. Nothing but a weird morgue seemed the world, haunted with +despondent madness; and exactly like that world about us were the minds +of us two poor men, full of macabre, bleak, and funereal feelings. + +Between us yawned an early grave for one or other of our bodies. + +I heard Wilson cry out: + +'Are you ready, Jeffson?' + +'Aye, Wilson!' cried I. + +'_Then here goes!_' cries he. + +Even as he spoke, he fired. Surely, the man was in deadly earnest to +kill me. + +But his shot passed harmlessly by me: as indeed was only likely: we +were mere shadows one to the other. + +I fired perhaps ten seconds later than he: but in those ten seconds he +stood perfectly revealed to me in clear, lavender light. + +An Arctic fire-ball had traversed the sky, showering abroad, a +sulphurous glamour over the snow-landscape. Before the intenser blue of +its momentary shine had passed away, I saw Wilson stagger forward, and +drop. And him and his lantern I buried deep there under the rubble ice. + + * * * * * + +On the 13th March, nearly three months later, Clark, Mew and I left the +Boreal in latitude 85 15'. + +We had with us thirty-two dogs, three sledges, three kayaks, human +provisions for 112 days, and dog provisions for 40. Being now about 340 +miles from the Pole, we hoped to reach it in 43 days, then, turning +south, and feeding living dogs with dead, make either Franz Josef Land +or Spitzbergen, at which latter place we should very likely come up with +a whaler. + +Well, during the first days, progress was very slow, the ice being rough +and laney, and the dogs behaving most badly, stopping dead at every +difficulty, and leaping over the traces. Clark had had the excellent +idea of attaching a gold-beater's-skin balloon, with a lifting power of +35 pounds, to each sledge, and we had with us a supply of zinc and +sulphuric-acid to repair the hydrogen-waste from the bags; but on the +third day Mew over-filled and burst his balloon, and I and Clark had to +cut ours loose in order to equalise weights, for we could neither leave +him behind, turn back to the ship, nor mend the bag. So it happened that +at the end of the fourth day out, we had made only nineteen miles, and +could still from a hummock discern afar the leaning masts of the old +Boreal. Clark led on ski, captaining a sledge with 400 lbs. of +instruments, ammunition, pemmican, aleuronate bread; Mew followed, his +sledge containing provisions only; and last came I, with a mixed +freight. But on the third day Clark had an attack of snow-blindness, and +Mew took his place. + +Pretty soon our sufferings commenced, and they were bitter enough. The +sun, though constantly visible day and night, gave no heat. Our +sleeping-bags (Clark and Mew slept together in one, I in another) were +soaking wet all the night, being thawed by our warmth; and our fingers, +under wrappings of senne-grass and wolf-skin, were always bleeding. +Sometimes our frail bamboo-cane kayaks, lying across the sledges, would +crash perilously against an ice-ridge--and they were our one hope of +reaching land. But the dogs were the great difficulty: we lost six +mortal hours a day in harnessing and tending them. On the twelfth day +Clark took a single-altitude observation, and found that we were only in +latitude 86 45'; but the next day we passed beyond the furthest point +yet reached by man, viz. 86 53', attained by the _Nix_ explorers four +years previously. + + * * * * * + +Our one secret thought now was food, food--our day-long lust for the +eating-time. Mew suffered from 'Arctic thirst. + + * * * * * + +Under these conditions, man becomes in a few days, not a savage only, +but a mere beast, hardly a grade above the bear and walrus. Ah, the ice! +A long and sordid nightmare was that, God knows. + +On we pressed, crawling our little way across the Vast, upon whose hoar +silence, from Eternity until then, Bootes only, and that Great Bear, had +watched. + + * * * * * + +After the eleventh day our rate of march improved: all lanes +disappeared, and ridges became much less frequent. By the fifteenth day +I was leaving behind the ice-grave of David Wilson at the rate of ten to +thirteen miles a day. + +Yet, as it were, his arm reached out and touched me, even there. + +His disappearance had been explained by a hundred different guesses on +the ship--all plausible enough. I had no idea that anyone connected me +in any way with his death. + +But on our twenty-second day of march, 140 miles from our goal, he +caused a conflagration of rage and hate to break out among us three. + +It was at the end of a march, when our stomachs were hollow, our frames +ready to drop, and our mood ravenous and inflamed. One of Mew's dogs was +sick: it was necessary to kill it: he asked me to do it. + +'Oh,' said I, 'you kill your own dog, of course.' + +'Well, I don't know,' he replied, catching fire at once, 'you ought to +be used to killing, Jeffson.' + +'How do you mean, Mew?' said I with a mad start, for madness and the +flames of Hell were instant and uppermost in us all: 'you mean because +my profession----' + +'Profession! damn it, no,' he snarled like a dog: 'go and dig up David +Wilson--I dare say you know where to find him--and he will tell you my +meaning, right enough.' + +I rushed at once to Clark, who was stooping among the dogs, +unharnessing: and savagely pushing his shoulder, I exclaimed: + +'That beast accuses me of murdering David Wilson!' + +'Well?' said Clark. + +'I'd split his skull as clean----!' + +'Go away, Adam Jeffson, and let me be!' snarled Clark. + +'Is that all you've got to say about it, then--you?' + +'To the devil with you, man, say I, and let me be!' cried he: 'you know +your own conscience best, I suppose.' + +Before this insult I stood with grinding teeth, but impotent. However, +from that moment a deeper mood of brooding malice occupied my spirit. +Indeed the humour of us all was one of dangerous, even murderous, +fierceness. In that pursuit of riches into that region of cold, we had +become almost like the beasts that perish. + + * * * * * + +On the 10th April we passed the 89th parallel of latitude, and though +sick to death, both in spirit and body, pressed still on. Like the lower +animals, we were stricken now with dumbness, and hardly once in a week +spoke a word one to the other, but in selfish brutishness on through a +real hell of cold we moved. It is a cursed region--beyond doubt +cursed--not meant to be penetrated by man: and rapid and awful was the +degeneration of our souls. As for me, never could I have conceived that +savagery so heinous could brood in a human bosom as now I felt it brood +in mine. If men could enter into a country specially set apart for the +habitation of devils, and there become possessed of evil, as we were so +would they be. + + * * * * * + +As we advanced, the ice every day became smoother; so that, from four +miles a day, our rate increased to fifteen, and finally (as the sledges +lightened) to twenty. + +It was now that we began to encounter a succession of strange-looking +objects lying scattered over the ice, whose number continually +increased as we proceeded. They had the appearance of rocks, or pieces +of iron, incrusted with glass-fragments of various colours, and they +were of every size. Their incrustations we soon determined to be +diamonds, and other precious stones. On our first twenty-mile day Mew +picked up a diamond-crystal as large as a child's foot, and such objects +soon became common. We thus found the riches which we sought, beyond all +dream; but as the bear and the walrus find them: for ourselves we had +lost; and it was a loss of riches barren as ashes, for all those +millions we would not have given an ounce of fish-meal. Clark grumbled +something about their being meteor-stones, whose ferruginous substance +had been lured by the magnetic Pole, and kept from frictional burning in +their fall by the frigidity of the air: and they quickly ceased to +interest our sluggish minds, except in so far as they obstructed our +way. + + * * * * * + +We had all along had good weather: till, suddenly, on the morning of the +13th April, we were overtaken by a tempest from the S.W., of such mighty +and solemn volume that the heart quailed beneath it. It lasted in its +full power only an hour, but during that time snatched two of our +sledges long distances, and compelled us to lie face-downward. We had +travelled all the sun-lit night, and were gasping with fatigue; so as +soon as the wind allowed us to huddle together our scattered things, we +crawled into the sleeping-bags, and instantly slept. + +We knew that the ice was in awful upheaval around us; we heard, as our +eyelids sweetly closed, the slow booming of distant guns, and brittle +cracklings of artillery. This may have been a result of the tempest +stirring up the ocean beneath the ice. Whatever it was, we did not care: +we slept deep. + +We were within ten miles of the Pole. + + * * * * * + +In my sleep it was as though someone suddenly shook my shoulder with +urgent '_Up! up_!' It was neither Clark nor Mew, but a dream merely: for +Clark and Mew, when I started up, I saw lying still in their +sleeping-bag. + +I suppose it must have been about noon. I sat staring a minute, and my +first numb thought was somehow this: that the Countess Clodagh had +prayed me 'Be first'--for her. Wondrous little now cared I for the +Countess Clodagh in her far unreal world of warmth--precious little for +the fortune which she coveted: millions on millions of fortunes lay +unregarded around me. But that thought, _Be first!_ was deeply suggested +in my brain, as if whispered there. Instinctively, brutishly, as the +Gadarean swine rushed down a steep place, I, rubbing my daft eyes, +arose. + +The first thing which my mind opened to perceive was that, while the +tempest was less strong, the ice was now in extraordinary agitation. I +looked abroad upon a vast plain, stretched out to a circular, but waving +horizon, and varied by many hillocks, boulders, and sparkling +meteor-stones that everywhere tinselled the blinding white, some big as +houses, most small as limbs. And this great plain was now rearranging +itself in a widespread drama of havoc, withdrawing in ravines like +mutual backing curtsies, then surging to clap together in passionate +mountain-peaks, else jostling like the Symplegades, fluent and +inconstant as billows of the sea, grinding itself, piling itself, +pouring itself in cataracts of powdered ice, while here and there I saw +the meteor-stones leap spasmodically, in dusts and heaps, like geysers +or spurting froths in a steamer's wake, a tremendous uproar, meantime, +filling all the air. As I stood, I plunged and staggered, and I found +the dogs sprawling, with whimperings, on the heaving floor. + +I did not care. Instinctively, daftly, brutishly, I harnessed ten of +them to my sledge; put on Canadian snow-shoes: and was away +northward--alone. + +The sun shone with a clear, benign, but heatless shining: a ghostly, +remote, yet quite limpid light, which seemed designed for the lighting +of other planets and systems, and to strike here by happy chance. A +great wind from the S.W., meantime, sent thin snow-sweepings flying +northward past me. + +The odometer which I had with me had not yet measured four miles, when I +began to notice two things: first that the jewelled meteor-stones were +now accumulating beyond all limit, filling my range of vision to the +northern horizon with a dazzling glister: in mounds, and parterres, and +scattered disconnection they lay, like largesse of autumn leaves, spread +out over those Elysian fields and fairy uplands of wealth, trillions of +billions, so that I had need to steer my twining way among them. Now, +too, I noticed that, but for these stones, all roughness had +disappeared, not a trace of the upheaval going on a little further south +being here, for the ice lay positively as smooth as a table before me. +It is my belief that this stretch of smooth ice has never, never felt +one shock, or stir, or throe, and reaches right down to the bottom of +the deep. + + * * * * * + +And now with a wild hilarity I flew. Gradually, a dizziness, a lunacy, +had seized upon me, till finally, up-buoyed on air, and dancing mad, I +sped, I spun, with grinning teeth that chattered and gibbered, and +eyeballs of distraction: for a Fear, too--most cold and dreadful--had +its hand of ice upon my heart, I being so alone in that place, face to +face with the Ineffable: but still with a giddy levity, and a fatal joy, +and a blind hilarity, on I sped, I spun. + + * * * * * + +The odometer measured nine miles from my start. I was in the immediate +neighbourhood of the Pole. + +I cannot say when it began, but now I was conscious of a sound in my +ears, distinct and near, a steady sound of splashing, or fluttering, +resembling the noising of a cascade or brook: and it grew. Forty more +steps I took (slide I could not now for the meteorites)--perhaps +sixty--perhaps eighty: and now, to my sudden horror, I stood by a +circular clean-cut lake. + +One minute only, swaying and nodding there, I stood: and then I dropped +down flat in swoon. + + * * * * * + +In a hundred years, I suppose, I should never succeed in analysing +_why_ I swooned: but my consciousness still retains the impression of +that horrid thrill. I saw nothing distinctly, for my whole being reeled +and toppled drunken, like a spinning-top in desperate death-struggle at +the moment when it flags, and wobbles dissolutely to fall; but the very +instant that my eyes met what was before me, I knew, I knew, that here +was the Sanctity of Sanctities, the old eternal inner secret of the Life +of this Earth, which it was a most burning shame for a man to see. The +lake, I fancy, must be a mile across, and in its middle is a pillar of +ice, very low and broad; and I had the clear impression, or dream, or +notion, that there was a name, or word, graven all round in the ice of +the pillar in characters which I could never read; and under the name a +long date; and the fluid of the lake seemed to me to be wheeling with a +shivering ecstasy, splashing and fluttering, round the pillar, always +from west to east, in the direction of the spinning of the earth; and it +was borne in upon me--I can't at all say how--that this fluid was the +substance of a living creature; and I had the distinct fancy, as my +senses failed, that it was a creature with many dull and anguished eyes, +and that, as it wheeled for ever round in fluttering lust, it kept its +eyes always turned upon the name and the date graven in the pillar. But +this must be my madness.... + + * * * * * + +It must have been not less than an hour before a sense of life returned +to me; and when the thought stabbed my brain that a long, long time I +had lain there in the presence of those gloomy orbs, my spirit seemed to +groan and die within me. + +In some minutes, however, I had scrambled to my feet, clutched at a +dog's harness, and without one backward glance, was flying from that +place. + +Half-way to the halting-place, I waited Clark and Mew, being very sick +and doddering, and unable to advance. But they did not come. + +Later on, when I gathered force to go further, I found that they had +perished in the upheaval of the ice. One only of the sledges, half +buried, I saw near the spot of our bivouac. + + * * * * * + +Alone that same day I began my way southward, and for five days made +good progress. On the eighth day I noticed, stretched right across the +south-eastern horizon, a region of purple vapour which luridly obscured +the face of the sun: and day after day I saw it steadily brooding +there. But what it could be I did not understand. + + * * * * * + +Well, onward through the desert ice I continued my lonely way, with a +baleful shrinking terror in my heart; for very stupendous, alas! is the +burden of that Arctic solitude upon one poor human soul. + +Sometimes on a halt I have lain and listened long to the hollow silence, +recoiling, crushed by it, hoping that at least one of the dogs might +whine. I have even crept shivering from the thawed sleeping-bag to flog +a dog, so that I might hear a sound. + +I had started from the Pole with a well-filled sledge, and the sixteen +dogs left alive from the ice-packing which buried my comrades. This was +on the evening of the 13th April. I had saved from the wreck of our +things most of the whey-powder, pemmican, &c., as well as the +theodolite, compass, chronometer, train-oil lamp for cooking, and other +implements: I was therefore in no doubt as to my course, and I had +provisions for ninety days. But ten days from the start my supply of +dog-food failed, and I had to begin to slaughter my only companions, one +by one. + +Well, in the third week the ice became horribly rough, and with moil +and toil enough to wear a bear to death, I did only five miles a day. +After the day's work I would crawl with a dying sigh into the +sleeping-bag, clad still in the load of skins which stuck to me a mere +filth of grease, to sleep the sleep of a swine, indifferent if I never +woke. + +Always--day after day--on the south-eastern horizon, brooded sullenly +that curious stretched-out region of purple vapour, like the smoke of +the conflagration of the world. And I noticed that its length constantly +reached out and out, and silently grew. + + * * * * * + +Once I had a very pleasant dream. I dreamed that I was in a garden--an +Arabian paradise--so sweet was the perfume. All the time, however, I had +a sub-consciousness of the gale which was actually blowing from the S.E. +over the ice, and, at the moment when I awoke, was half-wittedly droning +to myself; 'It is a Garden of Peaches; but I am not really in the +garden: I am really on the ice; only, the S.E. storm is wafting to me +the aroma of this Garden of Peaches.' + +I opened my eyes--I started--I sprang to my feet! For, of all the +miracles!--I could not doubt--an actual aroma like peach-blossom was in +the algid air about me! + +Before I could collect my astonished senses, I began to vomit pretty +violently, and at the same time saw some of the dogs, mere skeletons as +they were, vomiting, too. For a long time I lay very sick in a kind of +daze, and, on rising, found two of the dogs dead, and all very queer. +The wind had now changed to the north. + +Well, on I staggered, fighting every inch of my deplorably weary way. +This odour of peach-blossom, my sickness, and the death of the two dogs, +remained a wonder to me. + +Two days later, to my extreme mystification (and joy), I came across a +bear and its cub lying dead at the foot of a hummock. I could not +believe my eyes. There she lay on her right side, a spot of dirty-white +in a disordered patch of snow, with one little eye open, and her +fierce-looking mouth also; and the cub lay across her haunch, biting +into her rough fur. I set to work upon her, and allowed the dogs a +glorious feed on the blubber, while I myself had a great banquet on the +fresh meat. I had to leave the greater part of the two carcasses, and I +can feel again now the hankering reluctance--quite unnecessary, as it +turned out--with which I trudged onwards. Again and again I found +myself asking: 'Now, what could have killed those two bears?' + +With brutish stolidness I plodded ever on, almost like a walking +machine, sometimes nodding in sleep while I helped the dogs, or +manouvred the sledge over an ice-ridge, pushing or pulling. On the 3rd +June, a month and a half from my start, I took an observation with the +theodolite, and found that I was not yet 400 miles from the Pole, in +latitude 84 50'. It was just as though some Will, some Will, was +obstructing and retarding me. + +However, the intolerable cold was over, and soon my clothes no longer +hung stark on me like armour. Pools began to appear in the ice, and +presently, what was worse, my God, long lanes, across which, somehow, I +had to get the sledge. But about the same time all fear of starvation +passed away: for on the 6th June I came across another dead bear, on the +7th three, and thenceforth, in rapidly growing numbers, I met not bears +only, but fulmars, guillemots, snipes, Ross's gulls, little awks--all, +all, lying dead on the ice. And never anywhere a living thing, save me, +and the two remaining dogs. + +If ever a poor man stood shocked before a mystery, it was I now. I had a +big fear on my heart. + +On the 2nd July the ice began packing dangerously, and soon another +storm broke loose upon me from the S.W. I left off my trek, and put up +the silk tent on a five-acre square of ice surrounded by lanes: and +_again_--for the second time--as I lay down, I smelled that delightful +strange odour of peach-blossom, a mere whiff of it, and presently +afterwards was taken sick. However, it passed off this time in a couple +of hours. + +Now it was all lanes, lanes, alas! yet no open water, and such was the +difficulty and woe of my life, that sometimes I would drop flat on the +ice, and sob: 'Oh, no more, no more, my God: here let me die.' The +crossing of a lane might occupy ten or twelve entire hours, and then, on +the other side I might find another one opening right before me. +Moreover, on the 8th July, one of the dogs, after a feed on blubber, +suddenly died; and there was left me only 'Reinhardt,' a white-haired +Siberian dog, with little pert up-sticking ears, like a cat's. Him, too, +I had to kill on coming to open water. + +This did not happen till the 3rd August, nearly four months from the +Pole. + +I can't think, my God, that any heart of man ever tholed the appalling +nightmare and black abysm of sensations in which, during those four +long desert months, I weltered: for though I was as a brute, I had a +man's heart to feel. What I had seen, or dreamed, at the Pole followed +and followed me; and if I shut my poor weary eyes to sleep, those others +yonder seemed to watch me still with their distraught and gloomy gaze, +and in my spinning dark dreams spun that eternal ecstasy of the lake. + +However, by the 28th July I knew from the look of the sky, and the +absence of fresh-water ice, that the sea could not be far; so I set to +work, and spent two days in putting to rights the now battered kayak. +This done, I had no sooner resumed my way than I sighted far off a +streaky haze, which I knew to be the basalt cliffs of Franz Josef Land; +and in a craziness of joy I stood there, waving my ski-staff about my +head, with the senile cheers of a very old man. + +In four days this land was visibly nearer, sheer basaltic cliffs mixed +with glacier, forming apparently a great bay, with two small islands in +the mid-distance; and at fore-day of the 3rd August I arrived at the +definite edge of the pack-ice in moderate weather at about the +freezing-point. + +I at once, but with great reluctance, shot Reinhardt, and set to work to +get the last of the provisions, and the most necessary of the +implements, into the kayak, making haste to put out to the toilless +luxury of being borne on the water, after all the weary trudge. Within +fourteen hours I was coasting, with my little lug-sail spread, along the +shore-ice of that land. It was midnight of a calm Sabbath, and low on +the horizon smoked the drowsing red sun-ball, as my canvas skiff lightly +chopped her little way through this silent sea. Silent, silent: for +neither snort of walrus, nor yelp of fox, nor cry of startled kittiwake, +did I hear: but all was still as the jet-black shadow of the cliffs and +glacier on the tranquil sea: and many bodies of dead things strewed the +surface of the water. + + * * * * * + +When I found a little fjord, I went up it to the end where stood a +stretch of basalt columns, looking like a shattered temple of +Antediluvians; and when my foot at last touched land, I sat down there a +long, long time in the rubbly snow, and silently wept. My eyes that +night were like a fountain of tears. For the firm land is health and +sanity, and dear to the life of man; but I say that the great ungenial +ice is a nightmare, and a blasphemy, and a madness, and the realm of the +Power of Darkness. + + * * * * * + +I knew that I was at Franz Josef Land, somewhere or other in the +neighbourhood of C. Fligely (about 82 N.), and though it was so late, +and getting cold, I still had the hope of reaching Spitzbergen that +year, by alternately sailing all open water, and dragging the kayak over +the slack drift-ice. All the ice which I saw was good flat fjord-ice, +and the plan seemed feasible enough; so after coasting about a little, +and then three days' good rest in the tent at the bottom of a ravine of +columnar basalt opening upon the shore, I packed some bear and walrus +flesh, with what artificial food was left, into the kayak, and I set out +early in the morning, coasting the shore-ice with sail and paddle. In +the afternoon I managed to climb a little way up an iceberg, and made +out that I was in a bay whose terminating headlands were invisible. I +accordingly decided to make S.W. by W. to cross it, but, in doing so, I +was hardly out of sight of land, when a northern storm overtook me +toward midnight; before I could think, the little sail was all but +whiffed away, and the kayak upset. I only saved it by the happy chance +of being near a floe with an ice-foot, which, projecting under the +water, gave me foot-hold; and I lay on the floe in a mooning state the +whole night under the storm, for I was half drowned. + +And at once, on recovering myself, I abandoned all thought of whalers +and of Europe for that year. Happily, my instruments, &c., had been +saved by the kayak-deck when she capsized. + + * * * * * + +A hundred yards inland from the shore-rim, in a circular place where +there was some moss and soil, I built myself a semi-subterranean Eskimo +den for the long Polar night. The spot was quite surrounded by high +sloping walls of basalt, except to the west, where they opened in a +three-foot cleft to the shore, and the ground was strewn with slabs and +boulders of granite and basalt. I found there a dead she-bear, two +well-grown cubs, and a fox, the latter having evidently fallen from the +cliffs; in three places the snow was quite red, overgrown with a red +lichen, which at first I took for blood. I did not even yet feel secure +from possible bears, and took care to make my den fairly tight, a work +which occupied me nearly four weeks, for I had no tools, save a hatchet, +knife, and metal-shod ski-staff. I dug a passage in the ground two feet +wide, two deep, and ten long, with perpendicular sides, and at its north +end a circular space, twelve feet across, also with perpendicular sides, +which I lined with stones; the whole excavation I covered with +inch-thick walrus-hide, skinned during a whole bitter week from four of +a number that lay about the shore-ice; for ridge-pole I used a thin +pointed rock which I found near, though, even so, the roof remained +nearly flat. This, when it was finished, I stocked well, putting in +everything, except the kayak, blubber to serve both for fuel and +occasional light, and foods of several sorts, which I procured by merely +stretching out the hand. The roof of both circular part and passage was +soon buried under snow and ice, and hardly distinguishable from the +general level of the white-clad ground. Through the passage, if I passed +in or out, I crawled flat, on hands and knees: but that was rare: and in +the little round interior, mostly sitting in a cowering attitude, I +wintered, harkening to the large and windy ravings of darkling December +storms above me. + + * * * * * + +All those months the burden of a thought bowed me; and an unanswered +question, like the slow turning of a mechanism, revolved in my gloomy +spirit: for everywhere around me lay bears, walruses, foxes, thousands +upon thousands of little awks, kittiwakes, snow-owls, eider-ducks, +gulls-dead, dead. Almost the only living things which I saw were some +walruses on the drift-floes: but very few compared with the number +which I expected. It was clear to me that some inconceivable catastrophe +had overtaken the island during the summer, destroying all life about +it, except some few of the amphibia, cetacea, and crustacea. + +On the 5th December, having crept out from the den during a southern +storm, I had, for the third time, a distant whiff of that self-same +odour of peach-blossom: but now without any after-effects. + + * * * * * + +Well, again came Christmas, the New Year--Spring: and on the 22nd May I +set out with a well-stocked kayak. The water was fairly open, and the +ice so good, that at one place I could sail the kayak over it, the wind +sending me sliding at a fine pace. Being on the west coast of Franz +Josef Land, I was in as favourable a situation as possible, and I turned +my bow southward with much hope, keeping a good many days just in sight +of land. Toward the evening of my third day out I noticed a large flat +floe, presenting far-off a singular and lovely sight, for it seemed +freighted thick with a profusion of pink and white roses, showing in its +clear crystal the empurpled reflection. On getting near I saw that it +was covered with millions of Ross's gulls, all dead, whose pretty rosy +bosoms had given it that appearance. + +Up to the 29th June I made good progress southward and westward (the +weather being mostly excellent), sometimes meeting dead bears, floating +away on floes, sometimes dead or living walrus-herds, with troop after +troop of dead kittiwakes, glaucus and ivory gulls, skuas, and every kind +of Arctic fowl. On that last day--the 29th June--I was about to encamp +on a floe soon after midnight, when, happening to look toward the sun, +my eye fell, far away south across the ocean of floes, upon +something--_the masts of a ship_. + +A phantom ship, or a real ship: it was all one; real, I must have +instantly felt, it could not be: but at a sight so incredible my heart +set to beating in my bosom as though I must surely die, and feebly +waving the cane oar about my head, I staggered to my knees, and thence +with wry mouth toppled flat. + +So overpoweringly sweet was the thought of springing once more, like the +beasts of Circe, from a walrus into a man. At this time I was tearing my +bear's-meat just like a bear; I was washing my hands in walrus-blood to +produce a glairy sort of pink cleanliness, in place of the black grease +which chronically coated them. + +Worn as I was, I made little delay to set out for that ship; and I had +not travelled over water and ice four hours when, to my in-describable +joy, I made out from the top of a steep floe that she was the _Boreal_. +It seemed most strange that she should be anywhere hereabouts: I could +only conclude that she must have forced and drifted her way thus far +westward out of the ice-block in which our party had left her, and +perhaps now was loitering here in the hope of picking us up on our way +to Spitzbergen. + +In any case, wild was the haste with which I fought my way to be at her, +my gasping mouth all the time drawn back in a _rictus_ of laughter at +the anticipation of their gladness to see me, their excitement to hear +the grand tidings of the Pole attained. Anon I waved the paddle, though +I knew that they could not yet see me, and then I dug deep at the +whitish water. What astonished me was her main-sail and fore-mast +square-sail--set that calm morning; and her screws were still, for she +moved not at all. The sun was abroad like a cold spirit of light, +touching the great ocean-room of floes with dazzling spots, and a tint +almost of rose was on the world, as it were of a just-dead bride in her +spangles and white array. The _Boreal_ was the one little distant +jet-black spot in all this purity: and upon her, as though she were +Heaven, I paddled, I panted. But she was in a queerish state: by 9 A.M. +I could see that. Two of the windmill arms were not there, and half +lowered down her starboard beam a boat hung askew; moreover, soon after +10 I could clearly see that her main-sail had a long rent down the +middle. + +I could not at all make her out. She was not anchored, though a +sheet-anchor hung over at the starboard cathead; she was not moored; and +two small ice-floes, one on each side, were sluggishly bombarding her +bows. + +I began now to wave the paddle, battling for my breath, ecstatic, crazy +with excitement, each second like a year to me. Very soon I could make +out someone at the bows, leaning well over, looking my way. Something +put it into my head that it was Sallitt, and I began an impassioned +shouting. 'Hi! Sallitt! Hallo! Hi!' I called. + +I did not see him move: I was still a good way off: but there he stood, +leaning steadily over, looking my way. Between me and the ship now was +all navigable water among the floes, and the sight of him so visibly +near put into me such a shivering eagerness, that I was nothing else but +a madman for the time, sending the kayak flying with venomous digs in +quick-repeated spurts, and mixing with the diggings my crazy wavings, +and with both the daft shoutings of 'Hallo! Hi! Bravo! I have _been to +the Pole!_' + +Well, vanity, vanity. Nearer still I drew: it was broad morning, going +on toward noon: I was half a mile away, I was fifty yards. But on board +the _Boreal_, though now they _must_ have heard me, seen me, I observed +no movement of welcome, but all, all was still as death that still +Arctic morning, my God. Only, the ragged sail flapped a little, and--one +on each side--two ice-floes sluggishly bombarded the bows, with hollow +sounds. + +I was certain now that Sallitt it was who looked across the ice: but +when the ship swung a little round, I noticed that the direction of his +gaze was carried with her movement, he no longer looking my way. + +'Why, Sallitt!' I shouted reproachfully: 'why, Sallitt, man...!' I +whined. + +But even as I shouted and whined, a perfect wild certainty was in my +heart: for an aroma like peach, my God, had been suddenly wafted from +the ship upon me, and I must have very well known then that that +watchful outlook of Sallitt saw nothing, and on the _Boreal_ were dead +men all; indeed, very soon I saw one of his eyes looking like a glass +eye which has slid askew, and glares distraught. And now again my +wretched body failed, and my head dropped forward, where I sat, upon +the kayak-deck. + + * * * * * + +Well, after a long time, I lifted myself to look again at that forlorn +and wandering craft. There she lay, quiet, tragic, as it were culpable +of the dark secret she bore; and Sallitt, who had been such good friends +with me, would not cease his stare. I knew quite well why he was there: +he had leant over to vomit, and had leant ever since, his forearms +pressed on the bulwark-beam, his left knee against the boards, and his +left shoulder propped on the cathead. When I came quite near, I saw that +with every bump of the two floes against the bows, his face shook in +response, and nodded a little; strange to say, he had no covering on his +head, and I noted the play of the faint breezes in his uncut hair. After +a time I would approach no more, for I was afraid; I did not dare, the +silence of the ship seemed so sacred and awful; and till late afternoon +I sat there, watching the black and massive hull. Above her water-line +emerged all round a half-floating fringe of fresh-green sea-weed, +proving old neglect; an abortive attempt had apparently been made to +lower, or take in, the larch-wood pram, for there she hung by a jammed +davit-rope, stern up, bow in the water; the only two arms of the +windmill moved this way and that, through some three degrees, with an +_andante_ creaking sing-song; some washed clothes, tied on the bow-sprit +rigging to dry, were still there; the iron casing all round the bluff +bows was red and rough with rust; at several points the rigging was in +considerable tangle; occasionally the boom moved a little with a +tortured skirling cadence; and the sail, rotten, I presume, from +exposure--for she had certainly encountered no bad weather--gave out +anon a heavy languid flap at a rent down the middle. Besides Sallitt, +looking out there where he had jammed himself, I saw no one. + +By a paddle-stroke now, and another presently, I had closely approached +her about four in the afternoon, though my awe of the ship was +complicated by that perfume of hers, whose fearful effects I knew. My +tentative approach, however, proved to me, when I remained unaffected, +that, here and now, whatever danger there had been was past; and +finally, by a hanging rope, with a thumping desperation of heart, I +clambered up her beam. + + * * * * * + +They had died, it seemed, very suddenly, for nearly all the twelve were +in poses of activity. Egan was in the very act of ascending the +companion-way; Lamburn was sitting against the chart-room door, +apparently cleaning two carbines; Odling at the bottom of the +engine-room stair seemed to be drawing on a pair of reindeer komagar; +and Cartwright, who was often in liquor, had his arms frozen tight round +the neck of Martin, whom he seemed to be kissing, they two lying stark +at the foot of the mizzen-mast. + +Over all--over men, decks, rope-coils--in the cabin, in the +engine-room--between skylight leaves--on every shelf, in every +cranny--lay a purplish ash or dust, very impalpably fine. And steadily +reigning throughout the ship, like the very spirit of death, was that +aroma of peach-blossom. + + * * * * * + +Here it had reigned, as I could see from the log-dates, from the rust on +the machinery, from the look of the bodies, from a hundred indications, +during something over a year. It was, therefore, mainly by the random +workings of winds and currents that this fragrant ship of death had been +brought hither to me. + +And this was the first direct intimation which I had that the Unseen +Powers (whoever and whatever they may be), who through the history of +the world had been so very, very careful to conceal their Hand from the +eyes of men, hardly any longer intended to be at the pains to conceal +their Hand from me. It was just as though the Boreal had been openly +presented to me by a spiritual agency, which, though I could not see it, +I could readily apprehend. + + * * * * * + +The dust, though very thin and flighty above-decks, lay thickly +deposited below, and after having made a tour of investigation +throughout the ship, the first thing which I did was to examine +that--though I had tasted nothing all day, and was exhausted to death. I +found my own microscope where I had left it in the box in my berth to +starboard, though I had to lift up Egan to get at it, and to step over +Lamburn to enter the chart-room; but there, toward evening, I sat at the +table and bent to see if I could make anything of the dust, while it +seemed to me as if all the myriad spirits of men that have sojourned on +the earth, and angel and devil, and all Time and all Eternity, hung +silent round for my decision; and such an ague had me, that for a long +time my wandering finger-tips, all ataxic with agitation, eluded every +delicate effort which I made, and I could nothing do. Of course, I know +that an odour of peach-blossom in the air, resulting in death, could +only be associated with some vaporous effluvium of cyanogen, or of +hydrocyanic ('prussic') acid, or of both; and when I at last managed to +examine some of the dust under the microscope, I was not therefore +surprised to find, among the general mass of purplish ash, a number of +bright-yellow particles, which could only be minute crystals of potassic +ferrocyanide. What potassic ferrocyanide was doing on board the _Boreal_ +I did not know, and I had neither the means, nor the force of mind, +alas! to dive then further into the mystery; I understood only that by +some extraordinary means the air of the region just south of the Polar +environ had been impregnated with a vapour which was either cyanogen, or +some product of cyanogen; also, that this deadly vapour, which is very +soluble, had by now either been dissolved by the sea, or else dispersed +into space (probably the latter), leaving only its faint after-perfume; +and seeing this, I let my poor abandoned head drop again on the table, +and long hours I sat there staring mad, for I had a suspicion, my God, +and a fear, in my breast. + + * * * * * + +The _Boreal,_ I found, contained sufficient provisions, untouched by +the dust, in cases, casks, &c., to last me, probably, fifty years. After +two days, when I had partially scrubbed and boiled the filth of fifteen +months from my skin, and solaced myself with better food, I overhauled +her thoroughly, and spent three more days in oiling and cleaning the +engine. Then, all being ready, I dragged my twelve dead and laid them +together in two rows on the chart-room floor; and I hoisted for love the +poor little kayak which had served me through so many tribulations. At +nine in the morning of the 6th July, a week from my first sighting of +the _Boreal_, I descended to the engine-room to set out. + +The screws, like those of most quite modern ships, were driven by the +simple contrivance of a constant stream of liquid air, contained in very +powerful tanks, exploding through capillary tubes into non-expansion +slide-valve chests, much as in the ordinary way with steam: a motor +which gave her, in spite of her bluff hulk, a speed of sixteen knots. It +is, therefore, the simplest thing for one man to take these ships round +the world, since their movement, or stopping, depend upon nothing but +the depressing or raising of a steel handle, provided that one does not +get blown to the sky meantime, as liquid air, in spite of its thousand +advantages, occasionally blows people. At any rate, I had tanks of air +sufficient to last me through twelve years' voyaging; and there was the +ordinary machine on board for making it, with forty tons of coal, in +case of need, in the bunkers, and two excellent Belleville boilers: so I +was well supplied with motors at least. + +The ice here was quite slack, and I do not think I ever saw Arctic +weather so bright and gay, the temperature at 41. I found that I was +midway between Franz Josef and Spitzbergen, in latitude 79 23' N. and +longitude 39 E.; my way was perfectly clear; and something almost like +a mournful hopefulness was in me as the engines slid into their clanking +turmoil, and those long-silent screws began to churn the Arctic sea. I +ran up with alacrity and took my stand at the wheel; and the bows of my +eventful Argo turned southward and westward. + + * * * * * + +When I needed food or sleep, the ship slept, too: when I awoke, she +continued her way. + +Sixteen hours a day sometimes I stood sentinel at that wheel, +overlooking the varied monotony of the ice-sea, till my knees would +give, and I wondered why a wheel at which one might sit was not +contrived, rather delicate steering being often required among the floes +and bergs. By now, however, I was less weighted with my ball of Polar +clothes, and stood almost slim in a Lap great-coat, a round Siberian fur +cap on my head. + +At midnight when I threw myself into my old berth, it was just as though +the engines, subsided now into silence, were a dead thing, and had a +ghost which haunted me; for I heard them still, and yet not them, but +the silence of their ghost. + +Sometimes I would startle from sleep, horrified to the heart at some +sound of exploding iceberg, or bumping floe, noising far through that +white mystery of quietude, where the floes and bergs were as floating +tombs, and the world a liquid cemetery. Never could I describe the +strange Doom's-day shock with which such a sound would recall me from +far depths of chaos to recollection of myself: for often-times, both +waking and in nightmare, I did not know on which planet I was, nor in +which Age, but felt myself adrift in the great gulf of time and space +and circumstance, without bottom for my consciousness to stand upon; and +the world was all mirage and a new show to me; and the boundaries of +dream and waking lost. + +Well, the weather was most fair all the time, and the sea like a pond. +During the morning of the fifth day, the 11th July, I entered, and went +moving down, an extraordinary long avenue of snow-bergs and floes, most +regularly placed, half a mile across and miles long, like a Titanic +double-procession of statues, or the Ming Tombs, but rising and sinking +on the cadenced swell; many towering high, throwing placid shadows on +the aisle between; some being of a lucid emerald tint; and three or four +pouring down cascades that gave a far and chaunting sound. The sea +between was of a strange thick bluishness, almost like raw egg-white; +while, as always here, some snow-clouds, white and woolly, floated in +the pale sky. Down this avenue, which produced a mysterious impression +of Cyclopean cathedrals and odd sequesteredness, I had not passed a +mile, when I sighted a black object at the end. + +I rushed to the shrouds, and very soon made out a whaler. + +Again the same panting agitations, mad rage to be at her, at once +possessed me; I flew to the indicator, turned the lever to full, then +back to give the wheel a spin, then up the main-mast ratlins, waving a +long foot-bandage of vadmel tweed picked up at random, and by the time I +was within five hundred yards of her, had worked myself to such a pitch, +that I was again shouting that futile madness: 'Hullo! Hi! Bravo! _I +have been to the Pole!_' + +And those twelve dead that I had in the chart-room there must have heard +me, and the men on the whaler must have heard me, and smiled their +smile. + +For, as to that whaler, I should have known better at once, if I had not +been crazy, since she _looked_ like a ship of death, her boom slamming +to port and starboard on the gentle heave of the sea, and her fore-sail +reefed that serene morning. Only when I was quite near her, and hurrying +down to stop the engines, did the real truth, with perfect suddenness, +drench my heated brain; and I almost ran into her, I was so stunned. + +However, I stopped the _Boreal_ in time, and later on lowered the kayak, +and boarded the other. + +This ship had evidently been stricken silent in the midst of a perfect +drama of activity, for I saw not one of her crew of sixty-two who was +not busy, except one boy. I found her a good-sized thing of 500 odd +tons, ship-rigged, with auxiliary engine of seventy horse-power, and +pretty heavily armour-plated round the bows. There was no part of her +which I did not over-haul, and I could see that they had had a great +time with whales, for a mighty carcass, attached to the outside of the +ship by the powerful cant-purchase tackle, had been in process of +flensing and cutting-in, and on the deck two great blankets of blubber, +looking each a ton-weight, surrounded by twenty-seven men in many +attitudes, some terrifying to see, some disgusting, several grotesque, +all so unhuman, the whale dead, and the men dead, too, and death was +there, and the rank-flourishing germs of Inanity, and a mesmerism, and a +silence, whose dominion was established, and its reign was growing old. +Four of them, who had been removing the gums from a mass of stratified +whalebone at the mizzen-mast foot, were quite imbedded in whale-flesh; +also, in a barrel lashed to the top of the main top-gallant masthead was +visible the head of a man with a long pointed beard, looking steadily +out over the sea to the S.W., which made me notice that five only of the +probable eight or nine boats were on board; and after visiting the +'tween-decks, where I saw considerable quantities of stowed whalebone +plates, and about fifty or sixty iron oil-tanks, and cut-up blubber; and +after visiting cabin, engine-room, fo'cas'le, where I saw a lonely boy +of fourteen with his hand grasping a bottle of rum under all the +turned-up clothes in a chest, he, at the moment of death, being +evidently intent upon hiding it; and after two hours' search of the +ship, I got back to my own, and half an hour later came upon all the +three missing whale-boats about a mile apart, and steered zig-zag near +to each. They contained five men each and a steerer, and one had the +harpoon-gun fired, with the loose line coiled round and round the head +and upper part of the stroke line-manager; and in the others hundreds of +fathoms of coiled rope, with toggle-irons, whale-lances, hand-harpoons, +and dropped heads, and grins, and lazy _abandon_, and eyes that stared, +and eyes that dozed, and eyes that winked. + +After this I began to sight ships not infrequently, and used regularly +to have the three lights burning all night. On the 12th July I met one, +on the 15th two, on the 16th one, on the 17th three, on the 18th +two--all Greenlanders, I think: but, of the nine, I boarded only three, +the glass quite clearly showing me, when yet far off, that on the others +was no life; and on the three which I boarded were dead men; so that +that suspicion which I had, and that fear, grew very heavy upon me. + +I went on southward, day after day southward, sentinel there at my +wheel; clear sunshine by day, when the calm pale sea sometimes seemed +mixed with regions of milk, and at night the immense desolation of a +world lit by a sun that was long dead, and by a light that was gloom. It +was like Night blanched in death then; and wan as the very kingdom of +death and Hades I have seen it, most terrifying, that neuter state and +limbo of nothingness, when unreal sea and spectral sky, all boundaries +lost, mingled in a vast shadowy void of ghastly phantasmagoria, pale to +utter huelessness, at whose centre I, as if annihilated, seemed to swoon +in immensity of space. Into this disembodied world would come anon +waftures of that peachy scent which I knew: and their frequency rapidly +grew. But still the _Boreal_ moved, traversing, as it were, bottomless +Eternity: and I reached latitude 72, not far now from Northern Europe. + +And now, as to that blossomy peach-scent--even while some floes were yet +around me--I was just like some fantastic mariner, who, having set out +to search for Eden and the Blessed Islands, finds them, and balmy gales +from their gardens come out, while he is yet afar, to meet him with +their perfumes of almond and champac, cornel and jasmin and lotus. For I +had now reached a zone where the peach-aroma was constant; all the world +seemed embalmed in its spicy fragrance; and I could easily imagine +myself voyaging beyond the world toward some clime of perpetual and +enchanting Spring. + + * * * * * + +Well, I saw at last what whalers used to call 'the blink of the ice'; +that is to say, its bright apparition or reflection in the sky when it +is left behind, or not yet come-to. By this time I was in a region where +a good many craft of various sorts were to be seen; I was continually +meeting them; and not one did I omit to investigate, while many I +boarded in the kayak or the larch-wood pram. Just below latitude 70 I +came upon a good large fleet of what I supposed to be Lafoden cod and +herring fishers, which must have drifted somewhat on a northward +current. They had had a great season, for the boats were well laden with +curing fish. I went from one to the other on a zig-zag course, they +being widely scattered, some mere dots to the glass on the horizon. The +evening was still and clear with that astral Arctic clearness, the sun +just beginning his low-couched nightly drowse. These sturdy-looking +brown boats stood rocking gently there with slow-creaking noises, as of +things whining in slumber, without the least damage, awaiting the +appalling storms of the winter months on that tenebrous sea, when a +dark doom, and a deep grave, would not fail them. The fishers were braw +carles, wearing, many of them, fringes of beard well back from the +chin-point, with hanging woollen caps. In every case I found below-decks +a number of cruses of corn-brandy, marked _aquavit_, two of which I took +into the pram. In one of the smacks an elderly fisher was kneeling in a +forward sprawling pose, clasping the lug-mast with his arms, the two +knees wide apart, head thrown back, and the yellow eye-balls with their +islands of grey iris staring straight up the mast-pole. At another of +them, instead of boarding in the pram, I shut off the _Boreal's_ liquid +air at such a point that, by delicate steering, she slackened down to a +stoppage just a-beam of the smack, upon whose deck I was thus able to +jump down. After looking around I descended the three steps aft into the +dark and garrety below-decks, and with stooping back went calling in an +awful whisper: '_Anyone? Anyone?_' Nothing answered me: and when I went +up again, the _Boreal_ had drifted three yards beyond my reach. There +being a dead calm, I had to plunge into the water, and in that +half-minute there a sudden cold throng of unaccountable terrors beset +me, and I can feel again now that abysmal desolation of loneliness, and +sense of a hostile and malign universe bent upon eating me up: for the +ocean seemed to me nothing but a great ghost. + +Two mornings later I came upon another school, rather larger boats +these, which I found to be Brittany cod-fishers. Most of these, too, I +boarded. In every below-decks was a wooden or earthenware image of the +Virgin, painted in gaudy faded colours; and in one case I found a boy +who had been kneeling before the statue, but was toppled sideways now, +his knees still bent, and the cross of Christ in his hand. These +stalwart blue woollen blouses and tarpaulin sou'-westers lay in every +pose of death, every detail of feature and expression still perfectly +preserved. The sloops were all the same, all, all: with sing-song creaks +they rocked a little, nonchalantly: each, as it were, with a certain +sub-consciousness of its own personality, and callous unconsciousness of +all the others round it: yet each a copy of the others: the same hooks +and lines, disembowelling-knives, barrels of salt and pickle, piles and +casks of opened cod, kegs of biscuit, and low-creaking rockings, and a +bilgy smell, and dead men. The next day, about eighty miles south of the +latitude of Mount Hekla, I sighted a big ship, which turned out to be +the French cruiser _Lazare Trport_. I boarded and overhauled her +during three hours, her upper, main, and armoured deck, deck by deck, to +her lowest black depths, even childishly spying up the tubes of her two +big, rusted turret-guns. Three men in the engine-room had been much +mangled, after death, I presume, by a burst boiler; floating about 800 +yards to the north-east lay a long-boat of hers, low in the water, +crammed with marines, one oar still there, jammed between the row-lock +and the rower's forced-back chin; on the ship's starboard deck, in the +long stretch of space between the two masts, the blue-jackets had +evidently been piped up, for they lay there in a sort of serried +disorder, to the number of two hundred and seventy-five. Nothing could +be of suggestion more tragic than the wasted and helpless power of this +poor wandering vessel, around whose stolid mass myriads of wavelets, +busy as aspen-leaves, bickered with a continual weltering splash that +was quite loud to hear. I sat a good time that afternoon in one of her +steely port main-deck casemates on a gun-carriage, my head sunken on my +breast, furtively eyeing the bluish turned-up feet, all shrunk, +exsanguined, of a sailor who lay on his back before me; his soles were +all that I could see, the rest of him lying head-downwards beyond the +steel door-sill. + +Drenched in seas of lugubrious reverie I sat, till, with a shuddering +start, I awoke, paddled back to the _Boreal_, and, till sleep conquered +me, went on my way. At ten the next morning, coming on deck, I spied to +the west a group of craft, and turned my course upon them. They turned +out to be eight Shetland sixerns, which must have drifted north-eastward +hither. I examined them well, but they were as the long list of the +others: for all the men, and all the boys, and all the dogs on them were +dead. + + * * * * * + +I could have come to land a long time before I did: but I would not: I +was so afraid. For I was used to the silence of the ice: and I was used +to the silence of the sea: but, God knows it, I was afraid of the +silence of the land. + + * * * * * + +Once, on the 15th July, I had seen a whale, or thought I did, spouting +very remotely afar on the S.E. horizon; and on the 19th I distinctly saw +a shoal of porpoises vaulting the sea-surface, in their swift-successive +manner, northward: and seeing them, I had said pitifully to myself: +'Well, I am not quite alone in the world, then, my good God--not quite +alone.' + +Moreover, some days later, the _Boreal_ had found herself in a bank of +cod making away northward, millions of fish, for I saw them, and one +afternoon caught three, hand-running, with the hook. + +So the sea, at least, had its tribes to be my mates. + +But if I should find the land as still as the sea, without even the +spouting whale, or school of tumbling sea-hogs--_if Paris were dumber +than the eternal ice_--what then, I asked myself, should I do? + + * * * * * + +I could have made short work, and landed at Shetland, for I found myself +as far westward as longitude 11 23' W.: but I would not: I was so +afraid. The shrinking within me to face that vague suspicion which I +had, turned me first to a foreign land. + +I made for Norway, and on the first night of this definite intention, at +about nine o'clock, the weather being gusty, the sky lowering, the air +sombrous, and the sea hard-looking, dark, and ridged, I was steaming +along at a good rate, holding the wheel, my poor port and starboard +lights still burning there, when, without the least notice, I received +the roughest physical shock of my life, being shot bodily right over +the wheel, thence, as from a cannon, twenty feet to the cabin-door, +through it head-foremost down the companion-way, and still beyond some +six yards along the passage. I had crashed into some dark and dead ship, +probably of large size, though I never saw her, nor any sign of her; and +all that night, and the next day till four in the afternoon, the +_Boreal_ went driving alone over the sea, whither she would: for I lay +unconscious. When I woke, I found that I had received really very small +injuries, considering: but I sat there on the floor a long time in a +sulky, morose, disgusted, and bitter mood; and when I rose, pettishly +stopped the ship's engines, seeing my twelve dead all huddled and +disfigured. Now I was afraid to steam by night, and even in the daytime +I would not go on for three days: for I was childishly angry with I know +not what, and inclined to quarrel with Those whom I could not see. + +However, on the fourth day, a rough swell which knocked the ship about, +and made me very uncomfortable, coaxed me into moving; and I did so with +bows turned eastward and southward. + +I sighted the Norway coast four days later, in latitude 63 19', at noon +of the 11th August, and pricked off my course to follow it; but it was +with a slow and dawdling reluctance that I went, at much less than +half-speed. In some eight hours, as I knew from the chart, I ought to +sight the lighthouse light on Smoelen Island; and when quiet night came, +the black water being branded with trails of still moonlight, I passed +quite close to it, between ten and twelve, almost under the shadow of +the mighty hills: but, oh my God, no light was there. And all the way +down I marked the rugged sea-board slumber darkling, afar or near, with +never, alas! one friendly light. + + * * * * * + +Well, on the 15th August I had another of those maniac raptures, whose +passing away would have left an elephant racked and prostrate. During +four days I had seen not one sign of present life on the Norway coast, +only hills, hills, dead and dark, and floating craft, all dead and dark; +and my eyes now, I found, had acquired a crazy fixity of stare into the +very bottom of the vacant abyss of nothingness, while I remained +unconscious of being, save of one point, rainbow-blue, far down in the +infinite, which passed slowly from left to right before my consciousness +a little way, then vanished, came back, and passed slowly again, from +left to right continually; till some prick, or voice, in my brain would +startle me into the consciousness that I was staring, whispering the +profound confidential warning: _You must not stare so, or it is over +with you!_' Well, lost in a blank trance of this sort, I was leaning +over the wheel during the afternoon of the 15th, when it was as if some +instinct or premonition in my soul leapt up, and said aloud: 'If you +look just yonder, _you will see...!_' I started, and in one instant had +surged up from all that depth of reverie to reality: I glanced to the +right: and there, at last, my God, I saw something human which moved, +rapidly moved: at last!--and it came to me. + +That sense of recovery, of waking, of new solidity, of the comfortable +usual, a million-fold too intense for words--how sweetly consoling it +was! Again now, as I write, I can fancy and feel it--the rocky solidity, +the adamant ordinary, on which to base the feet, and live. From the day +when I stood at the Pole, and saw there the dizzy thing that made me +swoon, there had come into my way not one sign or trace that other +beings like myself were alive on the earth with me: till now, suddenly, +I had the sweet indubitable proof: for on the south-western sea, not +four knots away, I saw a large, swift ship: and her bows, which were +sharp as a hatchet, were steadily chipping through the smooth sea at a +pretty high pace, throwing out profuse ribbony foams that went +wide-vawering, with outward undulations, far behind her length, as she +ran the sea in haste, straight northward. + +At the moment, I was steering about S.E. by S., fifteen miles out from a +shadowy-blue series of Norway mountains; and just giving the wheel one +frantic spin to starboard to bring me down upon her, I flew to the +bridge, leant my back on the main-mast, which passed through it, put a +foot on the white iron rail before me, and there at once felt all the +mocking devils of distracted revelry possess me, as I caught the cap +from my long hairs, and commenced to wave and wave and wave, red-faced +maniac that I was: for at the second nearer glance, I saw that she was +flying an ensign at the main, and a long pennant at the main-top, and I +did not know what she was flying those flags there for: and I was +embittered and driven mad. + +With distinct minuteness did she print herself upon my consciousness in +that five minutes' interval: she was painted a dull and cholera yellow, +like many Russian ships, and there was a faded pink space at her bows +under the line where the yellow ceased: the ensign at her main I made +out to be the blue-and-white saltire, and she was clearly a Russian +passenger-liner, two-masted, two-funnelled, though from her funnels came +no trace of smoke, and the position of her steam-cones was anywhere. All +about her course the sea was spotted with wobbling splendours of the low +sun, large coarse blots of glory near the eye, but lessening to a +smaller pattern in the distance, and at the horizon refined to a +homogeneous band of livid silver. + +The double speed of the _Boreal_ and the other, hastening opposite ways, +must have been thirty-eight or forty knots, and the meeting was +accomplished in certainly less than five minutes: yet into that time I +crowded years of life. I was shouting passionately at her, my eyes +starting from my head, my face all inflamed with rage the most prone, +loud and urgent. For she did not stop, nor signal, nor make sign of +seeing me, but came furrowing down upon me like Juggernaut, with +steadfast run. I lost reason, thought, memory, purpose, sense of +relation, in that access of delirium which transported me, and can only +remember now that in the midst of my shouting, a word, uttered by the +fiends who used my throat to express their frenzy, set me laughing high +and madly: for I was crying: 'Hi! Bravo! Why don't you stop? _Madmen! I +have been to the Pole!'_ + +That instant an odour arose, and came, and struck upon my brain, most +detestable, most execrable; and while one might count ten, I was aware +of her near-sounding engines, and that cursed charnel went tearing past +me on her maenad way, not fifteen yards from my eyes and nostrils. She +was a thing, my God, from which the vulture and the jackal, prowling for +offal, would fly with shrieks of loathing. I had a glimpse of decks +piled thick with her festered dead. + +In big black letters on the round retreating yellow stern my eye-corner +caught the word _Yaroslav_, as I bent over the rail to retch and cough +and vomit at her. She was a horrid thing. + +This ship had certainly been pretty far south in tropical or +sub-tropical latitudes with her great crowd of dead: for all the bodies +which I had seen till then, so far from smelling ill, seemed to give out +a certain perfume of the peach. She was evidently one of those many +ships of late years which have substituted liquid air for steam, yet +retained their old steam-funnels, &c., in case of emergency: for air, I +believe, was still looked at askance by several builders, on account of +the terrible accidents which it sometimes caused. The _Boreal_ herself +is a similar instance of both motors. This vessel, the _Yaroslav_, must +have been left with working engines when her crew were overtaken by +death, and, her air-tanks being still unexhausted, must have been +ranging the ocean with impunity ever since, during I knew not how many +months, or, it might be, years. + +Well, I coasted Norway for nearly a hundred and sixty miles without once +going nearer land than two or three miles: for something held me back. +But passing the fjord-mouth where I knew that Aadheim was, I suddenly +turned the helm to port, almost before I knew that I was doing it, and +made for land. + +In half an hour I was moving up an opening in the land with mountains on +either hand, streaky crags at their summit, umbrageous boscage below; +and the whole softened, as it were, by veils woven of the rainbow. + +This arm of water lies curved about like a thread which one drops, only +the curves are much more pointed, so that every few minutes the scene +was changed, though the vessel just crawled her way up, and I could see +behind me nothing of what was passed, or only a land-locked gleam like a +lake. + +I never saw water so polished and glassy, like clarid polished marble, +reflecting everything quite clean-cut in its lucid abysm, over which +hardly the faintest zephyr breathed that still sun-down; it wimpled +about the bluff _Boreal_, which seemed to move as if careful not to +bruise it, in rich wrinkles and creases, like glycerine, or +dewy-trickling lotus-oil; yet it was only the sea: and the spectacle +yonder was only crags, and autumn-foliage and mountain-slope: yet all +seemed caught-up and chaste, rapt in a trance of rose and purple, and +made of the stuff of dreams and bubbles, of pollen-of-flowers, and rinds +of the peach. + +I saw it not only with delight, but with complete astonishment: having +forgotten, as was too natural in all that long barrenness of ice and +sea, that anything could be so ethereally fair: yet homely, too, human, +familiar, and consoling. The air here was richly spiced with that peachy +scent, and there was a Sabbath and a nepenthe and a charm in that place +at that hour, as it were of those gardens of Hesperus, and fields of +asphodel, reserved for the spirits of the just. + +Alas! but I had the glass at my side, and for me nepenthe was mixed with +a despair immense as the vault of heaven, my good God: for anon I would +take it up to spy some perched hut of the peasant, or burg of the +'bonder,' on the peaks: and I saw no one there; and to the left, at the +third marked bend of the fjord, where there is one of those watch-towers +that these people used for watching in-coming fish, I spied, lying on a +craggy slope just before the tower, a body which looked as if it must +surely tumble head-long, but did not. And when I saw that, I felt +definitely, for the first time, that shoreless despair which I alone of +men have felt, high beyond the stars, and deep as hell; and I fell to +staring again that blank stare of Nirvana and the lunacy of Nothingness, +wherein Time merges in Eternity, and all being, like one drop of water, +flies scattered to fill the bottomless void of space, and is lost. + +The _Boreal's_ bow walking over a little empty fishing-boat roused me, +and a minute later, just before I came to a new promontory and bend, I +saw two people. The shore there is some three feet above the water, and +edged with boulders of rock, about which grows a fringe of shrubs and +small trees: behind this fringe is a path, curving upward through a +sombre wooded little gorge; and on the path, near the water, I saw a +driver of one of those Norwegian sulkies that were called karjolers: he, +on the high front seat, was dead, lying sideways and backwards, with low +head resting on the wheel; and on a trunk strapped to a frame on the +axle behind was a boy, his head, too, resting sideways on the wheel, +near the other's; and the little pony was dead, pitched forward on its +head and fore-knees, tilting the shafts downward; and some distance from +them on the water floated an empty skiff. + + * * * * * + +When I turned the next fore-land, I all at once began to see a number of +craft, which increased as I advanced, most of them small boats, with +some schooners, sloops, and larger craft, the majority a-ground: and +suddenly now I was conscious that, mingling with that delicious odour of +spring-blossoms--profoundly modifying, yet not destroying it--was +another odour, wafted to me on the wings of the very faint land-breeze: +and 'Man,' I said, 'is decomposing': for I knew it well: it was the +odour of human corruption. + + * * * * * + +The fjord opened finally in a somewhat wider basin, shut-in by quite +steep, high-towering mountains, which reflected themselves in the water +to their last cloudy crag: and, at the end of this I saw ships, a quay, +and a modest, homely old town. + +Not a sound, not one: only the languidly-working engines of the +_Boreal_. Here, it was clear, the Angel of Silence had passed, and his +scythe mown. + +I ran and stopped the engines, and, without anchoring, got down into an +empty boat that lay at the ship's side when she stopped; and I paddled +twenty yards toward the little quay. There was a brigantine with all her +courses set, three jibs, stay-sails, square-sails, main and fore-sails, +and gaff-top-sail, looking hanging and listless in that calm place, and +wedded to a still copy of herself, mast-downward, in the water; there +were three lumber-schooners, a forty-ton steam-boat, a tiny barque, five +Norway herring-fishers, and ten or twelve shallops: and the +sailing-craft had all fore-and-aft sails set, and about each, as I +passed among them, brooded an odour that was both sweet and abhorrent, +an odour more suggestive of the very genius of mortality--the inner mind +and meaning of Azrael--than aught that I could have conceived: for all, +as I soon saw, were crowded with dead. + +Well, I went up the old mossed steps, in that strange dazed state in +which one notices frivolous things: I remember, for instance, feeling +the lightness of my new clothes: for the weather was quite mild, and the +day before I had changed to Summer things, having on now only a common +undyed woollen shirt, the sleeves rolled up, and cord trousers, with a +belt, and a cloth cap over my long hair, and an old pair of yellow +shoes, without laces, and without socks. And I stood on the unhewn +stones of the edge of the quay, and looked abroad over a largish piece +of unpaved ground, which lay between the first house-row and the quay. + +What I saw was not only most woeful, but wildly startling: woeful, +because a great crowd of people had assembled, and lay dead, there; and +wildly startling, because something in their _tout ensemble_ told me in +one minute why they were there in such number. + +They were there in the hope, and with the thought, to fly westward by +boat. + +And the something which told me this was a certain _foreign_ air about +that field of the dead as the eye rested on it, something un-northern, +southern, and Oriental. + +Two yards from my feet, as I stepped to the top, lay a group of three: +one a Norway peasant-girl in skirt of olive-green, scarlet stomacher, +embroidered bodice, Scotch bonnet trimmed with silver lace, and big +silver shoe-buckles; the second was an old Norway man in knee-breeches, +and eighteenth-century small-clothes, and red worsted cap; and the third +was, I decided, an old Jew of the Polish Pale, in gaberdine and +skull-cap, with ear-locks. + +I went nearer to where they lay thick as reaped stubble between the +quay and a little stone fountain in the middle of the space, and I saw +among those northern dead two dark-skinned women in costly dress, either +Spanish or Italian, and the yellower mortality of a Mongolian, probably +a Magyar, and a big negro in zouave dress, and some twenty-five obvious +French, and two Morocco fezes, and the green turban of a shereef, and +the white of an Ulema. + +And I asked myself this question: 'How came these foreign stragglers +here in this obscure northern town?' + +And my wild heart answered: 'There has been an impassioned stampede, +northward and westward, of all the tribes of Man. And this that I, Adam +Jeffson, here see is but the far-tossed spray of that monstrous, +infuriate flood.' + + * * * * * + +Well, I passed up a street before me, careful, careful where I trod. It +was not utterly silent, nor was the quay-square, but haunted by a pretty +dense cloud of mosquitoes, and dreamy twinges of music, like the drawing +of the violin-bow in elf-land. The street was narrow, pavered, steep, +and dark; and the sensations with which I, poor bent man, passed +through that dead town, only Atlas, fabled to bear the burden of this +Earth, could divine. + + * * * * * + +I thought to myself: If now a wave from the Deep has washed over this +planetary ship of earth, and I, who alone happened to be in the extreme +bows, am the sole survivor of that crew?... What then, my God, shall I +do? + + * * * * * + +I felt, I felt, that in this townlet, save the water-gnats of Norway, +was no living thing; that the hum and the savour of Eternity filled, and +wrapped, and embalmed it. + +The houses are mostly of wood, some of them fairly large, with a +_porte-cochre_ leading into a semi-circular yard, around which the +building stands, very steep-roofed, and shingled, in view of the heavy +snow-masses of winter. Glancing into one open casement near the ground, +I saw an aged woman, stout and capped, lie on her face before a very +large porcelain stove; but I paced on without stoppage, traversed +several streets, and came out, as it became dark, upon a piece of +grass-land leading downward to a mountain-gorge. It was some distance +along this gorge that I found myself sitting the next morning: and how, +and in what trance, I passed that whole blank night is obliterated from +my consciousness. When I looked about with the return of light I saw +majestic fir-grown mountains on either hand, almost meeting overhead at +some points, deeply shading the mossy gorge. I rose, and careless of +direction, went still onward, and walked and walked for hours, +unconscious of hunger; there was a profusion of wild +mountain-strawberries, very tiny, which must grow almost into winter, a +few of which I ate; there were blue gentianellas, and +lilies-of-the-valley, and luxuriance of verdure, and a noise of waters. +Occasionally, I saw little cataracts on high, fluttering like white wild +rags, for they broke in the mid-fall, and were caught away, and +scattered; patches also of reaped hay and barley, hung up, in a singular +way, on stakes six feet high, I suppose to dry; there were perched huts, +and a seemingly inaccessible small castle or burg, but none of these did +I enter: and five bodies only I saw in the gorge, a woman with a babe, +and a man with two small oxen. + +About three in the afternoon I was startled to find myself there, and +turned back. It was dark when I again passed through those gloomy +streets of Aadheim, making for the quay, and now I felt both my hunger +and a dropping weariness. I had no thought of entering any house, but +as I passed by one open _porte-cochre_, something, I know not what, +made me turn sharply in, for my mind had become as fluff on the winds, +not working of its own action, but the sport of impulses that seemed +external. I went across the yard, and ascended a wooden spiral stair by +a twilight which just enabled me to pick my way among five or six vague +forms fallen there. In that confined place fantastic qualms beset me; I +mounted to the first landing, and tried the door, but it was locked; I +mounted to the second: the door was open, and with a chill reluctance I +took a step inward where all was pitch darkness, the window-stores being +drawn. I hesitated: it was very dark. I tried to utter that word of +mine, but it came in a whisper inaudible to my ears: I tried again, and +this time heard myself say: '_anyone_?' At the same time I had made +another step forward, and trodden upon a soft abdomen; and at that +contact terrors the most cold and ghastly thrilled me through and +through, for it was as though I saw in that darkness the sudden eyeballs +of Hell and frenzy glare upon me, and with a low gurgle of affright I +was gone, helter-skelter down the stairs, treading upon flesh, across +the yard, and down the street, with pelting feet, and open arms, and +sobbing bosom, for I thought that all Aadheim was after me; nor was my +horrid haste appeased till I was on board the _Boreal_, and moving down +the fjord. + +Out to sea, then, I went again; and within the next few days I visited +Bergen, and put in at Stavanger. And I saw that Bergen and Stavanger +were dead. + +It was then, on the 19th August, that I turned my bow toward my native +land. + + * * * * * + +From Stavanger I steered a straight course for the Humber. + +I had no sooner left behind me the Norway coast than I began to meet the +ships, the ships--ship after ship; and by the time I entered the zone +of the ordinary alternation of sunny day and sunless night, I was moving +through the midst of an incredible number of craft, a mighty and +wide-spread fleet. + +Over all that great expanse of the North Sea, where, in its most +populous days of trade, the sailor might perhaps sight a sail or two, I +had now at every moment at least ten or twelve within scope of the +glass, oftentimes as many as forty, forty-five. + +And very still they lay on a still sea, itself a dead thing, livid as +the lips of death; and there was an intensity in the calm that was +appalling: for the ocean seemed weighted, and the air drugged. + +Extremely slow was my advance, for at first I would not leave any ship, +however remotely small, without approaching sufficiently to investigate +her, at least with the spy-glass: and a strange multitudinous mixture of +species they were, trawlers in hosts, war-ships of every nation, used, +it seemed, as passenger-boats, smacks, feluccas, liners, steam-barges, +great four-masters with sails, Channel boats, luggers, a Venetian +_burchiello_, colliers, yachts, _remorqueurs_, training ships, dredgers, +two _dahabeeahs_ with curving gaffs, Marseilles fishers, a Maltese +_speronare_, American off-shore sail, Mississippi steam-boats, Sorrento +lug-schooners, Rhine punts, yawls, old frigates and three-deckers, +called to novel use, Stromboli caiques, Yarmouth tubs, xebecs, Rotterdam +flat-bottoms, floats, mere gunwaled rafts--anything from anywhere that +could bear a human freight on water had come, and was here: and all, I +knew, had been making westward, or northward, or both; and all, I knew, +were crowded; and all were tombs, listlessly wandering, my God, on the +wandering sea with their dead. + +And so fair was the world about them, too: the brightest suavest autumn +weather; all the still air aromatic with that vernal perfume of peach: +yet not so utterly still, but if I passed close to the lee of any +floating thing, the spicy stirrings of morning or evening wafted me +faint puffs of the odour of mortality over-ripe for the grave. + +So abominable and accursed did this become to me, such a plague and a +hissing, vague as was the offence, that I began to shun rather than seek +the ships, and also I now dropped my twelve, whom I had kept to be my +companions all the way from the Far North, one by one, into the sea: for +now I had definitely passed into a zone of settled warmth. + +I was convinced, however, that the poison, whatever it might be, had +some embalming, or antiseptic, effect upon the bodies: at Aadheim, +Bergen and Stavanger, for instance, where the temperature permitted me +to go without a jacket, only the merest hints and whiffs of the +processes of dissolution had troubled me. + + * * * * * + +Very benign, I say, and pleasant to see, was sky and sea during all that +voyage: but it was at sun-set that my sense of the wondrously beautiful +was roused and excited, in spite of that great burden which I carried. +Certainly, I never saw sun-sets resembling those, nor could have +conceived of aught so flamboyant, extravagant, and bewitched: for the +whole heaven seemed turned into an arena for warring Hierarchies, +warring for the universe, or it was like the wild countenance of God +defeated, and flying marred and bloody from His enemies. But many +evenings I watched with unintelligent awe, believing it but a portent of +the un-sheathed sword of the Almighty; till, one morning, a thought +pricked me like a sword, for I suddenly remembered the great sun-sets of +the later nineteenth century, witnessed in Europe, America, and, I +believe, over the world, after the eruption of the volcano of Krakatoa. + +And whereas I had before said to myself: 'If now a wave from the Deep +has washed over this planetary ship of earth...,' I said now: 'A +wave--but not from the Deep: a wave rather which she had reserved, and +has spouted, from her own un-motherly entrails...' + + * * * * * + +I had some knowledge of Morse telegraphy, and of the manipulation of +tape-machines, telegraphic typing-machines, and the ordinary wireless +transmitter and coherer, as of most little things of that sort which +came within the outskirts of the interest of a man of science; I had +collaborated with Professor Stanistreet in the production of a text-book +called 'Applications of Science to the Arts,' which had brought us some +notoriety; and, on the whole, the _minutiae_ of modern things were +still pretty fresh in my memory. I could therefore have wired from +Bergen or Stavanger, supposing the batteries not run down, to somewhere: +but I would not: I was so afraid; afraid lest for ever from nowhere +should come one answering click, or flash, or stirring.... + + * * * * * + +I could have made short work, and landed at Hull: but I would not: I was +so afraid. For I was used to the silence of the ice: and I was used to +the silence of the sea: but I was afraid of the silence of England. + + * * * * * + +I came in sight of the coast on the morning of the 26th August, +somewhere about Hornsea, but did not see any town, for I put the helm to +port, and went on further south, no longer bothering with the +instruments, but coasting at hap-hazard, now in sight of land, and now +in the centre of a circle of sea; not admitting to myself the motive of +this loitering slowness, nor thinking at all, but ignoring the +deep-buried fear of the to-morrow which I shirked, and instinctively +hiding myself in to-day. I passed the Wash, I passed Yarmouth, +Felixstowe. By now the things that floated motionless on the sea were +beyond numbering, for I could hardly lower my eyes ten minutes and lift +them, without seeing yet another there: so that soon after dusk I, too, +had to lie still among them all, till morning: for they lay dark, and to +move at any pace would have been to drown the already dead. + +Well, I came to the Thames-mouth, and lay pretty well in among the Flats +and Pan Sands towards eight one evening, not seven miles from Sheppey +and the North Kent coast: and I did not see any Nore Light, nor Girdler +Light: and all along the coast I had seen no light: but as to that I +said not one word to myself, not admitting it, nor letting my heart know +what my brain thought, nor my brain know what my heart surmised; but +with a daft and mock-mistrustful under-look I would regard the darkling +land, holding it a sentient thing that would be playing a prank upon a +poor man like me. + +And the next morning, when I moved again, my furtive eye-corners were +very well aware of the Prince's Channel light-ship, and also the Tongue +ship, for there they were: but I would not look at them at all, nor go +near them: for I did not wish to have anything to do with whatever might +have happened beyond my own ken, and it was better to look straight +before, seeing nothing, and concerning one's-self with one's-self. + +The next evening, after having gone out to sea again, I was in a little +to the E. by S. of the North Foreland: and I saw no light there, nor any +Sandhead light; but over the sea vast signs of wreckage, and the coasts +were strewn with old wrecked fleets. I turned about S.E., very slowly +moving--for anywhere hereabouts hundreds upon hundreds of craft lay dead +within a ten-mile circle of sea--and by two in the fore-day had wandered +up well in sight of the French cliffs: for I had said: 'I will go and +see the light-beam of the great revolving-drum on Calais pier that +nightly beams half-way over-sea to England.' And the moon shone clear in +the southern heaven that morning, like a great old dying queen whose +Court swarms distantly from around her, diffident, pale, and tremulous, +the paler the nearer; and I could see the mountain-shadows on her spotty +full-face, and her misty aureole, and her lights on the sea, as it were +kisses stolen in the kingdom of sleep; and all among the quiet ships +mysterious white trails and powderings of light, like palace-corridors +in some fairy-land forlorn, full of breathless wan whispers, scandals, +and runnings-to-and-fro, with leers, and agitated last embraces, and +flight of the princess, and death-bed of the king; and on the N.E. +horizon a bank of brown cloud that seemed to have no relation with the +world; and yonder, not far, the white coast-cliffs, not so low as at +Calais near, but arranged in masses separated by vales of sward, each +with its wreck: but no light of any revolving-drum I saw. + + * * * * * + +I could not sleep that night: for all the operations of my mind and body +seemed in abeyance. Mechanically I turned the ship westward again; and +when the sun came up, there, hardly two miles from me, were the cliffs +of Dover; and on the crenulated summit of the Castle I spied the Union +Jack hang motionless. + +I heard eight, nine o'clock strike in the cabin, and I was still at sea. +But some mad, audacious whisper was at my brain: and at 10.30, the 2nd +September, immediately opposite the Cross Wall Custom House, the +_Boreal's_ anchor-chain, after a voyage of three years, two months, and +fourteen days, ran thundering, thundering, through the starboard +hawse-hole. + +Ah heaven! but I must have been stark mad to let the anchor go! for the +effect upon me of that shocking obstreperous hubbub, breaking in upon +all that cemetery repose that blessed morning, and lasting it seemed a +year, was most appalling; and at the sudden racket I stood excruciated, +with shivering knees and flinching heart, God knows: for not less +terrifically uproarious than the clatter of the last Trump it raged and +raged, and I thought that all the billion dead could not fail to start, +and rise, at alarum so excessive, and question me with their eyes.... + + * * * * * + +On the top of the Cross Wall near I saw a grey crab fearlessly crawl; at +the end where the street begins, I saw a single gas-light palely burn +that broad day, and at its foot a black man lay on his face, clad only +in a shirt and one boot; the harbour was almost packed with every sort +of craft, and on a Calais-Dover boat, eight yards from my stern, which +must have left Calais crowded to suffocation, I saw the rotted dead lie +heaped, she being unmoored, and continually grinding against an anchored +green brig. + +And when I saw that, I dropped down upon my knees at the capstan, and my +poor heart sobbed out the frail cry: 'Well, Lord God, Thou hast +destroyed the work of Thy hand...' + + * * * * * + +After a time I got up, went below in a state of somnambulism, took a +packet of pemmican cakes, leapt to land, and went following the railway +that runs from the Admiralty Pier. In an enclosed passage ten yards +long, with railway masonry on one side, I saw five dead lie, and could +not believe that I was in England, for all were dark-skinned people, +three gaudily dressed, and two in flowing white robes. It was the same +when I turned into a long street, leading northward, for here were a +hundred, or more, and never saw I, except in Constantinople, where I +once lived eighteen months, so variegated a mixture of races, black, +brunette, brown, yellow, white, in all the shades, some emaciated like +people dead from hunger, and, overlooking them all, one English boy with +a clean Eton collar sitting on a bicycle, supported by a lamp-post which +his arms clasped, he proving clearly the extraordinary suddenness of the +death which had overtaken them all. + +I did not know whither, nor why, I went, nor had I the least idea +whether all this was visually seen by me in the world which I had known, +or in some other, or was all phantasy of my disembodied spirit--for I +had the thought that I, too, might be dead since old ages, and my spirit +wandering now through the universe of space, in which there is neither +north nor south, nor up nor down, nor measure nor relation, nor aught +whatever, save an uneasy consciousness of a dream about bottomlessness. +Of grief or pain, I think, I felt nothing; though I have a sort of +memory now that some sound, resembling a sob or groan, though it was +neither, came at regular clockwork intervals from my bosom during three +or four days. Meantime, my brain registered like a tape-machine details +the most frivolous, the most ludicrous--the name of a street, Strond +Street, Snargate Street; the round fur cap--black fur for the side, +white ermine for the top--of a portly Karaite priest on his back, whose +robes had been blown to his spread knees, as if lifted and neatly folded +there; a violin-bow gripped between the thick, irregular teeth of a +little Spaniard with brushed-back hair and mad-looking eyes; odd shoes +on the foot of a French girl, one black, one brown. They lay in the +street about as numerous as gunners who fall round their carriage, at +intervals of five to ten feet, the majority--as was the case also in +Norway, and on the ships--in poses of distraction, with spread arms, or +wildly distorted limbs, like men who, the instant before death, called +upon the rocks and hills to cover them. + + * * * * * + +On the left I came to an opening in the land, called, I believe, 'The +Shaft,' and into this I turned, climbing a very great number of steps, +almost covered at one point with dead: the steps I began to count, but +left off, then the dead, and left off. Finally, at the top, which must +be even higher than the Castle, I came to a great open space laid out +with gravel-walks, and saw fortifications, barracks, a citadel. I did +not know the town, except by passings-through, and was surprised at the +breadth of view. Between me and the Castle to the east lay the district +of crowding houses, brick and ragstone, mixed in the distance with vague +azure haze; and to the right the harbour, the sea, with their ships; and +visible around me on the heights seven or eight dead, biting the dust; +the sun now high and warm, with hardly a cloud in the sky; and yonder a +mist, which was the coast of France. + +It seemed too big for one poor man. + +My head nodded. I sat on a bench, black-painted and hard, the seat and +back of horizontal boards, with intervals; and as I looked, I nodded, +heavy-headed and weary: for it was too big for me. And as I nodded, with +forehead propped on my left hand, and the packet of pemmican cakes in my +right, there was in my head, somehow, an old street-song of my +childhood: and I groaned it sleepily, like coronachs and drear funereal +nenias, dirging; and the packet beat time in my right hand, falling and +raising, falling heavily and rising, in time. + + I'll buy the ring, + You'll rear the kids: + Servants to wait on our ting, ting, ting. + . . . . . + . . . . . + Ting, ting, + Won't we be happy? + Ting, ting, + That shall be it: + I'll buy the ring, + You'll rear the kids: + Servants to wait on our ting, ting, ting. + . . . . . + . . . . . + +So maundering, I fell forward upon my face, and for twenty-three hours, +the living undistinguished from the dead, I slept there. + + * * * * * + +I was awakened by drizzle, leapt up, looked at a silver chronometer +which, attached by a leather to my belt, I carried in my +breeches-pocket, and saw that it was 10 A.M. The sky was dark, and a +moaning wind--almost a new thing now to me--had arisen. + +I ate some pemmican, for I had a reluctance--needless as it turned +out--to touch any of the thousand luxuries here, sufficient no doubt, +in a town like Dover alone, to last me five or six hundred years, if I +could live so long; and, having eaten, I descended The Shaft, and spent +the whole day, though it rained and blustered continually, in wandering +about. Reasoning, in my numb way, from the number of ships on the sea, I +expected to find the town over-crowded with dead: but this was not so; +and I should say, at a venture, that not a thousand English, nor fifteen +thousand foreigners, were in it: for that westward rage and stampede +must have operated here also, leaving the town empty but for the ever +new-coming hosts. + +The first thing which I did was to go into an open grocer's shop, which +was also a post and telegraph office, with the notion, I suppose, to get +a message through to London. In the shop a single gas-light was burning +its last, and this, with that near the pier, were the only two that I +saw: and ghastly enough they looked, transparently wannish, and as it +were ashamed, like blinking night-things overtaken by the glare of day. +I conjectured that they had so burned and watched during months, or +years: for they were now blazing diminished, with streaks and rays in +the flame, as if by effort, and if these were the only two, they must +have needed time to all-but exhaust the works. Before the counter lay a +fashionably-dressed negro with a number of tied parcels scattered about +him, and on the counter an empty till, and behind it a tall thin woman +with her face resting sideways in the till, fingers clutching the outer +counter-rim, and such an expression of frantic terror as I never saw. I +got over the counter to a table behind a wire-gauze, and, like a numb +fool, went over the Morse alphabet in my mind before touching the +transmitting key, though I knew no code-words, and there, big enough to +be seen, was the ABC dial, and who was to answer my message I did not +ask myself: for habit was still strong upon me, and my mind refused to +reason from what I saw to what I did not see; but the moment I touched +the key, and peered greedily at the galvanometer-needle at my right, I +saw that it did not move, for no current was passing; and with a kind of +fright, I was up, leapt, and got away from the place, though there was a +great number of telegrams about the receiver which, if I had been in my +senses, I would have stopped and read. + +Turning the corner of the next street, I saw wide-open the door of a +substantial large house, and went in. From bottom to top there was no +one there, except one English girl, sitting back in an easy-chair in the +drawing-room, which was richly furnished with Valenciennes curtains and +azure-satin things. She was a girl of the lowest class, hardly clad in +black rags, and there she lay with hanging jaw, in a very crooked and +awkward pose, a jemmy at her feet, in her left hand a roll of +bank-notes, and in her lap three watches. In fact, the bodies which I +saw here were, in general, either those of new-come foreigners, or else +of the very poor, the very old, or the very young. + +But what made me remember this house was that I found here on one of the +sofas a newspaper: _The Kent Express_; and sitting unconscious of my +dead neighbour, I pored a long while over what was written there. + +It said in a passage which I tore out and kept: + +'Telegraphic communication with Tilsit, Insterburg, Warsaw, Cracow, +Przemysl, Gross Wardein, Karlsburg, and many smaller towns lying +immediately eastward of the 21st parallel of longitude has ceased during +the night. In some at least of them there must have been operators still +at their duty, undrawn into the great westward-rushing torrent: but as +all messages from Western Europe have been answered only by that dread +mysterious silence which, just three months and two days since, +astounded the world in the case of Eastern New Zealand, we can only +assume that these towns, too, have been added to the long and mournful +list; indeed, after last evening's Paris telegrams we might have +prophesied with some certainty, not merely their overthrow, but even the +hour of it: for the rate-uniformity of the slow-riding vapour which is +touring our globe is no longer doubtful, and has even been definitely +fixed by Professor Craven at 100-1/2 miles per day, or 4 miles 330 yards +per hour. Its nature, its origin, remains, of course, nothing but matter +of conjecture: for it leaves no living thing behind it: nor, God knows, +is that of any moment now to us who remain. The rumour that it is +associated with an odour of almonds is declared, on high authority, to +be improbable; but the morose purple of its impending gloom has been +attested by tardy fugitives from the face of its rolling and smoky +march. + +'Is this the end? We do not, and cannot, believe it. Will the pure sky +which we to-day see above us be invaded in nine days, or less, by this +smoke of the Pit of Darkness? In spite of the assurances of the +scientists, we still doubt. For, if so, to what purpose that long drama +of History, in which we seem to see the Hand of the Dramaturgist? +Surely, the end of a Fifth Act should be obvious, satisfying to one's +sense of the complete: but History, so far, long as it has been, +resembles rather a Prologue than a Fifth Act. Can it be that the +Manager, utterly dissatisfied, would sweep all off, and 'hang up' the +piece for ever? Certainly, the sins of mankind have been as scarlet: and +if the fair earth which he has turned into Hell, send forth now upon him +the smoke of Hell, little the wonder. But we cannot yet believe. There +is a sparing strain in nature, and through the world, as a thread, is +spun a silence which smiles, and on the end of events we find placarded +large the words: "Why were ye afraid?" A dignified Hope, therefore--even +now, when we cower beneath this worldwide shadow of the wings of the +Condor of Death--becomes us: and, indeed, we see such an attitude among +some of the humblest of our people, from whose heart ascends the cry: +"Though He slay me, yet will I trust in Him." Here, therefore, O Lord! O +Lord, look down, and save! + +'But even as we thus write of hope, Reason, if we would hear her, +whispers us "fool": and inclement is the sky of earth. No more ships can +New York Harbour contain, and whereas among us men die weekly of +privations by the hundred thousand, yonder across the sea they perish by +the million: for where the rich are pinched, how can the poor live? +Already 700 out of the 1000 millions of our race have perished, and the +empires of civilisation have crumbled like sand-castles in a horror of +anarchy. Thousands upon thousands of unburied dead, anticipating the +more deliberate doom that comes and smokes, and rides and comes and +comes, and does not fail, encumber the streets of London, Manchester, +Liverpool. The guides of the nation have fled; the father stabs his +child, and the wife her husband, for a morsel of food; the fields lie +waste; wanton crowds carouse in our churches, universities, palaces, +banks and hospitals; we understand that late last night three +territorial regiments, the Munster Fusiliers, and the Lotian and East +Lancashire Regiments, riotously disbanded themselves, shooting two +officers; infectious diseases, as we all know, have spread beyond limit; +in several towns the police seem to have disappeared, and, in nearly +all, every vestige of decency; the results following upon the sudden +release of the convicts appear to be monstrous in the respective +districts; and within three short months Hell seems to have acquired +this entire planet, sending forth Horror, like a rabid wolf, and +Despair, like a disastrous sky, to devour and confound her. Hear, +therefore, O Lord, and forgive our iniquities! O Lord, we beseech Thee! +Look down, O Lord, and spare!' + + * * * * * + +When I had read this, and the rest of the paper, which had one whole +sheet-side blank, I sat a long hour there, eyeing a little patch of the +purple ash on a waxed board near the corner where the girl sat with her +time-pieces, so useless in her Eternity; and there was not a feeling in +me, except a pricking of curiosity, which afterwards became morbid and +ravenous, to know something more of that cloud, or smoke, of which this +man spoke, of its dates, its origin, its nature, its minute details. +Afterwards, I went down, and entered several houses, searching for more +papers, but did not find any; then I found a paper-shop which was open, +with boards outside, but either it had been deserted, or printing must +have stopped about the date of the paper which I had read, for the only +three news-papers there were dated long prior, and I did not read them. + +Now it was raining, and a blustering autumn day it was, distributing the +odours of the world, and bringing me continual mixed whiffs of flowers +and the hateful stench of decay. But I would not mind it much. + +I wandered and wandered, till I was tired of spahi and bashi-bazouk, of +Greek and Catalan, of Russian 'pope' and Coptic abuna, of dragoman and +Calmuck, of Egyptian maulawi and Afghan mullah, Neapolitan and sheik, +and the nightmare of wild poses, colours, stuffs and garbs, the +yellow-green kefie of the Bedouin, shawl-turbans of Baghdad, the +voluminous rose-silk tob of women, and face-veils, and stark distorted +nakedness, and sashes of figured muslin, and the workman's cords, and +the red tarboosh. About four, for very weariness, I was sitting on a +door-steep, bent beneath the rain; but soon was up again, fascinated no +doubt by this changing bazaar of sameness, its chance combinations and +permutations, and novelty in monotony. About five I was at a station, +marked Harbour Station, in and about which lay a considerable crowd, but +not one train. I sat again, and rested, rose and roamed again; soon +after six I found myself at another station, called 'Priory'; and here I +saw two long trains, both crowded, one on a siding, and one at the +up-platform. + +I examined both engines, and found them of the old boiler steam-type +with manholes, heaters, autoclaves, feed-pump, &c., now rare in western +countries, except England. In one there was no water, but in that at the +platform, the float-lever, barely tilted toward the float, showed that +there was some in the boiler. Of this one I overhauled all the +machinery, and found it good, though rusted. There was plenty of fuel, +and oil, which I supplemented from a near shop: and during ninety +minutes my brain and hands worked with an intelligence as it were +automatic, of their own motion. After three journeys across the station +and street, I saw the fire blaze well, and the manometer move; when the +lever of the safety-valve, whose load I lightened by half an atmosphere, +lifted, I jumped down, and tried to disconnect the long string of +carriages from the engine: but failed, the coupling being an automatic +arrangement new to me; nor did I care. It was now very dark; but there +was still oil for bull's-eye and lantern, and I lit them. I forgot +nothing. I rolled driver and stoker--the guard was absent--one to the +platform, one upon the rails: and I took their place there. At about +8.30 I ran out from Dover, my throttle-valve pealing high a long +falsetto through the bleak and desolate night. + + * * * * * + +My aim was London. But even as I set out, my heart smote me: I knew +nothing of the metals, their junctions, facing-points, sidings, +shuntings, and complexities. Even as to whether I was going toward, or +away from, London, I was not sure. But just in proportion as my first +timorousness of the engine hardened into familiarity and self-sureness, +I quickened speed, wilfully, with an obstinacy deaf and blind. + +Finally, from a mere crawl at first, I was flying at a shocking +velocity, while something, tongue in cheek, seemed to whisper me: 'There +must be other trains blocking the lines, at stations, in yards, and +everywhere--it is a maniac's ride, a ride of death, and Flying +Dutchman's frenzy: remember your dark five-deep brigade of passengers, +who rock and bump together, and will suffer in a collision.' But with +mulish stubbornness I thought: 'They wished to go to London'; and on I +raged, not wildly exhilarated, so far as I can remember, nor lunatic, +but feeling the dull glow of a wicked and morose Unreason urge in my +bosom, while I stoked all blackened at the fire, or saw the vague mass +of dead horse or cow, running trees and fields, and dark homestead and +deep-slumbering farm, flit ghostly athwart the murky air, as the +half-blind saw 'men like trees walking.' + +Long, however, it did not last: I could not have been twenty miles from +Dover when, on a long reach of straight lines, I made out before me a +tarpaulined mass opposite a signal-point: and at once callousness +changed to terror within me. But even as I plied the brake, I felt that +it was too late: I rushed to the gangway to make a wild leap down an +embankment to the right, but was thrown backward by a quick series of +rough bumps, caused by eight or ten cattle which lay there across the +lines: and when I picked myself up, and leapt, some seconds before the +impact, the speed must have considerably slackened, for I received no +fracture, but lay in semi-coma in a patch of yellow-flowered whin on +level ground, and was even conscious of a fire on the lines forty yards +away, and, all the night, of vague thunder sounding from somewhere. + + * * * * * + +About five, or half-past, in the morning I was sitting up, rubbing my +eyes, in a dim light mixed with drizzle. I could see that the train of +my last night's debauch was a huddled-up chaos of fallen carriages and +disfigured bodies. A five-barred gate on my left opened into a hedge, +and swung with creaks: two yards from my feet lay a little shaggy pony +with swollen wan abdomen, the very picture of death, and also about me a +number of dead wet birds. + +I picked myself up, passed through the gate, and walked up a row of +trees to a house at their end. I found it to be a little country-tavern +with a barn, forming one house, the barn part much larger than the +tavern part. I went into the tavern by a small side-door--behind the +bar--into a parlour--up a little stair--into two rooms: but no one was +there. I then went round into the barn, which was paved with +cobble-stones, and there lay a dead mare and foal, some fowls, with two +cows. A ladder-stair led to a closed trap-door in the floor above. I +went up, and in the middle of a wilderness of hay saw nine +people--labourers, no doubt--five men and four women, huddled together, +and with them a tin-pail containing the last of some spirit; so that +these had died merry. + +I slept three hours among them, and afterwards went back to the tavern, +and had some biscuits of which I opened a new tin, with some ham, jam +and apples, of which I made a good meal, for my pemmican was gone. + +Afterwards I went following the rail-track on foot, for the engines of +both the collided trains were smashed. I knew northward from southward +by the position of the sun: and after a good many stoppages at houses, +and by railway-banks, I came, at about eleven in the night, to a great +and populous town. + +By the Dane John and the Cathedral, I immediately recognised it as +Canterbury, which I knew quite well. And I walked up Castle Street to +the High Street, conscious for the first time of that +regularly-repeated sound, like a sob or groan, which was proceeding from +my throat. As there was no visible moon, and these old streets very dim, +I had to pick my way, lest I should desecrate the dead with my foot, and +they all should rise with hue and cry to hunt me. However, the bodies +here were not numerous, most, as before, being foreigners: and these, +scattered about this strict old English burg that mourning dark night, +presented such a scene of the baneful wrath of God, and all abomination +of desolation, as broke me quite down at one place, where I stood in +travail with jeremiads and sore sobbings and lamentations, crying out +upon it all, God knows. + +Only when I stood at the west entrance of the Cathedral I could discern, +spreading up the dark nave, to the lantern, to the choir, a +phantasmagorical mass of forms: I went a little inward, and striking +three matches, peered nearer: the two transepts, too, seemed +crowded--the cloister-doorway was blocked--the southwest porch thronged, +so that a great congregation must have flocked hither shortly before +their fate overtook them. + +Here it was that I became definitely certain that the after-odour of the +poison was not simply lingering in the air, but was being more or less +given off by the bodies: for the blossomy odour of this church actually +overcame that other odour, the whole rather giving the scent of old +mouldy linens long embalmed in cedars. + +Well, away with stealthy trot I ran from the abysmal silence of that +place, and in Palace Street near made one of those sudden immoderate +rackets that seemed to outrage the universe, and left me so woefully +faint, decrepit, and gasping for life (the noise of the train was +different, for there I was flying, but here a captive, and which way I +ran was capture). Passing in Palace Street, I saw a little lampshop, and +wanting a lantern, tried to get in, but the door was locked; so, after +going a few steps, and kicking against a policeman's truncheon, I +returned to break the window-glass. I knew that it would make a fearful +noise, and for some fifteen or twenty minutes stood hesitating: but +never could I have dreamed, my good God, of _such_ a noise, so +passionate, so dominant, so divulgent, and, O Heaven, so long-lasting: +for I seemed to have struck upon the weak spot of some planet, which +came suddenly tumbling, with protracted bellowing and _dbcle_, about +my ears. It was a good hour before I would climb in; but then quickly +found what I wanted, and some big oil-cans; and till one or two in the +morning, the innovating flicker of my lantern went peering at random +into the gloomy nooks of the town. + +Under a deep old Gothic arch that spanned a pavered alley, I saw the +little window of a little house of rubble, and between the two +diamond-paned sashes rags tightly beaten in, the idea evidently being to +make the place air-tight against the poison. When I went in I found the +door of that room open, though it, too, apparently, had been stuffed at +the edges; and on the threshold an old man and woman lay low. I +conjectured that, thus protected, they had remained shut in, till either +hunger, or the lack of oxygen in the used-up air, drove them forth, +whereupon the poison, still active, must have instantly ended them. I +found afterwards that this expedient of making air-tight had been widely +resorted to; and it might well have proved successful, if both the +supply of inclosed air, and of food, had been anywhere commensurate with +the durability of the poisonous state. + +Weary, weary as I grew, some morbid persistence sustained me, and I +would not rest. About four in the morning I was at a station again, +industriously bending, poor wretch, at the sooty task of getting another +engine ready for travel. This time, when steam was up, I succeeded in +uncoupling the carriages from the engine, and by the time morning +broke, I was lightly gliding away over the country, whither I did not +know, but making for London. + + * * * * * + +Now I went with more intelligence and caution, and got on very well, +travelling seven days, never at night, except it was very clear, never +at more than twenty or twenty-five miles, and crawling through tunnels. +I do not know the maze into which the train took me, for very soon after +leaving Canterbury it must have gone down some branch-line, and though +the names were marked at stations, that hardly helped me, for of their +situation relatively to London I was seldom sure. Moreover, again and +again was my progress impeded by trains on the metals, when I would have +to run back to a shunting-point or a siding, and, in two instances, +these being far behind, changed from my own to the impeding engine. On +the first day I travelled unhindered till noon, when I stopped in open +country that seemed uninhabited for ages, only that half a mile to the +left, on a shaded sward, was a large stone house of artistic design, +coated with tinted harling, the roof of red Ruabon tiles, and timbered +gables. I walked to it after another row with putting out the fire and +arranging for a new one, the day being bright and mild, with great +masses of white cloud in the sky. The house had an outer and an inner +hall, three reception rooms, fine oil-paintings, a kind of museum, and a +large kitchen. In a bed-room above-stairs I found three women with +servants' caps, and a footman, arranged in a strange symmetrical way, +head to head, like rays of a star. As I stood looking at them, I could +have sworn, my good God, that I heard someone coming up the stairs. But +it was some slight creaking of the breeze in the house, augmented a +hundredfold to my inflamed and fevered hearing: for, used for years now +to this silence of Eternity, it is as though I hear all sounds through +an ear-trumpet. I went down, and after eating, and drinking some +clary-water, made of brandy, sugar, cinnamon, and rose water, which I +found in plenty, I lay down on a sofa in the inner hall, and slept a +quiet sleep until near midnight. + +I went out then, still possessed with the foolish greed to reach London, +and after getting the engine to rights, went off under a clear black sky +thronged with worlds and far-sown spawn, some of them, I thought, +perhaps like this of mine, whelmed and drowned in oceans of silence, +with one only inhabitant to see it, and hear its silence. And all the +long night I travelled, stopping twice only, once to get the coal from +an engine which had impeded me, and once to drink some water, which I +took care, as always, should be running water. When I felt my head nod, +and my eyes close about 5 A.M., I threw myself, just outside the arch of +a tunnel upon a grassy bank, pretty thick with stalks and flowers, the +workings of early dawn being then in the east: and there, till near +eleven, slept. + +On waking, I noticed that the country now seemed more like Surrey than +Kent: there was that regular swell and sinking of the land; but, in +fact, though it must have been either, it looked like neither, for +already all had an aspect of return to a state of wild nature, and I +could see that for a year at the least no hand had tended the soil. Near +before me was a stretch of lucerne of such extraordinary growth, that I +was led during that day and the succeeding one to examine the condition +of vegetation with some minuteness, and nearly everywhere I detected a +certain hypertrophie tendency in stamens, calycles, pericarps, and +pistils, in every sort of bulbiferous growth that I looked at, in the +rushes, above all, the fronds, mosses, lichens, and all cryptogamia, and +in the trefoils, clover especially, and some creepers. Many +crop-fields, it was clear, had been prepared, but not sown; some had +not been reaped: and in both cases I was struck with their appearance of +rankness, as I was also when in Norway, and was all the more surprised +that this should be the case at a time when a poison, whose action is +the arrest of oxidation, had traversed the earth; I could only conclude +that its presence in large volumes in the lower strata of the atmosphere +had been more or less temporary, and that the tendency to exuberance +which I observed was due to some principle by which Nature acts with +freer energy and larger scope in the absence of man. + +Two yards from the rails I saw, when I got up, a little rill beside a +rotten piece of fence, barely oozing itself onward under masses of foul +and stagnant fungoids: and here there was a sudden splash, and life: and +I caught sight of the hind legs of a diving young frog. I went and lay +on my belly, poring over the clear dulcet little water, and presently +saw two tiny bleaks, or ablets, go gliding low among the swaying +moss-hair of the bottom-rocks, and thought how gladly would I be one of +them, with my home so thatched and shady, and my life drowned in their +wide-eyed reverie. At any rate, these little creatures are alive, the +batrachians also, and, as I found the next day, pupae and chrysales of +one sort or another, for, to my deep emotion, I saw a little white +butterfly staggering in the air over the flower-garden of a rustic +station named Butley. + + * * * * * + +It was while I was lying there, poring upon that streamlet, that a +thought came into my head: for I said to myself: 'If now I be here +alone, alone, alone... alone, alone... one on the earth... and my girth +have a spread of 25,000 miles... what will happen to my mind? Into what +kind of creature shall I writhe and change? I may live two years so! +What will have happened then? I may live five years--ten! What will have +happened after the five? the ten? I may live twenty, thirty, forty...' + +Already, already, there are things that peep and sprout within me...! + + * * * * * + +I wanted food and fresh running water, and walked from the engine half a +mile through fields of lucerne whose luxuriance quite hid the +foot-paths, and reached my shoulder. After turning the brow of a hill, I +came to a park, passing through which I saw some dead deer and three +persons, and emerged upon a terraced lawn, at the end of which stood an +Early English house of pale brick with copings, plinths, stringcourses +of limestone, and spandrels of carved marble; and some distance from the +porch a long table, or series of tables, in the open air, still spread +with cloths that were like shrouds after a month of burial; and the +table had old foods on it, and some lamps; and all around it, and all on +the lawn, were dead peasants. I seemed to know the house, probably from +some print which I may have seen, but I could not make out the +escutcheon, though I saw from its simplicity that it must be very +ancient. Right across the faade spread still some of the letters in +evergreens of the motto: 'Many happy returns of the day,' so that +someone must have come of age, or something, for inside all was gala, +and it was clear that these people had defied a fate which they, of +course, foreknew. I went nearly throughout the whole spacious place of +thick-carpeted halls, marbles, and famous oils, antlers and arras, and +gilt saloons, and placid large bed-chambers: and it took me an hour. +There were here not less than a hundred and eighty people. In the first +of a vista of three large reception-rooms lay what could only have been +a number of quadrille parties, for to the _coup d'oeil_ they presented a +two-and-two appearance, made very repulsive by their jewels and +evening-dress. I had to steel my heart to go through this house, for I +did not know if these people were looking at me as soon as my back was +turned. Once I was on the very point of flying, for I was going up the +great central stairway, and there came a pelt of dead leaves against a +window-pane in a corridor just above on the first floor, which thrilled +me to the inmost soul. But I thought that if I once fled, they would all +be at me from behind, and I should be gibbering mad long, long before I +reached the outer hall, and so stood my ground, even defiantly +advancing. In a small dark bedroom in the north wing on the second +floor--that is to say, at the top of the house--I saw a tall young lady +and a groom, or wood-man, to judge by his clothes, horribly riveted in +an embrace on a settee, she with a light coronet on her head in +low-necked dress, and their lipless teeth still fiercely pressed +together. I collected in a bag a few delicacies from the under-regions +of this house, Lyons sausages, salami, mortadel, apples, roes, raisins, +artichokes, biscuits, a few wines, a ham, bottled fruit, pickles, +coffee, and so on, with a gold plate, tin-opener, cork-screw, fork, &c., +and dragged them all the long way back to the engine before I could eat. + + * * * * * + +My brain was in such a way, that it was several days before the +perfectly obvious means of finding my way to London, since I wished to +go there, at all occurred to me; and the engine went wandering the +intricate railway-system of the south country, I having twice to water +her with a coal-bucket from a pool, for the injector was giving no water +from the tank under the coals, and I did not know where to find any near +tank-sheds. On the fifth evening, instead of into London, I ran into +Guildford. + + * * * * * + +That night, from eleven till the next day, there was a great storm over +England: let me note it down. And ten days later, on the 17th of the +month came another; and on the 23rd another; and I should be put to it +to count the great number since. And they do not resemble English +storms, but rather Arctic ones, in a certain very suggestive something +of personalness, and a carousing malice, and a Tartarus gloom, which I +cannot quite describe. That night at Guildford, after wandering about, +and becoming very weary, I threw myself upon a cushioned pew in an old +Norman church with two east apses, called St. Mary's, using a +Bible-cushion for pillow, and placing some distance away a little tin +lamp turned low, whose ray served me for _veilleuse_ through the night. +Happily I had taken care to close up everything, or, I feel sure, the +roof must have gone. Only one dead, an old lady in a chapel on the north +side of the chancel, whom I rather mistrusted, was there with me: and +there I lay listening: for, after all, I could not sleep a wink, while +outside vogued the immense tempest. And I communed with myself, +thinking: 'I, poor man, lost in this conflux of infinitudes and vortex +of the world, what can become of me, my God? For dark, ah dark, is the +waste void into which from solid ground I am now plunged a million +fathoms deep, the sport of all the whirlwinds: and it were better for me +to have died with the dead, and never to have seen the wrath and +turbulence of the Ineffable, nor to have heard the thrilling bleakness +of the winds of Eternity, when they pine, and long, and whimper, and +when they vociferate and blaspheme, and when they expostulate and +intrigue and implore, and when they despair and die, which ear of man +should never hear. For they mean to eat me up, I know, these Titanic +darknesses: and soon like a whiff I shall pass away, and leave the world +to them.' So till next morning I lay mumping, with shivers and +cowerings: for the shocks of the storm pervaded the locked church to my +very heart; and there were thunders that night, my God, like callings +and laughs and banterings, exchanged between distant hill-tops in Hell. + + * * * * * + +'Well, the next morning I went down the steep High Street, and found a +young nun at the bottom whom I had left the previous evening with a +number of girls in uniform opposite the Guildhall--half-way up the +street. She must have been spun down, arm over arm, for the wind was +westerly, and whereas I had left her completely dressed to her wimple +and beads, she was now nearly stripped, and her little flock scattered. +And branches of trees, and wrecked houses, and reeling clouds of dead +leaves were everywhere that wild morning. + +This town of Guildford appeared to be the junction of an extraordinary +number of railway-lines, and before again setting out in the afternoon, +when the wind had lulled, having got an A B C guide, and a railway-map, +I decided upon my line, and upon a new engine, feeling pretty sure now +of making London, only thirty miles away. I then set out, and about five +o'clock was at Surbiton, near my aim; I kept on, expecting every few +minutes to see the great city, till darkness fell, and still, at +considerable risk, I went, as I thought, forward: but no London was +there. I had, in fact, been on a loop-line, and at Surbiton gone wrong +again; for the next evening I found myself at Wokingham, farther away +than ever. + +I slept on a rug in the passage of an inn called The Rose, for there was +a wild, Russian-looking man, with projecting top-teeth, on a bed in the +house, whose appearance I did not like, and it was late, and I too tired +to walk further; and the next morning pretty early I set out again, and +at 10 A.M. was at Reading. + +The notion of navigating the land by precisely the same means as the +sea, simple and natural as it was, had not at all occurred to me: but at +the first accidental sight of a compass in a little shop-window near the +river at Reading, my difficulties as to getting to any desired place in +the world vanished once and for all: for a good chart or map, the +compass, a pair of compasses, and, in the case of longer distances, a +quadrant, sextant or theodolite, with a piece of paper and pencil, were +all that were necessary to turn an engine into a land-ship, one choosing +the lines that ran nearest the direction of one's course, whenever they +did not run precisely. + +Thus provided, I ran out from Reading about seven in the evening, while +there was still some light, having spent there some nine hours. This was +the town where I first observed that shocking crush of humanity, which +I afterwards met in every large town west of London. Here, I should say, +the English were quite equal in number to the foreigners: and there were +enough of both, God knows: for London must have poured many here. There +were houses, in every room of which, and on the stairs, the dead +actually overlay each other, and in the streets before them were points +where only on flesh, or under carriages, was it possible to walk. I went +into the great County Gaol, from which, as I had read, the prisoners had +been released two weeks before-hand, and there I found the same pressed +condition, cells occupied by ten or twelve, the galleries continuously +rough-paved with faces, heads, and old-clothes-shops of robes; and in +the parade-ground, against one wall, a mass of human stuff, like tough +grey clay mixed with rags and trickling black gore, where a crush as of +hydraulic power must have acted. At a corner between a gate and a wall +near the biscuit-factory of this town I saw a boy, whom I believe to +have been blind, standing jammed, at his wrist a chain-ring, and, at the +end of the chain, a dog; from his hap-hazard posture I conjectured that +he, and chain, and dog had been lifted from the street, and placed so, +by the storm of the 7th of the month; and what made it very curious was +that his right arm pointed a little outward just over the dog, so that, +at the moment when I first sighted him, he seemed a drunken fellow +setting his dog at me. In fact, all the dead I found much mauled and +stripped and huddled: and the earth seemed to be making an abortive +effort to sweep her streets. + +Well, some little distance from Reading I saw a big flower-seed farm, +looking dead in some plots, and in others quite rank: and here again, +fluttering quite near the engine, two little winged aurelians in the +quiet evening air. I went on, passing a great number of crowded trains +on the down-line, two of them in collision, and very broken up, and one +exploded engine; even the fields and cuttings on either hand of the line +had a rather populous look, as if people, when trains and vehicles +failed, had set to trudging westward in caravans and streams. When I +came to a long tunnel near Slough, I saw round the foot of the arch an +extraordinary quantity of wooden _dbris_, and as I went very slowly +through, was alarmed by the continuous bumping of the train, which, I +knew, was passing over bodies; at the other end were more _dbris_; and +I easily guessed that a company of desperate people had made the tunnel +air-tight at the two arches, and provisioned themselves, with the hope +to live there till the day of destiny was passed; whereupon their +barricades must have been crashed through by some up-train and +themselves crushed, or else, other crowds, mad to share their cave of +refuge, had stormed the boardings. This latter, as I afterwards found, +was a very usual event. + +I should very soon have got to London now, but, as my bad luck would +have it, I met a long up-train on the metals, with not one creature in +any part of it. There was nothing to do but to tranship, with all my +things, to its engine, which I found in good condition with plenty of +coal and water, and to set it going, a hateful labour: I being already +jet-black from hair to toes. However, by half-past ten I found myself +stopped by another train only a quarter of a mile from Paddington, and +walked the rest of the way among trains in which the standing dead still +stood, propped by their neighbours, and over metals where bodies were as +ordinary and cheap as waves on the sea, or twigs in a forest. I believe +that wild crowds had given chase on foot to moving trains, or fore-run +them in the frenzied hope of inducing them to stop. + +I came to the great shed of glass and girders which is the station, the +night being perfectly soundless, moonless, starless, and the hour about +eleven. + +I found later that all the electric generating-stations, or all that I +visited, were intact; that is to say, must have been shut down before +the arrival of the doom; also that the gas-works had almost certainly +been abandoned some time previously: so that this city of dreadful +night, in which, at the moment when Silence choked it, not less than +forty to sixty millions swarmed and droned, must have more resembled +Tartarus and the foul shades of Hell than aught to which my fancy can +liken it. + +For, coming nearer the platforms, I saw that trains, in order to move at +all, must have moved through a slough of bodies pushed from behind, and +forming a packed homogeneous mass on the metals: and I knew that they +_had_ moved. Nor could _I_ now move, unless I decided to wade: for flesh +was everywhere, on the roofs of trains, cramming the interval between +them, on the platforms, splashing the pillars like spray, piled on +trucks and lorries, a carnal quagmire; and outside, it filled the space +between a great host of vehicles, carpeting all that region of London. +And all here that odour of blossoms, which nowhere yet, save on one vile +ship, had failed, was now wholly overcome by another: and the thought +was in my head, my God, that if the soul of man had sent up to Heaven +the odour which his body gave to me, then it was not so strange that +things were as they were. + +I got out from the station, with ears, God knows, that still awaited the +accustomed noising of this accursed town, habituated as I now was to all +the dumb and absent void of Soundlessness; and I was overwhelmed in a +new awe, and lost in a wilder woesomeness, when, instead of lights and +business, I saw the long street which I knew brood darker than Babylons +long desolate, and in place of its ancient noising, heard, my God, a +shocking silence, rising higher than I had ever heard it, and blending +with the silence of the inane, eternal stars in heaven. + + * * * * * + +I could not get into any vehicle for some time, for all thereabouts was +practically a mere block; but near the Park, which I attained by +stooping among wheels, and selecting my foul steps, I overhauled a +Daimler car, found in it two cylinders of petrol, lit the ignition-lamp, +removed with averted abhorrence three bodies, mounted, and broke that +populous stillness. And through streets nowhere empty of bodies I went +urging eastward my jolting, and spattered, and humming way. + +That I should have persisted, with so much pains, to come to this +unbounded catacomb, seems now singular to me: for by that time I could +not have been sufficiently daft to expect to find another being like +myself on the earth, though I cherished, I remember, the irrational hope +of yet somewhere finding dog, or cat, or horse, to be with me, and would +anon think bitterly of Reinhardt, my Arctic dog, which my own hand had +shot. But, in reality, a morbid curiosity must have been within me all +the time to read the real truth of what had happened, so far as it was +known, or guessed, and to gloat upon all that drama, and cup of +trembling, and pouring out of the vials of the wrath of God, which must +have preceded the actual advent of the end of Time. This inquisitiveness +had, at every town which I reached, made the search for newspapers +uppermost in my mind; but, by bad luck, I had found only four, all of +them ante-dated to the one which I had read at Dover, though their dates +gave me some idea of the period when printing must have ceased, viz. +soon after the 17th July--about three months subsequent to my arrival at +the Pole--for none I found later than this date; and these contained +nothing scientific, but only orisons and despairings. On arriving, +therefore, at London, I made straight for the office of the _Times_, +only stopping at a chemist's in Oxford Street for a bottle of antiseptic +to hold near my nose, though, having once left the neighbourhood of +Paddington, I had hardly much need of this. + +I made my way to the square where the paper was printed, to find that, +even there, the ground was closely strewn with calpac and pugaree, black +abayeh and fringed praying-shawl, hob-nail and sandal, figured lungi and +striped silk, all very muddled and mauled. Through the dark square to +the twice-dark building I passed, and found open the door of an +advertisement-office; but on striking a match, saw that it had been +lighted by electricity, and had therefore to retrace my stumbling steps, +till I came to a shop of lamps in a near alley, walking meantime with +timid cares that I might hurt no one--for in this enclosed neighbourhood +I began to feel strange tremors, and kept striking matches, which, so +still was the black air, hardly flickered. + +When I returned to the building with a little lighted lamp, I at once +saw a file on a table, and since there were a number of dead there, and +I wished to be alone, I took the heavy mass of paper between my left arm +and side, and the lamp in my right hand; passed then behind a counter; +and then, to the right, up a stair which led me into a very great +building and complexity of wooden steps and corridors, where I went +peering, the lamp visibly trembling in my hand, for here also were the +dead. Finally, I entered a good-sized carpeted room with a baize-covered +table in the middle, and large smooth chairs, and on the table many +manuscripts impregnated with purple dust, and around were books in +shelves. This room had been locked upon a single man, a tall man in a +frock-coat, with a pointed grey beard, who at the last moment had +decided to fly from it, for he lay at the threshold, apparently fallen +dead the moment he opened the door. Him, by drawing his feet aside, I +removed, locked the door upon myself, sat at the table before the dusty +file, and, with the little lamp near, began to search. + +I searched and read till far into the morning. But God knows, He +alone.... + +I had not properly filled the little reservoir with oil, and at about +three in the fore-day, it began to burn sullenly lower, letting sparks, +and turning the glass grey: and in my deepest chilly heart was the +question: 'Suppose the lamp goes out before the daylight....' + +I knew the Pole, and cold, I knew them well: but to be frozen by panic, +my God! I read, I say, I searched, I would not stop: but I read that +night racked by terrors such as have never yet entered into the heart +of man to conceive. My flesh moved and crawled like a lake which, here +and there, the breeze ruffles. Sometimes for two, three, four minutes, +the profound interest of what I read would fix my mind, and then I would +peruse an entire column, or two, without consciousness of the meaning of +one single word, my brain all drawn away to the innumerable host of the +wan dead that camped about me, pierced with horror lest they should +start, and stand, and accuse me: for the grave and the worm was the +world; and in the air a sickening stirring of cerements and shrouds; and +the taste of the pale and insubstantial grey of ghosts seemed to infect +my throat, and faint odours of the loathsome tomb my nostrils, and the +toll of deep-toned passing-bells my ears; finally the lamp smouldered +very low, and my charnel fancy teemed with the screwing-down of coffins, +lych-gates and sextons, and the grating of ropes that lower down the +dead, and the first sound of the earth upon the lid of that strait and +gloomy home of the mortal; that lethal look of cold dead fingers I +seemed to see before me, the insipidness of dead tongues, the pout of +the drowned, and the vapid froths that ridge their lips, till my flesh +was moist as with the stale washing-waters of morgues and mortuaries, +and with such sweats as corpses sweat, and the mawkish tear that lies +on dead men's cheeks; for what is one poor insignificant man in his +flesh against a whole world of the disembodied, he alone with them, and +nowhere, nowhere another of his kind, to whom to appeal against them? I +read, and I searched: but God, God knows ... If a leaf of the paper, +which I slowly, warily, stealingly turned, made but one faintest rustle, +how did that _reveille_ boom in echoes through the vacant and haunted +chambers of my poor aching heart, my God! and there was a cough in my +throat which for a cruelly long time I would not cough, till it burst in +horrid clamour from my lips, sending crinkles of cold through my inmost +blood. For with the words which I read were all mixed up visions of +crawling hearses, wails, and lugubrious crapes, and piercing shrieks of +madness in strange earthy vaults, and all the mournfulness of the black +Vale of Death, and the tragedy of corruption. Twice during the ghostly +hours of that night the absolute and undeniable certainty that some +presence--some most gashly silent being--stood at my right elbow, so +thrilled me, that I leapt to my feet to confront it with clenched fists, +and hairs that bristled stiff in horror and frenzy. After that second +time I must have fainted; for when it was broad day, I found my dropped +head over the file of papers, supported on my arms. And I resolved then +never again after sunset to remain in any house: for that night was +enough to kill a horse, my good God; and that this is a haunted planet I +know. + + * * * * * + +What I read in the _Times_ was not very definite, for how could it be? +but in the main it confirmed inferences which I had myself drawn, and +fairly satisfied my mind. + +There had been a battle royal in the paper between my old collaborator +Professor Stanistreet and Dr. Martin Rogers, and never could I have +conceived such an indecorous piece of business, men like them calling +one another 'tyro,' 'dreamer,' and in one place 'block-head.' +Stanistreet denied that the perfumed odour of almonds attributed to the +advancing cloud could be due to anything but the excited fancy of the +reporting fugitives, because, said he, it was unknown that either Cn, +HCn, or K_4FeCn_6 had been given out by volcanoes, and the +destructiveness to life of the travelling cloud could only be owing to +CO and CO_2. To this Rogers, in an article characterised by +extraordinary heat, replied that he could not understand how even a +'tyro'(!) in chemical and geological phenomena would venture to rush +into print with the statement that HCn had not commonly been given out +by volcanoes: that it _had_ been, he said, was perfectly certain; though +whether it had been or not could not affect the decision of a reasoning +mind as to whether it was being: for that cyanogen, as a matter of fact, +was not rare in nature, though not directly occurring, being one of the +products of the common distillation of pit-coal, and found in roots, +peaches, almonds, and many tropical flora; also that it had been +actually pointed out as probable by more than one thinker that some salt +or salts of Cn, the potassic, or the potassic ferrocyanide, or both, +must exist in considerable stores in the earth at volcanic depths. In +reply to this, Stanistreet in a two-column article used the word +'dreamer,' and Rogers, when Berlin had been already silenced, finally +replied with his amazing 'block-head.' But, in my opinion, by far the +most learned and lucid of the scientific dicta was from the rather +unexpected source of Sloggett, of the Dublin Science and Art Department: +he, without fuss, accepted the statements of the fugitive eye-witnesses, +down to the assertion that the cloud, as it rolled travelling, seemed +mixed from its base to the clouds with languid tongues of purple flame, +rose-coloured at their edges. This, Sloggett explained, was the +characteristic flame of both cyanogen and hydrocyanic acid vapour, +which, being inflammable, may have become locally ignited in the passage +over cities, and only burned in that limited and languid way on account +of the ponderous volumes of carbonic anhydride with which they must, of +course, be mixed: the dark empurpled colour was due to the presence of +large quantities of the scoriae of the trappean rocks: basalts, +green-stone, trachytes, and the various porphyries. This article was +most remarkable for its clear divination, because written so early--not +long, in fact, after the cessation of telegraphic communication with +Australia and China; and at a date so early Sloggett stated that the +character of the devastation not only proved an eruption--another, but +far greater Krakatoa--probably in some South Sea region, but indicated +that its most active product must be, not CO, but potassic ferrocyanide +(K_4FeCn_6), which, undergoing distillation with the products of sulphur +in the heat of eruption, produced hydrocyanic acid (HCn); and this +volatile acid, he said, remaining in a vaporous state in all climates +above a temperature of 26.5 C., might involve the entire earth, if the +eruption proved sufficiently powerful, travelling chiefly in a direction +contrary to the earth's west-to-east motion, the only regions which +would certainly be exempt being the colder regions of the Arctic +circles, where the vapour of the acid would assume the liquid state, and +fall as rain. He did not anticipate that vegetation would be permanently +affected, unless the eruption were of inconceivable duration and +activity, for though the poisonous quality of hydrocyanic acid consisted +in its sudden and complete arrest of oxidation, vegetation had two +sources of life--the soil as well as the air; with this exception, all +life, down to the lowest evolutionary forms, would disappear (here was +the one point in which he was somewhat at fault), until the earth +reproduced them. For the rest, he fixed the rate of the on-coming cloud +at from 100 to 105 miles a day; and the date of eruption, either the +14th, 15th, or 16th of April--which was either one, two, or three days +after the arrival of the _Boreal_ party at the Pole; and he concluded by +saying that, if the facts were as he had stated them, then he could +suggest no hiding-place for the race of man, unless such places as mines +and tunnels could be made air-tight; nor could even they be of use to +any considerable number, except in the event of the poisonous state of +the air being of very short duration. + + * * * * * + +I had thought of mines before: but in a very languid way, till this +article, and other things that I read, as it were struck my brain a slap +with the notion. For 'there,' I said, 'if anywhere, shall I find a +man....' + + * * * * * + +I went out from that building that morning feeling like a man bowed down +with age, for the depths of unutterable horror into which I had had +glimpses during that one night made me very feeble, and my steps +tottered, and my brain reeled. + +I got out into Farringdon Street, and at the near Circus, where four +streets meet, had under my furthest range of vision nothing but four +fields of bodies, bodies, clad in a rag-shop of every faded colour, or +half-clad, or not clad at all, actually, in many cases, over-lying one +another, as I had seen at Reading, but here with a markedly more +skeleton appearance: for I saw the swollen-looking shoulders, sharp +hips, hollow abdomens, and stiff bony limbs of people dead from famine, +the whole having the grotesque air of some _macabre_ battle-field of +fallen marionettes. Mixed with these was an extraordinary number of +vehicles of all sorts, so that I saw that driving among them would be +impracticable, whereas the street which I had taken during the night +was fairly clear. I thought a minute what I should do: then went by a +parallel back-street, and came out to a shop in the Strand, where I +hoped to find all the information which I needed about the excavations +of the country. The shutters were up, and I did not wish to make any +noise among these people, though the morning was bright, it being about +ten o'clock, and it was easy to effect entrance, for I saw a crow-bar in +a big covered furniture-van near. I, therefore, went northward, till I +came to the British Museum, the cataloguing-system of which I knew well, +and passed in. There was no one at the library-door to bid me stop, and +in the great round reading-room not a soul, except one old man with a +bag of gotre hung at his neck, and spectacles, he lying up a +book-ladder near the shelves, a 'reader' to the last. I got to the +printed catalogues, and for an hour was upstairs among the dim sacred +galleries of this still place, and at the sight of certain Greek and +Coptic papyri, charters, seals, had such a dream of this ancient earth, +my good God, as even an angel's pen could not half express on paper. +Afterwards, I went away loaded with a good hundred-weight of +Ordnance-maps, which I had stuffed into a bag found in the cloak-room, +with three topographical books; I then, at an instrument-maker's in +Holborn, got a sextant and theodolite, and at a grocer's near the river +put into a sack-bag provisions to last me a week or two; at Blackfriars +Bridge wharf-station I found a little sharp white steamer of a few tons, +which happily was driven by liquid air, so that I had no troublesome +fire to light: and by noon I was cutting my solitary way up the Thames, +which flowed as before the ancient Britons were born, and saw it, and +built mud-huts there amid the primaeval forest; and afterwards the +Romans came, and saw it, and called it Tamesis, or Thamesis. + + * * * * * + +That night, as I lay asleep on the cabin-cushions of my little boat +under the lee of an island at Richmond, I had a clear dream, in which +something, or someone, came to me, and asked me a question: for it said: +'Why do you go seeking another man?--that you may fall upon him, and +kiss him? or that you may fall upon him, and murder him?' And I answered +sullenly in my dream: 'I would not murder him. I do not wish to murder +anyone.' + + * * * * * + +What was essential to me was to know, with certainty, whether I was +really alone: for some instinct began to whisper me: 'Find that out: be +sure, be sure: for without the assurance you can never be--yourself.' + +I passed into the great Midland Canal, and went northward, leisurely +advancing, for I was in no hurry. The weather remained very warm, and +great part of the country was still dressed in autumn leaves. I have +written, I think, of the terrific character of the tempests witnessed in +England since my return: well, the calms were just as intense and novel. +This observation was forced upon me: and I could not but be surprised. +There seemed no middle course now: if there was a wind, it was a storm: +if there was not a storm, no leaf stirred, not a roughening zephyr ran +the water. I was reminded of maniacs that laugh now, and rave now--but +never smile, and never sigh. + +On the fourth afternoon I passed by Leicester, and the next morning left +my pleasant boat, carrying maps and compass, and at a small station took +engine, bound for Yorkshire, where I loitered and idled away two foolish +months, sometimes travelling by steam-engine, sometimes by automobile, +sometimes by bicycle, and sometimes on foot, till the autumn was quite +over. + + * * * * * + +There were two houses in London to which especially I had thought to +go: one in Harley Street, and one in Hanover Square: but when it came to +the point, I would not; and there was a little embowered home in +Yorkshire, where I was born, to which I thought to go: but I would not, +confining myself for many days to the eastern half of the county. + +One morning, while passing on foot along the coast-wall from Bridlington +to Flambro', on turning my eyes from the sea, I was confronted by a +thing which for a moment or two struck me with the most profound +astonishment. I had come to a mansion, surrounded by trees, three +hundred yards from the cliffs: and there, on a path at the bottom of the +domain, right before me, was a board marked: 'Trespassers will be +Prosecuted.' At once a mad desire--the first which I had had--to laugh, +to roar with laughter, to send wild echoes of merriment clapping among +the chalk gullies, and abroad on the morning air, seized upon me: but I +kept it under, though I could not help smiling at this poor man, with +his little delusion that a part of the earth was his. + +Here the cliffs are, I should say, seventy feet high, broken by frequent +slips in the upper stratum of clay, and, as I proceeded, climbing +always, I encountered some rather formidable gullies in the chalk, down +and then up which I had to scramble, till I came to a great mound or +barrier, stretching right across the great promontory, and backed by a +natural ravine, this, no doubt, having been raised as a rampart by some +of those old invading pirate-peoples, who had their hot life-scuffle, +and are done now, like the rest. Going on, I came to a bay in the cliff, +with a great number of boats lodged on the slopes, some quite high, +though the declivities are steep; toward the inner slopes is a lime-kiln +which I explored, but found no one there. When I came out on the other +side, I saw the village, with an old tower at one end, on a bare stretch +of land; and thence, after an hour's rest in the kitchen of a little +inn, went out to the coast-guard station, and the lighthouse. + +Looking across the sea eastward, the light-keepers here must have seen +that thick cloud of convolving browns and purples, perhaps mixed with +small tongues of fire, slowly walking the water, its roof in the clouds, +upon them: for this headland is in precisely the same longitude as +London; and, reckoning from the hour when, as recorded in the _Times_, +the cloud was seen from Dover over Calais, London and Flambro' must have +been overtaken soon after three o'clock on the Sunday afternoon, the +25th July. At sight in open daylight of a doom so gloomy--prophesied, +but perhaps hoped against to the last, and now come--the light-keepers +must have fled howling, supposing them to have so long remained faithful +to duty: for here was no one, and in the village very few. In this +lighthouse, which is a circular white tower, eighty feet high, on the +edge of the cliff, is a book for visitors to sign their names: and I +will write something down here in black and white: for the secret is +between God only, and me: After reading a few of the names, I took my +pencil, and I wrote my name there. + + * * * * * + +The reef before the Head stretches out a quarter of a mile, looking bold +in the dead low-water that then was, and showing to what extent the sea +has pushed back this coast, three wrecks impaled on them, and a big +steamer quite near, waiting for the first movements of the already +strewn sea to perish. All along the cliff-wall to the bluff crowned by +Scarborough Castle northward, and to the low vanishing coast of +Holderness southward, appeared those cracks and caves which had brought +me here, though there seemed no attempts at barricades; however, I got +down a rough slope on the south side to a rude wild beach, strewn with +wave-worn masses of chalk: and never did I feel so paltry and short a +thing as there, with far-outstretched bays of crags about me, their +bluffs encrusted at the base with stale old leprosies of shells and +barnacles, and crass algae-beards, and, higher up, the white cliff all +stained and weather-spoiled, the rock in some parts looking quite +chalky, and elsewhere gleaming hard and dull like dirty marbles, while +in the huge withdrawals of the coast yawn darksome gullies and caverns. +Here, in that morning's walk, I saw three little hermit-crabs, a limpet, +and two ninnycocks in a pool of weeds under a bearded rock. What +astonished me here, and, indeed, above, and everywhere, in London even, +and other towns, was the incredible number of birds that strewed the +ground, at some points resembling a real rain, birds of nearly every +sort, including tropic specimens: so that I had to conclude that they, +too, had fled before the cloud from country to country, till conquered +by weariness and grief, and then by death. + +By climbing over rocks thick with periwinkles, and splashing through +great sloppy stretches of crinkled sea-weed, which give a raw stench of +brine, I entered the first of the gullies: a narrow, long, winding one, +with sides polished by the sea-wash, and the floor rising inwards. In +the dark interior I struck matches, able still to hear from outside the +ponderous spasmodic rush and jostle of the sea between the crags of the +reef, but now quite faintly. Here, I knew, I could meet only dead men, +but urged by some curiosity, I searched to the end, wading in the middle +through a three-feet depth of sea-weed twine: but there was no one; and +only belemnites and fossils in the chalk. I searched several to the +south of the headland, and then went northward past it toward another +opening and place of perched boats, called in the map North Landing: +where, even now, a distinct smell of fish, left by the old crabbers and +herring-fishers, was perceptible. A number of coves and bays opened as I +proceeded; a faded green turf comes down in curves at some parts on the +cliff-brows, like wings of a young soldier's hair, parted in the middle, +and plastered on his brow; isolated chalk-masses are numerous, obelisks, +top-heavy columns, bastions; at one point no less than eight headlands +stretched to the end of the world before me, each pierced by its arch, +Norman or Gothic, in whole or in half; and here again caves, in one of +which I found a carpet-bag stuffed with a wet pulp like bread, and, +stuck to the rock, a Turkish tarboosh; also, under a limestone quarry, +five dead asses: but no man. The east coast had evidently been shunned. +Finally, in the afternoon I reached Filey, very tired, and there slept. + + * * * * * + +I went onward by train-engine all along the coast to a region of +iron-ore, alum, and jet-excavations round Whitby and Middlesborough. By +by-ways near the small place of Goldsborough I got down to the shore at +Kettleness, and reached the middle of a bay in which is a cave called +the Hob-Hole, with excavations all around, none of great depth, made by +jet-diggers and quarrymen. In the cave lay a small herd of cattle, +though for what purpose put there I cannot guess; and in the +jet-excavations I found nothing. A little further south is the chief +alum-region, as at Sandsend, but as soon as I saw a works, and the great +gap in the ground like a crater, where the lias is quarried, containing +only heaps of alum-shale, brushwood-stacks, and piles of cement-nodules +extracted from the lias, I concluded that here could have been found no +hiding; nor did I purposely visit the others, though I saw two later. +From round Whitby, and those rough moors, I went on to Darlington, not +far now from my home: but I would not continue that way, and after two +days' indecisive lounging, started for Richmond and the lead mines +about Arkengarth Dale, near Reeth. Here begins a region of mountain, +various with glens, fells, screes, scars, swards, becks, passes, +villages, river-heads, and dales. Some of the faces which I saw in it +almost seemed to speak to me in a broad dialect which I knew. But they +were not numerous in proportion: for all this country-side must have had +its population multiplied by at least some hundreds; and the villages +had rather the air of Danube, Levant, or Spanish villages. In one, named +Marrick, I saw that the street had become the scene either of a great +battle or a great massacre; and soon I was everywhere coming upon men +and women, English and foreign, dead from violence: cracked heads, +wounds, unhung jaws, broken limbs, and so on. Instead of going direct to +the mines from Reeth, that waywardness which now rules my mind, as +squalls an abandoned boat, took me somewhat further south-west to the +village of Thwaite, which I actually could not enter, so occupied with +dead was every spot on which the eye rested a hundred yards about it. +Not far from here I turned up, on foot now, a very steep, stony road to +the right, which leads over the Buttertubs Pass into Wensleydale, the +day being very warm and bright, with large clouds that looked like +lakes of molten silver giving off grey fumes in their centre, casting +moody shadows over the swardy dale, which below Thwaite expands, showing +Muker two miles off, the largest village of Upper Swaledale. Soon, +climbing, I could look down upon miles of Swaledale and the hills +beyond, a rustic panorama of glens and grass, river and cloudshadow, and +there was something of lightness in my step that fair day, for I had +left all my maps and things, except one, at Reeth, to which I meant to +return, and the earth, which is very good, was--mine. The ascent was +rough, and also long: but if I paused and looked behind--I saw, I saw. +Man's notion of a Heaven, a Paradise, reserved for the spirits of the +good, clearly arose from impressions which the earth made upon his mind: +for no Paradise can be fairer than this; just as his notion of a Hell +arose from the squalid mess into which his own foolish habits of thought +and action turned this Paradise. At least, so it struck me then: and, +thinking it, there was a hiss in my breath, as I went up into what more +and more acquired the character of a mountain pass, with points of +almost Alpine savagery: for after I had skirted the edge of a deep glen +on the left, the slopes changed in character, heather was on the +mountain-sides, a fretting beck sent up its noise, then screes, and +scars, and a considerable waterfall, and a landscape of crags; and +lastly a broad and rather desolate summit, palpably nearer the clouds. + + * * * * * + +Two days later I was at the mines: and here I first saw that wide-spread +scene of horror with which I have since become familiar. The story of +six out of ten of them all is the same, and short: selfish 'owners,' an +ousted world, an easy bombardment, and the destruction of all concerned, +before the arrival of the cloud in many cases. About some of the Durham +pit-mouths I have been given the impression that the human race lay +collected there; and that the notion of hiding himself in a mine must +have occurred to every man alive, and sent him thither. + +In these lead mines, as in most vein-mining, there are more shafts than +in collieries, and hardly any attempt at artificial ventilation, except +at rises, winzes and cul-de-sacs. I found accordingly that, though their +depth does not exceed three hundred feet, suffocation must often have +anticipated the other dreaded death. In nearly every shaft, both up-take +and down-take, was a ladder, either of the mine, or of the fugitives, +and I was able to descend without difficulty, having dressed myself in a +house at the village in a check flannel shirt, a pair of two-buttoned +trousers with circles of leather at the knees, thick boots, and a +miner's hat, having a leather socket attached to it, into which fitted a +straight handle from a cylindrical candlestick; with this light, and +also a Davy-lamp, which I carried about with me for a good many months, +I lived for the most part in the deeps of the earth, searching for the +treasure of a life, to find everywhere, in English duckies and guggs, +Pomeranian women in gaudy stiff cloaks, the Walachian, the Mameluk, the +Khirgiz, the Bonze, the Imaum, and almost every type of man. + + * * * * * + +One most brilliant Autumn day I walked by the village market-cross at +Barnard, come at last, but with a tenderness in my heart, and a +reluctance, to where I was born; for I said I would go and see my sister +Ada, and--the other old one. I leaned and loitered a long time on the +bridge, gazing up to the craggy height, which is heavy with waving wood, +and crowned by the Castle-tower, the Tees sweeping round the +mountain-base, smooth here and sunlit, but a mile down, where I wished +to go, but would not, brawling bedraggled and lacerated, like a sweet +strumpet, all shallow among rocks under reaches of shadow--the shadow of +Rokeby Woods. I climbed very leisurely up the hill-side, having in my +hand a bag with a meal, and up the stair in the wall to the top I went, +where there is no parapet, but a massiveness of wall that precludes +danger; and here in my miner's attire I sat three hours, brooding +sleepily upon the scene of lush umbrageous old wood that marks the long +way the river takes, from Marwood Chase up above, and where the rapid +Balder bickers in, down to bowery Rokeby, touched now with autumn; the +thickness of trees lessening away toward the uplands, where there are +far etherealized stretches of fields within hedgerows, and in the sunny +mirage of the farthest azure remoteness hints of lonesome moorland. It +was not till near three that I went down along the river, then, near +Rokeby, traversing the old meadow, and ascending the old hill: and +there, as of old, was the little black square with yellow letters on the +gate-wall: + + HUNT HILL HOUSE. + +No part, no house, I believe, of this country-side was empty of strange +corpses: and they were in Hunt Hill, too. I saw three in the weedy plot +to the right of the garden-path, where once the hawthorn and lilac tree +had grown from well-rollered grass, and in the little bush-wilderness to +the left, which was always a wilderness, one more: and in the +breakfast-room, to the right of the hall, three; and in the new wooden +clinker-built attachment opening upon the breakfast-room, two, half +under the billiard-table; and in her room overlooking the porch on the +first floor, the long thin form of my mother on her bed, with crushed-in +left temple, and at the foot of the bed, face-downward on the floor, +black-haired Ada in a night-dress. + +Of all the men and women who died, they two alone had burying. For I +digged a hole with the stable-spade under the front lilac; and I wound +them in the sheets, foot and form and head; and, not without throes and +qualms, I bore and buried them there. + + * * * * * + +Some time passed after this before the long, multitudinous, and +perplexing task of visiting the mine-regions again claimed me. I found +myself at a place called Ingleborough, which is a big table-mountain, +with a top of fifteen to twenty acres, from which the sea is visible +across Lancashire to the west; and in the sides of this strange hill are +a number of caves which I searched during three days, sleeping in a +garden-shed at a very rural and flower-embowered village, for every room +in it was thronged, a place marked Clapham in the chart, in Clapdale, +which latter is a dale penetrating the slopes of the mountain: and there +I found by far the greatest of the caves which I saw, having ascended a +path from the village to a hollow between two grass slopes, where there +is a beck, and so entering an arch to the left, screened by trees, into +the limestone cliff. The passage narrows pretty rapidly inwards, and I +had not proceeded two yards before I saw the clear traces of a great +battle here. All this region had, in fact, been invaded, for the cave +must have been famous, though I did not remember it myself, and for some +miles round the dead were pretty frequent, making the immediate approach +to the cave a matter for care, if the foot was to be saved from +pollution. It is clear that there had been an iron gate across the +entrance, that within this a wall had been built across, shutting in I +do not know how many, perhaps one or two, perhaps hundreds: and both +gate and wall had been stormed and broken down, for there still were the +sledges and rocks which, without doubt, had done it. I had a lamp, and +at my forehead the lighted candle, and I went on quickly, seeing it +useless now to choose my steps where there was no choice, through a +passage incrusted, roof and sides, with a scabrous petrified lichen, the +roof low for some ninety yards, covered with down-looking cones, like +an inverted forest of children's toy-trees. I then came to a round hole, +apparently artificial, opening through a curtain of stalagmitic +formation into a great cavern beyond, which was quite animated and +festal with flashes, sparkles, and diamond-lustres, hung in their +myriads upon a movement of the eye, these being produced by large +numbers of snowy wet stalagmites, very large and high, down the centre +of which ran a continuous long lane of clothes and hats and faces; with +hasty reluctant feet I somehow passed over them, the cave all the time +widening, thousands of stalactites appearing on the roof of every size, +from virgin's breast to giant's club, and now everywhere the wet drip, +drip, as it were a populous busy bazaar of perspiring brows and hurrying +feet, in which the only business is to drip. Where stalactite meets +stalagmite there are pillars: where stalactite meets stalactite in +fissures long or short there are elegances, flimsy draperies, delicate +fantasies; there were also pools of water in which hung heads and feet, +and there were vacant spots at outlying spaces, where the arched roof, +which continually heightened itself, was reflected in the chill gleam of +the floor. Suddenly, the roof came down, the floor went up, and they +seemed to meet before me; but looking, I found a low opening, through +which, drawing myself on the belly over slime for some yards in +repulsive proximity to dead personalities, I came out upon a floor of +sand and pebbles under a long dry tunnel, arched and narrow, grim and +dull, without stalactites, suggestive of monks, and catacomb-vaults, and +the route to the grave; and here the dead were much fewer, proving +either that the general mob had not had time to penetrate so far inward, +or else that those within, if they were numerous, had gone out to +defend, or to harken to, the storm of their citadel. This passage led me +into an open space, the grandest of all, loftily vaulted, full of genie +riches and buried treasures of light, the million-fold _ensemble_ of +lustres dancing schottishe with the eye, as it moved or was still: this +place, I should guess, being quite half a mile from the entrance. My +prying lantern showed me here only nineteen dead, men of various +nations, and at the far end two holes in the floor, large enough to +admit the body, through which from below came up a sound of falling +water. Both of these holes, I could see, had been filled with cement +concrete--wisely, I fancy, for a current of air from somewhere seemed to +be now passing through them: and this would have resulted in the death +of the hiders. Both, however, of the fillings had been broken through, +one partially, the other wholly, by the ignorant, I presume, who +thought to hide in a secret place yet beyond, where they may have +believed, on seeing the artificial work, that others were. I had my ear +a long time at one of these openings, listening to that mysterious chant +down below in a darkness most murky and dismal; and afterwards, spurred +by the stubborn will which I had to be thorough, I went back, took a +number of outer robes from the bodies, tied them well together, then one +end round the nearest pillar, and having put my mouth to the hole, +calling: _'Anyone? Anyone?'_ let myself down by the rope of garments, +the candle at my head: I had not, however, descended far into those +mournful shades, when my right foot plunged into water: and instantly +the feeling of terror pierced me that all the evil things in the +universe were at my leg to drag me down to Hell: and I was up quicker +than I went down: nor did my flight cease till, with a sigh of +deliverance, I found myself in open air. + + * * * * * + +After this, seeing that the autumn warmth was passing away, I set myself +with more system to my task, and within the next six months worked with +steadfast will, and strenuous assiduity, seeking, not indeed for a man +in a mine, but for some evidence of the possibility that a man might be +alive, visiting in that time Northumberland and Durham, Fife and +Kinross, South Wales and Monmouthshire, Cornwall and the Midlands, the +lead mines of Derbyshire, of Allandale and other parts of +Northumberland, of Alston Moor and other parts of Cumberland, of +Arkendale and other parts of Yorkshire, of the western part of Durham, +of Salop, of Cornwall, of the Mendip Hills of Somersetshire, of Flint, +Cardigan, and Montgomery, of Lanark and Argyll, of the Isle of Man, of +Waterford and Down; I have gone down the 360-ft. Grand Pipe iron ladder +of the abandoned graphite-mine at Barrowdale in Cumberland, half-way up +a mountain 2,000 feet high; and visited where cobalt and manganese ore +is mined in pockets at the Foel Hiraeddog mine near Rhyl in Flintshire, +and the lead and copper Newton Stewart workings in Galloway; the Bristol +coal-fields, and mines of South Staffordshire, where, as in Somerset, +Gloucester, and Shropshire, the veins are thin, and the mining-system is +the 'long-wall,' whereas in the North, and Wales, the system is the +'pillar-and stall'; I have visited the open workings for iron ores of +Northamptonshire, and the underground stone-quarries, and the +underground slate-quarries, with their alternate pillars and chambers, +in the Festiniog district of North Wales; also the rock-salt workings; +the tin, copper and cobalt workings of Cornwall; and where the minerals +were brought to the surface on the backs of men, and where they were +brought by adit-levels provided with rail-roads, and where, as in old +Cornish mines, there are two ladders in the shaft, moved up and down +alternately, see-saw, and by skipping from one to the other at right +moments you ascended or descended, and where the drawing-up is by a gin +or horse-whinn, with vertical drum; the Tisbury and Chilmark quarries in +Wiltshire, the Spinkwell and Cliffwood quarries in Yorkshire; and every +tunnel, and every recorded hole: for something urged within me, saying: +'You must be sure first, or you can never be--yourself.' + + * * * * * + +At the Farnbrook Coal-field, in the Red Colt Pit, my inexperience nearly +ended my life: for though I had a minute theoretical knowledge of all +British workings, I was, in my practical relation to them, like a man +who has learnt seamanship on shore. At this place the dead were +accumulated, I think beyond precedent, the dark plain around for at +least three miles being as strewn as a reaped field with stacks, and, +near the bank, much more strewn than stack-fields, filling the only +house within sight of the pit-mouth--the small place provided for the +company's officials--and even lying over the great mountain-heap of +wark, composed of the shale and _dbris_ of the working. Here I arrived +on the morning of the 15th December, to find that, unlike the others, +there was here no rope-ladder or other contrivance fixed by the +fugitives in the ventilating-shaft, which, usually, is not very deep, +being also the pumping-shaft, containing a plug-rod at one end of the +beam-engine which works the pumps; but looking down the shaft, I +discerned a vague mass of clothes, and afterwards a thing that could +only be a rope-ladder, which a batch of the fugitives, by hanging to it +their united weight, must have dragged down upon themselves, to prevent +the descent of yet others. My only way of going down, therefore, was by +the pit-mouth, and as this was an important place, after some hesitation +I decided, very rashly. First I provided for my coming up again by +getting a great coil of half-inch rope, which I found in the bailiff's +office, probably 130 fathoms long, rope at most mines being so +plentiful, that it almost seemed as if each fugitive had provided +himself in that way. This length of rope I threw over the beam of the +beam-engine in the bite where it sustains the rod, and paid one end +down the shaft, till both were at the bottom: in this way I could come +up, by tying one rope-end to the rope-ladder, hoisting it, fastening the +other end below, and climbing the ladder; and I then set to work to +light the pit-mouth engine-fire to effect my descent. This done, I +started the engine, and brought up the cage from the bottom, the 300 +yards of wire-rope winding with a quaint deliberateness round the drum, +reminding me of a camel's nonchalant leisurely obedience. When I saw the +four meeting chains of the cage-roof emerge, the pointed roof, and +two-sided frame, I stopped the ascent, and next attached to the +knock-off gear a long piece of twine which I had provided; carried the +other end to the cage, in which I had five companions; lit my +hat-candle, which was my test for choke-damp, and the Davy; and without +the least reflection, pulled the string. That hole was 900 feet deep. +First the cage gave a little up-leap, and then began to descend--quite +normally, I thought, though the candle at once went out--nor had I the +least fear; a strong current of air, indeed, blew up the shaft: but that +happens in shafts. _This_ current, however, soon became too vehemently +boisterous for anything: I saw the lamp-light struggle, the dead cheeks +quiver, I heard the cage-shoes go singing down the wire-rope guides, +and quicker we went, and quicker, that facile descent of Avernus, +slipping lightly, then raging, with sparks at the shoes and guides, and +a hurricane in my ears and eyes and mouth. When we bumped upon the +'dogs' at the bottom, I was tossed a foot upwards with the stern-faced +others, and then lay among them in the eight-foot space without +consciousness. + +It was only when I sat, an hour later, disgustedly reflecting on this +incident, that I remembered that there was always some 'hand-working' of +the engine during the cage-descents, an engineman reversing the action +by a handle at every stroke of the piston, to prevent bumping. However, +the only permanent injury was to the lamp: and I found many others +inside. + +I got out into the coal-hole, a large black hall 70 feet square by 15 +high, the floor paved with iron sheets; there were some little holes +round the wall, dug for some purpose which I never could discover, some +waggons full of coal and shale standing about, and all among the +waggons, and on them, and under them, bodies, clothes. I got a new lamp, +pouring in my own oil, and went down a long steep ducky-road, very +rough, with numerous rollers, over which ran a rope to the pit-mouth +for drawing up the waggons; and in the sides here, at regular intervals, +man-holes, within which to rescue one's self from down-tearing waggons; +and within these man-holes, here and there, a dead, and in others every +sort of food, and at one place on the right a high dead heap, and the +air here hot at 64 or 65 degrees, and getting hotter with the descent. + +The ducky led me down into a standing--a space with a turn-table--of +unusual size, which I made my base of operations for exploring. Here was +a very considerable number of punt-shaped putts on carriages, and also +waggons, such as took the new-mined coal from putt to pit-mouth; and +raying out from this open standing, several avenues, some ascending as +guggs, some descending as dipples, and the dead here all arranged in +groups, the heads of this group pointing up this gugg, of that group +toward that twin-way, of that other down that dipple, and the central +space, where weighing was done, almost empty: and the darksome silence +of this deep place, with all these multitudes, I found extremely +gravitating and hypnotic, drawing me, too, into their great Passion of +Silence in which they lay, all, all, so fixed and veteran; and at one +time I fell a-staring, nearer perhaps to death and the empty Gulf than +I knew; but I said I would be strong, and not sink into their habit of +stillness, but let them keep to their own way, and follow their own +fashion, and I would keep to my own way, and follow my own fashion, nor +yield to them, though I was but one against many; and I roused myself +with a shudder; and setting to work, caught hold of the drum-chain of a +long gugg, and planting my feet in the chogg-holes in which rested the +wheels of the putt-carriages that used to come roaring down the gugg, I +got up, stooping under a roof only three feet high, till I came, near +the end of the ascent, upon the scene of another battle: for in this +gugg about fifteen of the mine-hands had clubbed to wall themselves in, +and had done it, and I saw them lie there all by themselves through the +broken cement, with their bare feet, trousers, naked bodies all black, +visage all fierce and wild, the grime still streaked with sweat-furrows, +the candle in their rimless hats, and, outside, their own 'getting' +mattocks and boring-irons to besiege them. From the bottom of this gugg +I went along a very undulating twin-way, into which, every thirty yards +or so, opened one of those steep putt-ways which they called topples, +the twin-ways having plates of about 2-1/2 ft. gauge for the putts from +the headings, or workings, above to come down upon, full of coal and +shale: and all about here, in twin-way and topples, were ends and +corners, and not one had been left without its walling-in, and only one +was then intact, some, I fancied, having been broken open by their own +builders at the spur of suffocation, or hunger; and the one intact I +broke into with a mattock--it was only a thin cake of plaster, but +air-tight--and in a space not seven feet long behind it I found the very +ill-smelling corpse of a carting-boy, with guss and tugger at his feet, +and the pad which protected his head in pushing the putts, and a great +heap of loaves, sardines, and bottled beer against the walls, and five +or six mice that suddenly pitched screaming through the opening which I +made, greatly startling me, there being of dead mice an extraordinary +number in all this mine-region. I went back to the standing, and at one +point in the ground, where there was a windlass and chain, lowered +myself down a 'cut'--a small pit sunk perpendicularly to a lower +coal-stratum, and here, almost thinking I could hear the perpetual +rat-tat of notice once exchanged between the putt-boys below and the +windlass-boys above, I proceeded down a dipple to another place like a +standing, for in this mine there were six, or perhaps seven, veins: and +there immediately I came upon the acme of the horrible drama of this +Tartarus, for all here was not merely crowded, but, at some points, a +packed congestion of flesh, giving out a strong smell of the peach, +curiously mixed with the stale coal-odour of the pit, for here +ventilation must have been very limited; and a large number of these +masses had been shot down by only three hands, as I found: for through +three hermetical holes in a plaster-wall, built across a large gugg, +projected a little the muzzles of three rifles, which must have glutted +themselves with slaughter; and when, after a horror of disgust, having +swum as it were through a dead sea, I got to the wall, I peeped from a +small clear space before it through a hole, and made out a man, two +youths in their teens, two women, three girls, and piles of cartridges +and provisions; the hole had no doubt been broken from within at the +spur of suffocation, when the poison must have entered; and I +conjectured that here must be the mine-owner, director, manager, or +something of that sort, with his family. In another dipple-region, when +I had re-ascended to a higher level, I nearly fainted before I could +retire from the commencement of a region of after-damp, where there had +been an explosion, the bodies lying all hairless, devastated, and +grotesque. But I did not desist from searching every other quarter, no +momentary work, for not till near six did I go up by the pumping-shaft +rope-ladder. + + * * * * * + +One day, standing in that wild region of bare rock and sea, called +Cornwall Point, whence one can see the crags and postillion wild rocks +where Land's End dashes out into the sea, and all the wild blue sea +between, and not a house in sight, save the chimney of some little +mill-like place peeping between the rocks inland--on that day I finished +what I may call my official search. + +In going away from that place, walking northward, I came upon a lonely +house by the sea, a very beautiful house, made, it was clear, by an +artist, of the bungalow type, with an exquisitely sea-side expression. I +went to it, and found its special feature a spacious loggia or verandah, +sheltered by the overhanging upper story. Up to the first floor, the +exterior is of stone in rough-hewn blocks with a distinct batter, while +extra protection from weather is afforded by green slating above. The +roofs, of low pitch, are also covered with green slates, and a feeling +of strength and repose is heightened by the very long horizontal lines. +At one end of the loggia is a hexagonal turret, opening upon the loggia, +containing a study or nook. In front, the garden slopes down to the +sea, surrounded by an architectural sea-wall; and in this place I lived +three weeks. It was the house of the poet Machen, whose name, when I saw +it, I remembered very well, and he had married a very beautiful young +girl of eighteen, obviously Spanish, who lay on the bed in the large +bright bedroom to the right of the loggia, on her left exposed breast +being a baby with an india-rubber comforter in its mouth, both mother +and child wonderfully preserved, she still quite lovely, white brow +under low curves of black hair. The poet, strange to say, had not died +with them, but sat in the sitting-room behind the bedroom in a long +loose silky-grey jacket, at his desk--actually writing a poem! writing, +I could see, furiously fast, the place all littered with the written +leaves--at three o'clock in the morning, when, as I knew, the cloud +overtook this end of Cornwall, and stopped him, and put his head to rest +on the desk; and the poor little wife must have got sleepy, waiting for +it to come, perhaps sleepless for many long nights before, and gone to +bed, he perhaps promising to follow in a minute to die with her, but +bent upon finishing that poem, and writing feverishly on, running a race +with the cloud, thinking, no doubt, 'just two couplets more,' till the +thing came, and put his head to rest on the desk, poor carle: and I do +not know that I ever encountered aught so complimentary to my race as +this dead poet Machen, and his race with the cloud: for it is clear now +that the better kind of those poet men did not write to please the vague +inferior tribes who might read them, but to deliver themselves of the +divine warmth that thronged in their bosom; and if all the readers were +dead, still they would have written; and for God to read they wrote. At +any rate, I was so pleased with these poor people, that I stayed with +them three weeks, sleeping under blankets on a couch in the +drawing-room, a place full of lovely pictures and faded flowers, like +all the house: for I would not touch the young mother to remove her. And +finding on Machen's desk a big note-book with soft covers, dappled red +and yellow, not yet written in, I took it, and a pencil, and in the +little turret-nook wrote day after day for hours this account of what +has happened, nearly as far as it has now gone. And I think that I may +continue to write it, for I find in it a strange consolation, and +companionship. + + * * * * * + +In the Severn Valley, somewhere in the plain between Gloucester and +Cheltenham, in a rather lonely spot, I at that time travelling on a +tricycle-motor, I spied a curious erection, and went to it. I found it +of considerable size, perhaps fifty feet square, and thirty high, made +of pressed bricks, the perfectly flat roof, too, of brick, and not one +window, and only one door: this door, which I found open, was rimmed all +round its slanting rims with india-rubber, and when closed must have +been perfectly air-tight. Just inside I came upon fifteen English people +of the dressed class, except two, who were evidently bricklayers: six +ladies, and nine men: and at the further end, two more, men, who had +their throats cut; along one wall, from end to end were provisions; and +I saw a chest full of mixed potassic chlorate and black oxide of +manganese, with an apparatus for heating it, and producing oxygen--a +foolish thing, for additional oxygen could not alter the quantity of +breathed carbonic anhydride, which is a direct narcotic poison. Whether +the two with cut throats had sacrificed themselves for the others when +breathing difficulties commenced, or been killed by the others, was not +clear. When they could bear it no longer, they must have finally opened +the door, hoping that by then, after the passage of many days perhaps, +the outer air would be harmless, and so met their death. I believe that +this erection must have been run up by their own hands under the +direction of the two bricklayers, for they could not, I suppose, have +got workmen, except on the condition of the workmen's admission: on +which condition they would naturally employ as few as possible. + +In general, I remarked that the rich must have been more urgent and +earnest in seeking escape than the others: for the poor realised only +the near and visible, lived in to-day, and cherished the always-false +notion that to-morrow would be just like to-day. In an out-patients' +waiting-room, for instance, in the Gloucester infirmary, I chanced to +see an astonishing thing: five bodies of poor old women in shawls, come +to have their ailments seen-to on the day of doom; and these, I +concluded, had been unable to realise that anything would really happen +to the daily old earth which they knew, and had walked with assurance +on: for if everybody was to die, they must have thought, who would +preach in the Cathedral on Sunday evenings?--so they could not have +believed. In an adjoining room sat an old doctor at a table, the +stethoscope-tips still clinging in his ears: a woman with bared chest +before him; and I thought to myself: 'Well, this old man, too, died +doing his work....' + +In this same infirmary there was one surgical ward--for in a listless +mood I went over it--where the patients had died, not of the poison, nor +of suffocation, but of hunger: for the doctors, or someone, had made the +long room air-tight, double-boarding the windows, felting the doors, and +then locking them outside; they themselves may have perished before +their precautions for the imprisoned patients were complete: for I found +a heap of maimed shapes, mere skeletons, crowded round the door within. +I knew very well that they had not died of the cloud-poison, for the +pestilence of the ward was unmixed with that odour of peach which did +not fail to have more or less embalming effects upon the bodies which it +saturated. I rushed stifling from that place; and thinking it a pity, +and a danger, that such a horror should be, I at once set to work to +gather combustibles to burn the building to the ground. + +It was while I sat in an arm-chair in the street the next afternoon, +smoking, and watching the flames of this structure, that something was +suddenly born in me, something from the lowest Hell: and I smiled a +smile that never yet man smiled. And I said: 'I will burn, I will burn: +I will return to London....' + + * * * * * + +While I was on this Eastward journey, stopping for the night at the +town of Swindon, I had a dream: for I dreamed that a little brown bald +old man, with a bent back, whose beard ran in one thin streamlet of +silver from his chin to trail along the ground, said to me: 'You think +that you are alone on the earth, its sole Despot: well, have your fling: +but as sure as God lives, as God lives, as God lives'--he repeated it +six times--'sooner or later, later or sooner, you will meet another....' + +And I started from that frightful sleep with the brow of a corpse, wet +with sweat.... + + * * * * * + +I returned to London on the 29th of March, arriving within a hundred +yards of the Northern Station one windy dark evening about eight, where +I alighted, and walked to Euston Road, then eastward along it, till I +came to a shop which I knew to be a jeweller's, though it was too dark +to see any painted words. The door, to my annoyance, was locked, like +nearly all the shop-doors in London: I therefore went looking near the +ground, and into a cart, for something heavy, very soon saw a labourer's +ponderous boots, cut one from the shrivelled foot, and set to beat at +the glass till it came raining; then knocked away the bottom splinters, +and entered. + +No horrors now at that clatter of broken glass; no sick qualms; my +pulse steady; my head high; my step royal; my eye cold and calm. + + * * * * * + +Eight months previously, I had left London a poor burdened, cowering +wight. I could scream with laughter now at that folly! But it did not +last long. I returned to it--the Sultan. + + * * * * * + +No private palace being near, I was going to that great hotel in +Bloomsbury: but though I knew that numbers of candle-sticks would be +there, I was not sure that I should find sufficient: for I had acquired +the habit within the past few months of sleeping with at least sixty +lighted about me, and their form, pattern, style, age, and material was +of no small importance I selected ten from the broken shop, eight gold +and silver, and two of old ecclesiastical brass, and having made a +bundle, went out, found a bicycle at the Metropolitan Station, pumped +it, tied my bundle to the handle-bar, and set off riding. But since I +was too lazy to walk, I should certainly have procured some other means +of travelling, for I had not gone ten jolted and creaking yards, when +something went snap--it was a front fork--and I found myself half on +the ground, and half across the bare knees of a Highland soldier. I flew +with a shower of kicks upon the foolish thing: but that booted nothing; +and this was my last attempt in that way in London, the streets being in +an unsuitable condition. + +All that dismal night it blew great guns: and during nearly three weeks, +till London was no more, there was a storm, with hardly a lull, that +seemed to behowl her destruction. + + * * * * * + +I slept in a room on the second-floor of a Bloomsbury hotel that night; +and waking the next day at ten, ate with accursed shiverings in the cold +banqueting-room; went out then, and under drear low skies walked a long +way to the West district, accompanied all the time by a sound of +flapping flags--fluttering robes and rags--and grotesquely grim glimpses +of decay. It was pretty cold, and though I was warmly clad, the base +_bizarrerie_ of the European clothes which I wore had become a perpetual +offence and mockery in my eyes: at the first moment, therefore, I set +out whither I knew that I should find such clothes as a man might wear: +to the Turkish Embassy in Bryanston Square. + +I found it open, and all the house, like most other houses, almost +carpeted with dead forms. I had been acquainted with Redouza Pasha, and +cast an eye about for him amid that invasion of veiled hanums, +fierce-looking Caucasians in skins of beasts, a Sheik-ul-Islam in green +cloak, a khalifa, three emirs in cashmere turbans, two tziganes, their +gaudy brown mortality more glaringly abominable than even the Western's. +I could recognise no Redouza here: but the stair was fairly clear, and I +soon came to one of those boudoirs which sweetly recall the deep-buried +inner seclusion and dim sanctity of the Eastern home: a door encrusted +with mother-of-pearl, sculptured ceiling, candles clustered in tulips +and roses of opal, a brazen brasero, and, all in disarray, the silken +chemise, the long winter-cafetan doubled with furs, costly cabinets, +sachets of aromas, babooshes, stuffs of silk. When, after two hours, I +went from the house, I was bathed, anointed, combed, scented, and robed. + + * * * * * + +I have said to myself: 'I will ravage and riot in my Kingdoms. I will +rage like the Caesars, and be a withering blight where I pass like +Sennacherib, and wallow in soft delights like Sardanapalus. I will build +me a palace, vast as a city, in which to strut and parade my Monarchy +before the Heavens, with stones of pure molten gold, and rough +frontispiece of diamond, and cupola of amethyst, and pillars of pearl. +For there were many men to the eye: but there was One only, really: and +I was he. And always I knew it:--some faintest secret whisper which +whispered me: "_You_ are the Arch-one, the _motif_ of the world, Adam, +and the rest of men not much." And they are gone--all! all!--as no doubt +they deserved: and I, as was meet, remain. And there are wines, and +opiums, and haschish; and there are oils, and spices, fruits and +bivalves, and soft-breathing Cyclades, and scarlet luxurious Orients. I +will be restless and turbulent in my territories: and again, I will be +languishing and fond. I will say to my soul: "Be Full."' + + * * * * * + +I watch my mind, as in the old days I would watch a new precipitate in a +test-tube, to see into what sediment it would settle. + +I am very averse to trouble of any sort, so that the necessity for the +simplest manual operations will rouse me to indignation: but if a thing +will contribute largely to my ever-growing voluptuousness, I will +undergo a considerable amount of labour to accomplish it, though +without steady effort, being liable to side-winds and whims, and +purposeless relaxations. + +In the country I became very irritable at the need which confronted me +of occasionally cooking some green vegetable--the only item of food +which it was necessary to take some trouble over: for all meats, and +many fish, some quite delicious, I find already prepared in forms which +will remain good probably a century after my death, should I ever die. +In Gloucester, however, I found peas, asparagus, olives, and other +greens, already prepared to be eaten without base cares: and these, I +now see, exist everywhere in stores so vast comparatively to the needs +of a single man, that they may be called infinite. Everything, in fact, +is infinite compared with my needs. I take my meals, therefore, without +more trouble than a man who had to carve his joint, or chicken: though +even that little I sometimes find most irksome. There remains the +detestable degradation of lighting fires for warmth, which I have +occasionally to do: for the fire at the hotel invariably goes out while +I sleep. But that is an inconvenience of this vile northern island only, +to which I shall soon bid eternal glad farewells. + +During the afternoon of my second day in London, I sought out a strong +petrol motor in Holborn, overhauled and oiled it a little, and set off +over Blackfriars Bridge, making for Woolwich through that other more +putrid London on the south river-side. One after the other, I connected, +as I came upon them, two drays, a cab, and a private carriage, to my +motor in line behind, having cut away the withered horses, and using the +reins, chain-harness, &c., as impromptu couplings. And with this novel +train, I rumbled eastward. + +Half-way I happened to look at my old silver chronometer of +_Boreal_-days, which I have kept carefully wound--and how I can be still +thrown into these sudden frantic agitations by a nothing, a nothing, my +good God! I do not know. This time it was only the simple fact that the +hands chanced to point to 3.10 P.M., the precise moment at which all the +clocks of London had stopped--for each town has its thousand weird +fore-fingers, pointing, pointing still, to the moment of doom. In London +it was 3.10 on a Sunday afternoon. I first noticed it going up the river +on the face of the 'Big Ben' of the Parliament-house, and I now find +that they all, all, have this 3.10 mania, time-keepers still, but +keepers of the end of Time, fixedly noting for ever and ever that one +moment. The cloud-mass of fine penetrating _scoriae_ must have instantly +stopped their works, and they had fallen silent with man. But in their +insistence upon this particular minute I had found something so +hideously solemn, yet mock-solemn, personal, and as it were addressed to +_me_, that when my own watch dared to point to the same moment, I was +thrown into one of those sudden, paroxysmal, panting turmoils of mind, +half rage, half horror, which have hardly once visited me since I left +the _Boreal_. On the morrow, alas, another awaited me; and again on the +second morrow after. + + * * * * * + +My train was execrably slow, and not until after five did I arrive at +the entrance-gates of the Woolwich Royal Arsenal; and seeing that it was +too late to work, I uncoupled the motor, and leaving the others there, +turned back; but overtaken by lassitude, I procured candles, stopped at +the Greenwich Observatory, and in that old dark pile, remained for the +night, listening to a furious storm. But, a-stir by eight the next +morning, I got back by ten to the Arsenal, and proceeded to analyse that +vast and multiple entity. Many parts of it seemed to have been abandoned +in undisciplined haste, and in the Cap Factory, which I first entered, I +found tools by which to effect entry into any desired part. My first +search was for time-fuses of good type, of which I needed two or three +thousand, and after a wearily long time found a great number +symmetrically arranged in rows in a range of buildings called the +Ordnance Store Department. I then descended, walked back to the wharf, +brought up my train, and began to lower the fuses in bag-fulls by ropes +through a shoot, letting go each rope as the fuses reached the cart. +However, on winding one fuse, I found that the mechanism would not go, +choked with scoriae; and I had to resign myself to the task of opening +and dusting every one: a wretched labour in which I spent that day, like +a workman. But about four I threw them to the devil, having done two +hundred odd, and then hummed back in the motor to London. + + * * * * * + +That same evening at six I paid, for the first time, a visit to my old +self in Harley Street. It was getting dark, and a bleak storm that +hooted like whooping-cough swept the world. At once I saw that even _I_ +had been invaded: for my door swung open, banging, a lowered catch +preventing it from slamming; in the passage the car-lamp shewed me a +young man who seemed a Jew, sitting as if in sleep with dropped head, a +back-tilted silk-hat pressed down upon his head to the ears; and lying +on face, or back, or side, six more, one a girl with Arlesienne +head-dress, one a negress, one a Deal lifeboat's-man, and three of +uncertain race; the first room--the waiting-room--is much more +numerously occupied, though there still, on the table, lies the volume +of _Punch_, the _Gentlewoman_, and the book of London views in +heliograph. Behind this, descending two steps, is the study and +consulting-room, and there, as ever, the revolving-cover oak +writing-desk: but on my little shabby-red sofa, a large lady much too +big for it, in shimmering brown silk, round her left wrist a _trousseau_ +of massive gold trinkets, her head dropped right back, almost severed by +an infernal gash from the throat. Here were two old silver +candle-sticks, which I lit, and went upstairs: in the drawing-room sat +my old house-keeper, placidly dead in a rocking-chair, her left hand +pressing down a batch of the open piano-keys, among many strangers. But +she was very good: she had locked my bedroom against intrusion; and as +the door stands across a corner behind a green-baize curtain, it had not +been seen, or, at least, not forced. I did not know where the key might +be, but a few thumps with my back drove it open: and there lay my bed +intact, and everything tidy. This was a strange coming-back to it, Adam. + +But what intensely interested me in that room was a big thing standing +at the maroon-and-gold wall between wardrobe and dressing-table--that +gilt frame--and that man painted within it there. It was myself in oils, +done by--I forget his name now: a towering celebrity he was, and rather +a close friend of mine at one time. In a studio in St. John's Wood, I +remember, he did it; and many people said that it was quite a great work +of art. I suppose I was standing before it quite thirty minutes that +night, holding up the bits of candle, lost in wonder, in amused contempt +at that thing there. It is I, certainly: that I must admit. There is the +high-curving brow--really a King's brow, after all, it strikes me +now--and that vacillating look about the eyes and mouth which used to +make my sister Ada say: 'Adam is weak and luxurious.' Yes, that is +wonderfully done, the eyes, that dear, vacillating look of mine; for +although it is rather a staring look, yet one can almost see the dark +pupils stir from side to side: very well done. And there is the longish +face; and the rather thin, stuck-out moustache, shewing both lips which +pout a bit; and there is the nearly black hair; and there is the rather +visible paunch; and there is, oh good Heaven, the neat pink cravat--ah, +it must have been _that--the cravat_--that made me burst out into +laughter so loud, mocking, and uncontrollable the moment my eye rested +there! 'Adam Jeffson,' I muttered reproachfully when it was over, 'could +that poor thing in the frame have been you?' + +I cannot quite state why the tendency toward Orientalism--Oriental +dress--all the manner of an Oriental monarch--has taken full possession +of me: but so it is: for surely I am hardly any longer a Western, +'modern' mind, but a primitive and Eastern one. Certainly, that cravat +in the frame has receded a million, million leagues, ten thousand +forgotten aeons, from me! Whether this is a result due to my own +personality, of old acquainted with Eastern notions, or whether, +perhaps, it is the natural accident to any mind wholly freed from +trammels, I do not know. But I seem to have gone right back to the very +beginnings, and resemblance with man in his first, simple, gaudy +conditions. My hair, as I sit here writing, already hangs a black, oiled +string down my back; my scented beard sweeps in two opening whisks to my +ribs; I have on the _izar_, a pair of drawers of yomani cloth like +cotton, but with yellow stripes; over this a soft shirt, or quamis, of +white silk, reaching to my calves; over this a short vest of +gold-embroidered crimson, the _sudeyree_; over this a khaftan of +green-striped silk, reaching to the ankles, with wide, long sleeves +divided at the wrist, and bound at the waist with a voluminous gaudy +shawl of Cashmere for girdle; over this a warm wide-flowing torrent of +white drapery, lined with ermine. On my head is the skull-cap, covered +by a high crimson cap with deep-blue tassel; and on my feet is a pair of +thin yellow-morocco shoes, covered over with thick red-morocco +babooshes. My ankles--my ten fingers--my wrists--are heavy with gold and +silver ornaments; and in my ears, which, with considerable pain, I bored +three days since, are two needle-splinters, to prepare the holes for +rings. + + * * * * * + +O Liberty! I am free.... + + * * * * * + +While I was going to visit my old home in Harley Street that night, at +the very moment when I turned from Oxford Street into Cavendish Square, +this thought, fiercely hissed into my ears, was all of a sudden seething +in me: 'If now I should lift my eyes, and see a man walking yonder--just +yonder--_at the corner there_--turning from Harewood Place into Oxford +Street--what, my good God, should I do?--I without even a knife to run +and plunge into his heart?' + +And I turned my eyes--ogling, suspicious eyes of furtive +horror--reluctantly, lingeringly turned--and I peered deeply with +lowered brows across the murky winds at that same spot: but no man was +there. + +Hideously frequent is this nonsense now become with me--in streets of +towns--in deep nooks of the country: the invincible assurance that, if I +but turn the head, and glance _there_--at a certain fixed spot--I shall +surely see--I _must_ see--a man. And glance I must, glance I must, +though I perish: and when I glance, though my hairs creep and stiffen +like stirring amobse, yet in my eyes, I know, is monarch indignation +against the intruder, and my neck stands stiff as sovereignty itself, +and on my brow sits more than all the lordship of Persepolis and Iraz. + +To what point of wantonness this arrogance of royalty may lead me, I do +not know: I will watch, and see. It is written: 'It is not good for man +to be alone!' But good or no, the arrangement of One planet, One +inhabitant, already seems to me, not merely a natural and proper, but +the _only_ natural and proper, condition; so much so, that any other +arrangement has now, to my mind, a certain improbable, wild, and +far-fetched unreality, like the Utopian schemes of dreamers and +faddists. That the whole world should have been made for _me_ +alone--that London should have been built only in order that _I_ might +enjoy the vast heroic spectacle of its burning--that all history, and +all civilisation should have existed only in order to accumulate for +_my_ pleasures its inventions and facilities, its stores of purple and +wine, of spices and gold--no more extraordinary does it all seem to me +than to some little unreflecting Duke of my former days seemed the +possessing of lands which his remote forefathers seized, and slew the +occupiers: nor, in reality, is it even so extraordinary, I being alone. +But what sometimes strikes me with some surprise is, not that the +present condition of the world, with one sole master, should seem the +common-place and natural condition, but that it should have come to seem +_so_ common-place and natural--in nine months. The mind of Adam Jeffson +is adaptable. + + * * * * * + +I sat a long time thinking such things by my bed that night, till +finally I was disposed to sleep there. But I had no considerable number +of candle-sticks, nor was even sure of candles. I remembered, however, +that Peter Peters, three doors away on the other side of the street, +had had four handsome silver candelabra in his drawing-room, each +containing six stems; and I said to myself: 'I will search for candles +in the kitchen, and if I find any, I will go and get Peter Peters' +candelabra, and sleep here.' + +I took then the two lights which I had, my good God; went down to the +passage; then down to the basement; and there had no difficulty in +finding three packets of large candles, the fact being, I suppose, that +the cessation of gas-lighting had compelled everyone to provide +themselves in this way, for there were a great many wherever I looked. +With these I re-ascended, went into a little alcove on the second-floor +where I had kept some drugs, got a bottle of carbolic oil, and for ten +minutes went dashing all the corpses in the house. I then left the two +lighted bits of candle on the waiting-room table, and, with the +car-lamp, passed along the passage to the front-door, which was very +violently banging. I stepped out to find that the storm had increased to +a mighty turbulence (though it was dry), which at once caught my +clothes, and whirled them into a flapping cloud about and above me; +also, I had not crossed the street when my lamp was out. I persisted, +however, half blinded, to Peters door. It was locked: but immediately +near the pavement was a window, the lower sash up, into which, with +little trouble, I lifted myself and passed. My foot, as I lowered it, +stood on a body: and this made me angry and restless. I hissed a curse, +and passed on, scraping the carpet with my soles, that I might hurt no +one: for I did not wish to hurt any one. Even in the almost darkness of +the room I recognised Peters' furniture, as I expected: for the house +was his on a long lease, and I knew that his mother had had the +intention to occupy it after his death. But as I passed into the +passage, all was mere blank darkness, and I, depending upon the lamp, +had left the matches in the other house. I groped my way to the stairs, +and had my foot on the first step, when I was stopped by a vicious +shaking of the front-door, which someone seemed to be at with hustlings +and the most urgent poundings: I stood with peering stern brows two or +three minutes, for I knew that if I once yielded to the flinching at my +heart, no mercy would be shown me in this house of tragedy, and +thrilling shrieks would of themselves arise and ring through its haunted +chambers. The rattling continued an inordinate time, and so instant and +imperative, that it seemed as if it could not fail to force the door. +But, though horrified, I whispered to my heart that it could only be the +storm which was struggling at it like the grasp of a man, and after a +time went on, feeling my way by the broad rail, in my brain somehow the +thought of a dream which I had had in the _Boreal_ of the woman Clodagh, +how she let drop a fluid like pomegranate-seeds into water, and tendered +it to Peter Peters: and it was a mortal purging draught; but I would not +stop, but step by step went up, though I suffered very much, my brows +peering at the utter darkness, and my heart shocked at its own rashness. +I got to the first landing, and as I turned to ascend the second part of +the stair, my left hand touched something icily cold: I made some quick +instinctive movement of terror, and, doing so, my foot struck against +something, and I stumbled, half falling over what seemed a small table +there. Immediately a horrible row followed, for something fell to the +ground: and at that instant, ah, I heard something--a voice--a human +voice, which uttered words close to my ear--the voice of Clodagh, for I +knew it: yet not the voice of Clodagh in the flesh, but her voice +clogged with clay and worms, and full of effort, and thick-tongued: and +in that ghastly speech of the grave I distinctly heard the words: + +'_Things being as they are in the matter of the death of Peter ..._' + +And there it stopped dead, leaving me so sick, my God, so sick, that I +could hardly snatch my robes about me to fly, fly, fly, soft-footed, +murmuring in pain, down the steps, down like a sneaking thief, but +quick, snatching myself away, then wrestling with the cruel catch of the +door which she would not let me open, feeling her all the time behind +me, watching me. And when I did get out, I was away up the length of the +street, trailing my long _jubbah_, glancing backward, panting, for I +thought that she might dare to follow, with her daring evil will. And +all that night I lay on a common bench in the wind-tossed and dismal +Park. + + * * * * * + +The first thing which I did when the sun was up was to return to that +place: and I returned with hard and masterful brow. + +Approaching Peters' house I saw now, what the darkness had hidden from +me, that on his balcony was someone--quite alone there. The balcony is a +slight open-work wrought-iron structure, connected to a small roof by +three slender voluted pillars, two at the ends, one in the middle: and +at the middle one I saw someone, a woman--kneeling--her arms clasped +tight about the pillar, and her face rather upward-looking. Never did I +see aught more horrid: there were the gracious curves of the woman's +bust and hips still well preserved in a clinging dress of red cloth, +very faded now; and her reddish hair floated loose in a large flimsy +cloud about her; but her face, in that exposed position, had been quite +eaten away by the winds to a noseless skeleton, which grinned from ear +to ear, with slightly-dropped under-jaw--most horrid in contrast with +the body, and frame of hair. I meditated upon her a long time that +morning from the opposite pavement. An oval locket at her throat +contained, I knew, my likeness: for eight years previously I had given +it her. It was Clodagh, the poisoner. + +I thought that I would go into that house, and walk through it from top +to bottom, and sit in it, and spit in it, and stamp in it, in spite of +any one: for the sun was now high. I accordingly went in again, and up +the stairs to the spot where I had been frightened, and had heard the +words. And here a great rage took me, for I at once saw that I had been +made the dupe of the malign wills that beset me, and the laughing-stock +of Those for whom I care not a fig. From a little mahogany table there I +had knocked sideways to the ground, in my stumble, a small phonograph +with a great 25-inch japanned-tin horn, which, the moment that I now +noticed it, I took and flung with a great racket down the stairs: for +that this it was which had addressed me I did not doubt; it being indeed +evident that its clock-work mechanism had been stopped by the volcanic +scoriae in the midst of the delivery of a record, but had been started +into a few fresh oscillations by the shock of the fall, making it utter +those thirteen words, and stop. I was sufficiently indignant at the +moment, but have since been glad, for I was thereby put upon the notion +of collecting a number of cylinders with records, and have been touched +with indescribable sensations, sometimes thrilled, at hearing the +silence of this Eternity broken by those singing and speaking voices, so +life-like, yet most ghostly, of the old dead. + + * * * * * + +Well, the most of that same day I spent in a high chamber at Woolwich, +dusting out, and sometimes oiling, time-fuses: a work in which I +acquired such facility in some hours, that each finally occupied me no +more than ninety to a hundred seconds, so that by evening I had, with +the previous day's work, close on 600. The construction of these little +things is very simple, and, I believe, effective, so that I should have +no difficulty in making them myself in large numbers, if it were +necessary. Most contain a tiny dry battery, which sends a current along +a bell or copper wire at the running-down moment, the clocks being +contrived to be set for so many days, hours, and minutes, while others +ignite by striking. I arranged in rows in the covered van those which I +had prepared, and passed the night in an inn near the Barracks. I had +brought candle-sticks from London in the morning, and arranged the +furniture--a settee, chest-of-drawers, basin-stand, table, and a number +of chairs--in three-quarter-circle round the bed, so getting a +triple-row altar of lights, mixed with vases of the house containing +small palms and evergreens; with this I mingled a smell of ambergris +from the scattered contents of some Turkish sachets which I had; in the +bed a bottle of sweet Chypre-wine, with _bonbons_, nuts, and Havannas. +As I lay me down, I could not but reflect, with a smile which I knew to +be evil, upon that steady, strong, smouldering lust within me which was +urging me through all those pains at the Arsenal, I who shirked every +labour as unkingly. So, however, it was: and the next morning I was at +it again after an early breakfast, my fingers at first quite stiff with +cold, for it blew a keen and January gale. By nine I had 820 fuses; and +judging those sufficient to commence with, got into the motor, and took +it round to a place called the East Laboratory, a series of detached +buildings, where I knew that I should find whatever I wanted: and I +prepared my mind for a day's labour. In this place I found incredible +stores: mountains of percussion-caps, more chambers of fuses, small-arm +cartridges, shells, and all those murderous explosive mixtures, a-making +and made, with which modern savagery occupied its leisure in +exterminating itself: or, at least, savagery civilised in its top-story +only: for civilisation was apparently from the head downwards, and never +once grew below the neck in all those centuries, those people being +certainly much more mental than cordial, though I doubt if they were +genuinely mental either--reminding one rather of that composite image of +Nebuchadnezzar, head of gold, breast brazen, feet of clay--head +man-like, heart cannibal, feet bestial--like aegipeds, and mermaids, and +puzzling undeveloped births. However, it is of no importance: and +perhaps I am not much better than the rest, for I, too, after all, am of +them. At any rate, their lyddites, melanites, cordites, dynamites, +powders, jellies, oils, marls, and civilised barbarisms and obiahs, came +in very well for their own destruction: for by two o'clock I had so +worked, that I had on the first cart the phalanx of fuses; on the +second a goodly number of kegs, cartridge-cases and cartridge-boxes, +full of powder, explosive cottons and gelatines, and liquid +nitro-glycerine, and earthy dynamite, with some bombs, two reels of +cordite, two pieces of tarred cloth, a small iron ladle, a shovel, and a +crow-bar; the cab came next, containing a considerable quantity of loose +coal; and lastly, in the private carriage lay four big cans of common +oil. And first, in the Laboratory, I connected a fuse-conductor with a +huge tun of blasting-gelatine, and I set the fuse on the ground, timed +for the midnight of the twelfth day thence; and after that I visited the +Main Factory, the Carriage Department, the Ordnance Store Department, +the Royal Artillery Barracks, and the Powder Magazines in the Marshes, +traversing, as it seemed to me, miles of building; and in some I laid +heaps of oil-saturated coal with an explosive in suitable spots on the +ground-floor near wood-work, and in some an explosive alone: and all I +timed for ignition at midnight of the twelfth day. Hot now, and black as +ink, I proceeded through the town, stopping with perfect system at every +hundredth door: and I laid the faggots of a great burning: and timed +them all for ignition at midnight of the twelfth day. + + * * * * * + +Whatever door I found closed against me I drove at it with a maniac +malice. + + * * * * * + +Shall I commit the whole dark fact to paper?--that deep, deep secret of +the human organism? + +As I wrought, I waxed wicked as a demon! And with lowered neck, and +forward curve of the lower spine, and the blasphemous strut of tragic +play-actors, I went. For here was no harmless burning which I did--but +the crime of arson; and a most fiendish, though vague, malevolence, and +the rage to burn and raven and riot, was upon me like a dog-madness, and +all the mood of Nero, and Nebuchadnezzar: and from my mouth proceeded +all the obscenities of the slum and of the gutter, and I sent up such +hisses and giggles of challenge to Heaven that day as never yet has man +let out. But this way lies a spinning frenzy.... + + * * * * * + +I have taken a dead girl with wild huggings to my bosom; and I have +touched the corrupted lip, and spat upon her face, and tossed her down, +and crushed her teeth with my heel, and jumped and jumped upon her +breast, like the snake-stamping zebra, mad, mad...! + + * * * * * + +I was desolated, however, that first day of the faggot-laying, even in +the midst of my sense of omnipotence, by one thing, which made me give +some kicks to the motor: for it was only crawling, so that a good part +of the way I was stalking by its side; and when I came to that hill near +the Old Dover Road, the whole thing stopped, and refused to move, the +weight of the train being too great for my horse-power traction. I did +not know what to do, and stood there in angry impotence a full +half-hour, for the notion of setting up an electric station, with or +without automatic stoking-gear, presented so hideous a picture of labour +to me, that I would not entertain it. After a time, however, I thought +that I remembered that there was a comparatively new power station in +St. Paneras driven by turbines: and at once, I uncoupled the motor, +covered the drays with the tarpaulins, and went driving at singing +speed, choosing the emptier by-streets, and not caring whom I crushed. +After some trouble I found, in fact, the station in an obscure by-street +made of two long walls, and went in by a window, a rage upon me to have +my will quickly accomplished. I ran up some stairs, across two rooms, +into a gallery containing a switch-board, and in the room below saw the +works, all very neat-looking, but, as I soon found, very dusty. I went +down, and fixed upon a generating set--there were three--that would give +a decent load, and then saw that the switch-gear belonging to this +particular generator was in order. I then got some cloths and thoroughly +cleaned the dust off the commutators; ran next--for I was in a strange +fierce haste--and turned the water into the turbines, and away went the +engine; I hurried to set the lubricators running on the bearings, and in +a couple of minutes had adjusted the speed, and the brushes of the +generators, and switched the current on to the line. By this time, +however, I saw that it was getting dark, and feared that little could be +done that day; still, I hurried out, the station still running, got into +the car, and was off to look for a good electric one, of which there are +hosts in the streets, in order at least to clean up and adjust the motor +that night. I drove down three by-streets, till I turned into Euston +Road: but I had no sooner reached it than I pulled up--with sudden +jerk--with a shout of astonishment. + +That cursed street was all lighted up and gay! and three shimmering +electric globes, not far apart, illuminated every feature of a ghastly +battle-field of dead. + +And there was a thing there, the grinning impression of which I shall +carry to my grave: a thing which spelled and spelled at me, and ceased, +and began again, and ceased, and spelled at me. For, above a shop which +faced me was a flag, a red flag with white letters, fluttering on the +gale the words: 'Metcalfe's Stores'; and beneath the flag, stretched +right across the house, was the thing which spelled, letter by letter, +in letters of light: and it spelled two words, deliberately, coming to +the end, and going back to recommence: + + _Drink_ + ROBORAL. + +And that was the last word of civilised Man to me, Adam Jeffson--its +final counsel--its ultimate gospel and message--to _me_, my good God! +_Drink Roboral!_ + +I was put into such a passion of rage by this blatant ribaldry, which +affected me like the laughter of a skeleton, that I rushed from the car, +with the intention, I believe, of seeking stones to stone it: but no +stones were there: and I had to stand impotently enduring that rape of +my eyes, its victoriously-dogged iteration, its taunting leer, its +Drink Roboral--D, R, I, N, K R, O, B, O, R, A, L. + +It was one of those electrical spelling-advertisements, worked by a +small motor commutator driven by a works-motor, and I had now set it +going: for on some night before that Sabbath of doom the chemist must +have set it to work, but finding the works abandoned, had not troubled +to shut it down again. At any rate, this thing stopped my work for that +day, for when I went to shut down the works it was night; and I drove to +the place which I had made my home in sullen and weary mood: for I knew +that Roboral would not cure the least of all my sores. + + * * * * * + +The next morning I awoke in quite another frame of mind, disposed to +idle, and let things go. After rising, dressing, washing in cold diluted +rose-water, and descending to the _salle--manger_, where I had laid my +morning-meal the previous evening, I promenaded an hour the only one of +these long sombrous tufted corridors in which there were not more than +two dead, though behind the doors on either hand, all of which I had +locked, I knew that they lay in plenty. When I was warmed, I again went +down, looked into my motor, got three cylinders from one of a number of +motors standing near, lit up, and drove away--to Woolwich, as I thought +at first: but instead of crossing the river by Blackfriars, I went more +eastward; and having passed from Holborn into Cheapside, which was +impassable, unless I crawled, was about to turn, when I noticed a +phonograph-shop: into this I got by a side-door, suddenly seized by +quite a curiosity to hear what I might hear. I took a good one with +microphone diaphragm, and a number of record-cylinders in a +brass-handled box, and I put them into the car, for there was still a +very strong peach-odour in this closed shop, which displeased me. I then +proceeded southward and westward through by-streets, seeking some +probable house into which to go from the rough cold winds, when I saw +the Parliament-house, and thither, turning river-ward by Westminster +Hall to Palace Yard, I went, and with my two parcels, one weighting each +arm, walked into this old place along a line of purple-dusted busts; I +deposited my boxes on a table beside a massive brass thing lying there, +which, I suppose, must be what they called the Mace; and I sat to hear. + +Unfortunately, the phonograph was a clock-work one, and when I wound it, +it would not go: so that I got very angry at my absurdity in not +bringing an electric mechanism, as I could with much less trouble have +put in a chemical than cleaned the clock-work; and this thing put me +into such a rage, that I nearly tore it to pieces, and was half for +kicking it: but there was a man sitting in an old straight-backed chair +quite near me, which they called the Speaker's Chair, who was in such a +pose, that he had, every time I glanced suddenly at him, precisely the +air of bending forward with interest to watch what I was doing, a +Mohrgrabim kind of man, almost black, with Jewish nose, crinkled hair, +keffie, and flowing robe, probably, I should say, an Abyssinian Galla; +with him were only five or six people about the benches, mostly leaning +forward with rested head, so that this place had quite a void +sequestered mood. At all events, this Galla, or Bedouin, with his +grotesque interest in my doings, restrained my hands: and, finally, by +dint of peering, poking, dusting, and adjusting, in an hour's time I got +the phonograph to go very well. + +And all that morning, and far into late afternoon, forgetful of food, +and of the cold which gradually possessed me, I sat there listening, +musing--cylinder after cylinder: frivolous songs, orchestras, voices of +famous men whom I had spoken with, and shaken their solid hands, +speaking again to me, but thick-tongued, with hoarse effort and +gurgles, from out the vague void beyond the grave: most strange, most +strange. And the third cylinder that I put on, ah, I knew, with a +fearful start, that voice of thunder, I knew it well: it was the +preacher, Mackay's; and many, many times over I heard those words of his +that day, originally spoken, it seems, when the cloud had just passed +the longitude of Vienna; and in all that torrent of speech not one +single word of 'I told you so': but he cries: + +'...praise Him, O Earth, for He is He: and if He slay me, I will laugh +raillery at His Sword, and banter Him to His face: for His Sword is +sharp Mercy, and His poisons kill my death. Fear not, therefore, little +flock of Man! but take my comfort to your heart to-night, and my sweets +to your tongue: for though ye have sinned, and hardened yourselves as +brass, and gone far, far astray in these latter wildernesses, yet He is +infinitely greater than your sin, and will lead you back. Break not, +break not, poor broken heart of Earth: for from Him I run herald to thee +this night with the sweet and secret message, that of old He chose thee, +and once mixed conjugally with thee in an ancient sleep, O Afflicted: +and He is thou, and thou art He, flesh of His flesh, and bone of His +bone; and if thou perish utterly, it is that He has perished utterly, +too: for thou art He. Hope, therefore, most, and cheeriest smile, at +the very apsis and black nadir of Despair: for He is nimble as a weasel, +and He twists like Proteus, and His solstices and equinoxes, His tropics +and turning-points and recurrences are innate in Being, and when He +falls He falls like harlequin and shuttlecocks, shivering plumb to His +feet, and each third day, lo, He is risen again, and His defeats are but +the stepping-stones and rough scaffolding from which He builds His +Parthenons, and from the densest basalt gush His rills, and the last end +of this Earth shall be no poison-cloud, I say to you, but Carnival and +Harvest-home ... though ye have sinned, poor hearts ...' + + * * * * * + +So Mackay, with thick-tongued metallic effort. I found this brown room +of the Commons-house, with its green benches, and grilled galleries, so +agreeable to my mood, that I went again the next morning, and listened +to more records, till they tired me: for what I had was a prurient itch +to hear secret scandals, and revelations of the festering heart, but +these cylinders, gathered from a shop, divulged nothing. I then went out +to make for Woolwich, but in the car saw the poet's note-book in which I +had written: and I took it, went back, and was writing an hour, till I +was tired of that, too; and judging it too late for Woolwich that day, +wandered about the dusty committee-rooms and recesses of this +considerable place. In one room another foolishness suddenly seized upon +me, shewing how my slightest whim has become more imperious within me +than all the Jaws of the Medes and Persians: for in that room, Committee +Room No. 15, I found an apparently young policeman lying flat on his +back, who pleased me: his helmet tilted under his head, and near one +white-gloved hand a blue official envelope; the air of that stagnant +quiet room was still perceptibly peach-scented, and he gave not the +slightest odour that I could detect, though he had been corporal and +stalwart, his face now the colour of dark ashes, in each hollow cheek a +ragged hole about the size of a sixpence, the flimsy vaulted eye-lids +well embedded in their caverns, from under whose fringe of eye-lash +seemed whispered the word: '_Eternity._' His hair seemed very long for a +policeman, or perhaps it had grown since death; but what interested me +about him, was the envelope at his hand: for 'what,' I asked myself, +'was this fellow doing here with an envelope at three o'clock on a +Sunday afternoon?' This made me look closer, and then I saw by a mark at +the left temple that he had been shot, or felled; whereupon I was +thrown into quite a great rage, for I thought that this poor man was +killed in the execution of his duty, when many of his kind perhaps, and +many higher than he, had fled their post to pray or riot. So, after +looking at him a long time, I said to him: 'Well, D. 47, you sleep very +well: and you did well, dying so: I am pleased with you, and to mark my +favour, I decree that you shall neither rot in the common air, nor burn +in the common flames: for by my own hand shall you be distinguished with +burial.' And this wind so possessed me, that I at once went out: with +the crow-bar from the car I broke the window of a near iron-monger's in +Parliament Street, got a spade, and went into Westminster Abbey. I soon +prised up a grave-slab of some famous man in the north transept, and +commenced to shovel: but, I do not know how, by the time I had digged a +foot the whole impulse passed from me: I left off the work, promising to +resume it: but nothing was ever done, for the next day I was at +Woolwich, and busy enough about other matters. + + * * * * * + +During the next nine days I worked with a fever on me, and a map of +London before me. + +There were places in that city!--secrets, vastnesses, horrors! In the +wine-vaults at London Docks was a vat which must certainly have +contained between twenty and thirty thousand gallons: and with dancing +heart I laid a train there; the tobacco-warehouse must have covered +eighty acres: and there I laid a fuse. In a house near Regent's Park, +standing in a garden, and shut from the street by a high wall, I saw a +thing...! and what shapes a great city hid I now first know. + + * * * * * + +I left no quarter unremembered, taking a train, no longer of four, but +of eight, vehicles, drawn by an electric motor which I re-charged every +morning, mostly from the turbine station in St. Pancras, once from a +steam-station with very small engine and dynamo, found in the Palace +Theatre, which gave little trouble, and once from a similar little +station in a Strand hotel. With these I visited West Ham and Kew, +Finchley and Clapham, Dalston and Marylebone; I exhausted London; I +deposited piles in the Guildhall, in Holloway Gaol, in the new pillared +Justice-hall of Newgate, in the Tower, in the Parliament-house, in St. +Giles' Workhouse, in the Crypt and under the organ of St. Paul's, in the +South Kensington Museum, in the Royal Agricultural Society, in +Whiteley's place, in the Trinity House, in Liverpool Street, in the +Office of Works, in the secret recesses of the British Museum; in a +hundred inflammable warehouses, in five hundred shops, in a thousand +private dwellings. And I timed them all for ignition at midnight of the +23rd April. + +By five in the afternoon of the 22nd, when I left my train in Maida +Vale, and drove alone to the solitary house on high ground near +Hampstead Heath which I had chosen, the work was well finished. + + * * * * * + +The great morning dawned, and I was early a-stir: for I had much to do +that day. + +I intended to make for the sea-shore the next morning, and had therefore +to choose a good petrol motor, store it, and have it in a place of +safety; I had also to drag another vehicle after me, stored with trunks +of time-fuses, books, clothes, and other little things. + +My first journey was to Woolwich, whence I took all that I might ever +require in the way of mechanism; thence to the National Gallery, where I +cut from their frames the 'Vision of St. Helena,' Murillo's 'Boy +Drinking,' and 'Christ at the Column'; and thence to the Embassy to +bathe, anoint myself, and dress. + +As I had anticipated, and hoped, a blustering spring gale was blowing +from the north. + +Even as I set out from Hampstead, about 9 A.M., I had been able to guess +that some of my fuses had somehow anticipated the appointed hour: for I +saw three red hazes at various points in the air, and heard the far +vague booming of an occasional explosion; and by 11 A.M. I felt sure +that a large region of north-eastern London must be in flames. With the +solemn feelings of bridegrooms and marriage-mornings--with a flinching, +a flinching heart, God knows, yet a heart up-buoyed on thrilling joys--I +went about making preparations for the Gargantuan orgy of the night. + + * * * * * + +The house at Hampstead, which no doubt still stands, is of rather +pleasing design in quite a stone and rural style, with good breadths of +wall-surface, two plain coped gables, mullioned windows, and oversailing +slate verge roofs, but, rather spoiling it, a high square three-storied +tower at the south-east angle, on the topmost floor of which I had slept +the previous night. There I had provided myself with a jar of pale +tobacco mixed with rose-leaves and opium, found in a foreign house in +Seymour Street, also a genuine Saloniki hookah, together with the best +wines, nuts, and so on, and a gold harp of the musician Krasinski, +stamped with his name, taken from his house in Portland Street. + +But so much did I find to do that day, and so many odd things turned up +which I thought that I would take with me, that it was not till near six +that I drove finally northward through Camden Town. And now an ineffable +awe possessed my soul at the solemn noise which everywhere encompassed +me, an ineffable awe, a blissful terror. Never, never could I have +dreamed of aught so great and potent. All above my head there rushed +southward with wide-spread wing of haste a sparkling smoke; and mixed +with the immense roaring I heard mysterious hubbubs of tumblings and +rumblings, which I could not at all comprehend, like the moving-about of +furniture in the houses of Titans; while pervading all the air was a +most weird and tearful sound, as it were threnody, and a wild wail of +pain, and dying swan-songs, and all lamentations and tribulations of the +world. Yet I was aware that, at an hour so early, the flames must be far +from general; in fact, they had not well commenced. + + * * * * * + +As I had left a good semicircular region of houses, with a radius of +four hundred yards, without combustibles to the south of the isolated +house which I was to occupy, and as the wind was so strongly from the +north, I simply left my two vehicles at the door of the house, without +fear of any injury: nor did any occur. I then went up to the top of the +tower, lit the candles, and ate voraciously of the dinner which I had +left ready, for since the morning I had taken nothing; and then, with +hands and heart that quivered, I arranged the clothes of the low +spring-bed upon which to throw my frame in the morning hours. Opposite +the wall, where lay the bed, was a Gothic window, pretty large, with low +sill, hung with poppy-figured muslin, and looking directly south, so +that I could recline at ease in the red-velvet easy-chair, and see. It +had evidently been a young lady's room: for on the toilette were +cut-glass bottles, a plait of brown hair, powders, _rouge-aux-lvres,_ +one little bronze slipper, and knick-knacks, and I loved her and hated +her, though I did not see her anywhere. About half-past eight I sat at +the window to watch, all being arranged and ready at my right hand, the +candles extinguished in the red room: for the theatre was opened, was +opened: and the atmosphere of this earth seemed turned into Hell, and +Hell was in my soul. + + * * * * * + +Soon after midnight there was a sudden and very visible increase in the +conflagration. On all hands I began to see blazing structures soar, with +grand hurrahs, on high. In fives and tens, in twenties and thirties, all +between me and the remote limit of my vision, they leapt, they lingered +long, they fell. My spirit more and more felt, and danced--deeper +mysteries of sensation, sweeter thrills. I sipped exquisitely, I drew +out enjoyment leisurely. Anon, when some more expansive angel of flame +would arise from the Pit with steady aspiration, and linger with +outspread arms, and burst, I would lift a little from the chair, leaning +forward to clap, as at some famous acting; or I would call to them in +shouts of cheer, giving them the names of Woman. For now I seemed to see +nothing but some bellowing pandemonic universe through crimson glasses, +and the air was wildly hot, and my eye-balls like theirs that walk +staring in the inner midst of burning fiery furnaces, and my skin itched +with a fierce and prickly itch. Anon I touched the chords of the harp to +the air of Wagner's 'Walkren-ritt.' + +Near three in the morning, I reached the climax of my guilty sweets. My +drunken eye-lids closed in a luxury of pleasure, and my lips lay +stretched in a smile that dribbled; a sensation of dear peace, of +almighty power, consoled me: for now the whole area which through +streaming tears I surveyed, mustering its ten thousand thunders, and +brawling beyond the stars the voice of its southward-rushing torment, +billowed to the horizon one grand Atlantic of smokeless and flushing +flame; and in it sported and washed themselves all the fiends of Hell, +with laughter, shouts, wild flights, and holiday; and I--first of my +race--had flashed a signal to the nearer planets.... + + + * * * * * + + * * * * * + +Those words: 'signal to the nearer planets' I wrote nearly fourteen +months ago, some days after the destruction of London, I being then on +board the old _Boreal_, making for the coast of France: for the night +was dark, though calm, and I was afraid of running into some ship, yet +not sleepy, so I wrote to occupy my fingers, the ship lying still. The +book in which I wrote has been near me: but no impulse to write anything +has visited me, till now I continue; not, however, that I have very much +to put down. + +I had no intention of wearing out my life in lighting fires every +morning to warm myself in the inhospitable island of Britain, and set +out to France with the view of seeking some palace in the Riviera, +Spain, or perhaps Algiers, there, for the present at least, to make my +home. + +I started from Calais toward the end of April, taking my things along, +the first two days by train, and then determining that I was in no +hurry, and a petrol motor easier, took one, and maintained a generally +southern and somewhat eastern direction, ever-anew astonished at the +wildness of the forest vegetation which, within so short a space since +the disappearance of man, chokes this pleasant land, even before the +definite advent of summer. + +After three weeks of very slow travelling--for though I know several +countries very well, France with her pavered villages, hilly character, +vines, forests, and primeval country-manner, is always new and charming +to me--after three weeks I came unexpectedly to a valley which had never +entered my head; and the moment that I saw it, I said: 'Here I will +live,' though I had no idea what it was, for the monastery which I saw +did not look at all like a monastery, according to my ideas: but when I +searched the map, I discovered that it must be La Chartreuse de +Vauclaire in Prigord. + +It is my belief that this word 'Vauclaire' is nothing else than a +corruption of the Latin _Vallis Clara,_ or Bright Valley, for _l'_s and +_u'_s did interchange about in this way, I remember: _cheval_ becoming +_chevau(x)_ in the plural, like 'fool' and 'fou,' and the rest: which +proves the dear laziness of French people, for the 'l' was too much +trouble for them to sing, and when they came to _two_ 'l's' they quite +succumbed, shying that vault, or vo_u_te, and calling it some _y_. But +at any rate, this Vauclaire, or Valclear, was well named: for here, if +anywhere, is Paradise, and if anyone knew how and where to build and +brew liqueurs, it was those good old monks, who followed their Master +with _entrain_ in that Cana miracle, and in many other things, I fancy, +but aesthetically shirked to say to any mountain: 'Be thou removed.' + + * * * * * + +The general hue of the vale is a deep cerulean, resembling that blue of +the robes of Albertinelli's Madonnas; so, at least, it strikes the eye +on a clear forenoon of spring or summer. The monastery consists of an +oblong space, or garth, around three sides of which stand sixteen small +houses, with regular intervals between, all identical, the cells of the +fathers; between the oblong space and the cells come the cloisters, with +only one opening to the exterior; in the western part of the oblong is +a little square of earth under a large cypress-shade, within which, as +in a home of peace, it sleeps: and there, straight and slanting, stand +little plain black crosses over graves.... + +To the west of the quadrangle is the church, with the hostelry, and an +asphalted court with some trees and a fountain; and beyond, the +entrance-gate. + +All this stands on a hill of gentle slope, green as grass; and it is +backed close against a steep mountain-side, of which the tree-trunks are +conjectural, for I never saw any, the trees resembling rather one +continuous leafy tree-top, run out high and far over the extent of the +mountain. + + * * * * * + +I was there four months, till something drove me away. I do not know +what had become of the fathers and brothers, for I only found five, four +of whom I took in two journeys in the motor beyond the church of Saint +Martial d'Artenset, and left them there; and the fifth remained three +weeks with me, for I would not disturb him in his prayer. He was a +bearded brother of forty years or thereabouts, who knelt in his cell +robed and hooded in all his phantom white: for in no way different from +whatever is most phantom, visionary and eerie must a procession of these +people have seemed by gloaming, or dark night This particular brother +knelt, I say, in his small chaste room, glaring upward at his Christ, +who hung long-armed in a little recess between the side of three narrow +bookshelves and a projection of the wall; and under the Christ a gilt +and blue Madonna; the books on the three shelves few, leaning different +ways. His right elbow rested on a square plain table, at which was a +wooden chair; behind him, in a corner, the bed: a bed all enclosed in +dark boards, a broad perpendicular board along the foot, reaching the +ceiling, a horizontal board at the side over which he got into bed, +another narrower one like it at the ceiling for fringe and curtain, and +another perpendicular one hiding the pillow, making the clean bed within +a very shady and cosy little den, on the wall of this den being another +smaller Christ and a little picture. On the perpendicular board at the +foot hung two white garments, and over a second chair at the bed-side +another: all very neat and holy. He was a large stern man, blond as +corn, but with some red, too, in his hairy beard; and appalling was the +significance of those eyes that prayed, and the long-drawn cavity of +those saffron cheeks. I cannot explain to myself my deep reverence for +this man; but I had it, certainly. Many of the others, it is clear, had +fled: but not he: and to the near-marching cloud he opposed the Cross, +holding one real as the other--he alone among many. For Christianity was +an _lite_ religion, in which all were called, but few chosen, differing +from Mohammedanism and Buddhism, which grasped and conquered all within +their reach: the effect of Christ rather resembling Plato's and Dante's, +it would seem: but Mahomet's more like Homer's and Shakespeare's. + +It was my way to plant at the portal the big, carved chair from the +chancel on the hot days, and rest my soul, refusing to think of +anything, drowsing and smoking for hours. All down there in the plain +waved gardens of delicious fruit about the prolonged silver thread of +the river Isle, whose course winds loitering quite near the foot of the +monastery-slope. This slope dominates a tract of distance that is not +only vast, but looks immense, although the horizon is bounded by a +semicircle of low hills, rather too stiff and uniform for perfect +beauty; the interval of plain being occupied by yellow ploughed lands +which were never sown, weedy now, and crossed and recrossed by +vividly-green ribbons of vine, with stretches of pale-green lucerne, +orchards, and the white village of Monpont near the railway, all +embowered, the Isle drawing its mercurial streams through the +village-meadow, which is dark with shades of oaks: and to have played +there a boy, and used it familiarly from birth as one's own hand or +foot, must have been very sweet and homely; after this, the river +divides, and takes the shape of a heart; and very far away are visible +the grey banks of the Gironde. On the semicircle of hills, when there +was little distance-mist, I saw the ruins of some seigneurial chteau, +for the seigneurs, too, knew where to build; and to my left, between a +clump of oaks and an avenue of poplars, the bell-tower of the +village--church of Saint Martial d'Artenset--a very ancient type of +tower, I believe, and common in France, rather ponderous, consisting of +a square mass with a smaller square mass stuck on, the latter having +large Gothic windows; and behind me the west face of the +monastery-church, over the door being the statue of Saint Bruno. + +Well, one morning after four months, I opened my eyes in my cell to the +piercing consciousness that I had burned Monpont over-night: and so +overcome was I with regret for this poor inoffensive little place, that +for two days, hardly eating, I paced between the oak and walnut pews of +the nave, massive stalls they are, separated by grooved Corinthian +pilasters, wondering what was to become of me, and if I was not already +mad; and there are some little angels with extraordinarily human +Greuze-like faces, supporting the nerves of the apse, which, after a +time, every time I passed them, seemed conscious of me and my existence +there; and the wood-work which ornaments the length of the nave, and of +the choir also, elaborate with carved marguerites and roses, here and +there took in my eyes significant forms from certain points of view; and +there is a partition--for the nave is divided into two chapels, one for +the brothers and one for the fathers, I conclude--and in this partition +a massive door, which yet looks quite light and graceful, carved with +oak and acanthus leaves, and every time I passed through I had the +impression that the door was a sentient thing, subconscious of me; and +the delicate Italian-Renaissance brick vault which springs from the vast +nave seemed to look upon me with a gloomy knowledge of me, and of the +heart within me; and at about four in the afternoon of the second day, +after pacing the church for hours, I fell down at one of the two altars +near that carved door of the screen, praying God to have mercy upon my +soul; and in the very midst of my praying, I was up and away, the devil +in me, and I got into the motor, and did not come back to Vauclaire for +another month, and came leaving great tracts of burned desolation behind +me, towns and forests, Bordeaux burned, Lebourne burned, Bergerac +burned. + + * * * * * + +I returned to Vauclaire, for it seemed now my home; and there I +experienced a true, a deep repentance; and I humbled myself before my +Maker. And while in this state, sitting one bright day in front of the +monastery-gate, something said to me: 'You will never be a good man, nor +permanently escape Hell and Frenzy, unless you have an aim in life, +devoting yourself heart and soul to some great work, which will exact +all your science, your thought, your ingenuity, your knowledge of modern +things, your strength of body and will, your skill of head and hand: +otherwise you are bound to succumb. Do this, therefore, beginning, not +to-morrow nor this afternoon, but now: for though no man will see your +work, there is still the Almighty God, who is also something, in His +way: and He will see how you strive, and try, and groan: and perhaps, +seeing, He may have mercy upon you.' + + * * * * * + +In this way arose the idea of the Palace--an idea, indeed, which had +entered my brain before, but merely as a bombastic and visionary outcome +of my raving moods: now, however, in a very different way, soberly, and +soon concerning itself with details, difficulties, means, limitations, +and every kind of practical matter-of-fact; and every obstruction which, +one by one, I foresaw was, one by one, as the days passed, over-borne by +the vigour with which that thought, rapidly becoming a mania, possessed +me. After a week of incessant meditation, I decided Yes: and I said: I +will build a palace, which shall be both a palace and a temple: the +first human temple worthy the King of Heaven, and the only human palace +worthy the King of Earth. + + * * * * * + +After this decision I remained at Vauclaire another week, a very +different man to the lounger it had seen, strenuous, converted, humble, +making plans of this and of that, of the detail, and of the whole, +drawing, multiplying, dividing, adding, conic sections and the +rule-of-three, totting up the period of building, which came out at a +little over twelve years, estimating the quantities of material, weight +and bulk, my nights full of nightmare as to the _sort_, deciding as to +the size and structure of the crane, forge, and work-shop, and the +necessarily-limited weights of their component parts, making a list of +over 2,400 objects, and finally, up to the third week after my departure +from Vauclaire, skimming through the topography of nearly the whole +earth, before fixing upon the island of Imbros for my site. + + * * * * * + +I returned to England, and, once more, to the hollow windows and strewn +streets of black, burned-out and desolate London: for its bank-vaults, +etc., contained the necessary complement of the gold brought from Paris, +and then lying in the _Speranza_ at Dover; nor had I sufficient +familiarity with French industries and methods to find, even with the +aid of _Bottins_, one half of the 4,000 odd objects which I had now +catalogued. My ship was the _Speranza_, which brought me from Havre, for +at Calais, to which I first went, I could find nothing suitable for all +purposes, the _Speranza_ being an American yacht, very palatially +fitted, three-masted, air-driven, with a carrying capacity of 2,000 +tons, Tobin-bronzed, in good condition, containing sixteen interacting +tanks, with a five-block pulley-arrangement amid-ships that enables me +to lift very considerable weights without the aid of the hoisting +air-engine, high in the water, sharp, handsome, containing a few tons +only of sand-ballast, and needing when I found her only three days' work +at the water-line and engines to make her decent and fit. I threw out +her dead, backed her from the Outer to the Inner Basin to my train on +the quai, took in the twenty-three hundred-weight bags of gold, and the +half-ton of amber, and with this alone went to Dover, thence to +Canterbury by motor, and thence in a long train, with a store of +dynamite from the Castle for blasting possible obstructions, to London: +meaning to make Dover my _dpt_, and the London rails my thoroughfare +from all parts of the country. + +Instead of three months, as I had calculated, it took me nine: a +harrowing slavery. I had to blast no less than forty-three trains from +the path of my loaded wagons, several times blasting away the metals as +well, and then having to travel hundreds of yards without metals: for +the labour of kindling the obstructing engines, to shunt them down +sidings perhaps distant, was a thing which I would not undertake. +However, all's well that ends well, though if I had it to go through +again, certainly I should not. The _Speranza_ is now lying seven miles +off Cape Roca, a heavy mist on the still water, this being the 19th of +June at 10 in the night: no wind, no moon: cabin full of mist: and I +pretty listless and disappointed, wondering in my heart why I was such +a fool as to take all that trouble, nine long servile months, my good +God, and now seriously thinking of throwing the whole vile thing to the +devil; she pretty deep in the water, pregnant with the palace. When the +thirty-three ... + + * * * * * + + * * * * * + + * * * * * + + * * * * * + + * * * * * + +Those words: 'when the thirty-three' were written by me over seventeen +years since--long years--seventeen in number, nor have I now any idea to +what they refer. The book in which I wrote I had lost in the cabin of +the _Speranza_, and yesterday, returning to Imbros from an hour's +aimless cruise, discovered it there behind a chest. + +I find now considerable difficulty in guiding the pencil, and these few +lines now written have quite an odd look, like the handwriting of a man +not very proficient in the art: it is seventeen years, seventeen, +seventeen ... ah! And the expression of my ideas is not fluent either: I +have to think for the word a minute, and I should not be surprised if +the spelling of some of them is queer. My brain has been thinking +inarticulately perhaps, all these years: and the English words and +letters, as they now stand written, have rather an improbable and +foreign air to me, as a Greek or Russian book might look to a man who +has not so long been learning those languages as to forget the +impossibly foreign impression received from them on the first day of +tackling them. Or perhaps it is only my fancy: for that I have fancies I +know. + +But what to write? The history of those seventeen years could not be put +down, my good God: at least, it would take me seventeen more to do it. +If I were to detail the building of the palace alone, and how it killed +me nearly, and how I twice fled from it, and had to return, and became +its bounden slave, and dreamed of it, and grovelled before it, and +prayed, and raved, and rolled; and how I forgot to make provision on the +west side for the contraction and expansion of the gold in the colder +weather and the heats of summer, and had to break down nine months' +work, and how I cursed Thee, how I cursed Thee; and how the lake of wine +evaporated faster than the conduits replenished it, and the three +journeys which I had to take to Constantinople for shiploads of wine, +and my frothing despairs, till I had the thought of placing the +reservoir in the platform; and how I had then to break down the south +side of the platform to the very bottom, and of the month-long nightmare +of terror that I had lest the south side of the palace would undergo +subsidence; and how the petrol failed, and of the three-weeks' search +for petrol along the coast; and how, after list-rubbing all the jet, I +found that I had forgotten the necessary rouge for polishing; and how, +in the third year, I found the fluate, which I had for water-proofing +the pores of the platform-stone, nearly all leaked away in the +_Speranza's_ hold, and I had to get silicate of soda at Gallipoli; and +how, after two years' observation, I had to come to the conclusion that +the lake was leaking, and discovered that this Imbros sand was not +suitable for mixing with the skin of Portland cement which covered the +cement concrete, and had to substitute sheet-bitumen in three places; +and how I did all, all for the sake of God, thinking: 'I will work, and +be a good man, and cast Hell from me: and when I see it stand finished, +it will be an Altar and a Testimony to me, and I shall find peace, and +be well': and how I have been cheated--seventeen years, long years of my +life--for there is no God; and how my plasterers'-hair failed me, and I +had to use flock, hessian, scrym, wadding, wood-street paving-blocks, +and whatever I could find, for filling the interspaces between the +platform cross-walls; and of the espagnolette bolts, how a number of +them mysteriously disappeared, as if snatched to Hell by harpies, and I +had to make them; and how the crane-chain would not reach two of the +silver-panel castings when they were finished, and they were too heavy +for me to lift, and the wringing of the hands of my despair, and my +biting of the earth, and the transport of my fury; and how, for a whole +wild week, I searched in vain for the text-book which describes the +ambering process; and how, when all was nearly over, in the blasting +away of the forge and crane with dynamite, a long crack appeared down +the gold of the east platform-steps, and how I would not be consoled, +but mourned and mourned; and how, in spite of all my tribulations, it +was sweetly interesting to watch my power slowly grow from the first +feeble beginnings of the landing of materials and unloading them from +the motor, a hundred-weight at a time, till I could swing four tons--see +the solid metals flow--enjoy the gliding sounds of the handle, +crank-shaft, and system of levers, forcing inwards the mould-end, and +the upper and lower plungers, for pressing the material--build at ease +in a travelling-cage--and watch from my hut-door through sleepless +hours, under the electric moonlight of this land, the three piles of +gold stones, the silver panels, the two-foot squares of jet, and be +comforted; and how the putty-wash--but it is past, it is past: and not +to live over again that vulgar nightmare of means and ends have I taken +to this writing again--but to put down something else, if I dare. + +Seventeen years, my good God, of that delusion! I could write down no +sort of explanation for all those groans and griefs, at which a +reasoning being would not shriek with laughter. I should have lived at +ease in some palace of the Middle-Orient, and burned my cities: but no, +I must be 'a good man'--vain thought. The words of a wild madman, that +preaching man in England who prophesied what happened, were with me, +where he says: 'the defeat of Man is _His_ defeat'; and I said to +myself: 'Well, the last man shall not be quite a fiend, just to spite +That Other.' And I worked and groaned, saying: 'I will be a good man, +and burn nothing, nor utter aught unseemly, nor debauch myself, but +choke back the blasphemies that Those Others shriek through my throat, +and build and build, with moils and groans.' And it was Vanity: though I +do love the house, too, I love it well, for it is my home on the waste +earth. + +I had calculated to finish it in twelve years, and I should undoubtedly +have finished it in fourteen, instead of in sixteen and seven months, +but one day, when the south, north, and east platform-steps were already +finished--it was in the July of the third year, and near sunset--as I +left off work, instead of going to the tent where my dinner lay ready, I +walked down to the ship--most strangely--in a daft, mechanical sort of +way, without saying a word to myself, an evil-meaning smile of malice on +my lips; and at midnight I was lying off Mitylene, thirty miles to the +south, having bid, as I thought, a last farewell to all those toils. I +was going to burn Athens. + +I did not, however: but kept on my way westward round Cape Matapan, +intending to destroy the forests and towns of Sicily, if I found there a +suitable motor for travelling, for I had not been at the pains to take +the motor on board at Imbros; otherwise I would ravage parts of southern +Italy. But when I came thereabouts, I was confronted with an awful +horror: for no southern Italy was there, and no Sicily was there, unless +a small new island, probably not five miles long, was Sicily; and +nothing else I saw, save the still-smoking crater of Stromboli. I +cruised northward, searching for land, and for a long time would not +believe the evidence of the instruments, thinking that they wilfully +misled me, or I stark mad. But no: no Italy was there, till I came to +the latitude of Naples, it, too, having disappeared, engulfed, engulfed, +all that stretch. From this monstrous thing I received so solemn a shock +and mood of awe, that the evil mind in me was quite chilled and quelled: +for it was, and is, my belief that a wide-spread re-arrangement of the +earth's surface is being purposed, and in all that drama, O my God, how +shall _I_ be found? + +However, I went on my way, but more leisurely, not daring for a long +time to do anything, lest I might offend anyone; and, in this foolish +cowering mind, coasted all the western coast of Spain and France during +five weeks, in that prolonged intensity of calm weather which now +alternates with storms that transcend all thought, till I came again to +Calais: and there, for the first time, landed. + +Here I would no longer contain myself, but burned; and that magnificent +stretch of forest that lay between Agincourt and Abbville, covering +five square miles, I burned; and Abbville I burned; and Amiens I +burned; and three forests between Amiens and Paris I burned; and Paris I +burned; burning and burning during four months, leaving behind me +smoking districts, a long tract of ravage, like some being of the Pit +that blights where pass his flaming wings. + + * * * * * + +This of city-burning has now become a habit with me more enchaining--and +infinitely more debased--than ever was opium to the smoker, or alcohol +to the drunkard. I count it among the prime necessaries of my life: it +is my brandy, my bacchanal, my secret sin. I have burned Calcutta, +Pekin, and San Francisco. In spite of the restraining influence of this +palace, I have burned and burned. I have burned two hundred cities and +countrysides. Like Leviathan disporting himself in the sea, so I have +rioted in this earth. + + * * * * * + +After an absence of six months, I returned to Imbros: for I was for +looking again upon the work which I had done, that I might mock myself +for all that unkingly grovelling: and when I saw it, standing there as I +had left it, frustrate and forlorn, and waiting its maker's hand, some +pity and instinct to build took me--for something of God was in Man--and +I fell upon my knees, and spread my arms to God, and was converted, +promising to finish the palace, with prayers that as I built so He +would build my soul, and save the last man from the enemy. And I set to +work that day to list-rub the last few dalles of the jet. + + * * * * * + +I did not leave Imbros after that during four years, except for +occasional brief trips to the coast--to Kilid-Bahr, Gallipoli, Lapsaki, +Gamos, Rodosto, Erdek, Erekli, or even once to Constantinople and +Scutari--if I happened to want anything, or if I was tired of work: but +without once doing the least harm to anything, but containing my +humours, and fearing my Maker. And full of peaceful charm were those +little cruises through this Levantic world, which, truly, is rather like +a light sketch in water-colours done by an angel than like the dun real +earth; and full of self-satisfaction and pious contentment would I +return to Imbros, approved of my conscience, for that I had surmounted +temptation, and lived tame and stainless. + +I had set up the southern of the two closed-lotus pillars, and the +platform-top was already looking as lovely as heaven, with its alternate +two-foot squares of pellucid gold and pellucid jet, when I noticed one +morning that the _Speranza's_ bottom was really now too foul, and the +whim took me then and there to leave all, and clean her as far as I +could. I at once went on board, descended to the hold, took off my +sudeyrie, and began to shift the ballast over to starboard, so as to +tilt up her port bottom to the scraper. This was wearying labour, and +about noon I was sitting on a bag, resting in the almost darkness, when +something seemed to whisper to me these words: '_You dreamed last night +that there is an old Chinaman alive in Pekin._' Horridly I started: I +_had_ dreamed something of the sort, but, from the moment of waking, +till then, had forgotten it: and I leapt livid to my feet. + +I cleaned no _Speranza_ that day, nor for four days did I anything, but +sat on the cabin-house and mused, my supporting palm among the hairy +draperies of my chin: for the thought of such a thing, if it could by +any possibility be true, was detestable as death to me, changing the +colour of the sun, and the whole aspect of the world: and anon, at the +outrage of that thing, my brow would flush with wrath, and my eyes +blaze: till, on the fourth afternoon, I said to myself: 'That old +Chinaman in Pekin is likely to get burned to death, I think, or blown to +the clouds!' + +So, a second time, on the 4th March, the poor palace was left to build +itself. For, after a short trip to Gallipoli, where I got some young +lime-twigs in boxes of earth, and some preserved limes and ginger, I set +out for a long voyage to the East, passing through the Suez Canal, and +visiting Bombay, where I was three weeks, and then destroyed it. + + * * * * * + +I had the thought of going across Hindustan by engine, but did not like +to leave my ship, to which I was very attached, not sure of finding +anything so suitable and good at Calcutta; and, moreover, I was afraid +to abandon my petrol motor, which I had taken on board with the +air-windlass, since I was going to uncivilised land. I therefore coasted +down western Hindustan. + +All that northern shore of the Arabian Sea has at the present time an +odour which it wafts far over the water, resembling odours of happy +vague dream-lands, sweet to smell in the early mornings as if the earth +were nothing but a perfume, and life an inhalation. + +On that voyage, however, I had, from beginning to end, twenty-seven +fearful storms, or, if I count that one near the Carolines, then +twenty-eight. But I do not wish to write of these rages: they were too +inhuman: and how I came alive through them against all my wildest hope, +Someone, or Something, only knows. + +I will write down here a thing: it is this, my God--something which I +have observed: a definite obstreperousness in the mood of the elements +now, when once roused, which grows, which grows continually. Tempests +have become very very far more wrathful, the sea more truculent and +unbounded in its insolence; when it thunders, it thunders with a venom +new to me, cracking as though it would split the firmament, and bawling +through the heaven of heavens, as if roaring to devour all things; in +Bombay once, and in China thrice, I was shaken by earthquakes, the +second and third marked by a certain extravagance of agitation, that +might turn a man grey. Why should this be, my God? I remember reading +very long ago that on the American prairies, which from time immemorial +had been swept by great storms, the storms gradually subsided when man +went to reside permanently there. If this be true, it would seem that +the mere presence of man had a certain subduing or mesmerising effect +upon the native turbulence of Nature, and his absence now may have +removed the curb. It is my belief that within fifty years from now the +huge forces of the earth will be let fully loose to tumble as they will; +and this planet will become one of the undisputed playgrounds of Hell, +and the theatre of commotions stupendous as those witnessed on the face +of Saturn. + + * * * * * + +The Earth is all on my brain, on my brain, O dark-minded Mother, with +thy passionate cravings after the Infinite, thy regrets, and mighty +griefs, and comatose sleeps, and sinister coming doom, O Earth: and I, +poor man, though a king, sole witness of thy bleak tremendous woes. Upon +her I brood, and do not cease, but brood and brood--the habit, if I +remember right, first becoming fixed and fated during that long voyage +eastward: for what is in store for her God only knows, and I have seen +in my broodings long visions of her future, which, if a man should see +with the eye of flesh, he would spread the arms, and wheel and wheel +through the mazes of a hiccuping giggling frenzy, for the vision only is +the very verge of madness. If I might cease but for one hour that +perpetual brooding upon her! But I am her child, and my mind grows and +grows to her like the off-shoots of the banyan-tree, that take root +downward, and she sucks and draws it, as she draws my feet by +gravitation, and I cannot take wing from her: for she is greater than I, +and there is no escaping her; and at the last, I know, my soul will +dash itself to ruin, like erring sea-fowl upon pharos-lights, against +her wild and mighty bosom. Often a whole night through I lie open-eyed +in the dark, with bursting brain, thinking of that hollow Gulf of +Mexico, how identical in shape and size with the protuberance of Africa +just opposite, and how the protuberance of the Venezuelan and Brazilian +coast fits in with the in-curve of Africa: so that it is obvious to +me--it is quite _obvious_--that they once were one; and one night rushed +so far apart; and the wild Atlantic knew that thing, and ran gladly, +hasting in between: and how if eye of flesh had been there to see, and +ear to hear that cruel thundering, my God, my God--what horror! And if +now they meet again, so long apart ...but that way fury lies. Yet one +cannot help but think: I lie awake and think, for she fills my soul, and +absorbs it, with all her moods and ways. She has meanings, secrets, +plans. Strange, strange, for instance, that similarity between the +scheme of Europe and the scheme of Asia: each with three southern +peninsulas pointing south: Spain corresponding with Arabia, Italy with +India, the Morea and Greece, divided by the Gulf of Corinth, +corresponding with the Malay Peninsula and Annam, divided by the Gulf of +Siam; each with two northern peninsulas pointing south, Sweden and +Norway, and Korea and Kamschatka; each with two great islands similarly +placed, Britain and Ireland, and the Japanese Hondo and Yezo; the Old +World and the New has each a peninsula pointing north--Denmark and +Yucatan: a forefinger with long nail--and a thumb--pointing to the Pole. +What does she mean? What can she mean, O Ye that made her? Is she +herself a living being, with a will and a fate, as sailors said that +ships were living entities? And that thing that wheeled at the Pole, +wheels it still yonder, yonder, in its dark ecstasy? Strange that +volcanoes are all near the sea: I don't know why; I don't think that +anyone ever knew. This fact, in connection with submarine explosions, +used to be cited in support of the chemical theory of volcanoes, which +supposed the infiltration of the sea into ravines containing the +materials which form the fuel of eruptions: but God knows if that is +true. The lofty ones are intermittent--a century, two, ten, of silent +waiting, and then their talk silenced for ever some poor district; the +low ones are constant in action. Who could know the dark way of the +world? Sometimes they form a linear system, consisting of several vents +which extend in one direction, near together, like chimneys of some long +foundry beneath. In mountains, a series of serrated peaks denotes the +presence of dolomites; rounded heads mean calcareous rocks; and needles, +crystalline schists. The preponderance of land in the northern +hemisphere denotes the greater intensity there of the causes of +elevation at a remote geologic epoch: that is all that one can say about +it: but whence that greater intensity? I have some knowledge of the +earth for only ten miles down: but she has eight thousand miles: and +whether through all that depth she is flame or fluid, hard or soft, I do +not know, I do not know. Her method of forming coal, geysers and hot +sulphur-springs, and the jewels, and the atols and coral reefs; the +metamorphic rocks of sedimentary origin, like gneiss, the plutonic and +volcanic rocks, rocks of fusion, and the unstratified masses which +constitute the basis of the crust; and harvests, the burning flame of +flowers, and the passage from the vegetable to the animal: I do not know +them, but they are of her, and they are like me, molten in the same +furnace of her fiery heart. She is dark and moody, sudden and ill-fated, +and rends her young like a cannibal lioness; and she is old and wise, +and remembers Hur of the Chaldees which Uruk built, and that Temple of +Bel which rose in seven pyramids to symbolise the planets, and +Birs-i-Nimrud, and Haran, and she bears still, as a thing of yesterday, +old Persepolis and the tomb of Cyrus, and those cloister-like +vihrah-temples of the ancient Buddhists, cut from the Himalayan rock; +and returning from the Far East, I stopped at Ismailia, and so to Cairo, +and saw where Memphis was, and stood one bright midnight before that +great pyramid of Shafra, and that dumb Sphynx, and, seated at the well +of one of the rock-tombs, looked till tears of pity streamed down my +cheeks: for great is the earth, and her Ages, but man 'passeth away.' +These tombs have pillars extremely like the two palace-pillars, only +that these are round, and mine are square: for I chose it so: but the +same band near the top, then over this the closed lotus-flower, then the +small square plinth, which separates them from the architrave, only mine +have no architrave; the tombs consist of a little outer temple or court, +then comes a well, and inside another chamber, where, I suppose, the +dead were, a ribbon-like astragal surrounding the walls, which are +crowned with boldly-projecting cornices, surmounted by an abacus. And +here, till the pressing want of food drove me back, I remained: for more +and more the earth over-grows me, wooes me, assimilates me; so that I +ask myself this question: 'Must I not, in time, cease to be a man, and +become a small earth, precisely her copy, extravagantly weird and +fierce, half-demoniac, half-ferine, wholly mystic--morose and +turbulent--fitful, and deranged, and sad--like her?' + + * * * * * + +A whole month of that voyage, from May the 15th to June the 13th, I +wasted at the Andaman Islands near Malay: for that any old Chinaman +could be alive in Pekin began, after some time, to seem the most +quixotic notion that ever entered a human brain; and these jungled +islands, to which I came after a shocking vast orgy one night at +Calcutta, when I fired not only the city but the river, pleased my fancy +to such an extent, that at one time I intended to abide there. I was at +the one called in the chart 'Saddle Hill,' the smallest of them, I +think: and seldom have I had such sensations of peace as I lay a whole +burning day in a rising vale, deeply-shaded in palm and tropical +ranknesses, watching thence the _Speranza_ at anchor: for there was a +little offing here at the shore whence the valley arose, and I could see +one of its long peaks lined with cocoanut-trees, and all cloud burned +out of the sky except the flimsiest lawn-figments, and the sea as +absolutely calm as a lake roughened with breezes, yet making a +considerable noise in its breaking on the shore, as I have noticed in +these sorts of places: I do not know why. These poor Andaman people seem +to have been quite savage, for I met a number of them in roaming the +island, nearly skeletons, yet with limbs and vertebrae still, in +general, cohering, and in some cases dry-skinned and mummified relics of +flesh, and never anywhere a sign of clothes: a very singular thing, +considering their nearness to high old civilisations all about them. +They looked small and black, or almost; and I never found a man without +finding on or near him a spear and other weapons: so that they were +eager folk, and the wayward dark earth was in them, too, as she should +be in her children. They had in many cases some reddish discoloration, +which may have been the traces of betel-nut stains: for betel-nuts +abound there. And I was so pleased with these people, that I took on +board with the gig one of their little tree-canoes: which was my +foolishness: for gig and canoe were only three nights later washed from +the decks into the middle of the sea. + + * * * * * + +I passed down the Straits of Malacca, and in that short distance between +the Andaman Islands, and the S.W. corner of Borneo I was thrice so +mauled, that at times it seemed quite out of the question that anything +built by man could escape such unfettered cataclysms, and I resigned +myself, but with bitter reproaches, to perish darkly. The effect of the +third upon me, when it was over, was the unloosening afresh of all my +evil passion: for I said: 'Since they mean to slay me, death shall find +me rebellious'; and for weeks I could not sight some specially happy +village, or umbrageous spread of woodland, that I did not stop the ship, +and land the materials for their destruction; so that nearly all those +spicy lands about the north of Australia will bear the traces of my hand +for many a year: for more and more my voyage became dawdling and +zigzaged, as the merest whim directed it, or the movement of the pointer +on the chart; and I thought of eating the lotus of surcease and nepenthe +in some enchanted nook of this bowering summer, where from my hut-door I +could see through the pearl-hues of opium the sea-lagoon slaver lazily +upon the old coral atol, and the cocoanut-tree would droop like slumber, +and the bread-fruit tree would moan in sweet and weary dream, and I +should watch the _Speranza_ lie anchored in the pale atol-lake, year +after year, and wonder what she was, and whence, and why she dozed so +deep for ever, and after an age of melancholy peace and burdened bliss, +I should note that sun and moon had ceased revolving, and hung inert, +opening anon a heavy lid to doze and drowse again, and God would sigh +'Enough,' and nod, and Being would swoon to sleep: for that any old +Chinaman should be alive in Pekin was a thing so fantastically maniac, +as to draw from me at times sudden fits of wild red laughter that left +me faint. + +During a space of four months, from the 18th June to the 23rd October, I +visited the Fijis, where I saw skulls still surrounded with remnants of +extraordinary haloes of stiff hair, women clad in girdles made of thongs +fixed in a belt, and, in Samoa near, bodies crowned with coronets of +nautilus-shell, and traces of turmeric-paint and tattooing, and in one +townlet a great assemblage of carcasses, suggesting by their look some +festival, or dance: so that I believe that these people were overthrown +without the least fore-knowledge of anything. The women of the Maoris +wore an abundance of green-jade ornaments, and I found a peculiar kind +of shell-trumpet, one of which I have now, also a tattooing chisel, and +a nicely-carved wooden bowl. The people of New Caledonia, on the other +hand, went, I should think, naked, confining their attention to the +hair, and in this resembling the Fijians, for they seemed to wear an +artificial hair made of the fur of some creature like a bat, and also +they wore wooden masks, and great rings--for the ear, no doubt--which +must have fallen to the shoulders: for the earth was in them all, and +made them wild, perverse and various like herself. I went from one to +the other without any system whatever, searching for the ideal +resting-place, and often thinking that I had found it: but only wearying +of it at the thought that there was a yet deeper and dreamier in the +world. But in this search I received a check, my God, which chilled me +to the marrow, and set me flying from these places. + + * * * * * + +One evening, the 29th November, I dined rather late--at eight--sitting, +as was my custom in calm weather, cross-legged on the cabin-rug at the +port aft corner, a small semicircle of _Speranza_ gold-plate before me, +and near above me the red-shaded lamp with green conical reservoir, +whose creakings never cease in the stillest mid-sea, and beyond the +plates the array of preserved soups, meat-extracts, meats, fruit, +sweets, wines, nuts, liqueurs, coffee on the silver spirit-tripod, +glasses, cruet, and so on, which it was always my first care to select +from the store-room, open, and lay out once for all in the morning on +rising. I was late, seven being my hour: for on that day I had been +engaged in the occasionally necessary, but always deferred, task of +overhauling the ship, brushing here a rope with tar, there a board with +paint, there a crank with oil, rubbing a door-handle, a brass-fitting, +filling the three cabin-lamps, dusting mirrors and furniture, dashing +the great neat-joinered plains of deck with bucketfulls, or, high in +air, chopping loose with its rigging the mizzen top-mast, which since a +month was sprained at the clamps, all this in cotton drawers under loose +_quamis_, bare-footed, my beard knotted up, the sun a-blaze, the sea +smooth and pale with the smooth pallor of strong currents, the ship +still enough, no land in sight, yet great tracts of sea-weed making +eastward--I working from 11 A.M. till near 7, when sudden darkness +interrupted: for I wished to have it all over in one obnoxious day. I +was therefore very tired when I went down, lit the central chain-lever +lamp and my own two, washed and dressed in my bedroom, and sat to dinner +in the dining-hall corner. I ate voraciously, with sweat, as usual, +pouring down my eager brow, using knife or spoon in the right hand, but +never the Western fork, licking the plates clean in the Mohammedan +manner, and drinking pretty freely. Still I was tired, and went upon +deck, where I had the threadbare blue-velvet easy-chair with the broken +left arm before the wheel, and in it sat smoking cigar after cigar from +the Indian D box, half-asleep, yet conscious. The moon came up into a +pretty cloudless sky, and she was bright, but not bright enough to +out-shine the enlightened flight of the ocean, which that night was one +continuous swamp of Jack-o'-lantern phosphorescence, a wild but faint +luminosity mingled with stars and flashes of brilliance, the whole +trooping unanimously eastward, as if in haste with elfin momentous +purpose, a boundless congregation, in the sweep of a strong oceanic +current. I could hear it, in my slumbrous lassitude, struggling and +gurgling at the tied rudder, and making wet sloppy noises under the +sheer of the poop; and I was aware that the _Speranza_ was gliding along +pretty fast, drawn into that procession, probably at the rate of four to +six knots: but I did not care, knowing very well that no land was within +two hundred miles of my bows, for I was in longitude 173, in the +latitude of Fiji and the Society Islands, between those two: and after a +time the cigar drooped and dropped from my mouth, and sleep overcame +me, and I slept there, in the lap of the Infinite. + + * * * * * + +So that something preserves me, Something, Someone: _and for what?_ ... +If I had slept in the cabin, I must most certainly have perished: for +lying there on the poop, I dreamed a dream which once I had dreamed on +the ice, far, far yonder in the forgotten hyperborean North: that I was +in an Arabian paradise, a Garden of Peaches; and I had a very long +vision of it, for I walked among the trees, and picked the fruit, and +pressed the blossoms to my nostrils with breathless inhalations of love: +till a horrible sickness woke me: and when I opened my eyes, the night +was black, the moon gone down, everything wet with dew, the sky arrayed +with most glorious stars like a thronged bazaar of tiaraed rajahs and +begums with spangled trains, and all the air fragrant with that mortal +scent; and high and wide uplifted before me--stretching from the +northern to the southern limit--a row of eight or nine inflamed smokes, +as from the chimneys of some Cyclopean foundry a-work all night, most +solemn, most great and dreadful in the solemn night: eight or nine, I +should say, or it might be seven, or it might be ten, for I did not +count them; and from those craters puffed up gusts of encrimsoned +material, here a gust and there a gust, with tinselled fumes that +convolved upon themselves, and sparks and flashes, all veiled in a +garish haze of light: for the foundry worked, though languidly; and upon +a rocky land four miles ahead, which no chart had ever marked, the +_Speranza_ drove straight with the current of the phosphorus sea. + +As I rose, I fell flat: and what I did thereafter I did in a state of +existence whose acts, to the waking mind, appear unreal as dream. I must +at once, I think, have been conscious that here was the cause of the +destruction of mankind; that it still surrounded its own neighbourhood +with poisonous fumes; and that I was approaching it. I must have somehow +crawled, or dragged myself forward. There is an impression on my mind +that it was a purple land of pure porphyry; there is some faint memory, +or dream, of hearing a long-drawn booming of waves upon its crags: I do +not know whence I have them. I think that I remember retching with +desperate jerks of the travailing intestines; also that I was on my face +as I moved the regulator in the engine-room: but any recollection of +going down the stairs, or of coming up again, I have not. Happily, the +wheel was tied, the rudder hard to port, and as the ship moved, she +must, therefore, have turned; and I must have been back to untie the +wheel in good time, for when my senses came, I was lying there, my head +against the under gimbal, one foot on a spoke of the wheel, no land in +sight, and morning breaking. + +This made me so sick, that for either two or three days I lay without +eating in the chair near the wheel, only rarely waking to sufficient +sense to see to it that she was making westward from that place; and on +the morning when I finally roused myself I did not know whether it was +the second or the third morning: so that my calendar, so scrupulously +kept, may be a day out, for to this day I have never been at the pains +to ascertain whether I am here writing now on the 5th or the 6th of +June. + + * * * * * + +Well, on the fourth, or the fifth, evening after this, just as the sun +was sinking beyond the rim of the sea, I happened to look where he hung +motionless on the starboard bow: and there I saw a clean-cut black-green +spot against his red--a most unusual sight here and now--a ship: a poor +thing, as it turned out when I got near her, without any sign of mast, +heavily water-logged, some relics of old rigging hanging over, even her +bowsprit apparently broken in the middle (though I could not see it), +and she nothing more than a hirsute green mass of old weeds and +sea-things from bowsprit-tip to poop, and from bulwarks to water-line, +stout as a hedgehog, only awaiting there the next high sea to founder. + +It being near my dinner-hour and night's rest, I stopped the _Speranza_ +some fifteen yards from her, and commenced to pace my spacious poop, as +usual, before eating; and as I paced, I would glance at her, wondering +at her destiny, and who were the human men that had lived on her, their +Christian names, and family names, their age, and thought, and way of +life, and beards; till the desire arose within me to go to her, and see; +and I threw off my outer garments, uncovered and unroped the cedar +cutter--the only boat, except the air-pinnace, left to me intact--and +got her down by the mizzen five-block pulley-system. But it was a +ridiculous nonsense, for having paddled to her, I was thrown into +paroxysms of rage by repeated failures to scale her bulwarks, low as +they were; my hands, indeed, could reach, but I found no hold upon the +slimy mass, and three rope-ends which I caught were also untenably +slippery: so that I jerked always back into the boat, my clothes a mass +of filth, and the only thought in my blazing brain a twenty-pound +charge of guncotton, of which I had plenty, to blow her to uttermost +Hell. I had to return to the _Speranza_, get a half-inch rope, then back +to the other, for I would not be baulked in such a way, though now the +dark was come, only slightly tempered by a half-moon, and I getting +hungry, and from minute to minute more fiendishly ferocious. Finally, by +dint of throwing, I got the rope-loop round a mast-stump, drew myself +up, and made fast the boat, my left hand cut by some cursed shell: and +all for what? the imperiousness of a whim. The faint moonlight shewed an +ample tract of deck, invisible in most parts under rolled beds of putrid +seaweed, and no bodies, and nothing but a concave, large esplanade of +seaweed. She was a ship of probably 1,500 tons, three-masted, and a +sailer. I got aft (for I had on thick outer babooshes), and saw that +only four of the companion-steps remained; by a small leap, however, I +could descend into that desolation, where the stale sea-stench seemed +concentrated into a very essence of rankness. Here I experienced a +singular ghostly awe and timorousness, lest she should sink with me, or +something: but striking matches, I saw an ordinary cabin, with some +fungoids, skulls, bones and rags, but not one cohering skeleton. In the +second starboard berth was a small table, and on the floor a thick +round ink-pot, whose continual rolling on its side made me look down; +and there I saw a flat square book with black covers, which curved +half-open of itself, for it had been wet and stained. This I took, and +went back to the _Speranza_: for that ship was nothing but an emptiness, +and a stench of the crude elements of life, nearly assimilated now to +the rank deep to which she was wedded, and soon to be absorbed into its +nature and being, to become a sea in little, as I, in time, my God, +shall be nothing but an earth in little. + +During dinner, and after, I read the book, with some difficulty, for it +was pen-written in French, and discoloured, and it turned out to be the +journal of someone, a passenger and voyager, I imagine, who called +himself Albert Tissu, and the ship the _Marie Meyer_. There was nothing +remarkable in the narrative that I could see--common-place descriptions +of South Sea scenes, records of weather, cargoes, and the like--till I +came to the last written page: and that was remarkable enough. It was +dated the 13th of April--strange thing, my good God, incredibly +strange--that same day, twenty long years ago, when I reached the Pole; +and the writing on that page was quite different from the neat look of +the rest, proving immoderate excitement, wildest haste; and he heads it +'_Cinq Heures_,'--I suppose in the evening, for he does not say: and he +writes: 'Monstrous event! phenomenon without likeness! the witnesses of +which must for ever live immortalised in the annals of the universe, an +event which will make even Mama, Henri and Juliette admit that I was +justified in undertaking this most eventful voyage. Talking with Captain +Tombarel on the poop, when a sudden exclamation from him--"_Mon Dieu!_" +His visage whitens! I follow the direction of his gaze to eastward! I +behold! eight kilomtres perhaps away--, _ten monstrous waterspouts_, +reaching up, up, high enough--all apparently in one straight line, with +intervals of nine hundred _mtres_, very regularly placed. They do not +wander, dance, nor waver, as waterspouts do; nor are they at all +lily-shaped, like waterspouts: but ten hewn pillars of water, with +uniform diameter from top to bottom, only a little twisted here and +there, and, as I divine, fifty _mtres_ in girth. Five, ten, stupendous +minutes we look, Captain Tombarel mechanically repeating and repeating +under his breath "_Mon Dieu!_" "_Mon Dieu!_" the whole crew now on the +poop, I agitated, but collected, watch in hand. And suddenly, all is +blotted out: the pillars of water, doubtless still there, can no more be +seen: for the ocean all about them is steaming, hissing higher than the +pillars a dense white vapour, vast in extent, whose venomous sibilation +we at this distance can quite distinctly hear. It is affrighting, it is +intolerable! the eyes can hardly bear to watch, the ears to hear! it +seems unholy travail, monstrous birth! But it lasts not long: all at +once the _Marie Meyer_ commences to pitch and roll violently, and the +sea, a moment since calm, is now rough! and at the same time, through +the white vapour, we see a dark shadow slowly rising--the shadow of a +mighty back, a new-born land, bearing upwards ten flames of fire, +slowly, steadily, out of the sea, into the clouds. At the moment when +that sublime emergence ceases, or seems to cease, the grand thought that +smites me is this: "I, Albert Tissu, am immortalised: my name shall +never perish from among men!" I rush down, I write it. The latitude is +16 21' 13" South; the longitude 176 58' 19" West[1]. There is a great +deal of running about on the decks--they are descending. There is surely +a strange odour of almonds--I only hope--it is so dark, _mon D_----' + +So the Frenchman, Tissu. + + +[Footnote 1: This must be French reckoning, from meridian of Paris.] + + * * * * * + +With all that region I would have no more to do: for all here, it used +to be said, lies a great sunken continent; and I thought it would be +rising and shewing itself to my eyes, and driving me stark mad: for the +earth is full of these contortions, sudden monstrous grimaces and +apparitions, which are like the face of Medusa, affrighting a man into +spinning stone; and nothing could be more appallingly insecure than +living on a planet. + +I did not stop till I had got so far northward as the Philippine +Islands, where I was two weeks--exuberant, odorous places, but so hilly +and rude, that at one place I abandoned all attempt at travelling in the +motor, and left it in a valley by a broad, shallow, noisy river, full of +mossy stones: for I said: 'Here I will live, and be at peace'; and then +I had a fright, for during three days I could not re-discover the river +and the motor, and I was in the greatest despair, thinking: 'When shall +I find my way out of these jungles and vastnesses?' For I was where no +paths were, and had lost myself in deeps where the lure of the earth is +too strong and rank for a single man, since in such places, I suppose, a +man would rapidly be transformed into a tree, or a snake, or a tiger. At +last, however, I found the place, to my great joy, but I would not shew +that I was glad, and to hide it, fell upon a front wheel of the car with +some kicks. I could not make out who the people were that lived here: +for the relics of some seemed quite black, like New Zealand races, and I +could still detect the traces of tattooing, while others suggested +Mongolian types, and some looked like pigmies, and some like whites. But +I cannot detail the two-years' incidents of that voyage: for it is past, +and like a dream: and not to write of that--of all that--have I taken +this pencil in hand after seventeen long, long years. + + * * * * * + +Singular my reluctance to put it on paper. I will write rather of the +voyage to China, and how I landed the motor on the wharf at Tientsin, +and went up the river through a maize and rice-land most charming in +spite of intense cold, I thick with clothes as an Arctic traveller; and +of the three dreadful earthquakes within two weeks; and how the only map +which I had of the city gave no indication of the whereabouts of its +military depositories, and I had to seek for them; and of the three +days' effort to enter them, for every gate was solid and closed; and how +I burned it, but had to observe its flames, without deep pleasure, from +beyond the walls to the south, the whole place being one cursed plain; +yet how, at one moment, I cried aloud with wild banterings and glad +laughters of Tophet to that old Chinaman still alive within it; and how +I coasted, and saw the hairy Ainus, man and woman hairy alike; and how, +lying one midnight awake in my cabin, the _Speranza_ being in a still +glassy water under a cliff overhung by drooping trees--it was the +harbour of Chemulpo--to me lying awake came the thought: 'Suppose now +you should hear a step walking to and fro, leisurely, on the poop above +you--_just suppose'_; and the night of horrors which I had, for I could +not help supposing, and at one time really thought that I heard it: and +how the sweat rolled and poured from my brow; and how I went to +Nagasaki, and burned it; and how I crossed over the great Pacific deep +to San Francisco, for I knew that Chinamen had been there, too, and one +of them might be alive; and how, one calm day, the 15th or the 16th +April, I, sitting by the wheel in the mid-Pacific, suddenly saw a great +white hole that ran and wheeled, and wheeled and ran, in the sea, coming +toward me, and I was aware of the hot breath of a reeling wind, and then +of the hot wind itself, which deep-groaned the sound of the letter _V_, +humming like a billion spinning-tops, and the _Speranza_ was on her +side, sea pouring over her port-bulwarks, and myself in the corner +between deck and taffrail, drowning fast, but unable to stir; but all +was soon past and the white hole in the sea, and the hot spinning-top of +wind, ran wheeling beyond, to the southern horizon, and the _Speranza_ +righted herself: so that it was clear that someone wished to destroy me, +for that a typhoon of such vehemence ever blew before I cannot think; +and how I came to San Francisco, and how I burned it, and had my sweets: +for it was mine; and how I thought to pass over the great +trans-continental railway to New York, but would not, fearing to leave +the _Speranza_, lest all the ships in the harbour there should be +wrecked, or rusted, and buried under sea-weed, and turned unto the sea; +and how I went back, my mind all given up now to musings upon the earth +and her ways, and a thought in my soul that I would return to those deep +places of the Filipinas, and become an autochthone--a tree, or a snake, +or a man with snake-limbs, like the old autochthones: but I would not: +for Heaven was in man, too: Earth and Heaven; and how as I steamed round +west again, another winter come, and I now in a mood of dismal +despondencies, on the very brink of the inane abyss and smiling idiotcy, +I saw in the island of Java the great temple of Boro Budor: and like a +tornado, or volcanic event, my soul was changed: for my recent studies +in the architecture of the human race recurred to me with interest, and +three nights I slept in the temple, examining it by day. It is vast, +with that look of solid massiveness which above all characterises the +Japanese and Chinese building, my measurement of its width being 529 +feet, and it rises terrace-like in six stories to a height of about 120 +or 130 feet: here Buddhist and Brahmin forms are combined into a most +richly-developed whole, with a voluptuousness of tracery that is simply +intoxicating, each of the five off-sets being divided up into an +innumerable series of external niches, containing each a statue of the +sitting Boodh, all surmounted by a number of cupolas, and the whole +crowned by a magnificent dagop: and when I saw this, I had the impulse +to return to my home after so long wandering, and to finish the temple +of temples, and the palace of palaces; and I said: 'I will return, and +build it as a testimony to God.' + + * * * * * + +Save for a time, near Cairo, I did not once stop on that homeward +voyage, but turned into the little harbour at Imbros at a tranquil +sunset on the 7th of March (as I reckon), and I moored the _Speranza_ to +the ring in the little quay, and I raised the battered motor from the +hold with the middle air-engine (battered by the typhoon in the +mid-Pacific, which had broken it from the rope-fastenings and tumbled it +head-over-heels to port), and I went through the windowless +village-street, and up through the plantains and cypresses which I knew, +and the Nile mimosas, and mulberries, and Trebizond palms, and pines, +and acacias, and fig-trees, till the thicket stopped me, and I had to +alight: for in those two years the path had finally disappeared; and on, +on foot, I made my way, till I came to the board-bridge, and leant +there, and looked at the rill; and thence climbed the steep path in the +sward toward that rolling table-land where I had built with many a +groan; and half-way up, I saw the tip of the crane-arm, then the blazing +top of the south pillar, then the shed-roof, then the platform, a +blinking blotch of glory to the watery eyes under the setting sun. But +the tent, and nearly all that it contained, was gone. + + * * * * * + +For four days I would do nothing, simply lying and watching, shirking a +load so huge: but on the fifth morning I languidly began something: and +I had not worked an hour, when a fever took me--to finish it, to finish +it--and it lasted upon me, with only three brief intervals, nearly seven +years; nor would the end have been so long in coming, but for the +unexpected difficulty of getting the four flat roofs water-tight, for I +had to take down half the east one. Finally, I made them of gold slabs +one-and-a-quarter inch thick, smooth on both sides, on each beam double +gutters being fixed along each side of the top flange to catch any +leakage at the joints, which are filled with slaters'-cement. The slabs +are clamped to the top flanges by steel clips, having bolts set with +plaster-of-Paris in holes drilled in the slabs. These clips are 1-1/2 +in. by 3/17 in., and are 17 in. apart. The roofs are slightly pitched to +the front edges, where they drain into gold-plated copper-gutters on +plated wrought-iron brackets, with one side flashed up over the blocks, +which raise the slabs from the beam-tops, to clear the joint gutters.... +But now I babble again of that base servitude, which I would forget, but +cannot: for every measurement, bolt, ring, is in my brain, like a +burden: but it is past, it is past--and it was vanity. + + * * * * * + +Six months ago to-day it was finished: six months more protracted, +desolate, burdened, than all those sixteen years in which I built. + +I wonder what a man--another man--some Shah, or Tsar, of that far-off +past, would say now of me, if eye could rest upon me! With what awe +would he certainly shrink before the wild majesty of these eyes; and +though I am not lunatic--for I am not, I am not--how would he fly me +with the exclamation: 'There is the very lunacy of Pride!' + +For there would seem to him--it must be so--in myself, in all about me, +something extravagantly royal, touched with terror. My body has +fattened, and my girth now fills out to a portly roundness its broad +Babylonish girdle of crimson cloth, minutely gold-embroidered, and hung +with silver, copper and gold coins of the Orient; my beard, still black, +sweeps in two divergent sheaves to my hips, flustered by every wind; as +I walk through this palace, the amber-and-silver floor reflects in its +depths my low-necked, short-armed robe of purple, blue, and scarlet, +a-glow with luminous stones. I am ten times crowned Lord and Emperor; I +sit a hundred times enthroned in confirmed, obese old Majesty. Challenge +me who will--challenge me who dare! Among those myriad worlds upon which +I nightly pore, I may have my Peers and Compeers and Fellow-denizens ... +but _here_ I am Sole; Earth acknowledges my ancient sway and hereditary +sceptre: for though she draws me, not yet, not yet, am I hers, but she +is mine. It seems to me not less than a million million aeons since +other beings, more or less resembling me, walked impudently in the open +sunlight on this planet, which is rightly mine--I can indeed no longer +picture to myself, nor even credit, that such a state of things--so +fantastic, so far-fetched, so infinitely droll--could have existed: +though, at bottom, I suppose, I know that it must have been really so. +Up to ten years ago, in fact, I used frequently to dream that there were +others. I would see them walk in the streets like ghosts, and be +troubled, and start awake: but never now could such a thing, I think, +occur to me in sleep: for the wildness of the circumstance would +certainly strike my consciousness, and immediately I should know that +the dream was a dream. For now, at least, I am sole, I am lord. The +golden walls of this palace which I have built look down, enamoured of +their reflection, into a lake of the choicest, purplest wine. + +Not that I made it of wine because wine is rare; nor the walls of gold +because gold is rare: that would have been too childish: but because I +would match for beauty a human work with the works of those Others: and +because it happens, by some persistent freak of the earth, that +precisely things most rare and costly are generally the most beautiful. + +The vision of glorious loveliness which is this palace now risen before +my eyes cannot be described by pen and paper, though there _may_ be +words in the lexicons of language which, if I sought for them with +inspired wit for sixteen years, as I have built for sixteen years, might +as vividly express my thought on paper, as the stones-of-gold, so +grouped and built, express it to the eye: but, failing such labours and +skill, I suppose I could not give, if there were another man, and I +tried to give, the faintest conception of its celestial charm. + +It is a structure positively as clear as the sun, and as fair as the +moon--the sole great human work in the making of which no restraining +thought of cost has played a part: one of its steps alone being of more +cost than all the temples, mosques and besestins, the palaces, pagodas +and cathedrals, built between the ages of the Nimrods and the Napoleons. + +The house itself is very small--only 40 ft. long, by 35 broad, by 27 +high: yet the structure as a whole is sufficiently enormous, high +uplifted: the rest of the bulk being occupied by the platform, on which +the house stands, each side of this measuring at its base 480 ft., its +height from top to bottom 130 ft, and its top 48 ft. square, the +elevation of the steps being just nearly 30 degrees, and the top reached +from each of the four points of the compass by 183 low long steps, very +massively overlaid with smooth molten gold--not forming a continuous +flight, but broken into threes and fives, sixes and nines, with landings +between the series, these from the top looking like a great terraced +parterre of gold. It is thus an Assyrian palace in scheme: only that the +platform has steps on all sides, instead of on one. The platform-top, +from its edge to the golden walls of the house, is a mosaic consisting +of squares of the glassiest clarified gold, and squares of the glassiest +jet, corner to corner, each square 2 ft. wide. Around the edge of the +platform on top run 48 square plain gold pilasters, 12 on each side, 2 +ft. high, tapering upwards, and topped by a knob of solid gold, pierced +with a hole through which passes a lax inch-and-a-half silver chain, +hung with little silver balls which strike together in the breeze. The +mansion consists of an outer court, facing east toward the sea, and the +house proper, which encloses an inner court. The outer court is a hollow +oblong 32 ft. wide by 8 ft. long, the summit of its three walls being +battlemented; they are 18-1/2 ft. in height, or 8-1/2 ft. lower than the +house; around their gold sides, on inside and outside, 3 ft. from the +top, runs a plain flat band of silver, 1 ft. wide, projecting 2/3 in., +and at the gate, which is a plain Egyptian entrance, facing eastwards, +2-1/2 ft. narrower at top than at bottom, stand the two great square +pillars of massive plain gold, tapering upwards, 45 ft. high, with their +capital of band, closed lotus, and thin plinth; in the outer court, +immediately opposite the gate, is an oblong well, 12 ft. by 3 ft, +reproducing in little the shape of the court, its sides, which are +gold-lined, tapering downward to near the bottom of the platform, where +a conduit of 1/8 in. diameter automatically replenishes the ascertained +mean evaporation of the lake during the year, the well containing +105,360 litres when nearly full, and the lake occupying a circle round +the platform of 980 ft. diameter, with a depth of 3-1/2 ft. Round the +well run pilasters connected by silver chains with little balls, and it +communicates by a 1/8 in. conduit with a pool of wine let into the inner +court, this being fed from eight tall and narrow golden tanks, tapering +upwards, which surround it, each containing a different red wine, +sufficient on the whole to last for all purposes during my lifetime. The +ground of the outer court is also a mosaic of jet and gold: but +thenceforth the jet-squares give place throughout to squares of silver, +and the gold-squares to squares of clear amber, clear as solidified oil. +The entrance is by an Egyptian doorway 7 ft. high, with folding-doors of +gold-plated cedar, opening inwards, surrounded by a very large +projecting coping of plain silver, 3-1/2 ft. wide, severe simplicity of +line throughout enormously multiplying the effect of richness of +material. The interior resembles, I believe, rather a Homeric, than an +Assyrian or Egyptian house--except for the 'galleries,' which are purely +Babylonish and Old Hebrew. The inner court, with its wine-pool and +tanks, is a small oblong of 8 ft. by 9 ft., upon which open four +silver-latticed window-oblongs in the same proportion, and two doors, +before and behind, oblongs in the same proportion. Round this run the +eight walls of the house proper, the inner 10 ft. from the outer, each +parallel two forming a single long corridor-like chamber, except the +front (east) two, which are divided into three apartments; in each side +of the house are six panels of massive plain silver, half-an-inch +thinner in their central space, where are affixed paintings, 22 or else +21 taken at the burning of Paris from a place called 'The Louvre,' and 2 +or else 3 from a place in England: so that the panels have the look of +frames, and are surrounded by oval garlands of the palest amethyst, +topaz, sapphire, and turquoise which I could find, each garland being of +only one kind of stone, a mere oval ring two feet wide at the sides and +narrowing to an inch at the top and bottom, without designs. The +galleries are five separate recesses in the outer walls under the roofs, +two in the east faade, and one in the north, south, and west, hung with +pavilions of purple, blue, rose and white silk on rings and rods of +gold, with gold pilasters and banisters, each entered by four steps from +the roof, to which lead, north and south, two spiral stairs of cedar. On +the east roof stands the kiosk, under which is the little lunar +telescope; and from that height, and from the galleries, I can watch +under the bright moonlight of this climate, which is very like +lime-light, the for-ever silent blue hills of Macedonia, and where the +islands of Samothraki, Lemnos, Tenedos slumber like purplish fairies on +the Aegean Sea: for, usually, I sleep during the day, and keep a +night-long vigil, often at midnight descending to bathe my coloured +baths in the lake, and to disport myself in that strange intoxication of +nostrils, eyes, and pores, dreaming long wide-eyed dreams at the bottom, +to return dazed, and weak, and drunken. Or again--_twice_ within these +last void and idle six months--I have suddenly run, bawling out, from +this temple of luxury, tearing off my gaudy rags, to hide in a hut by +the shore, smitten for one intense moment with realisation of the past +of this earth, and moaning: 'alone, alone ... all alone, alone, alone +... alone, alone....' For events precisely resembling eruptions take +place in my brain; and one spangled midnight--ah, how spangled!--I may +kneel on the roof with streaming, uplifted face, with outspread arms, +and awe-struck heart, adoring the Eternal: the next, I may strut like a +cock, wanton as sin, lusting to burn a city, to wallow in filth, and, +like the Babylonian maniac, calling myself the equal of Heaven. + + * * * * * + +But it was not to write of this--of all this--! + +Of the furnishing of the palace I have written nothing.... But why I +hesitate to admit to myself what I _know_, is not clear. If They speak +to me, I may surely write of Them: for I do not fear Them, but am Their +peer. + +Of the island I have written nothing: its size, climate, form, +vegetation.... There are two winds: a north and a south wind; the north +is cool, and the south is warm; and the south blows during the winter +months, so that sometimes on Christmas-day it is quite hot; and the +north, which is cool, blows from May to September, so that the summer is +hardly ever oppressive, and the climate was made for a king. The +mangal-stove in the south hall I have never once lit. + +The length, I should say, is 19 miles; the breadth 10, or thereabouts; +and the highest mountains should reach a height of some 2,000 ft., +though I have not been all over it. It is very densely wooded in most +parts, and I have seen large growths of wheat and barley, obviously +degenerate now, with currants, figs, valonia, tobacco, vines in rank +abundance, and two marble quarries. From the palace, which lies on a +sunny plateau of beautifully-sloping swards, dotted with the circular +shadows thrown by fifteen huge cedars, and seven planes, I can see on +all sides an edge of forest, with the gleam of a lake to the north, and +in the hollow to the east the rivulet with its little bridge, and a few +clumps and beds of flowers. I can also spy right through---- + + * * * * * + +It shall be written now: + +I have this day heard within me the contention of the Voices. + + * * * * * + +I thought that they were done with me! That all, all, all, was ended! I +have not heard them for twenty years! + +But to-day--distinctly--breaking in with brawling impassioned +suddenness upon my consciousness.... I heard. + +This late _far niente_ and vacuous inaction here have been undermining +my spirit; this inert brooding upon the earth; this empty life, and +bursting brain! Immediately after eating at noon to-day, I said to +myself: + +'I have been duped by the palace: for I have wasted myself in building, +hoping for peace, and there is no peace. Therefore now I shall fly from +it, to another, sweeter work--not of building, but of destroying--not of +Heaven, but of Hell--not of self-denial, but of reddest orgy. +Constantinople--beware!' I tossed the chair aside, and with a stamp was +on my feet: and as I stood--again, again--I heard: the startlingly +sudden wrangle, the fierce, vulgar outbreak and voluble controversy, +till my consciousness could not hear its ears: and one urged: 'Go! go!' +and the other: 'Not there...! where you like, ... but not there...! for +your life!' + +I did not--for I could not--go: I was so overcome. I fell upon the couch +shivering. + +These Voices, or impulses, plainly as I felt them of old, quarrel within +me now with an openness new to them. Lately, influenced by my long +scientific habit of thought, I have occasionally wondered whether what I +used to call 'the two Voices' were not in reality two strong +instinctive movements, such as most men may have felt, though with less +force. But to-day doubt is past, doubt is past: nor, unless I be very +mad, can I ever doubt again. + + * * * * * + +I have been thinking, thinking of my life: there is a something which I +cannot understand. + +There was a man whom I met once in that dark backward and abysm of time, +when I must have been very young--I fancy at some college or school in +England, and his name now is far enough beyond scope of my memory, lost +in the vast limbo of past things. But he used to talk continually about +certain 'Black' and 'White' Powers, and of their strife for this world. +He was a short man with a Roman nose, and lived in fear of growing a +paunch. His forehead a-top, in profile, was more prominent than the +nose-end, he parted his hair in the middle, and had the theory that the +male form was more beautiful than the female. I forget what his name +was--the dim clear-obscure being. Very profound was the effect of his +words upon me, though, I think, I used to make a point of slighting +them. This man always declared that 'the Black' would carry off the +victory in the end: and so he has, so he has. + +But assuming the existence of this 'Black' and this 'White' being--and +supposing it to be a fact that my reaching the Pole had any connection +with the destruction of my race, according to the notions of that +extraordinary Scotch parson--then it must have been the power of '_the +Black_' which carried me, in spite of all obstacles, to the Pole. So far +I can understand. + +But _after_ I had reached the Pole, what further use had either White or +Black for me? Which was it--White or Black--that preserved my life +through my long return on the ice--and _why_? It _could_ not have been +'the Black'! For I readily divine that from the moment when I touched +the Pole, the only desire of the Black, which had previously preserved, +must have been to destroy me, with the rest. It must have been 'the +White,' then, that led me back, retarding me long, so that I should not +enter the poison-cloud, and then openly presenting me the _Boreal_ to +bring me home to Europe. But his motive? And the significance of these +recommencing wrangles, after such a silence? This I do not understand! + +Curse Them, curse Them, with their mad tangles! I care nothing for Them! +Are there any White Idiots and Black Idiots--_at all_? Or are these +Voices that I hear nothing but the cries of my own strained nerves, and +I all mad and morbid, morbid and mad, mad, my good God? + +This inertia here is _not good_ for me! This stalking about the palace! +and long thinkings about Earth and Heaven, Black and White, White and +Black, and things beyond the stars! My brain is like bursting through +the walls of my poor head. + +To-morrow, then, to Constantinople. + + * * * * * + +Descending to go to the ship, I had almost reached the middle of the +east platform-steps, when my foot slipped on the smooth gold: and the +fall, though I was not walking carelessly, had, I swear, all the +violence of a fall caused by a push. I struck my head, and, as I rolled +downward, swooned. When I came to myself, I was lying on the very bottom +step, which is thinly washed by the wine-waves: another roll and I +suppose I must have drowned. I sat there an hour, lost in amazement, +then crossed the causeway, came down to the _Speransa_ with the motor, +went through her, spent the day in work, slept on her, worked again +to-day, till four, at both ship and time-fuses (I with only 700 fuses +left, and in Stamboul alone must be 8,000 houses, without counting +Galata, Tophana, Kassim-pacha, Scutari, and the rest), started out at +5.30, and am now at 11 P.M. lying motionless two miles off the north +coast of the island of Marmora, with moonlight gloating on the water, a +faint north breeze, and the little pale land looking immensely +stretched-out, solemn and great, as if that were the world, and there +were nothing else; and the tiny island at its end immense, and the +_Speranza_ vast, and I only little. To-morrow at 11 A.M. I will moor the +_Speranza_ in the Golden Horn at the spot where there is that low damp +nook of the bagnio behind the naval magazines and that hill where the +palace of the Capitan Pacha is. + + * * * * * + +I found that great tangle of ships in the Golden Horn wonderfully +preserved, many with hardly any moss-growths. This must be due, I +suppose, to the little Ali-Bey and Kezat-Hanah, which flow into the Horn +at the top, and made no doubt a constant current. + +Ah, I remember the place: long ago I lived here some months, or, it may +be, years. It is the fairest of cities--and the greatest. I believe that +London in England was larger: but no city, surely, ever _seemed_ so +large. But it is flimsy, and will burn like tinder. The houses are made +of light timber, with interstices filled by earth and bricks, and some +of them look ruinous already, with their lovely faded tints of green +and gold and red and blue and yellow, like the hues of withered flowers: +for it is a city of paints and trees, and all in the little winding +streets, as I write, are volatile almond-blossoms, mixed with +maple-blossoms, white with purple. Even the most splendid of the +Sultan's palaces are built in this combustible way: for I believe that +they had a notion that stone-building was presumptuous, though I have +seen some very thick stone-houses in Galata. This place, I remember, +lived in a constant state of sensation on account of nightly flares-up; +and I have come across several tracts already devastated by fires. The +ministers-of-state used to attend them, and if the fire would not go +out, the Sultan himself was obliged to be there, in order to encourage +the firemen. Now it will burn still better. + +But I have been here six weeks, and still no burning: for the place +seems to plead with me, it is so ravishing, so that I do not know why I +did not live here, and spare my toils during those sixteen nightmare +years; for two whole weeks the impulse to burn was quieted; and since +then there has been an irritating whisper at my ear which said: 'It is +not really like the great King that you are, this burning, but like a +foolish child, or a savage, who liked to see fireworks: or at least, if +you must burn, do not burn poor Constantinople, which is so charming, +and so very old, with its balsamic perfumes, and the blossomy trees of +white and light-purple peeping over the walls of the cloistered painted +houses, and all those lichened tombs--those granite menhirs and regions +of ancient marble tombs between the quarters, Greek tombs, Byzantine, +Jew, Mussulman tombs, with their strange and sacred +inscriptions--overwaved by their cypresses and vast plane-trees.' And +for weeks I would do nothing: but roamed about, with two minds in me, +under the tropic brilliance of the sky by day, and the vast dreamy +nights of this place that are like nights seen through azure-tinted +glasses, and in each of them is not one night, but the thousand-and-one +long crowded nights of glamour and fancy: for I would sit on the immense +esplanade of the Seraskierat, or the mighty grey stones of the porch of +the mosque of Sultan Mehmed-fatih, dominating from its great steps all +old Stamboul, and watch the moon for hours and hours, so passionately +bright she soared through clear and cloud, till I would be smitten with +doubt of my own identity, for whether I were she, or the earth, or +myself, or some other thing or man, I did not know, all being so silent +alike, and all, except myself, so vast, the Seraskierat, and the +Suleimanieh, and Stamboul, and the Marmora Sea, and the earth, and +those argent fields of the moon, all large alike compared with me, and +measure and space were lost, and I with them. + + * * * * * + +These proud Turks died stolidly, many of them. In streets of +Kassim-pacha, in crowded Taxim on the heights of Pera, and under the +long Moorish arcades of Sultan-Selim, I have seen the open-air barber's +razor with his bones, and with him the half-shaved skull of the +faithful, and the long two-hours' narghile with traces of burnt tembaki +and haschish still in the bowl. Ashes now are they all, and dry yellow +bone; but in the houses of Phanar and noisy old Galata, and in the Jew +quarter of Pri-pacha, the black shoe and head-dress of the Greek is +still distinguishable from the Hebrew blue. It was a mixed ritual of +colours here in boot and hat: yellow for Mussulman, red boots, black +calpac for Armenian, for the Effendi a white turban, for the Greek a +black. The Tartar skull shines from under a high taper calpac, the +Nizain-djid's from a melon-shaped head-piece; the Imam's and Dervish's +from a grey conical felt; and there is here and there a Frank in +European rags. I have seen the towering turban of the Bashi-bazouk, and +his long sword, and some softas in the domes on the great wall of +Stamboul, and the beggar, and the street-merchant with large tray of +water-melons, sweetmeats, raisins, sherbet, and the bear-shewer, and the +Barbary organ, and the night-watchman who evermore cried 'Fire!' with +his long lantern, two pistols, dirk, and wooden javelin. Strange how all +that old life has come back to my fancy now, pretty vividly, and for the +first time, though I have been here several times lately. I have gone +out to those plains beyond the walls with their view of rather barren +mountain-peaks, the city looking nothing but minarets shooting through +black cypress-tops, and I seemed to see the wild muezzin at some summit, +crying the midday prayer: '_Mohammed Resoul Allah!_'--the wild man; and +from that great avenue of cypresses which traverses the cemetery of +Scutari, the walled city of Stamboul lay spread entire up to Phanar and +Eyoub in their cypress-woods before me, the whole embowered now in +trees, all that complexity of ways and dark alleys with overhanging +balconies of old Byzantine houses, beneath which a rider had to stoop +the head, where old Turks would lose their way in mazes of the +picturesque; and on the shaded Bosphorus coast, to Foundoucli and +beyond, some peeping yali, snow-white palace, or old Armenian cot; and +the Seraglio by the sea, a town within a town; and southward the Sea of +Marmora, blue-and-white, and vast, and fresh as a sea just born, +rejoicing at its birth and at the jovial sun, all brisk, alert, to the +shadowy islands afar: and as I looked, I suddenly said aloud a wild, mad +thing, my God, a wild and maniac thing, a shrieking maniac thing for +Hell to laugh at: for something said with my tongue: '_This city is not +quite dead._' + + * * * * * + + * * * * * + +Three nights I slept in Stamboul itself at the palace of some sanjak-bey +or emir, or rather dozed, with one slumbrous eye that would open to +watch my visitors Sinbad, and Ali Baba, and old Haroun, to see how they +slumbered and dozed: for it was in the small luxurious chamber where the +bey received those speechless all-night visits of the Turks, long rosy +hours of perfumed romance, and drunkenness of the fancy, and visionary +languor, sinking toward morning into the yet deeper peace of dreamless +sleep; and there, still, were the white _yatags_ for the guests to sit +cross-legged on for the waking dream, and to fall upon for the final +swoon, and the copper brazier still scenting of essence-of-rose, and the +cushions, rugs, hangings, the monsters on the wall, the +haschish-chibouques, narghiles, hookahs, and drugged pale cigarettes, +and a secret-looking lattice beyond the door, painted with trees and +birds; and the air narcotic and grey with the pastilles which I had +burned, and the scented smokes which I had smoked; and I all drugged and +mumbling, my left eye suspicious of Ali there, and Sinbad, and old +Haroun, who dozed. And when I had slept, and rose to wash in a room near +the overhanging latticed balcony of the faade, before me to the north +lay old Galata in sunshine, and that steep large street mounting to +Pera, once full at every night-fall of divans on which grave dervishes +smoked narghiles, and there was no space for passage, for all was +divans, lounges, almond-trees, heaven-high hum, chibouques in forests, +the dervish, and the innumerable porter, the horse-hirer with his horse +from Tophana, and arsenal-men from Kassim, and traders from Galata, and +artillery-workmen from Tophana; and on the other side of the house, the +south end, a covered bridge led across a street, which consisted mostly +of two immense blind walls, into a great tangled wilderness of flowers, +which was the harem-garden, where I passed some hours; and here I might +have remained many days, many weeks perhaps, but that, dozing one +fore-day with those fancied others, it was as if there occurred a laugh +somewhere, and a thing said: 'But this city is not quite dead!' waking +me from deeps of peace to startled wakefulness. And I thought to myself: +'If it be not quite dead, it _will_ be soon--and with some suddenness!' +And the next morning I was at the Arsenal. + + * * * * * + +It is long since I have so deeply enjoyed, even to the marrow. It may be +'the White' who has the guardianship of my life: but assuredly it is +'the Black' who reigns in my soul. + +Grandly did old Stamboul, Galata, Tophana, Kassim, right out beyond the +walls to Phanar and Eyoub, blaze and burn. The whole place, except one +little region of Galata, was like so much tinder, and in the five hours +between 8 P.M. and 1 A.M. all was over. I saw the tops of those vast +masses of cemetery-cypresses round the tombs of the Osmanlis outside the +walls, and those in the cemetery of Kassim, and those round the sacred +mosque of Eyoub, shrivel away instantaneously, like flimsy hair caught +by a flame; I saw the Genoese tower of Galata go heading obliquely on an +upward curve, like Sir Roger de Coverley and wild rockets, and burst +high, high, with a report; in pairs, and threes, and fours, I saw the +blue cupolas of the twelve or fourteen great mosques give in and +subside, or soar and rain, and the great minarets nod the head, and +topple; and I saw the flames reach out and out across the empty breadth +of the Etmeidan--three hundred yards--to the six minarets of the Mosque +of Achmet, wrapping the red Egyptian-granite obelisk in the centre; and +across the breadth of the Serai-Meidani it reached to the buildings of +the Seraglio and the Sublime Porte; and across those vague barren +stretches that lie between the houses and the great wall; and across the +seventy or eighty great arcaded bazaars, all-enwrapping, it reached; and +the spirit of fire grew upon me: for the Golden Horn itself was a tongue +of fire, crowded, west of the galley-harbour, with exploding +battleships, Turkish frigates, corvettes, brigs--and east, with tens of +thousands of feluccas, caiques, gondolas and merchantmen aflame. On my +left burned all Scutari; and between six and eight in the evening I had +sent out thirty-seven vessels under low horse-powers of air, with trains +and fuses laid for 11 P.M., to light with their wandering fires the Sea +of Marmora. By midnight I was encompassed in one great furnace and fiery +gulf, all the sea and sky inflamed, and earth a-flare. Not far from me +to the left I saw the vast Tophana barracks of the Cannoniers, and the +Artillery-works, after long reluctance and delay, take wing together; +and three minutes later, down by the water, the barrack of the +Bombardiers and the Military School together, grandly, grandly; and +then, to the right, in the valley of Kassim, the Arsenal: these +occupying the sky like smoky suns, and shedding a glaring day over many +a mile of sea and land; I saw the two lines of ruddier flaring where the +barge-bridge and the raft-bridge over the Golden Horn made haste to +burn; and all that vastness burned with haste, quicker and quicker--to +fervour--to fury--to unanimous rabies: and when its red roaring stormed +the infinite, and the might of its glowing heart was Gravitation, Being, +Sensation, and I its compliant wife--then my head nodded, and with +crooked lips I sighed as it were my last sigh, and tumbled, weak and +drunken, upon my face. + + * * * * * + + * * * * * + +O wild Providence! Unfathomable madness of Heaven! that ever I should +write what now I write! I will not write it.... + + * * * * * + +The hissing of it! It is only a crazy dream! a tearing-out of the hair +by the roots to scatter upon the raving storms of Saturn! My hand will +not write it! + + * * * * * + +In God's name----! During four nights after the burning I slept in a +house--French as I saw by the books, &c., probably the Ambassador's, for +it has very large gardens and a beautiful view over the sea, situated on +the rapid east declivity of Pera; it is one of the few large houses +which, for my safety, I had left standing round the minaret whence I had +watched, this minaret being at the top of the old Mussulman quarter on +the heights of Taxim, between Pera proper and Foundoucli. At the bottom, +both at the quay of Foundoucli, and at that of Tophana, I had left under +shelter two caiques for double safety, one a Sultan's gilt craft, with +gold spur at the prow, and one a boat of those zaptias that used to +patrol the Golden Horn as water-police: by one or other of these I meant +to reach the _Speranza_, she being then safely anchored some distance up +the Bosphorus coast. So, on the fifth morning I set out for the Tophana +quay; but a light rain had fallen over-night, and this had re-excited +the thin grey smoke resembling quenched steam, which, as from some +reeking province of Abaddon, still trickled upward over many a square +mile of blackened tract, though of flame I could see no sign. I had not +accordingly advanced far over every sort of _dbris_, when I found my +eyes watering, my throat choked, and my way almost blocked by roughness: +whereupon I said: 'I will turn back, cross the region of tombs and +barren waste behind Pera, descend the hill, get the zaptia boat at the +Foundoucli quay, and so reach the _Speranza_.' + +Accordingly, I made my way out of the region of smoke, passed beyond the +limits of smouldering ruin and tomb, and soon entered a rich woodland, +somewhat scorched at first, but soon green and flourishing as the +jungle. This cooled and soothed me, and being in no hurry to reach the +ship, I was led on and on, in a somewhat north-western direction, I +fancy. Somewhere hereabouts, I thought, was the place they called 'The +Sweet Waters,' and I went on with the vague notion of coming upon them, +thinking to pass the day, till afternoon, in the forest. Here nature, in +only twenty years has returned to an exuberant savagery, and all was now +the wildest vegetation, dark dells, rills wimpling through deep-brown +shade of sensitive mimosa, large pendulous fuchsia, palm, cypress, +mulberry, jonquil, narcissus, daffodil, rhododendron, acacia, fig. Once +I stumbled upon a cemetery of old gilt tombs, absolutely overgrown and +lost, and thrice caught glimpses of little trellised yalis choked in +boscage. With slow and listless foot I went, munching an almond or an +olive, though I could swear that olives were not formerly indigenous to +any soil so northern: yet here they are now, pretty plentiful, though +elementary, so that modifications whose end I cannot see are certainly +proceeding in everything, some of the cypresses which I met that day +being immense beyond anything I ever heard of: and the thought, I +remember, was in my head, that if a twig or leaf should change into a +bird, or a fish with wings, and fly before my eyes, what then should I +do? and I would eye a branch suspiciously anon. After a long time I +penetrated into a very sombre grove. The day outside the wood was +brilliant and hot, and very still, the leaves and flowers here all +motionless. I seemed, as it were, to hear the vacant silence of the +world, and my foot treading on a twig, produced the report of pistols. I +presently reached a glade in a thicket, about eight yards across, that +had a scent of lime and orange, where the just-sufficient twilight +enabled me to see some old bones, three skulls, and the edge of a +tam-tam peeping from a tuft of wild corn with corn-flowers, and here and +there some golden champac, and all about a profusion of musk-roses. I +had stopped--_why_ I do not recollect--perhaps thinking that if I was +not getting to the Sweet Waters, I should seriously set about finding my +way out. And as I stood looking about me, I remember that some cruising +insect trawled near my ear its lonely drone. + +Suddenly, God knows, I started, I started. + +I imagined--I dreamed--that I saw a pressure in a bed of moss and +violets, _recently made!_ And while I stood gloating upon that +impossible thing, I imagined--I dreamed--the lunacy of it!--that I heard +a laugh...! the laugh, my good God, of a human soul. + +Or it seemed half a laugh, and half a sob: and it passed from me in one +fleeting instant. + +Laughs, and sobs, and idiot hallucinations, I had often heard before, +feet walking, sounds behind me: and even as I had heard them, I had +known that they were nothing. But brief as was this impression, it was +yet so thrillingly _real_, that my poor heart received, as it were, the +very shock of death, and I fell backward into a mass of moss, supported +on the right palm, while the left pressed my working bosom; and there, +toiling to catch my breath, I lay still, all my soul focussed into my +ears. But now I could hear no sound, save only the vast and audible hum +of the silence of the universe. + + +There was, however, the foot-print. If my eye and ear should so +conspire against me, that, I thought, was hard. + +Still I lay, still, in that same pose, without a stir, sick and +dry-mouthed, infirm and languishing, with dying breaths: but keen, +keen--and malign. + +I would wait, I said to myself, I would be artful as snakes, though so +woefully sick and invalid: I would make no sound.... + +After some minutes I became conscious that my eyes were leering--leering +in one fixed direction: and instantly, the mere fact that I had a sense +of direction proved to me that I must, _in truth_, have heard something! +I strove--I managed--to raise myself: and as I stood upright, feebly +swaying there, not the terrors of death alone were in my breast, but the +authority of the monarch was on my brow. + +I moved: I found the strength. + +Slow step by slow step, with daintiest noiselessness, I moved to a +thread of moss that from the glade passed into the thicket, and along +its winding way I stepped, in the direction of the sound. Now my ears +caught the purling noise of a brooklet, and following the moss-path, I +was led into a mass of bush only two or three feet higher than my head. +Through this, prowling like a stealthy cat, I wheedled my painful way, +emerged upon a strip of open long-grass, and now was faced, three yards +before me, by a wall of acacia-trees, prickly-pear and pichulas, between +which and a forest beyond I spied a gleam of running water. + +On hands and knees I crept toward the acacia-thicket, entered it a +little, and leaning far forward, peered. And there--at once--ten yards +to my right--I saw. + +Singular to say, my agitation, instead of intensifying to the point of +apoplexy and death, now, at the actual sight, subsided to something very +like calmness. With malign and sullen eye askance I stood, and steadily +I watched her there. + + * * * * * + +She was on her knees, her palms lightly touching the ground, supporting +her. At the edge of the streamlet she knelt, and she was looking with a +species of startled shy astonishment at the reflexion of her face in the +limpid brown water. And I, with sullen eye askance regarded her a good +ten minutes' space. + + * * * * * + +I believe that her momentary laugh and sob, which I had heard, was the +result of surprise at seeing her own image; and I firmly believe, from +the expression of her face, that this was the first time that she had +seen it. + + * * * * * + +Never, I thought, as I stood moodily gazing, had I seen on the earth a +creature so fair (though, analysing now at leisure, I can quite conclude +that there was nothing at all remarkable about her good looks). Her +hair, somewhat lighter than auburn, and frizzy, was a real garment to +her nakedness, covering her below the hips, some strings of it falling, +too, into the water: her eyes, a dark blue, were wide in a most silly +expression of bewilderment. Even as I eyed and eyed her, she slowly +rose: and at once I saw in all her manner an air of unfamiliarity with +the world, as of one wholly at a loss what to do. Her pupils did not +seem accustomed to light; and I could swear that that was the first day +in which she had seen a tree or a stream. + +Her age appeared eighteen or twenty. I guessed that she was of +Circassian blood, or, at least, origin. Her skin was whitey-brown, or +old ivory-white. + + * * * * * + +She stood up motionless, at a loss. She took a lock of her hair, and +drew it through her lips. There was some look in her eyes, which I +could plainly see now, somehow indicating wild hunger, though the wood +was full of food. After letting go her hair, she stood again feckless +and imbecile, with sideward-hung head, very pitiable to see I think now, +though no faintest pity touched me then. It was clear that she did not +at all know what to make of the look of things. Finally, she sat on a +moss-bank, reached and took a musk-rose on her palm, and looked +hopelessly at it. + + * * * * * + +One minute after my first actual sight of her my extravagance of +agitation, I say, died down to something like calm. The earth was mine +by old right: I felt that: and this creature a mere slave upon whom, +without heat or haste, I might perform my will: and for some time I +stood, coolly enough considering what that will should be. + +I had at my girdle the little cangiar, with silver handle encrusted with +coral, and curved blade six inches long, damascened in gold, and sharp +as a razor; the blackest and the basest of all the devils of the Pit was +whispering in my breast with calm persistence: 'Kill, kill--and eat.' + +_Why_ I should have killed her I do not know. That question I now ask +myself. It must be true, true that it is '_not good_' for man to be +alone. There was a religious sect in the Past which called itself +'Socialist': and with these must have been the truth, man being at his +best and highest when most social, and at his worst and lowest when +isolated: for the Earth gets hold of all isolation, and draws it, and +makes it fierce, base, and materialistic, like sultans, aristocracies, +and the like: but Heaven is where two or three are gathered together. It +may be so: I do not know, nor care. But I know that after twenty years +of solitude on a planet the human soul is more enamoured of solitude +than of life, shrinking like a tender nerve from the rough intrusion of +Another into the secret realm of Self: and hence, perhaps, the +bitterness with which solitary castes, Brahmins, patricians, +aristocracies, always resisted any attempt to invade their +slowly-acquired domain of privileges. Also, it may be true, it may, it +may, that after twenty years of solitary selfishness, a man becomes, +without suspecting it--not at all noticing the slow stages--a real and +true beast, a horrible, hideous beast, mad, prowling, like that King of +Babylon, his nails like birds' claws, and his hair like eagles' +feathers, with instincts all inflamed and fierce, delighting in +darkness and crime for their own sake. I do not know, nor care: but I +know that, as I drew the cangiar, the basest and the slyest of all the +devils was whispering me, tongue in cheek: 'Kill, kill--and be merry.' + +With excruciating slowness, like a crawling glacier, tender as a nerve +of the touching leaves, I moved, I stole, obliquely toward her through +the wall of bush, the knife behind my back. Once only there was a +restraint, a check: I felt myself held back: I had to stop: for one of +the ends of my divided beard had caught in a limb of prickly-pear. + +I set to disentangling it: and it was, I believe, at the moment of +succeeding that I first noticed the state of the sky, a strip of which I +could see across the rivulet: a minute or so before it had been pretty +clear, but now was busy with hurrying clouds. It was a sinister +muttering of thunder which had made me glance upward. + +When my eyes returned to the sitting figure, she was looking foolishly +about the sky with an expression which almost proved that she had never +before heard that sound of thunder, or at least had no idea what it +could bode. My fixed regard lost not one of her movements, while inch by +inch, not breathing, careful as the poise of a balance, I crawled. And +suddenly, with a rush, I was out in the open, running her down.... + +She leapt: perhaps two, perhaps three, paces she fled: then stock still +she stood--within some four yards of me--with panting nostrils, with +enquiring face. + +I saw it all in one instant, and in one instant all was over. I had not +checked the impetus of my run at her stoppage, and I was on the point of +reaching her with uplifted knife, when I was suddenly checked and +smitten by a stupendous violence: a flash of blinding light, attracted +by the steel which I held, struck tingling through my frame, and at the +same time the most passionate crash of thunder that ever shocked a poor +human ear felled me to the ground. The cangiar, snatched from my hand, +fell near the girl's foot. + +I did not entirely lose consciousness, though, surely, the Powers no +longer hide themselves from me, and their close contact is too +intolerably rough and vigorous for a poor mortal man. During, I should +think, three or four minutes, I lay so astounded under that bullying cry +of wrath, that I could not move a finger. When at last I did sit up, the +girl was standing near me, with a sort of smile, holding out to me the +cangiar in a pouring rain. + +I took it from her, and my doddering fingers dropped it into the +stream. + + * * * * * + +Pour, pour came the rain, raining as it can in this place, not long, but +a deluge while it lasts, dripping in thick-liquidity, like a profuse +sweat, through the forest, I seeking to get back by the way I had come, +flying, but with difficulty and slowness, and a feeling in me that I was +being tracked. And so it proved: for when I struck into more open space, +nearly opposite the west walls, but now on the north side of the Golden +Horn, where there is a flat grassy ground somewhere between the valley +of Kassim and Charkoi, with horror I saw that _protge_ of Heaven, or +of someone, not ten yards behind, following me like a mechanical figure, +it being now near three in the afternoon, and the rain drenching me +through, and I tired and hungry, and from all the ruins of +Constantinople not one whiff of smoke ascending. + +I trudged on wearily till I came to the quay of Foundoucli, and the +zaptia boat; and there she was with me still, her hair nothing but a +thin drowned string down her back. + + * * * * * + +Not only can she not speak to me in any language that I know: but she +can speak in _no_ language: it is my firm belief that she has _never_ +spoken. + +She never saw a boat, or water, or the world, till now--I could swear +it. She came into the boat with me, and sat astern, clinging for dear +life to the gunwale by her finger-nails, and I paddled the eight hundred +yards to the _Speranza_, and she came up to the deck after me. When she +saw the open water, the boat, the yalis on the coast, and then the ship, +astonishment was imprinted on her face. But she appears to know little +fear. She smiled like a child, and on the ship touched this and that, as +if each were a living thing. + +It was only here and there that one could see the ivory-brown colour of +her skin: the rest was covered with dirt, like old bottles long lying in +cellars. + +By the time we reached the _Speranza_, the rain suddenly stopped: I went +down to my cabin to change my clothes, and had to shut the door in her +face to keep her out. When I opened it, she was there, and she followed +me to the windlass, when I went to set the anchor-engine going. I +intended, I suppose, to take her to Imbros, where she might live in one +of the broken-down houses of the village. But when the anchor was not +yet half up, I stopped the engine, and let the chain run again. For I +said, 'No, I will be alone, I am not a child.' + +I knew that she was hungry by the look in her eyes: but I cared nothing +for that. I was hungry, too: and that was all I cared about. + +I would not let her be there with me another instant. I got down into +the boat, and when she followed, I rowed her back all the way past +Foundoucli and the Tophana quay to where one turns into the Golden Horn +by St. Sophia, around the mouth of the Horn being a vast semicircle of +charred wreckage, carried out by the river-currents. I went up the steps +on the Galata side before one comes to where the barge-bridge was. When +she had followed me on to the embankment, I walked up one of those +rising streets, very encumbered now with stone-_dbris_ and ashes, but +still marked by some standing black wall-fragments, it being now not far +from night, but the air as clear and washed as the translucency of a +great purple diamond with the rain and the afterglow of the sun, and all +the west aflame. + +When I was about a hundred yards up in this old mixed quarter of Greeks, +Turks, Jews, Italians, Albanians, and noise and cafedjis and +wine-bibbing, having turned two corners, I suddenly gathered my skirts, +spun round, and, as fast as I could, was off at a heavy trot back to +the quay. She was after me, but being taken by surprise, I suppose, was +distanced a little at first. However, by the time I could scurry myself +down into the boat, she was so near, that she only saved herself from +the water by a balancing stoppage at the brink, as I pushed off. I then +set out to get back to the ship, muttering: 'You can have Turkey, if you +like, and I will keep the rest of the world.' + +I rowed sea-ward, my face toward her, but steadily averted, for I would +not look her way to see what she was doing. However, as I turned the +point of the quay, where the open sea washes quite rough and loud, to go +northward and disappear from her, I heard a babbling cry--the first +sound which she had uttered. I did look then: and she was still quite +near me, for the silly maniac had been running along the embankment, +following me. + +'Little fool!' I cried out across the water, 'what are you after now?' +And, oh my good God, shall I ever forget that strangeness, that wild +strangeness, of my own voice, addressing on this earth another human +soul? + +There she stood, whimpering like an abandoned dog after me. I turned the +boat, rowed, came to the first steps, landed, and struck her two +stinging slaps, one on each cheek. While she cowered, surprised no +doubt, I took her by the hand, led her back to the boat, landed on the +Stamboul side, and set off, still leading her, my object being to find +some sort of possible edifice near by, not hopelessly burned, in which +to leave her: for in all Galata there was plainly none, and Pera, I +thought, was too far to walk to. But it would have been better if I had +gone to Pera, for we had to walk quite three miles from Seraglio Point +all along the city battlements to the Seven-towers, she picking her +bare-footed way after me through the great Sahara of charred stuff, and +night now well arrived, and the moon a-drift in the heaven, making the +desolate lonesomeness of the ruins tenfold desolate, so that my heart +smote me then with bitterness and remorse, and I had a vision of myself +that night which I will not put down on paper. At last, however, pretty +late in the evening, I spied a large mansion with green lattice-work +faade, and shaknisier, and terrace-roof, which had been hidden from me +by the arcades of a bazaar, a vast open space at about the centre of +Stamboul, one of the largest of the bazaars, I should think, in the +middle of which stood the mansion, probably the home of pasha or vizier: +for it had a very distinguished look in that place. It seemed very +little hurt, though the vegetation that had apparently choked the great +open space was singed to a black fluff, among which lay thousands of +calcined bones of man, horse, ass, and camel, for all was distinct in +the bright, yet so pensive and forlorn, moonlight, which was that +Eastern moonlight of pure astral mystery which illumines Persepolis, and +Babylon, and ruined cities of the old Anakim. + +The house, I knew, would contain divans, _yatags_, cushions, foods, +wines, sherbets, henna, saffron, mastic, raki, haschish, costumes, and a +hundred luxuries still good. There was an outer wall, but the foliage +over it had been singed away, and the gate all charred. It gave way at a +push from my palm. The girl was close behind me. I next threw open a +little green lattice-door in the faade under the shaknisier, and +entered. Here it was dark, and the moment that she, too, was within, I +slipped out quickly, slammed the door in her face, and hooked it upon +her by a little hook over the latch. + +I now walked some yards beyond the court, then stopped, listening for +her expected cry: but all was still: five minutes--ten--I waited: but no +sound. I then continued my morose and melancholy way, hollow with +hunger, intending to start that night for Imbros. + +But this time I had hardly advanced twenty steps, when I heard a frail +and strangled cry, apparently in mid-air behind me, and glancing, saw +the creature lying at the gateway, a white thing in black stubble-ashes. +She had evidently jumped, well outward, from a small casement of lattice +on a level with the little shaknisier grating, through which once peeped +bright eyes, thirty feet aloft. + +I hardly believe that she was conscious of any danger in jumping, for +all the laws of life are new to her, and, having sought and found the +opening, she may have merely come with blind instinctiveness after me, +taking the first way open to her. I walked back, pulled at her arm, and +found that she could not stand. Her face was screwed with silent +pain--she did not moan. Her left foot, I could see, was bleeding: and by +the wounded ankle I took her, and dragged her so through the ashes +across the narrow court, and tossed her like a little dog with all my +force within the door, cursing her. + +Now I would not go back the long way to the ship, but struck a match, +and went lighting up girandoles, cressets, candelabra, into a confusion +of lights among great numbers of pale-tinted pillars, rose and azure, +with verd-antique, olive, and Portoro marble, and serpentine. The +mansion was large, I having to traverse quite a desert of embroidered +brocade-hangings, slender columns, and Broussa silks, till I saw a +stair-case doorway behind a Smyrna _portire_, went up, and wandered +some time in a house of gilt-barred windows, with very little furniture, +but palatial spaces, solitary huge pieces of _faence_ of inestimable +age, and arms, my footfalls quite stifled in the Persian carpeting. I +passed through a covered-in hanging-gallery, with one window-grating +overlooking an inner court, and by this entered the harem, which +declared itself by a greater luxury, bric--bracerie, and profusion of +manner. Here, descending a short curved stair behind a _portire_, I +came into a marble-paved sort of larder, in which was an old negress in +blue dress, her hair still adhering, and an infinite supply of +sweetmeats, French preserved foods, sherbets, wines, and so on. I put a +number of things into a pannier, went up again, found some of those +exquisite pale cigarettes which drunken in the hollow of an emerald, +also a jewelled two-yard-long chibouque, and tembaki: and with all +descended by another stair, and laid them on the steps of a little +raised kiosk of green marble in a corner of the court; went up again, +and brought down a still-snowy _yatag_ to sleep on; and there, by the +kiosk-step, ate and passed the night, smoking for several hours in a +state of languor. In the centre of the court is a square marble well, +looking white through a rankness of wild vine, acacias in flower, weeds, +jasmines, and roses, which overgrew it, as well as the kiosk and the +whole court, climbing even the four-square arcade of Moorish arches +round the open space, under one of which I had deposited a long lantern +of crimson silk: for here no breath of the fire had come. About two in +morning I fell to sleep, a deeper peace of shadow now reigning where so +long the melancholy silver of the moon had lingered. + + * * * * * + +About eight in the morning I rose and made my way to the front, +intending that that should be my last night in this ruined place: for +all the night, sleeping and waking, the thing which had happened filled +my brain, growing from one depth of incredibility to a deeper, so that +at last I arrived at a sort of certainty that it could be nothing but a +drunken dream: but as I opened my eyes afresh, the deep-cutting +realisation of that impossibility smote like a pang of lightning-stroke +through my being: and I said: 'I will go again to the far Orient, and +forget': and I started out from the court, not knowing what had become +of her during the night, till, having reached the outer chamber, with a +wild start I saw her lying there at the door in the very spot where I +had flung her, asleep sideways, head on arm ... Softly, softly, I stept +over her, got out, and went running at a cautious clandestine trot. The +morning was in high _fte_, most fresh and pure, and to breathe was to +be young, and to see such a sunlight lighten even upon ruin so vast was +to be blithe. After running two hundred yards to one of the great broken +bazaar-portals, I looked back to see if I was followed: but all that +space was desolately empty. I then walked on past the arch, on which a +green oblong, once inscribed, as usual, with some text in gilt +hieroglyphs, is still discernible; and, emerging, saw the great panorama +of destruction, a few vast standing walls, with hollow Oriental windows +framing deep sky beyond, and here and there a pillar, or half-minaret, +and down within the walls of the old Seraglio still some leafless, +branchless trunks, and in Eyoub and Phanar leafless forests, and on the +northern horizon Pera with the steep upper-half of the Iani-Chircha +street still there, and on the height the European houses, and all +between blackness, stones, a rolling landscape of ravine, like the hilly +pack-ice of the North if its snow were ink, and to the right Scutari, +black, laid low, with its vast region of tombs, and rare stumps of its +forests, and the blithe blue sea, with the widening semicircle of +floating _dbris_, looking like brown foul scum at some points, +congested before the bridgeless Golden Horn: for I stood pretty high in +the centre of Stamboul somewhere in the region of the Suleimanieh, or of +Sultan-Selim, as I judged, with immense purviews into abstract distances +and mirage. And to me it seemed too vast, too lonesome, and after +advancing a few hundred yards beyond the bazaar, I turned again. + + * * * * * + +I found the girl still asleep at the house-door, and stirring her with +my foot, woke her. She leapt up with a start of surprise, and a +remarkable sinuous agility, and gazed an astounded moment at me, till, +separating reality from dream and habit, she realised me: but +immediately subsided to the floor again, being in evident pain. I pulled +her up, and made her limp after me through several halls to the inner +court, and the well, where I set her upon the weedy margin, took her +foot in my lap, examined it, drew water, washed it, and bandaged it with +a strip torn from my caftan-hem, now and again speaking gruffly to her, +so that she might no more follow me. + +After this, I had breakfast by the kiosk-steps, and when I was +finished, put a mass of truffled _foie gras_ on a plate, brushed through +the thicket to the well, and gave it her. She took it, but looked +foolish, not eating. I then, with my forefinger, put a little into her +mouth, whereupon she set hungrily to eat it all. I also gave her some +ginger-bread, a handful of bonbons, some Krishnu wine, and some +anisette. + +I then started out afresh, gruffly bidding her stay there, and left her +sitting on the well, her hair falling down the opening, she peering +after me through the bushes. But I had not half reached the ogival +bazaar-portal, when looking anxiously back, I saw that she was limping +after me. So that this creature tracks me in the manner of a nutshell +following about in the wake of a ship. + +I turned back with her to the house, for it was necessary that I should +plan some further method of eluding her. That was five days ago, and +here I have stayed: for the house and court are sufficiently agreeable, +and form a museum of real _objets d'art_. It is settled, however, that +to-morrow I return to Imbros. + + * * * * * + +It seems certain that she never wore, saw, nor knew of, clothes. + +I have dressed her, first sousing her thoroughly with sponge and soap +in luke-warm rose-water in the silver cistern of the harem-bath, which +is a circular marbled apartment with a fountain and the complicated +ceilings of these houses, and frescoes, and gilt texts of the Koran on +the walls, and pale rose-silk hangings. On the divan I had heaped a +number of selected garments, and having shewed her how to towel herself, +I made her step into a pair of the trousers called _shintiyan_ made of +yellow-striped white-silk; this, by a running string, I tied loosely +round the upper part of her hips; then, drawing up the bottoms to her +knees, tied them there, so that their voluminous baggy folds, +overhanging still to the ankles, have rather the look of a skirt; over +this I put upon her a blue-striped chiffon chemise, or quamis, reaching +a little below the hips; I then put on a short jacket or vest of scarlet +satin, thickly embroidered in gold and precious stones, reaching +somewhat below the waist, and pretty tight-fitting; and, making her lie +on the couch, I put upon her little feet little yellow baboosh-slippers, +then anklets, on her fingers rings, round her neck a necklace of +sequins, finally dyeing her nails, which I cut, with henna. There +remained her head, but with this I would have nothing to do, only +pointing to the tarboosh which I had brought, to a square kerchief, to +some corals, and to the fresco of a woman on the wall, which, if she +chose, she might copy. Lastly, I pierced her ears with the silver +needles which they used here: and after two hours of it left her. + +About an hour afterwards I saw her in the arcade round the court, and, +to my great surprise, she had a perfect plait down her back, and over +her head and brows a green-silk feredjeh, or hood, precisely as in the +picture. + + * * * * * + +Here is a question, the answer to which would be interesting to me: +Whether or not for twenty years--or say rather twenty centuries, twenty +eternal aeons--I have been stark mad, a raving maniac; and whether or +not I am now suddenly sane, sitting here writing in my right mind, my +whole mood and tone changed, or rapidly changing? And whether such +change can be due to the presence of only one other being in the world +with me? + + * * * * * + +This singular being! Where she has lived--and how--is a problem to which +not the faintest solution is conceivable. She had, I say, never seen +clothes: for when I began to dress her, her perplexity was unbounded; +also, during her twenty years, she has never seen almonds, figs, nuts, +liqueurs, chocolate, conserves, vegetables, sugar, oil, honey, +sweetmeats, orange-sherbet, mastic, salt, raki, tobacco, and many such +things: for she showed perplexity at all these, hesitation to eat them: +but she has known and tasted _white wine_: I could see that. Here, then, +is a mystery. + + * * * * * + +I have not gone to Imbros, but remained here some days longer observing +her. + +I have allowed her to sit in a corner at meal-time, not far from where I +eat, and I have given her food. + +She is wonderfully clever! I continually find that, after an incredibly +short time, she has most completely adapted herself to this or that. +Already she wears her outfit as coquettishly as though born to clothes. +Without at all seeming observant--for, on the contrary, she gives an +impression of great flightiness--she watches me, I am convinced, with +pretty exact observation. She knows precisely when I am speaking +roughly, bidding her go, bidding her come, tired of her, tolerant of +her, scorning her, cursing her. If I wish her to the devil, she quickly +divines it by my face, and will disappear. Yesterday I noticed +something queer about her, and soon discovered that she had been +staining her lids with black kohol, like the _hanums_, so that, having +found a box, she must have guessed its use from the pictures. +Wonderfully clever!--imitative as a mirror. Two mornings ago I found an +old mother-of-pearl kittur, and sitting under the arcade, touched the +strings, playing a simple air; I could just see her behind one of the +arch-pillars on the opposite side, and she was listening with apparent +eagerness, and, I fancied, panting. Well, returning from a walk beyond +the Phanar walls in the afternoon, I heard the same air coming out from +the house, for she was repeating it pretty faultlessly by ear. + +Also, during the forenoon of the previous day, I came upon her--for +footsteps make no sound in this house--in the pacha's visitors'-hall: +and what was she doing?--copying the poses of three dancing-girls +frescoed there! So that she would seem to have a character as light as a +butterfly's, and is afraid of nothing. + + * * * * * + +Now I know. + +I had observed that at the beginning of every meal she seemed to have +something on her mind, going toward the door, hesitating as if to see +whether I would follow, and then returning. At length yesterday, after +sitting to eat, she jumped up, and to my infinite surprise, said her +first word: said it with a most quaint, experimental effort of the +tongue, as a fledgling trying the air: the word '_Come_.' + +That morning, meeting her in the court, I had told her to repeat some +words after me: but she had made no attempt, as if shy to break the long +silence of her life; and now I felt some sort of foolish pleasure in +hearing her utter that word, often no doubt heard from me: and after +hurriedly eating, I went with her, saying to myself: 'She must be about +to shew me the food to which she is accustomed: and perhaps that will +solve her origin.' + +And so it has proved. I have now discovered that to the moment when she +saw me, she had tasted only her mother's milk, dates, and that white +wine of Ismidt which the Koran permits. + +As it was getting dark, I lit and took with me the big red-silk lantern, +and we set out, she leading, and walking confoundedly fast, slackening +when I swore at her, and getting fast again: and she walks with a +certain levity, flightiness, and liberated _furore_, very hard to +describe, as though space were a luxury to be revelled in. By what +instinctive cleverness, or native vigour of memory, she found her way I +cannot tell, but she led me such a walk that night, miles, miles, till I +became furious, darkness having soon fallen with only a faint moon +obscured by cloud, and a drizzle which haunted the air, she without +light climbing and picking her thinly-slippered steps over mounds of +_dbris_ and loosely-strewn masonry with unfailing agility, I +occasionally splashing a foot with horror into one of those little ponds +which always marked the Stamboul streets. When I was nearer her, I would +see her peer across and upward toward Pera, as if that were a remembered +land-mark, and would note the perpetual aspen oscillations of the long +coral drops in her ears, and the nimble ply of her limbs, wondering with +a groan if Pera was our goal. + +Our goal was even beyond Pera. When we came to the Golden Horn, she +pointed to my caique which lay at the Old Seraglio steps, and over the +water we went, she lying quite at ease now, with her face at the level +of the water in the centre of the crescent-shape, as familiarly as a +_hanum_ of old engaged in some escapade through the crowded Babel of +Galata and that north side of the Horn. + +Through Galata we passed, I already cursing the journey: and, following +the line of the coast and the great steep thoroughfare of Pera, we came +at last, almost in the country, to a great wall, and the entrance to an +immense terraced garden, whose limits were invisible, many of the trees +and avenues being still intact. + +I knew it at once: I had lain a special fuse-train in the great palace +at the top of the terraces: it was the royal palace, Yildiz. + +Up and up we went through the grounds, a few unburned old bodies in rags +of uniform still discernible here and there as the lantern swung past +them, a musician in sky-blue, a fantassin and officer-of-the-guard in +scarlet, forming a cross, with domestics of the palace in +red-and-orange. + +The palace itself was quite in ruins, together with all its surrounding +barracks, mosque, and seraglio, and, as we reached the top of the +grounds, presented a picture very like those which I have seen of the +ruins of Persepolis, only that here the columns, both standing and +fallen, were innumerable, and all more or less blackened; and through +doorless doors we passed, down immensely-wide short flights of steps, +and up them, and over strewed courtyards, by tottering fragments of +arcades, all roofless, and tracts of charcoal between interrupted +avenues of pillars, I following, expectant, and she very eager now. +Finally, down a flight of twelve or fourteen rather steep and narrow +steps, very dislocated, we went to a level which, I thought, must be the +floor of the palace vaults: for at the bottom of the steps we stood on a +large plain floor of plaster, which bore the marks of the flames; and +over this the girl ran a few steps, pointed with excited recognition to +a hole in it, ran further, and disappeared down the hole. + +When I followed, and lowered the lantern a little, I saw that the drop +down was about eight feet, made less than six feet by a heap of +stone-rubbish below, the falling of which had caused the hole: and it +was by standing on this rubbish-heap, I knew at once, that she must have +been enabled to climb out into the world. + +I dropped down, and found myself in a low flat-roofed cellar, with a +floor of black earth, very fusty and damp, but so very vast in extent +that even in the day-time, I suppose, I could not have discerned its +boundaries; I fancy, indeed, that it extends beneath the whole palace +and its environs--an enormous stretch of space: with the lantern I could +only see a very limited portion of its area. She still led me eagerly +on, and I presently came upon a whole region of flat boxes, each about +two feet square, and nine inches high, made of very thin laths, packed +to the roof; and about a-hundred-and-fifty feet from these I saw, where +she pointed, another region of bottles, fat-bellied bottles in chemises +of wicker-work, stretching away into gloom and total darkness. The +boxes, of which a great number lay broken open, as they can be by merely +pulling with the fingers at a pliant crack, contain dates; and the +bottles, of which many thousands lay empty, contain, I saw, old +Ismidtwine. Some fifty or sixty casks, covered with mildew, some old +pieces of furniture, and a great cube of rotting, curling parchments, +showed that this cellar had been more or less loosely used for the +occasional storage of superfluous stores and knick-knacks. + +It was also more or less loosely used as a domestic prison. For in the +lane between the region of boxes and the region of bottles, near the +former, there lay on the ground the skeleton of a woman, the details of +whose costume were still appreciable, with thin brass gyves on her +wrists: and when I had examined her well, I knew the whole history of +the creature standing silent by my side. + +She is the daughter of the Sultan, as I assumed when I had once +determined that the skeleton is both the skeleton of her mother, and the +skeleton of the Sultana. + +That the skeleton was her mother is clear: for the cloud occurred just +twenty-one years since, and the dead woman was, of course, at that +moment in the prison, which must have been air-tight, and with her the +girl: but since the girl is quite certainly not much more than +twenty--she looks younger--she must at that time have been either unborn +or a young babe: but a babe would hardly be imprisoned with another than +its own mother. I am rather inclined to think that the girl was unborn +at the moment of the cloud, and was born in the cellar. + +That the mother was the Sultana is clear from her fragments of dress, +and the symbolic character of her every ornament, crescent earrings, +heron-feather, and the blue campaca enamelled in a bracelet. This poor +woman, I have thought, may have been the victim of some unbounded fit of +imperial passion, incurred by some domestic crime, real or imagined, +which may have been pardoned in a day had not death overtaken her master +and the world. + +There are four steep stone steps at about the centre of the cellar, +leading up to a locked iron trap-door, apparently the only opening into +this great hole: and this trap-door must have been so nearly air-tight +as to bar the intrusion of the poison in anything like deadly quantity. + +But how rare--how strange--the coincidence of chances here. For, if the +trap-door was absolutely air-tight, I cannot think that the supply of +oxygen in the cellar, large as it was, would have been sufficient to +last the girl twenty years, to say nothing of what her mother used up +before death: for I imagine that the woman must have continued to live +some time in her dungeon, sufficiently long, at least, to teach her +child to procure its food of dates and wine; so that the door must have +been only just sufficiently hermetic to bar the poison, yet admit some +oxygen; or else, the place may have been absolutely air-tight at the +time of the cloud, and some crack, which I have not seen, opened to +admit oxygen after the poison was dispersed: in any case--the +all-but-infinite rarity of the chance! + +Thinking these things I climbed out, and we walked to Pera, where I +slept in a great white-stone house in five or six acres of garden +overlooking the cemetery of Kassim, having pointed out to the girl +another house in which to sleep. + +This girl! what a history! After existing twenty years in a sunless +world hardly three acres wide, she one day suddenly saw the only sky +which she knew collapse at one point! a hole appeared into yet a world +beyond! It was I who had come, and kindled Constantinople, and set her +free. + + * * * * * + +Ah, I see something now! I see! it was for this that I was preserved: I +to be a sort of new-fangled Adam--and this little creature to be my Eve! +That is it! _The White_ does not admit defeat: he would recommence the +Race again! At the last, the eleventh hour--in spite of all--he would +turn defeat into victory, and outwit that Other. + +However, if this be so--and I seem to see it quite clearly--then in that +White scheme is a singular flaw: at _one point_, it is obvious, that +elaborate Forethought fails: for I have a free will--and I refuse, I +refuse. + +Certainly, in this matter I am on the side of the Black: and since it +depends absolutely upon me, this time Black wins. + +No more men on the earth after me, ye Powers! To _you_ the question may +be nothing more than a gambling excitement as to the final outcome of +your arial squabble: but to the poor men who had to bear the wrongs, +Inquisitions, rack-rents, Waterloos, unspeakable horrors, it was hard +earnest, you know! Oh the wretchedness--the deep, deep pain--of that +bungling ant-hill, happily wiped out, my God! My sweetheart Clodagh ... +she was not an ideal being! There was a man called Judas who betrayed +the gentle Founder of the Christian Faith, and there was some Roman king +named Galba, a horrid dog, and there was a French devil, Gilles de Raiz: +and the rest were all much the same, much the same. Oh no, it was not a +good race, that small infantry which called itself Man: and here, +falling on my knees before God and Satan as I write, I swear, I swear: +Never through me shall it spring and fester again. + + * * * * * + +I cannot realise her! Not at all, at all, at all! If she is out of my +sight and hearing ten minutes, I fall to doubting her reality. If I lose +her for half a day, all the old feelings, resembling certainties, come +back, that I have only been dreaming--that this appearance cannot be an +actual objective fact of life, since the impossible is impossible. + +Seventeen long years, seventeen long years, of madness.... + + * * * * * + +To-morrow I start for Imbros: and whether this girl chooses to follow +me, or whether she stays behind, I will see her from the moment I land +no more. + + * * * * * + +She must rise very early. I who am now regularly on the palace-roof at +dawn, sometimes from between the pavilion-curtains of the galleries, or +from the steps of the telescope-kiosk, may spy her far down below, a +dainty microscopic figure, generally running about the sward, or gazing +up in wonder at the palace from the lake-edge. + +It is now three months since she came with me to Imbros. + +I left her the first night in that pale-yellow house with the two green +jalousies facing the beach, where there was everything that she would +need; but I knew that, like all the houses there now, it leaked +profusely, and the next day I went down to the curving stair, cut +through the rock at the back and south of the village, climbed, and half +a mile beyond found that park and villa with gables, which I had noted +from the sea. The villa is almost intact, very strongly built of +purplish marble, though small, and very like a Western house, with +shingles, and three gables, so that I think it must have been the yali +of some Englishman, for it contains a number of English books, though +the only body I saw there was what looked like an Aararat Kurd, with +spiral string wound down his turban, yellow ankle-pantaloons, and flung +red shoulder-cloak; and all in the heavily-wooded park, and all about +the low rock-steps up the hill, profusions of man-dragora; and from the +rock-steps to the house a narrow long avenue of acacias, mossy +underfoot, that mingle overhead, the house standing about four yards +from the edge of the perpendicular sea-cliff, whence one can see the +_Speranzas_ main top-mast, and broken mizzen-mast-head, in her quiet +haven. After examining the place I went down again to the village, and +her house: but she was not there: and two hours long I paced about among +the weeds of these amateur little alleys and flat-roofed windowless +houses (though some have terrace-roofs, and a rare aperture), whose +once-raw yellows, greens, and blues look now like sunset tints when the +last flush is gone, and they fade dun. When at last she came running +with open mouth, I took her up the rock-steps, and into the house, and +there she has lived, one of the gable-tips, I now find (that overlooking +the sea), being just visible from the north-east corner of the +palace-roof, two miles from it. + +That night again, when I was leaving her, she made an attempt to follow +me. But I was resolved to end it, then: and cutting a sassafras-whip I +cut her deep, three times, till she ran, crying. + + * * * * * + +So, then, what is my fate henceforth?--to think always, from sun to +moon, and from moon to sun, of one only thing--and that thing an object +for the microscope?--to become a sneaking Paul Pry to spy upon the silly +movements of one little sparrow, like some fatuous motiveless gossip of +old, his occupation to peep, his one faculty to scent, his honey and his +achievement to unearth the infinitely unimportant? I would kill her +first! + + * * * * * + +I am convinced that she is no stay-at-home, but roams continually over +the island: for thrice, wandering myself, I have come upon her. + +The first time she was running with flushed face, intent upon striking +down a butterfly with a twig held in the left hand (for both hands she +uses with dexterity). It was at about nine in the morning, in her park, +near the bottom where there are high grass-growths and ferny luxuriance +between the close tree-trunks, and shadow, and the broken wall of an old +funeral-kiosk sunk aslant under moss, creepers, and wild flowers, behind +which I peeped hidden and wet with dew. She has had the assurance to +modify the dress I put upon her, and was herself a butterfly, for +instead of the shintiyan, she had on a zouave, hardly reaching to the +waist, of saffron satin, no feredj, but a scarlet fez with violet +tassel, and baggy pantaloons of azure silk; down her back the long +auburn plait, quite neat, but all her front hair loose and wanton, the +fez cocked backward, while I caught glimpses of her fugitive heels +lifting out of the dropping slipper-sole. She is pretty clever, but not +clever enough, for that butterfly escaped, and in one instant I saw her +change into weary and sad, for on this earth is nothing more fickle than +that Proteus face, which resembles a landscape swept with cloud-shadows +on a bright day. Fast beat my heart that morning, owing to the +consciousness that, while I saw, I was unseen, yet might be seen. + +Another noontide, three weeks afterwards, I came upon her a good way up +yonder to the west of the palace, sleeping on her arm in an alley +between overgrown old trellises, where rioting wild vine buried her in +gloom: but I had not been peeping through the bushes a minute, when she +started up and looked wildly about, her quick consciousness, I imagine, +detecting a presence: though I think that I managed to get away unseen. +She keeps her face very dirty: all about her mouth was dry-stained with +a polychrome of grape, _mrs_, and other coloured juices, like +slobbering _gamins_ of old. I could also see that her nose and cheeks +are now sprinkled with little freckles. + +Four days since I saw her a third time, and then found that the +primitive instinct to represent the world in pictures has been working +in her: for she was drawing. It was down in the middle one of the three +east-and-west village streets, for thither I had strolled toward +evening, and coming out upon the street from between an old wall and a +house, saw her quite near. I pulled up short--and peered. She was lying +on her face all among grasses, a piece of yellow board before her, and +in her fingers a chalk-splinter: and very intently she drew, her +tongue-tip travelling along her short upper-lip from side to side, +regularly as a pendulum, her fez tipped far back, and the left foot +swinging upward from the knee. She had drawn her yali at the top, and +now, as I could see by peering well forward, was drawing underneath the +palace--from memory, for where she lay it is all hidden: yet the palace +it was, for there were the waving lines meant for the steps, the two +slanting pillars, the slanting battlements of the outer court, and +before the portal, with turban reaching above the roof, and my two +whisks of beard sweeping below the knees--myself. + +Something spurred me, and I could not resist shouting a sudden "Hi!" +whereupon she scrambled like a spring-bok to her feet, I pointing to the +drawing, smiling. + +This creature has a way of mincing her pressed lips, while she shakes +the head, intensely cooing a fond laugh: and so she did then. + +"You are a clever little wretch, you know," said I, she cocking her eye, +trying to divine my meaning with vague smile. + +'Oh, yes, a clever little wretch,' I went on in a gruff voice, 'clever +as a serpent, no doubt: for in the first case it was the Black who used +the serpent, but now it is the White. But it will not do, you know. Do +you know what you are to me, you? You are my Eve!--a little fool, a +little piebald frog like you. But it will not do at all, at all! A nice +race it would be with you for mother, and me for father, wouldn't +it?--half-criminal like the father, half-idiot like the mother: just +like the last, in short. They used to say, in fact, that the offspring +of a brother and sister was always weak-headed: and from such a wedlock +certainly came the human race, so no wonder it was what it was: and so +it would have to be again now. Well no--unless we have the children, and +cut their throats at birth: and _you_ would not like that at all, I +know, and, on the whole, it would not work, for the White would be +striking a poor man dead with His lightning, if I attempted that. No, +then: the modern Adam is some eight to twenty thousand years wiser than +the first--you see? less instinctive, more rational. The first disobeyed +by commission: I shall disobey by omission: only his disobedience was a +sin, mine is a heroism. I have not been a particularly ideal sort of +beast so far, you know: but in me, Adam Jeffson--I swear it--the human +race shall at last attain a true nobility, the nobility of +self-extinction. I shall turn out trumps: I shall prove myself stronger +than Tendency, World-Genius, Providence, Currents of Fate, White Power, +Black Power, or whatever is the name for it. No more Clodaghs, Lucrezia +Borgias, Semiramises, Pompadours, Irish Landlords, Hundred-Years' +Wars--you see?' + +She kept her left eye obliquely cocked like a little fool, wondering, no +doubt, what I was saying. + +'And talking of Clodagh,' I went on, 'I shall call you that henceforth, +to keep me reminded. So that is your name--not Eve--but Clodagh, who was +a Poisoner, you see? She poisoned a poor man who trusted her: and that +is your name now--not Eve, but Clodagh--to remind me, you most dangerous +little speckled viper! And in order that I may no more see your foolish +little pretty face, I decree that, for the future, you wear a _yashmak_ +to cover up your lips, which, I can see, were meant to be seductive, +though dirty; and you can leave the blue eyes, and the little +white-skinned freckled nose uncovered, if you like, they being +commonplace enough. Meantime, if you care to see how to draw a palace--I +will show you.' + +Before I stretched my hand, she was presenting the board--so that she +had guessed something of my meaning! But some hard tone in my talk had +wounded her, for she presented it looking very glum, her under-lip +pushing a little obliquely out, very pathetically, I must say, as always +when she is just ready to cry. + +In a few strokes I drew the palace, and herself standing at the portal +between the pillars: and now great was her satisfaction, for she pointed +to the sketched figure, and to herself, interrogatively: and when I +nodded 'yes,' she went cooing her fond murmurous laugh, with pressed +and mincing lips: and it is clear that, in spite of my beatings, she is +in no way afraid of me. + +Before I could move away, I felt some rain-drops, and down in some +seconds rushed a shower. I looked, saw that the sky was rapidly +darkening, and ran into the nearest of the little cubical houses, +leaving her glancing sideways upward, with the quaintest artlessness of +interest in the downpour: for she is not yet quite familiarised with the +operations of nature, and seems to regard them with a certain amiable +inquisitive seriousness, as though they were living beings, comrades as +good as herself. She presently joined me, but even then stretched her +hand out to feel the drops. + +Now there came a thunder-clap, the wind was rising, and rain spattering +about me: for the panes of these houses, made, I believe, of paper +saturated in almond-oil, have long disappeared, and rains, penetrating +by roof and rare window, splash the bones of men. I gathered up my +skirts to run toward other shelter, but she was before me, saying in her +strange experimental voice that word of hers: "_Come_." + +She ran in advance, and I, with the outer robe over my head, followed, +urging flinching way against the whipped rain-wash. She took the way by +the stone horse-pond, through an alley to the left between two blind +walls, then down a steep path through wood to the rock-steps, and up we +ran, and along the hill, to her yali, which is a mile nearer the village +than the palace, though by the time we pelted into its dry shelter we +were wet to the skin. + +Sudden darkness had come, but she quickly found some matches, lit one, +looking at it with a certain meditative air, and applied it to a candle +and to a bronze Western lamp on the table, which I had taught her to oil +and light. Near a Western fire-place was a Turkish mangal, like one +which she had seen me light to warm bath-waters in Constantinople, and +when I pointed to it, she ran to the kitchen, returned with some chopped +wood, and very cleverly lit it. And there for several hours I sat that +night, reading (the first time for many years): it was a book by the +poet Milton, found in a glazed book-case on the other side of the +fire-place: and most strange, most novel, I found those august words +about warring angels that night, while the storm raved: for this man had +evidently taken no end of pains with his book, and done it gallantly +well, too, making the thing hum: and I could not conceive why he should +have been at that trouble--unless it were for the same reason that I +built the palace, because some spark bites a man, and he would be +like--but that is all vanity, and delusion. + +Well, there is a rage in the storms of late years which really +transcends bounds; I do not remember if I have noted it in these sheets +before: but I never could have conceived a turbulence so huge. Hour +after hour I sat there that night, smoking a chibouque, reading, and +listening to the batteries and lamentations of that haunted air, +shrinking from it, fearing even for the _Speranza_ by her quay in the +sequestered harbour, and for the palace-pillars. But what astonished me +was that girl: for, after sitting on the ottoman to my left some time, +she fell sideways asleep, not the least fear about her, though I should +have thought that nervousness at such a turmoil would be so natural to +her: and whence she has this light confidence in the world into which +she has so abruptly come I do not know, for it is as though someone +inspired her with the mood of nonchalance, saying: 'Be of good cheer, +and care not a pin about anything: for God is God.' + +I heard the ocean swing hoarse like heavy ordnance against the cliffs +below, where they meet the outer surface of the southern of the two +claws of land that form the harbour: and the thought came into my mind: +'If now I taught her to speak, to read, I could sometimes make her read +a book to me.' + +The winds seemed wilfully struggling for the house to snatch and wing it +away into the drear Eternities of the night: and I could not but heave +the sigh: 'Alas for us two poor waifs and castaways of our race, little +bits of flotsam and seaweed-hair cast up here a moment, ah me, on this +shore of the Ages, soon to be dragged back, O turgid Eternity, into thy +abysmal gorge; and upon what strand--who shall say?--shall she next be +flung, and I, divided then perhaps by all the stretch of the +trillion-distanced astral gulf?' And such a pity, and a wringing of the +heart, seemed in things, that a tear fell from my eyes that ominous +midnight. + +She started up at a gust of more appalling volume, rubbing her eyes, +with dishevelled hair (it must have been about midnight), listening a +minute, with that demure, droll interest of hers, to the noise of the +elements, and then smiled to me; rose then, left the room, and presently +returned with a pomegranate and some almonds on a plate, also some +delicious old sweet wine in a Samian cruche, and an old silver cup, gilt +inside, standing in a zarf. These she placed on the table near me, I +murmuring: 'Hospitality.' + +She looked at the book, which I read as I ate, with lowered left +eye-lid, seeking to guess its use, I suppose. Most things she +understands at once, but this must have baffled her: for to see one +looking fixedly at a thing, and not know what one is looking at it for, +must be very disconcerting. + +I held it up before her, saying: + +"Shall I teach you to read it? If I did, how would you repay me, you +Clodagh?" + +She cocked her eyes, seeking to comprehend. God knows, at that moment I +pitied the poor dumb waif, alone in all the whole round earth with me. +The candle-flame, moved by the wind like a slow-painting brush, +flickered upon her face, though every cranny was closed. + +"Perhaps, then," I said, "I will teach you. You are a pitiable little +derelict of your race, you know: and two hours every day I will let you +come to the palace, and I will teach you. But be sure, be careful. If +there be danger, I will kill you: assuredly--without fail. And let me +begin with a lesson now: say after me: 'White.'" + +I took her hand, and got her to understand that I wanted her to repeat +after me. + +"White," said I. + +"Hwhite," said she. + +'Power,' said I. + +'Pow-wer,' said she. + +'White Power,' said I. + +'Hwhite Pow-wer,' said she. + +'Shall not,' said I. + +'Sall not,' said she. + +'White Power shall not,' said I. + +'Hwhite Pow-wer sall not,' said she. + +'Prevail,' said I. + +'Fffail,' said she, pronouncing the 'v' with a long fluttering +'f'-sound. + +'Pre-vail,' said I. + +'Pe-vvvail,' said she. + +'White Power shall not prevail,' said I. + +'Hwhite Pow-wer sall not--fffail,' said she. + +A thunder which roared as she said it seemed to me to go laughing +through the universe, and a minute I looked upon her face with positive +shrinking fear; till, starting up, I thrust her with violence from my +path, and dashed forth to re-seek the palace and my bed. + +Such was the ingratitude and fatality which my first attempt, four +nights since, to teach her met with. It remains to be seen whether my +pity for her dumbness, or some servile tendency toward fellowship in +myself, will result in any further lesson. Certainly, I think not: for +though I have given my word, the most solemnly-pledged word may be +broken. + +Surely, surely, her presence in the world with me--for I suppose it is +that--has wrought some profound changes in my mood: for gone now +apparently are those turbulent hours when, stalking like a peacock, I +flaunted my monarchy in the face of the Eternal Powers, with hissed +blasphemies; or else dribbled, shaking my body in a lewd dance; or was +off to fire some vast city and revel in redness and the chucklings of +Hell; or rolled in the drunkenness of drugs. It was mere frenzy!--I see +it now--it was 'not good,' 'not good.' And it rather looks as if it were +past--or almost. I have clipped my beard and hair, removed the earrings, +and thought of modifying my attire. I will just watch to see whether she +comes loitering down there about the gate of the lake. + + * * * * * + +Her progress is like.... + + * * * * * + +It is nine months since I have written, on these sheets, those words, +'Her progress is like....' being the beginning of some narrative in +which something interrupted me: and since then I have had no impulse to +write. + +But I was thinking just now of the curious tricks and uncertainties of +my memory, and seeing the sheets, will record it here. I have lately +been trying to recall the name of a sister of mine--some perfectly +simple name, I know--and the name of my old home in England: and they +have completely passed out of my cognizance, though she was my only +sister, and we grew up closely together: some quite simple name, I +forget it now. Yet I can't say that my memory is bad: there are +things--quite unexpected, unimportant things--which come up in my mind +with considerable clearness. For instance, I remember to have met in +Paris (I think), long before the poison-cloud, a little Brazilian boy of +the colour of weak coffee-and-milk, of whom she now constantly reminds +me. He wore his hair short like a convict's, so that one could spy the +fish-white flesh beneath, and delighted to play solitary about the +stairs of the hotel, dressed up in the white balloon-dress of a Pierrot. +I have the impression now that he must have had very large ears. Clever +as a flea he was, knowing five or six languages, as it were by nature, +without having any suspicion that that was at all extraordinary. She has +that same light, unconscious, and nonchalant cleverness, and easy way of +life. It is little more than a year since I began to teach her, and +already she can speak English with a quite considerable vocabulary, and +perfect correctness (except that she does not pronounce the letter 'r'); +she has also read, or rather devoured, a good many books; and can write, +draw, and play the harp. And all she does without effort: rather with +the flighty naturalness with which a bird takes to the wing. + +What made me teach her to read was this: One afternoon, fourteen months +or so ago, I from the roof-kiosk saw her down at the lake-rim, a book in +hand; and as she had seen me looking steadily at books, so she was +looking steadily at it, with pathetic sideward head: so that I burst +into laughter, for I saw her clearly through the glass, and whether she +is the simplest little fool, or the craftiest serpent that ever +breathed, I am not yet sure. If I thought that she has the least design +upon my honour, it would be ill for her. + +I went to Gallipoli for two days in the month of May, and brought back a +very pretty little caique, a perfect slender crescent of the colour of +the moon, though I had two days' labour in cutting through bush-thicket +for the passage of the motor in bringing it up to the lake. It has +pleased me to see her lie among the silk cushions of the middle, while +I, paddling, taught her her first words and sentences between the hours +of eight and ten in the evening, though later they became 10 A.M. to +noon, when the reading began, we sitting on the palace-steps before the +portal, her mouth invariably well covered with the yashmak, the +lesson-book being a large-lettered old Bible found at her yali. _Why_ +she must needs wear the yashmak she has never once asked; and how much +she divines, knows, or intends, I have no idea, continually questioning +myself as to whether she is all simplicity, or all cunning. + +That she is conscious of some profound difference in our organisation I +cannot doubt: for that I have a long beard, and she none at all, is +among the most patent of facts. + + * * * * * + +I have thought that a certain _Western-ness_--a growing modernity of +tone--may be the result, as far as I am concerned, of her presence with +me? I do not know.... + + * * * * * + +There is the gleam of a lake-end just visible in the north forest from +the palace-top, and in it a good number of fish like carp, tench, roach, +etc., so in May I searched for a tackle-shop in the Gallipoli +Fatmeh-bazaar, and got four 12-foot rods, with reels, silk-line, +quill-floats, a few yards of silk-worm gut, with a packet of No. 7 and +8 hooks, and split-shot for sinkers; and since red-worms, maggots and +gentles are common on the island, I felt sure of a great many more fish +than the number I wanted, which was none at all. However, for the mere +amusement, I fished several times, lying at my length in a patch of +long-grass over-waved by an enormous cedar, where the bank is steep, and +the water deep. And one mid-afternoon she was suddenly there with me, +questioned me with her eyes, and when I consented, stayed: and presently +I said I would teach her bottom-angling, and sent her flying up to the +palace for another rod and tackle. + +That day she did nothing, for after teaching her to thread the worm, and +put the gentles on the smaller hooks, I sent her to hunt for worms to +chop up for ground-baiting the pitch for the next afternoon; and when +this was done it was dinner-time, and I sent her home, for by then I was +giving the reading-lessons in the morning. + +The next day I found her at the bank, taught her to take the sounding +for adjusting the float, and she lay down not far from me, holding the +rod. So I said to her: + +'Well, this is better than living in a dark cellar twenty years, with +nothing to do but walk up and down, sleep, and consume dates and Ismidt +wine.' + +'Yes!' says she. + +'Twenty years!' said I: 'How did you bear it?' + +'I was not closs,' says she. + +'Did you never suspect that there was a world outside that cellar?' said +I. + +'Never,' says she, 'or lather, yes: but I did not suppose that it was +_this_ world, but another where he lived.' + +'He who?' + +'He who spoke with me.' + +'Who was that?' + +'Oh! a bite!' she screamed gladly. + +I saw her float bob under, and started up, rushed to her, and taught her +how to strike and play it, though it turned out when landed to be +nothing but a tiny barbel: but she was in ecstasies, holding it on her +palm, murmuring her fond coo. + +She re-baited, and we lay again. I said: + +'But what a life: no exit, no light, no prospect, no hope--' + +'Plenty of _hope_!' says she. + +'Good Heavens! hope of what?' + +'I knew vely well that something was lipening over the cellar, or under, +or alound it, and would come to pass at a certain fixed hour, and that I +should see it, and feel it, and it would be vely nice.' + +'Ah, well, you had to wait for it, at any rate. Didn't those twenty +years seem _long_?' + +'No--at least sometimes--not often. I was always so occupied.' + +'Occupied in doing what?' + +'In eating, or dlinking, or lunning, or talking.' + +'Talking to your_self_?' + +'Not myself.' + +'To whom, then?' + +'To the one who told me when I was hungly, and put the dates to satisfy +my hunger.' + +'I see. Don't wriggle about in that way, or you will never catch any +fish. The maxim of angling is: "Study to be quiet"--' + +'O! another bite!' she called, and this time, all alone, very agilely +landed a good-sized bream. + +'But do you mean that you were never sad?' said I when she was +re-settled. + +'Sometimes I would sit and cly,' says she--'I did not know why. But if +that was "sadness," I was never miserlable, never, never. And if I +clied, it did not last long, and I would soon fall to sleep, for he +would lock me in his lap, and kiss me, and wipe all my tears away.' + +'He who?' + +'Why, what a question! he who told me when I was hungly, and of the +thing that was lipening outside the cellar, which would be so nice.' + +'I see, I see. But in all that dingy place, and thick gloom, were you +never at all afraid?' + +'Aflaid! _I_! of what?' + +'Of the unknown.' + +'I do not understand you. How could I be _aflaid_? The known was the +very opposite of tellible: it was merely hunger and dates, thirst and +wine, the desire to lun and space to lun in, the desire to sleep and +sleep: there was nothing tellible in that: and the unknown was even less +tellible than the known: for it was the nice thing that was lipening +outside the cellar. I do not understand--' + +'Ah, yes,' said I, 'you are a clever little being: but your continual +fluttering about is fatal to all angling. Isn't it in your nature to +keep still a minute? And with regard now to your habits in the +cellar--?' + +'_Another!_' she cried with happy laugh, and landed a young chub. And +that afternoon she caught seven, and I none. + + * * * * * + +Another day I took her from the pitch to one of the kitchens in the +village with some of the fish, till then always thrown away, and taught +her cooking: for the only cooking-implement in the palace is the silver +alcohol-lamp for coffee and chocolate. We both scrubbed the utensils, +and boil and fry I taught her, and the making of a sauce from vinegar, +bottled olives, and the tinned American butter from the _Speranza_, and +the boiling of rice mixed with flour for ground-baiting our pitch. And +she, at first astonished, was soon all deft housewifeliness, breathless +officiousness, and behind my back, of her own intuitiveness, grated some +dry almonds found there, and with them sprinkled the fried tench. And we +ate them, sitting on the floor together: the first new food, I suppose, +tasted by me for twenty-one years: nor did I find it disagreeable. + +The next day she came up to the palace reading a book, which turned out +to be a cookery-book in English, found at her yali; and a week later, +she appeared, out of hours, presenting me a yellow-earthenware dish +containing a mess of gorgeous colours--a boiled fish under red peppers, +bits of saffron, a greenish sauce, and almonds: but I turned her away, +and would have none of her, or her dish. + + * * * * * + +About a mile up to the west of the palace is a very old ruin in the +deepest forest, I think of a mosque, though only three truncated +internal pillars under ivy, and the weedy floor, with the courtyard and +portal-steps remain, before it being a long avenue of cedars, gently +descending from the steps, the path between the trees choked with +long-grass and wild rye reaching to my middle. Here I saw one day a +large disc of old brass, bossed in the middle, which may have been +either a shield or part of an ancient cymbal, with concentric rings +graven round it, from centre to circumference. The next day I brought +some nails, a hammer, a saw, and a box of paints from the _Speranza_; +and I painted the rings in different colours, cut down a slim +lime-trunk, nailed the thin disc along its top, and planted it well, +before the steps: for I said I would make a bull's-eye, and do rifle and +revolver practice before it, from the avenue. And this the next evening +I was doing at four hundred feet, startling the island, it seemed, with +that unusual noise, when up she came peering with enquiring face: at +which I was very angry, because my arm, long unused, was firing wide: +but I was too proud to say anything, and let her look, and soon she +understood, laughing every time I made a considerable miss, till at last +I turned upon her saying: 'If you think it so easy, you may try.' + +She had been wanting to try, for she came eagerly to the offer, and +after I had opened and showed her the mechanism, the cartridges, and how +to shoot, I put into her hands one of the _Speranza_ Colt's. She took +her bottom-lip between her teeth, shut her left eye, vaulted out the +revolver like an old shot to the level of her intense right eye, and +sent a ball through the geometrical centre of the boss. + +However, it was a fluke-shot, for I had the satisfaction of seeing her +miss every one of the other five, except the last, which hit the black. +That, however, was three weeks since, and now my hitting record is forty +per cent., and hers ninety-six--most extraordinary: so that it is clear +that this creature is the _protge_ of someone, and favouritism is in +the world. + + * * * * * + +Her book of books is the Old Testament. Sometimes, at noon or afternoon, +I may look abroad from the roof or galleries, and see a remote figure +sitting on the sward under the shade of plane or black cypress: and I +always know that the book she cons there is the Bible--like an old +Rabbi. She has a passion for stories: and there finds a store. + +Three nights since when it was pretty late, and the moon very splendid, +I saw her passing homewards close to the lake, and shouted down to her, +meaning to say 'Good-night'; but she thought that I had called her, and +came: and sitting out on the top step we talked for hours, she without +the yashmak. + +We fell to talking about the Bible. And says she: 'What did Cain to +Abel?' + +'He knocked him over,' I replied, liking sometimes to use such idioms, +with the double object of teaching and perplexing her. + +'Over what?' says she. + +'Over his heels,' said I. + +'I do not complehend!' + +'He killed him, then.' + +'That I know. But how did Abel feel when he was killed? What is it to be +_killed_?' + +'Well,' said I, 'you have seen bones all around you, and the bones of +your mother, and you can feel the bones in your fingers. Your fingers +will become mere bone after you are dead, as die you must. Those bones +which you see around you, are, of course, the bones of the men of whom +we often speak: and the same thing happened to them which happens to a +fish or a butterfly when you catch them, and they lie all still.' + +'And the men and the butterfly feel the same after they are dead?' + +'Precisely the same. They lie in a deep drowse, and dream a +nonsense-dream.' + +'That is not dleadful. I thought that it was much more dleadful. I +should not mind dying.' + +'Ah!... so much the better: for it is possible that you may have to die +a great deal sooner than you think.' + +'I should not mind. Why were men so vely aflaid to die?' + +'Because they were all such shocking cowards.' + +'Oh, not all! not all!' + +(This girl, I know not with what motive, has now definitely set herself +up against me as the defender of the dead race. With every chance she is +at it.) + +'Nearly all,' said I: 'tell me one who was not afraid--' + +'There was Isaac,' says she: 'when Ablaham laid him on the wood to kill +him, he did not jump up and lun to hide.' + +'Isaac was a great exception,' said I: 'in the Bible and such books, you +understand, you read of only the best sorts of people; but there were +millions and millions of others--especially about the time of the +poison-cloud--on a very much lower level--putrid wretches--covetous, +false, murderous, mean, selfish, debased, hideous, diseased, making the +earth a very charnel of festering vices and crimes.' + +This, for several minutes, she did not answer, sitting with her back +half toward me, cracking almonds, continually striking one step with the +ball of her outstretched foot. In the clarid gold of the platform I saw +her fez and corals reflected as an elongated blotch of florid red. She +turned and drank some wine from the great gold Jarvan goblet which I had +brought from the temple of Boro Budor, her head quite covered in by it. +Then, the little hairs at her lip-corners still wet, says she: + +'Vices and climes, climes and vices. Always the same. What were these +climes and vices?' + +'Robberies of a hundred sorts, murders of ten hundred--' + +'But what made them _do_ them?' + +'Their evil nature--their base souls.' + +'But _you_ are one of them, _I_ am another: yet you and I live here +together, and we do no vices and climes.' + +Her astounding shrewdness! Right into the inmost heart of a matter does +her simple wit seem to pierce! + +'No,' I said, 'we do no vices and crimes, because we lack _motive_. +There is no danger that we should hate each other, for we have plenty to +eat and drink, dates, wines, and thousands of things. (Our danger is +rather the other way.) But _they_ hated and schemed, because they were +very numerous, and there arose a question among them of dates and wine.' + +'Was there not, then, enough land to grow dates and wine for all?' + +'There was--yes: much more than enough, I fancy. But some got hold of a +vast lot of it, and as the rest felt the pinch of scarcity, there arose, +naturally, a pretty state of things--including the vices and crimes.' + +'Ah, but then,' says she, 'it was not to their bad souls that the vices +and climes were due, but only to this question of land. It is certain +that if there had been no such question, there would have been no vices +and climes, because you and I, who are just like them, do no vices and +climes here, where there is no such question.' + +The clear limelight of her intelligence! She wriggled on her seat in her +effort of argument. + +'I am not going to argue the matter,' I said. 'There _was_ that question +of dates and wine, you see. And there always must be on an earth where +millions of men, with varying degrees of cunning, reside.' + +'Oh, not at all necessalily!' she cries with conviction: 'not at all, at +all: since there are much more dates and wine than are enough for all. +If there should spling up more men now, having the whole wisdom, +science, and expelience of the past at their hand, and they made an +allangement among themselves that the first man who tlied to take more +than he could work for should be killed, and sent to dleam a +nonsense-dleam, the question could never again alise!' + +'It arose before--it would arise again.' + +'But no! I can guess clearly how it alose before: it alose thlough the +sheer carelessness of the first men. The land was at first so vely, vely +much more than enough for all, that the men did not take the tlouble to +make an allangement among themselves; and afterwards the habit of +carelessness was confirmed; till at last the vely oliginal carelessness +must have got to have the look of an allangement; and so the stleam +which began in a little long ended in a big long, the long glowing more +and more fixed and fatal as the stleam lolled further flom the source. I +see it clearly, can't you? But now, if some more men would spling, they +would be taught--' + +'Ah, but no more men will _spling_, you see--!' + +'There is no telling. I sometimes feel as if they must, and shall. The +tlees blossom, the thunder lolls, the air makes me lun and leap, the +glound is full of lichness, and I hear the voice of the Lord God walking +all among the tlees of the folests.' + +As she said this, I saw her under-lip push out and tremble, as when she +is near to crying, and her eyes moisten: but a moment after she looked +at me full, and smiled, so mobile is her face: and as she looked, it +suddenly struck me what a noble temple of a brow the creature has, +almost pointed at the uplifted summit, and widening down like a +bell-curved Gothic arch, draped in strings of frizzy hair which anon she +shakes backward with her head. + +'Clodagh,' I said after some minutes--'do you know why I called you +Clodagh?' + +'No? Tell me?' + +'Because once, long ago before the poison-cloud, I had a lover called +Clodagh: and she was a....' + +'But tell me first,' cries she: 'how did one know one's lover, or one's +wife, flom all the others?' + +'Well, by their faces....' + +'But there must have been many faces--all alike--' + +'Not all alike. Each was different from the rest.' + +'Still, it must have been vely clever to tell. I can hardly conceive +any face, except yours and mine.' + +'Ah, because you are a little goose, you see.' + +'What was a goose like?' + +'It was a thing like a butterfly, only larger, and it kept its toes +always spread out, with a skin stretched between.' + +'Leally? How caplicious! And am I like that?--but what were you saying +that your lover, Clodagh, was?' + +'She was a Poisoner.' + +'Then why call me Clodagh, since _I_ am not a poisoner?' + +'I call you so to remind me: lest you--lest you--should become +my--lover, too.' + +'I am your lover already: for I love you.' + +'What, girl?' + +'Do I not love you, who are mine?' + +'Come, come, don't be a little maniac!' I went. 'Clodagh was a +_poisoner_....' + +'Why did she poison? Had she not enough dates and wine?' + +'She had, yes: but she wanted more, more, more, the silly idiot.' + +'So that the vices and climes were not confined to those that lacked +things, but were done by the others, too?' + +'By the others chiefly.' + +'Then I see how it was!' + +'How was it?' + +'The others had got _spoiled_. The vices and climes must have +begun with those who lacked things, and then the others, always seeing +vices and climes alound them, began to do them, too--as when one rotten +olive is in a bottle, the whole mass soon becomes collupted: but +originally they were not rotten, but only became so. And all though a +little carelessness at the first. I am sure that if more men could +spling now--' + +'But I _told_ you, didn't I, that no more men will spring? You +understand, Clodagh, that originally the earth produced men by a long +process, beginning with a very low type of creature, and continually +developing it, until at last a man stood up. But that can never happen +again: for the earth is old, old, and has lost her producing vigour now. +So talk no more of men _splinging_, and of things which you do not +understand. Instead, go inside--stop, I will tell you a secret: to-day +in the wood I picked some musk-roses and wound them into a wreath, +meaning to give them you for your head when you came to-morrow: and it +is inside on the pearl tripod in the second room to the left: go, +therefore, and put it on, and bring the harp, and play to me, my dear.' + +She ran quick with a little cry, and coming again, sat crowned, +incarnadine in the blushing depths of the gold. Nor did I send her home +to her lonely yali, till the pale and languished moon, weary of +all-night beatitudes, sank down soft-couched in quilts of curdling opals +to the Hesperian realms of her rest. + +So sometimes we speak together, she and I, she and I. + + * * * * * + +That ever I should write such a thing! I am driven out from Imbros! + +I was walking up in a wood yesterday to the west--it was a calm clear +evening about seven, the sun having just set. I had the book in which I +have written so far in my hand, for I had thought of making a sketch of +an old windmill to the north-west to show her. Twenty minutes before she +had been with me, for I had chanced to meet her, and she had come, but +kept darting on ahead after peeping fruit, gathering armfuls of +amaranth, nenuphar, and red-berried asphodel, till, weary of my life, I +had called to her: 'Go away! out of my sight'--and she, with suddenly +pushed under-lip, had walked off. + +Well, I was continuing my stroll, when I seemed to feel some quaking of +the ground, and before one could count twenty, it was as if the island +was bent upon wracking itself to pieces. My first thought was of her, +and in great scare I went running, calling in the direction which she +had gone, staggering as on the deck of some labouring ship, falling, +picking myself up, running again. The air was quite full of uproar, and +the land waving like the sea: and as I went plunging, not knowing +whither, I saw to my right some three or four acres of forest droop and +sink into a gulf which opened to receive them. Up I flung my arms, +crying out: 'Good God! save the girl!' and a minute later rushed out, to +my surprise, into open space on a hill-side. On the lower ground I could +see the palace, and beyond it, a small space of white sea which had the +awful appearance of being higher than the land. Down the hill-side I +staggered, driven by the impulse to fly somewhither, but about half way +down was startled afresh by a shrill pattering like musical hail, and +the next moment saw the entire palace rush with the jangling clatter of +a thousand bells into the heaving lake. + +Some seconds after this, the earthquake, having lasted fully ten +minutes, began to lull, and soon ceased. I found her an hour later +standing among the ruins of her little yali. + + * * * * * + +Well, what a thing! Probably every building on the island has been +destroyed; the palace-platform, all cracked, leans half-sunken askew +into the lake, like a huge stranded ark, while of the palace itself no +trace remains, except a mound of gold stones emerging above the lake to +the south. Gone, gone--sixteen years of vanity and vexation. But from a +practical point of view, what is a worst calamity of all is that the +_Speranza_ now lies high-and-dry in the village: for she was bodily +picked up from the quay by the tidal wave, and driven bow-foremost into +a street not half her width, and there now lies, looking huge enough in +the little village, wedged for ever, smashed in at the nip like a frail +match-box, a most astonishing spectacle: her bows forty feet up the +street, ten feet above the ground at the stem, rudder resting on the +inner edge of the quay, foremast tilted forward, the other two masts all +right, and that bottom, which has passed through seas so far, buried in +every sort of green and brown seaweed, the old _Speranza_. Her steps +were there, and by a slight leap I could catch them underneath and go up +hand-over-hand, till I got foothold; this I did at ten the same night +when the sea-water had mostly drained back from the land, leaving +everything very swampy, however; she there with me, and soon following +me upon the ship. I found most things cracked into tiny fragments, +twisted, disfigured out of likeness, the house-walls themselves +displaced a little at the nip, the bow of the cedar skiff smashed in to +her middle against the aft starboard corner of the galley; and were it +not for the fact that the air-pinnace had not broken from her heavy +ropings, and one of the compasses still whole, I do not know what I +should have done: for the four old water-logged boats in the cove have +utterly disappeared. + +I made her sleep on the cabin-floor amid the _dbris_ of berth and +everything, and I myself slept high up in the wood to the west. I am +writing now lying in the long-grass the morning after, the sun rising, +though I cannot see him. My plan for to-day is to cut three or four logs +with the saw, lay them on the ground by the ship, lower the pinnace upon +them, so get her gradually down into the water, and by evening bid a +long farewell to Imbros, which drives me out in this way. Still, I look +forward with pleasure to our hour's run to the Mainland, when I shall +teach her to steer by the compass, and manipulate liquid-air, as I have +taught her to dress, to talk, to cook, to write, to think, to live. For +she is my creation, this creature: as it were, a 'rib from my side.' + +But what is the design of this expulsion? And what was it that she +called it last night?--'this new going out flom Halan'! 'Haran,' I +believe, being the place from which Abraham went out, when 'called' by +God. + + * * * * * + +We apparently felt only the tail of the earthquake at Imbros: for it has +ravaged Turkey! And we two poor helpless creatures put down here in the +theatre of all these infinite violences: it is too bad, too bad. For the +rages of Nature at present are perfectly astonishing, and what it may +come to I do not know. When we came to the Macedonian coast in good +moonlight, we sailed along it, and up the Dardanelles, looking out for +village, yali, or any habitation where we might put up: but everything +has apparently been wrecked. We saw Kilid-Bahr, Chanak-Kaleh, Gallipoli, +Lapsaki in ruins; at the last place I landed, leaving her in the boat, +and walked a little way, but soon went back with the news that there was +not even a bazaar-arch left standing whole, in most parts even the line +of the streets being obliterated, for the place had fallen like a house +of dice, and had then been shaken up and jumbled. Finally we slept in a +forest on the other side of the strait, beyond Gallipoli, taking our few +provisions, and having to wade at some points through morass a foot deep +before we reached dry woodland. + +Here, the next morning, I sat alone--for we had slept separated by at +least half a mile--thinking out the question of whither I should go: my +choice would have been to remain either in the region where I was, or to +go Eastward: but the region where I was offered no dwelling that I could +see; and to go any distance Eastward, I needed a ship. Of ships I had +seen during the night only wrecks, nor did I know where to find one in +all these latitudes. I was thus, like her 'Ablaham,' urged Westward. + +In order, then, to go Westward, I first went a little further Eastward, +once more entered the Golden Horn, and once more mounted the scorched +Seraglio steps. Here what the wickedness of man had spared, the +wickedness of Nature had destroyed, and the few houses which I had left +standing round the upper part of Pera I now saw low as the rest; also +the house near the Suleimanieh, where we had lived our first days, to +which I went as to a home, I found without a pillar standing; and that +night she slept under the half-roof of a little funeral-kiosk in the +scorched cypress-wood of Eyoub, and I a mile away, at the edge of the +forest where first I saw her. + +The next morning, having met, as agreed, at the site of the Prophet's +mosque, we traversed together the valley and cemetery of Kassim by the +quagmires up to Pera, all the landscape having to me a rather twisted +unfamiliar aspect. We had determined to spend the morning in searching +for supplies among the earthquake-ruins of Pera; and as I had decided to +collect sufficient in one day to save us further pains for some time, we +passed a good many hours in this task, I confining myself to the great +white house in the park overlooking Kassim, where I had once slept, +losing myself in the huge obliquities of its floors, roofs and +wall-fragments, she going to the old Mussulman quarter of Djianghir +near, on the heights of Taxim, where were many shops, and thence round +the brow of the hill to the great French Embassy-house, overlooking +Foundoucli and the sea, both of us having large Persian carpet-bags, and +all in the air of that wilderness of ruin that morning a sweet, strong, +permanent odour of maple-blossom. + +We met toward evening, she quivering under such a load, that I would not +let her carry it, but abandoned my day's labour, which was lighter, and +took hers, which was quite enough: we went back Westward, seeking all +the while some shelter from the saturating night-dews of this place: and +nothing could we find, till we came again, quite late, to her broken +funeral-kiosk at the entrance to the immense cemetery-avenue of Eyoub. +There without a word I left her among the shattered catafalques, for I +was weary; but having gone some distance, turned back, thinking that I +might take some more raisins from the bag; and after getting them, said +to her, shaking her little hand where she sat under the roof-shadow on a +stone: + +'Good-night, Clodagh.' + +She did not answer promptly: and her answer, to my surprise, was a +protest against her name: for a rather sulky, yet gentle, voice came +from the darkness, saying: + +'I am _not_ a Poisoner!' + +'Well,' said I, 'all right: tell me whatever you like that I should call +you, and henceforth I will call you that.' + +'Call me Eve,' says she. + +'Well, no,' said I, 'not Eve, anything but that: for _my_ name is Adam, +and if I called you Eve, that would be simply absurd, and we do not want +to be ridiculous in each other's eyes. But I will call you anything else +that you like.' + +'Call me Leda,' says she. + +'And why Leda?' said I. + +'Because Leda sounds something like Clodagh,' says she, 'and you are +al-leady in the habit of calling me Clodagh; and I saw the name Leda in +a book, and liked it: but Clodagh is most hollible, most bitterly +hollible!' + +'Well, then,' said I, 'Leda it shall be, and I shan't forget, for I like +it, too, and it suits you, and you ought to have a name beginning with +an "L." Good-night, my dear, sleep well, and dream, dream.' + +'And to you, too, my God give dleams of peace and pleasantness,' says +she; and I went. + +And it was only when I had lain myself upon leaves for my bed, my head +on my caftan, a rill for my lullaby, and two stars, which alone I could +see out of the heavenful, for my watch-lights; and only when my eyes +were already closed toward slumber, that a sudden strong thought pierced +and woke me: for I remembered that Leda was the name of a Greek woman +who had borne twins. In fact, I should not be surprised if this Greek +word Leda is the same word etymologically as the Hebrew Eve, for I have +heard of _v's_, and _b's_, and _d's_ interchanging about in this way, +and if _Di_, meaning God, or Light, and _Bi_, meaning Life, and Io_v_e, +and Iho_v_ah and Go_d_, meaning much the same, are all one, that would +be nothing astonishing to me, as wi_d_ow, and veu_v_e, are one: and +where it says, 'truly the Light is Good (_tob, b_on),' this is as if it +said, 'truly the Di is Di.' Such, at any rate, is the fatality that +attends me, even in the smallest things: for this Western Eve, or Greek +Leda, had twins. + + * * * * * + +Well, the next morning we crossed by the ruins of old Greek Phanar +across the triple Stamboul-wall, which still showed its deep-ivied +portal, and made our way, not without climbing, along the Golden Horn to +the foot of the Old Seraglio, where I soon found signs of the railway. +And that minute commenced our journey across Turkey, Bulgaria, Servia, +Bosnia, Croatia, to Trieste, occupying no day or two as in old times, +but four months, a long-drawn nightmare, though a nightmare of rich +happiness, if one may say so, leaving on the memory a vague vast +impression of monstrous ravines, ever-succeeding profundities, heights +and greatnesses, jungles strange as some moon-struck poet's fantasy, +everlasting glooms, and a sound of mighty unseen rivers, cataracts, and +slow cumbered rills whose bulrushes never see the sun, with largesse +everywhere, secrecies, profusions, the unimaginable, the unspeakable, a +savagery most lush and fierce and gaudy, and vales of Arcadie, and +remote mountain-peaks, and tarns shy as old-buried treasure, and +glaciers, and we two human folk pretty small and drowned and lost in +all that amplitude, yet moving always through it. + +We followed the lines that first day till we came to a steam train, and +I found the engine fairly good, and everything necessary to move it at +my hand: but the metals in such a condition of twisted, broken, vaulted, +and buried confusion, due to the earthquake, that, having run some +hundreds of yards to examine them, I saw that nothing could be done in +that way. At first this threw me into a condition like despair, for what +we were to do I did not know: but after persevering on foot for four +days along the deep-rusted track, which is of that large-gauge type +peculiar to Eastern Europe, I began to see that there were considerable +sound stretches, and took heart. + +I had with me land-charts and compass, but nothing for taking +altitude-observations: for the _Speranza_ instruments, except one +compass, had all been broken-up by her shock. However, on getting to the +town of Silivri, about thirty miles from our start, I saw in the ruins +of a half-standing bazaar-shop a number of brass objects, and there +found several good sextants, quadrants, and theodolites. Two mornings +later, we came upon an engine in mid-country, with coals in it, and a +stream near; I had a goat-skin of almond-oil in the bag, and found the +machinery serviceable after an hour's careful inspection, having +examined the boiler with a candle through the manhole, and removed the +autoclaves of the heaters. All was red with rust, and the shaft of the +connecting-rod in particular seemed so frail, that at one moment I was +very dubious: I decided, however, and, except for a slight leakage at +the tubulure which led the steam to the valve-chest, all went very well; +at a pressure never exceeding three-and-a-half atmospheres, we travelled +nearly a hundred and twenty miles before being stopped by a head-to-head +block on the line, when we had to abandon our engine; we then continued +another seven miles a-foot, I all the time mourning my motor, which I +had had to leave at Imbros, and hoping at every townlet to find a whole +one, but in vain. + + * * * * * + +It was wonderful to see the villages and towns going back to the earth, +already invaded by vegetation, and hardly any longer breaking the +continuity of pure Nature, the town now as much the country as the +country, and that which is not-Man becoming all in all with a certain +_furore_ of vigour. A whole day in the southern gorges of the Balkan +Mountains the slow train went tearing its way through many a mile of +bind-weed tendrils, a continuous curtain, flaming with large flowers, +but sombre as the falling shades of night, rather resembling jungles of +Ceylon and the Filipinas; and she, that day, lying in the single car +behind, where I had made her a little yatag-bed from Tatar Bazardjik, +continually played the kittur, barely touching the strings, and crooning +low, low, in her rich contralto, eternally the same air, over and over +again, crooning, crooning, some melancholy tune of her own dreaming, +just audible to me through the slow-travailing monotony of the engine; +till I was drunken with so sweet a woe, my God, a woe that was sweet as +life, and a dolour that lulled like nepenthe, and a grief that soothed +like kisses, so sweet, so sweet, that all that world of wood and gloom +lost locality and realness for me, and became nothing but a charmed and +pensive Heaven for her to moan and lullaby in; and from between my +fingers streamed plenteous tears that day, and all that I could keep on +mourning was 'O Leda, O Leda, O Leda,' till my heart was near to break. + +The feed-pump eccentric-shaft of this engine, which was very poor and +flaky, suddenly gave out about five in the afternoon, and I had to stop +in a hurry, and that sweet invisible mechanism which had crooned and +crooned about my ears in the air, and followed me whithersoever I went, +stopped too. Down she jumped, calling out: + +'Well, I had a plesentiment that something would happen, and I am so +glad, for I was tired!' + +Seeing that nothing could be done with the feed-water pump, I got down, +took the bag, and parting before us the continuous screen, we went +pioneering to the left between a rock-cleft, stepping over large stones +that looked black with moss-growths, no sky, but hundreds of feet of +impenetrable leafage overhead, and everywhere the dew-dabbled profusion +of dim ferneries, dishevelled maidenhairs mixed with a large-leaved +mimosa, wild vine, white briony, and a smell of cedar, and a soft +rushing of perpetual waters that charmed the gloaming. The way led +slightly upwards three hundred feet, and presently, after some windings, +and the climbing of five huge steps almost regular, yet obviously +natural, the gorge opened in a roundish space, fifty feet across, with +far overhanging edges seven hundred feet high; and there, behind a +curtain which fell from above, its tendrils defined and straight like a +Japanese bead-hanging, we spread the store of foods, I opening the +wines, fruits, vegetables and meats, she arranging them in order with +the gold plate, and lighting both the spirit-lamp and the lantern: for +here it was quite dark. Near us behind the curtain of tendrils was a +small green cave in the rock, and at its mouth a pool two yards wide, a +black and limpid water that leisurely wheeled, discharging a little +rivulet from the cave: and in it I saw three owl-eyed fish, a finger +long, loiter, and spur themselves, and gaze. Leda, who cannot be still +in tongue or limb, chattered in her glib baby manner as we ate, and +then, after smoking a cigarette, said that she would go and 'lun,' and +went, and left me darkling, for she is the sun and the moon and the host +of the stars, I occupying myself that night in making a calendar at the +end of this book in which I have written, for my almanack and many +things that I prized were lost with the palace--making a calendar, +counting the days in my head--but counting them across my thoughts of +her. + +She came again to tell me good-night, and then went down to the train to +sleep; and I put out the lantern, and stooped within the cave, and made +my simple couch beside the little rivulet, and slept. + +But a fitful sleep, and soon again I woke; and a long time I lay so, +gradually becoming conscious of a slow dripping at one spot in the +cave: for at a minute's interval it darkly splashed, regularly, very +deliberately; and it seemed to grow always louder and sadder, and the +splash at first was 'Leesha,' but it became 'Leda' to my ears, and it +sobbed her name, and I pitied myself, so sad was I. And when I could no +longer bear the anguished melancholy of its spasm and its sobbing, I +arose and went softly, softly, lest she should hear in that sounding +silence of the hushed and darksome night, going more slow, more soft, as +I went nearer, a sob in my throat, my feet leading me to her, till I +touched the carriage. And against it a long time I leant my clammy brow, +a sob aching in my poor throat, and she all mixed up in my head with the +suspended hushed night, and with the elfin things in the air that made +the silence so musically a-sound to the vacant ear-drum, and with the +dripping splash in the cave. And softly I turned the door-handle, and +heard her breathe in Asleep, her head near me; and I touched her hair +with my lips, and close to her ear I said--for I heard her breathe as if +in sleep--'Little Leda, I have come to you, for I could not help it, +Leda: and oh, my heart is full of the love of you, for you are mine, and +I am yours: and to live with you, till we die, and after we are dead to +be near you still, Leda, with my broken heart near your heart, little +Leda--' + +I must have sobbed, I think; for as I spoke close at her ears, with +passionately dying eyes of love, I was startled by an irregularity in +her breathing; and with cautious hurry I shut the door, and quite back +to the cave I stole in haste. + +And the next morning when we met I thought--but am not now sure--that +she smiled singularly: I thought so. She may, she _may_, have heard--But +I cannot tell. + + * * * * * + +Twice I was obliged to abandon engines on account of forest-tree +obstructions right across the line, which, do what I might, I could not +move, and these were the two bitterest incidents of the pilgrimage; and +at least thirty times I changed from engine to engine, when other trains +blocked. As for the extent of the earthquake, it is pretty certain that +it was universal over the Peninsula, and at many points exhibited +extreme violence, for up to the time that we entered upon Servian +territory, we occasionally came upon stretches of the lines so +dislocated, that it was impossible to proceed upon them, and during the +whole course I never saw one intact house or castle; four times, where +the way was of a nature to permit of it, I left the imbedded metals and +made the engine travel the ground till I came upon other metals, when I +always succeeded in driving it upon them. It was all very leisurely, for +not everywhere, nor every day, could I get a nautical observation, and +having at all times to go at low pressures for fear of tube and boiler +weakness, crawling through tunnels, and stopping when total darkness +came on, we did not go fast, nor much cared to. Once, moreover, for +three days, and once for four, we were overtaken by hurricanes of such +vast inclemency, that no thought of travelling entered our heads, our +only care being to hide our poor cowering bodies as deeply and darkly as +possible. Once I passed through a city (Adrianople) doubly devastated, +once by the hellish arson of my own hand, and once by the earthquake: +and I made haste to leave that place behind me. + +Finally, three months and twenty-seven days from the date of the +earthquake, having traversed only 900 odd English miles, I let go in the +Venice lagoon, in the early morning of the 10th September, the lateen +sail and stone anchor of a Maltese _speronare_, which I had found, and +partially cleaned, at Trieste; and thence I passed up the Canalazzo in a +gondola. For I said to Leda: 'In Venice will I pitch my Patriarch tent.' + +But to will and to do are not the same thing, and still further +Westward was I driven. For the stagnant upper canals of this place are +now mere miasmas of pestilence: and within two days I was rolling with +fever in the Old Procurazie Palace, she standing in pale wonderment at +my bed-side, sickness quite a novel thing to her: and, indeed, this was +my first serious illness since my twentieth year or thereabouts, when I +had over-worked my brain, and went a voyage to Constantinople. I could +not move from bed for some weeks, but happily did not lose my senses, +and she brought me the whole pharmacopoeia from the shops, from which to +choose my medicines. I guessed the cause of this illness, though not a +sign of it came near her, and as soon as my trembling knees could bear +me, I again set out--always Westward--enjoying now a certain luxury in +travelling compared with that Turkish difficulty, for here were no +twisted metals, more and better engines, in the cities as many good +petrol motors as I chose, and Nature markedly less savage. + +I do not know why I did not stop at Verona or Brescia, or some other +neighbourhood of the Italian lakes, since I was fond of water: but I +had, I think, the thought in my head to return to Vauclaire in France, +where I had lived, and there live: for I thought that she might like +those old monks. At all events, we did not remain long in any place till +we came to Turin, where we spent nine days, she in the house opposite +mine, and after that, at her own suggestion, went on still, passing by +train into the valley of the Isre, and then into that of the Western +Rhone, till we came to the old town of Geneva among some very great +mountains peaked with snow, the town seated at the head of a long lake +which the earth has made in the shape of the crescent moon, and like the +moon it is a thing of much beauty and many moods, suggesting a creature +under the spell of charms and magics. However, with this idea of +Vauclaire still in my head, we left Geneva in the motor which had +brought us at four in the afternoon of the 17th May, I intending to +reach the town called Bourg that night about eight, and there sleep, so +to go on to Lyons the next morning by train, and so, by the Bordeaux +route, make Vauclaire. But by some chance for which I cannot to this +hour account (unless the rain was the cause), I missed the chart-road, +which should have been fairly level, and found myself on mountain +tracks, unconscious of my whereabouts, while darkness fell, and a +windless downpour that had a certain sullen venom in its superabundance +drenched us. I stopped several times, looking about for chteau, +chalet, or village, but none did I see, though I twice came upon railway +lines; and not till midnight did we run down a rather steep pass upon +the shore of a lake, which, from its apparent vastness in the moonless +obscurity, I could only suppose to be the Lake of Geneva once again. +About two hundred yards to the left we saw through the rain a large +pile, apparently risen straight out of the lake, looking ghostly livid, +for it was of white stone, not high, but an old thing of complicated +white little turrets roofed with dark red candle extinguishers, and +oddities of Gothic nooks, window slits, and outline, very like a +fanciful picture. Round to this we went, drowned as rats, Leda sighing +and bedraggled, and found a narrow spit of low land projecting into the +lake, where we left the car, walked forward with the bag, crossed a +small wooden drawbridge, and came upon a rocky island with a number of +thick-foliaged trees about the castle. We quickly found a small open +portal, and went throughout the place, quite gay at the shelter, +everywhere lighting candles which we found in iron sconces in the rather +queer apartments: so that, as the castle is far seen from the shores of +the lake, it would have appeared to one looking thence a place suddenly +possessed and haunted. We found beds, and slept: and the next day it +turned out to be the antique Castle of Chillon, where we remained five +long and happy months, till again, again, Fate overtook us. + + * * * * * + +The morning after our coming, we had breakfast--our last meal +together--on the first floor in a pentagonal room approached from a +lower level by three little steps. In it is a ponderous oak table +pierced with a multitude of worm eaten tunnels, also three mighty high +backed chairs, an old oak desk covered still with papers, arras on the +walls, and three dark religious oil paintings, and a grandfathers clock: +it is at about the middle of the chteau, and contains two small, but +deep, three faced oriels, in each face four compartments with white +stone shafts between, these looking south upon shrubs and the rocky edge +of the island, then upon the deep blue lake, then upon another tiny +island containing four trees in a jungle of flowers, then upon the shore +of the lake interrupted by the mouths of a river which turned out to be +the Rhone, then upon a white town on the slopes which turned out to be +Villeneuve, then upon the great mountains back of Bouveret and St. +Gingolph, all having the surprised air of a resurrection just +completed, everything new washed in dyes of azure, ultramarine, indigo, +snow, emerald, that fresh morning: so that one had to call it the best +and holiest place in the world. These five old room walls, and oak +floor, and two oriels, became specially mine, though it was really +common ground to us both, and there I would do many little things. The +papers on the desk told that it had been the _bureau_ of one R.E. Gaud, +'_Grand Bailli_,' whose residence the place no doubt had been. + +She asked me while eating that morning to stay here, and I said that I +would see, though with misgiving: so together we went all about the +house, and finding it unexpectedly spacious, I consented to stop. At +both ends are suites, mostly small rooms, infinitely quaint and cosy, +furnished with heavy Henri Quatre furniture and bed draperies; and there +are separate, and as it were secret, spiral stairs for exit to each: so +we decided that she should have the suite overlooking the length of the +lake, the mouths of the Rhone, Bouveret and Villeneuve; and I should +have that overlooking the spit of land behind and the little drawbridge, +shore cliffs, and elmwood which comes down to the shore, giving at one +point a glimpse of the diminutive hamlet of Chillon; and, that decided, +I took her hand in mine, and I said: + +'Well, then, here we stay, both under the same roof--for the first time. +Leda, I will not explain why to you, but it is dangerous, so much so +that it _may_ mean the death of one or other of us: deadly, deadly +dangerous, my poor girl. You do not understand, but that is the fact, +believe me, for I know it very well, and I would not tell you false. +Well, then, you will easily comprehend, that this being so, you must +never on any account come near my part of the house, nor will I come +near yours. Lately we have been very much together, but then we have +been active, full of purpose and occupation: here we shall be nothing of +the kind, I can see. You do not understand at all--but things are so. We +must live perfectly separate lives, then. You are nothing to me, really, +nor I to you, only we live on the same earth, which is nothing at all--a +mere chance. Your own food, clothes, and everything that you want, you +will procure for yourself: it is perfectly easy: the shores are crowded +with mansions, castles, towns and villages; and I will do the same for +myself. The motor down there I set apart for your private use: if I want +another, I will get one; and to-day I will set about looking you up a +boat and fishing tackle, and cut a cross on the bow of yours, so that +you may know yours, and never use mine. All this is very necessary: you +cannot dream how much: but I know how much. Do not run any risks in +climbing, now, or with the motor, or in the boat ... little Leda ...' + +I saw her under-lip push, and I turned away in haste, for I did not care +whether she cried or not. In that long voyage, and in my illness at +Venice, she had become too near and dear to me, my tender love, my dear +darling soul; and I said in my heart: 'I will be a decent being: I will +turn out trumps.' + + * * * * * + +Under this castle is a sort of dungeon, not narrow, nor very dark, in +which are seven stout dark-grey pillars, and an eighth, half-built into +the wall; and one of them which has an iron ring, as well as the ground +around it, is all worn away by some prisoner or prisoners once chained +there; and in the pillar the word 'Byron' engraved. This made me +remember that a poet of that name had written something about this +place, and two days afterwards I actually came upon three volumes of the +poet in a room containing a great number of books, many of them English, +near the Grand Bailli's _bureau_: and in one I read the poem, which is +called 'The Prisoner of Chillon.' I found it very affecting, and the +description good, only I saw no seven rings, and where he speaks of the +'pale and livid light,' he should speak rather of the dun and brownish +gloom, for the word 'light' disconcerts the fancy, and of either pallor +or blue there is there no sign. However, I was so struck by the horror +of man's cruelty to man, as depicted in this poem, that I determined +that she should see it; went up straight to her rooms with the book, +and, she being away, ferreted among her things to see what she was +doing, finding all very neat, except in one room where were a number of +prints called _La Mode_, and _dbris_ of snipped cloth, and medley. +When, after two hours, she came in, and I suddenly presented myself, +'Oh!' she let slip, and then fell to cooing her laugh; and I took her +down through a big room stacked with every kind of rifle, with +revolvers, cartridges, powder, swords, bayonets--evidently some official +or cantonal magazine--and then showed her the worn stone in the dungeon, +the ring, the narrow deep slits in the wall, and I told the tale of +cruelty, while the splashing of the lake upon the rock outside was heard +with a strange and tragic sound, and her mobile face was all one sorrow. + +'How cruel they must have been!' cries she with tremulous lip, her face +at the same time reddened with indignation. + +'They were mere beastly monsters,' said I: 'it is nothing surprising if +monsters were cruel.' + +And in the short time while I said that, she was looking up with a +new-born smile. + +'Some others came and set the plisoner flee!' cries she. + +'Yes,' said I, 'they did, but--' + +'That was good of them,' says she. + +'Yes,' said I, 'that was all right, so far as it went.' + +'And it was a time when men had al-leady become cluel,' says she: 'if +those who set him flee were so good when all the lest were cluel, what +would they have been at a time when all the lest were kind? They would +have been just like Angels....!' + + * * * * * + +At this place fishing, and long rambles, were the order of the day, both +for her and for me, especially fishing, though a week rarely passed +which did not find me at Bouveret, St. Gingolph, Yvoire, Messery, Nyon, +Ouchy, Vevay, Montreux, Geneva, or one of the two dozen villages, +townlets, or towns, that crowd the shores, all very pretty places, each +with its charm, and mostly I went on foot, though the railway runs right +round the forty odd miles of the lake's length. One noon-day I was +walking through the main-street of Vevay going on to the Cully-road when +I had a fearful shock, for in a shop just in front of me to the right I +heard a sound--an unmistakable indication of life--as of clattering +metals shaken together. My heart leapt into my mouth, I was conscious of +becoming bloodlessly pale, and on tip-toe of exquisite caution I stole +up to the open door--peeped in--and it was she standing on the counter +of a jeweller's shop, her back turned to me, with head bent low over a +tray of jewels in her hands, which she was rummaging for something. I +went _'Hoh!'_ for I could not help it, and all that day, till sunset, we +were very dear friends, for I could not part from her, we walking +together by vor-alpen, wood, and shore all the way to Ouchy, she just +like a creature crazy that day with the bliss of living, rolling in +grasses and perilous flowery declines, stamping her foot defiantly at +me, arrogant queen that she is, and then running like mad for me to +catch her, with laughter, _abandon_, carolling railleries, and the +levity of the wild ass's colt on the hills, entangling her loose-flung +hair with Bacchic tendril and blossom, and drinking, in the passage +through Cully, more wine, I thought, than was good: and the flaming +darts of lightning that shot and shocked me that day, and the inner +secret gleams and revelations of Beauty which I had, and the pangs of +white-hot honey that tortured my soul and body, and were too much for +me, and made me sick, oh Heaven, what tongue could express all that deep +world of things? And at Ouchy with a backward wave of my arm I silently +motioned her from me, for I was dumb, and weak, and I left her there: +and all that long night her power was upon me, for she is stronger than +gravitation, which may be evaded, and than all the forces of life +combined, and the sun and the moon and the earth are nothing compared +with her; and when she was gone from me I was like a fish in the air, or +like a bird in the deep, for she is my element of life, made for me to +breathe in, and I drown without her: so that for many hours I lay on +that grassy hill leading to the burial-ground outside Ouchy that night, +like a man sore wounded, biting the grass. + +What made things worse for me was her adoption of European clothes since +coming to this place: I believe that, in her adroit way, she herself +made some of her dresses, for one day I saw in her apartments a number +of coloured fashion-plates, with a confusion like dress-making; or she +may have been only modifying finished things from the shops, for her +Western dressing is not quite like what I remember of the modern female +style, but is really, I should say, quite her own, rather resembling the +Greek, or the eighteenth century. At any rate, the airs and graces are +as natural to her as feathers to parrots; and she has changes like the +moon; never twice the same, and always transcending her last phase and +revelation: for I could not have conceived of anyone in whom _taste_ was +a faculty so separate as in her, so positive and salient, like smelling +or sight--more like _smelling_: for it is the faculty, half Reason, half +Imagination, by which she fore-scents precisely what will suit +exquisitely with what; so that every time I saw her, I received the +impression of a perfectly novel, completely bewitching, work of Art: the +special quality of works of Art being to produce the momentary +conviction that anything else whatever could not possibly be so good. + +Occasionally, from my window I would see her in the wood beyond the +drawbridge, cool and white in green shade, with her Bible probably, +training her skirt like a court-lady, and looking much taller than +before. I believe that this new dressing produced a separation between +us more complete than it might have been; and especially after that day +between Vevay and Ouchy I was very careful not to meet her. The more I +saw that she bejewelled herself, powdered herself, embalmed herself like +sachets of sweet scents, chapleted her Greek-dressed head with gold +fillets, the more I shunned her. Myself, somehow, had now resumed +European dress, and, ah me, I was greatly changed, greatly changed, God +knows, from the portly inflated monarch-creature that strutted and +groaned four years previously in the palace at Imbros: so that my manner +of life and thought might once more now have been called modern and +Western. + +All the more was my sense of responsibility awful: and from day to day +it seemed to intensify. An arguing Voice never ceased to remonstrate +within me, nor left me peace, and the curse of unborn hosts appeared to +menace me. To strengthen my fixity I would often overwhelm myself, and +her, with muttered opprobriums, calling myself 'convict,' her +'lady-bird'; asking what manner of man was I that I should dare so great +a thing; and as for her, what was she to be the Mother of a world?--a +versatile butterfly with a woman's brow! And continually now in my +fiercer moods I was meditating either my death--or hers. + +Ah, but the butterfly did not let me forget her brow! To the south-west +of Villeneuve, between the forest and the river is a well-grown gentian +field, and returning from round St. Gingolph to the Chteau one day in +the third month after an absence of three days, I saw, as I turned a +corner in the descent of the mountain, some object floating in the air +above the field. Never was I more startled, and, above all, perplexed: +for, beside the object soaring there like a great butterfly, I could see +nothing to account for it. It was not long, however, before I came to +the conclusion that she has re-invented _the kite_--for she had almost +certainly never seen one--and I presently sighted her holding the string +in the midfield. Her invention resembles the kind called 'swallow-tail' +of old. + + * * * * * + +But mostly it was on the lake that I saw her, for there we chiefly +lived, and occasionally there were guilty approaches and _rencontres_, +she in her boat, I in mine, both being slight clinker-built Montreux +pleasure-boats, which I had spent some days in overhauling and +varnishing, mine with jib, fore-and-aft mainsail, and spanker, hers +rather smaller, one-masted, with an easy-running lug-sail. It was no +uncommon thing for me to sail quite to Geneva, and come back from a +seven-days' cruise with my soul filled and consoled with the lake and +all its many moods of bright and darksome, serene and pensive, dolorous +and despairing and tragic, at morning, at noon, at sunset, at midnight, +a panorama that never for an instant ceased to unroll its +transformations, I sometimes climbing the mountains as high as the +goat-herd region of hoch-alpen, once sleeping there. And once I was made +very ill by a two-weeks' horror which I had: for she disappeared in her +skiff, I being at the Chteau, and she did not come back; and while she +was away there was a tempest that turned the lake into an angry ocean, +and, ah my good God, she did not come. At last, half-crazy at the vacant +days of misery which went by and by, and she did not come, I set out +upon a wild-goose quest, of her--of all the hopeless things the most +hopeless, for the world is great--and I sought and did not find her; and +after three days I turned back, recognising that I was mad to search the +infinite, and coming near the Chteau, I saw her wave her handkerchief +from the island-edge, for she divined that I had gone to seek her, and +she was watching for me: and when I took her hand, what did she say to +me, the Biblical simpleton?--'Oh you of little Faith!' says she. And she +had adventures to lisp, with all the _r_'s liquefied into _l_'s, and I +was with her all that day again. + +Once a month perhaps she would knock at my outermost door, which I +mostly kept locked when at home, bringing me a sumptuously-dressed, +highly-spiced red trout or grayling, which I had not the heart to +refuse, and exquisitely she does them, all hot and spiced, applying +apparently to their preparation the taste which she applies to dress; +and her extraordinary luck in angling did not fail to supply her with +the finest specimens, though, for that matter, this lake, with its old +fish-hatcheries and fish-ladders, is not miserly in that way, swarming +now with the best lake trout, river trout, red trout, and with salmon, +of which last I have brought in one with the landing-net of, I should +say, thirty-five to forty pounds. As the bottom goes off very rapidly +from the two islands to a depth of eight to nine hundred feet, we did +not long confine ourselves to bottom-fishing, but gradually advanced to +every variety of manoeuvre, doing middle-water spinning with +three-triangle flights and sliding lip-hook for jack and trout, trailing +with the sail for salmon, live-baiting with the float for pike, daping +with blue-bottles, casting with artificial flies, and I could not say in +which she became the most carelessly adept, for all soon seemed as old +and natural to her as an occupation learned from birth. + + * * * * * + +On the 21st October I attained my forty-sixth birthday in excellent +health: a day destined to end for me in bloodshed and tragedy, alas. I +forget now what circumstance had caused me to mention the date long +beforehand in, I think, Venice, not dreaming that she would keep any +count of it, nor was I even sure that my calendar was not faulty by a +day. But at ten in the morning of what I called the 21st, descending by +my private spiral in flannels with some trout and par bait, and +tackle--I met her coming up, my God, though she had no earthly right to +be there. With her cooing murmur of a laugh, yet pale, pale, and with a +most guilty look, she presented me a large bouquet of wild flowers. + +I was at once thrown into a state of great agitation. She was dressed in +rather a frippery of _mousseline de soie_, all cream-laced, with +wide-hanging short sleeves, a large diamond at the low open neck, the +ivory-brown skin there contrasting with the powdered bluish-white of her +face, where, however, the freckles were not quite whited out; on her +feet little pink satin slippers, without any stockings--a divinely pale +pink; and well back on her hair a plain thin circlet of gold; and she +smelled like heaven, God knows. + +I could not speak. She broke an awkward silence, saying, very faint and +pallid: + +'It is the day!' + +'I--perhaps--' I said, or some incoherency like that. + +I saw the touch of enthusiasm which she had summoned up quenched by my +manner. + +'I have not done long again?' she asked, looking down, breaking another +silence. + +'No, no, oh no,' said I hurriedly: 'not done wrong again. Only, I could +not suppose that you would count up the days. You are ... considerate. +Perhaps--but--' + +'Tell Leda?' + +'Perhaps.... I was going to say ... you might come fishing with me....' + +'O luck!' she went softly. + +I was pierced by a sense of my base cowardice, my incredible weakness: +but I could not at all help it. + +I took the flowers, and we went down to the south side, where my boat +lay; I threw out some of the fish from the well; arranged the tackle, +and then the stern cushions for her; got up the sails; and out we went, +she steering, I in the bows, with every possible inch of space between +us, receiving delicious intermittent whiffs from her of ambergris, +frangipane, or some blending of perfumes, the morning being bright and +hot, with very little breeze on the water, which looked mottled, like +colourless water imperfectly mixed with indigo-wash, we making little +headway; so it was some time before I moved nearer her to get the par +for fixing on the three-triangle flight, for I was going to trail for +salmon or large lake-trout; and during all that time we spoke not a word +together. + +Afterwards I said: + +'Who told you that flowers are proper to birthdays? or that birthdays +are of any importance?' + +'I suppose that nothing can happen so important as birth,' says she: +'and perfumes must be ploper to birth, because the wise men blought +spices to the young Jesus.' + +This _navet_ was the cause of my immediate recovery: for to laugh is +to be saved: and I laughed right out, saying: + +'But you read the Bible too much! all your notions are biblical. You +should read the quite modern books.' + +'I have tlied,' says she: 'but I cannot lead them long, nor often. The +whole world seems to have got so collupted. It makes me shudder.' + +'Ah, well now, you see, you quite come round to my point of view,' said +I. + +'Yes, and no,' says she: 'they had got so _spoiled_, that is all. +Everlybody seems to have become quite dull-witted--the plainest tluths +they could not see. I can imagine that those faculties which aided them +in their stlain to become lich themselves, and make the lest more poor, +must have been gleatly sharpened, while all the other faculties +withered: as I can imagine a person with one eye seeing double thlough +it, and quite blind on the other side.' + +'Ah,' said I, 'I do not think they even _wanted_ to see on the other +side. There were some few tolerably good and clear-sighted ones among +them, you know: and these all agreed in pointing out how, by changing +one or two of their old man-in-the-moon Bedlam arrangements, they could +greatly better themselves: but they heard with listless ears: I don't +know that they ever made any considerable effort. For they had become +more or less unconscious of their misery, so miserable were they: like +the man in Byron's "Prisoner of Chillon," who, when his deliverers came, +was quite indifferent, for he says: + + "It was at length the same to me + Fettered or fetterless to be: + I had learned to love Despair."' + +'Oh my God,' she went, covering her face a moment, 'how dleadful! And +it is tlue, it seems tlue:--they had learned to love Despair, to be even +ploud of Despair. Yet all the time, I feel _sure_ flom what I have lead, +flom what I scent, that the individual man was stluggling to see, to +live light, but without power, like one's leg when it is asleep: that is +so pletty of them all! that they meant well--everly one. But they were +too tloubled and sad, too awfully burdened: they had no chance at all. +Such a queer, unnatulal feeling it gives me to lead of all that world: I +can't desclibe it; all their motives seem so tainted, their life so +lopsided. Tluely, the whole head was sick, and the whole heart faint.' + +'Quite so,' said I: 'and observe that this was no new thing: in the very +beginning of the Book we read how God saw that the wickedness of man was +great on the earth, and every imagination of his heart evil....' + +'Yes,' she interrupted, 'that is tlue: but there must have been some +_cause!_ We can be quite _sure_ that it was not natulal, because you and +I are men, and our hearts are not evil.' + +This was her great argument which she always trotted out, because she +found that I had usually no answer to give to it. But this time I said: + +'Our hearts not evil? Say yours: but as to mine you know nothing, +Leda.' + +The semicircles under her eyes had that morning, as often, a certain +moist, heavy, pensive and weary something, as of one fresh from a revel, +very sweet and tender: and, looking softly at me with it, she answered: + +'I know my own heart, and it is not evil: not at all: not even in the +very least: and I know yours, too.' + +'You know _mine!_' cried I, with a half-laugh of surprise. + +'Quite well,' says she. + +I was so troubled by this cool assurance, that I said not a word, but +going to her, handed her the baited flight, swivel-trace, and line, +which she paid out; then I got back again almost into the bows. + +After a ten-minutes I spoke again: + +'So this is news to me: you know all about my heart. Well, come, tell me +what is in it!' + +Now she was silent, pretending to be busy with the trail, till she said, +speaking with low-bent face, and a voice that I could only just hear: + +'I will tell you what is in it: in it is a lebellion which you think +good, but is not good. If a stleam will just flow, neither tlying to +climb upward, nor over-flowing its banks, but lunning modestly in its +fated channel just wherever it is led, then it will finally leach the +sea--the mighty ocean--and lose itself in fulness.' + +'Ah,' said I, 'but that counsel is not new. It is what the philosophers +used to call "yielding to Destiny," and "following Nature." And Destiny +and Nature, I give you my word, often led mankind quite wrong--' + +'Or _seemed_ to,' says she--'for a time: as when a stleam flows north a +little, and the sea is to the south: but it is bound for the sea all the +time, and will turn again. Destiny never could, and cannot yet, be +judged, for it is not finished: and our lace should follow blindly +whither it points, sure that thlough many curves it leads the world to +our God.' + +'Our God indeed!' I cried, getting very excited: 'girl! you talk +speciously, but falsely! whence have you these thoughts in that head of +yours? Girl! you talk of "our race"! But there are only two of us left? +Are you talking _at_ me, Leda? Do not _I_ follow Destiny?' + +'You?' she sighed, with down-bent face: 'ah, poor me!' + +'What should I do if I followed it?' said I, with a crazy curiosity. + +Her face hung lower, paler, in trouble: and she said: + +'You would come now and sit near me here. You would not be there where +you are. You would be always and for ever near me....' + +My good God! I felt my face redden. + +'Oh, I could not _tell_ you...!' I cried: 'you talk the most disastrous...! +you lack all responsibility...! Never, never...!' + +Her face now was covered with her left hand, her right on the tiller: +and bitingly she said, with a touch of venom: + +'I could _make_ you come--_now_, if I chose: but I will not: I will wait +upon my God....' + +'_Make_ me!' I cried: 'Leda! How make me?' + +'I could cly before you, as I cly often and often ... in seclet ... for +my childlen....' + +'_You_ cry in secret? This is news--' + +'Yes, yes, I cly. Is not the burden of the world heavy upon me, too? and +the work I have to do _vely, vely_ gleat? And often and often I cly in +seclet, thinking of it: and I could cly now if I chose, for you love +your little girl so much, that you could not lesist me one minute....' + +Now I saw the push and tortion and trembling of her poor little +under-lip, boding tears: and at once a flame was in me which was +altogether beyond control; and crying out: 'why, my poor dear,' I found +myself in the act of rushing through the staggering boat to take her to +me. + +Mid-way, however, I was saved: a whisper, intense as lightning, arrested +me: 'Forward is no escape, nor backward, but _sideward_ there may be a +way!' And at a sudden impulse, before I knew what I was doing, I was in +the water swimming. + +The smaller of the islands was two hundred yards away, and thither I +swam, rested some minutes, and thence to the Castle. I did not once look +behind me. + + * * * * * + +Well, from 11 A.M. till five in the afternoon, I thought it all out, +lying in the damp flannels on my face on the sofa in the recess beside +my bed, where it was quite dark behind the tattered piece of arras: and +what things I suffered that day, and what deeps I sounded, and what +prayers I prayed, God knows. What infinitely complicated the awful +problem was this thought in my head: that to kill her would be far more +merciful to her than to leave her alone, having killed myself: and, +Heaven knows, it was for her alone that I thought, not at all caring for +myself. To kill her was better: but to kill her with my own hands--that +was too hard to expect of a poor devil like me, a poor common son of +Adam, after all, and never any sublime self-immolator, as two or three +of them were. And hours I lay there with brows convulsed in an agony, +groaning only those words: 'To kill her! to kill her!' thinking +sometimes that I should be merciful to myself too, and die, and let her +live, and not care, since, after my death, I would not see her suffer, +for the dead know not anything: and to expect me to kill her with my own +hand was a little too much. Yet that one or other of us must die was +perfectly certain, for I knew that I was just on the brink of failing in +my oath, and matters here had reached an obvious crisis: unless we could +make up our minds to part...? putting the width of the earth between +us? That conception occurred to me: and in the turmoil of my thoughts it +seemed a possibility. Finally, about 5 P.M., I resolved upon something: +and first I leapt up, went down and across the house into the arsenal, +chose a small revolver, fitted it with cartridge, took it up-stairs, +lubricated it with lamp-oil, went down and out across the drawbridge, +walked two miles beyond the village, shot the revolver at a tree, found +its action accurate, and started back. When I came to the Castle, I +walked along the island to the outer end, and looked up: there were her +pretty cream Valenciennes, put up by herself, waving inward before the +light lake-breeze at one open oriel; and I knew that she was in the +Castle, for I felt it: and always, always, when she was within, I knew, +for I felt her with me; and always when she was away, I knew, I felt, +for the air had a dreadful drought, and a barrenness, in it. And I +looked up for a time to see if she would come to the window, and then I +called, and she appeared. And I said to her: 'Come down here.' + + * * * * * + +Just here there is a little rock-path to the south, going down to the +water between rocks mixed with shrub-like little trees, three yards +long: a path, or a lane, one might call it, for at the lower end the +rocks and trees reach well over a tall man's head. There she had tied my +boat to a slender linden-trunk: and sadder now than Gethsemane that +familiar boat seemed to my eyes, for I knew very well that I should +never enter it more. I walked up and down the path, awaiting her: and +from the jacket-pocket in which lay the revolver I drew a box of Swedish +matches, from it took two matches, and broke off a bit from the plain +end of one; and the two I held between my left thumb and forefinger +joint, the phosphorus ends level and visible, the other ends invisible: +and I awaited her, pacing fast, and my brow was as stern as Azrael and +Rhadamanthus. + +She came, very pale, poor thing, and flurried, breathing fast. And +'Leda,' I said, meeting her in the middle of the lane, and going +straight to the point, 'we are to part, as you guess--for ever, as you +guess--for I see very well by your face that you guess. I, too, am very +sorry, my little child, and heavy is my heart. To leave you ... alone +... in the world ... is--death for me. But it must, ah it must, be +done.' + +Her face suddenly turned as sallow as the dead were, when the shroud was +already on, and the coffin had become a stale added piece of +room-furniture by the bed-side; but in recording that fact, I record +also this other: that, accompanying this mortal sallowness, which +painfully shewed up her poor freckles, was a steady smile, a little +turned-down: a smile of steady, of slightly disdainful--Confidence. + +She did not say anything: so I went on. + +'I have thought long,' said I, 'and I have made a plan--a plan which +cannot be effective without _your_ consent and co-operation: and the +plan is this: we go from this place together--this same night--to some +unknown spot, some town, say a hundred miles hence--by train. There I +get two motors, and I in one, and you in the other, we separate, going +different ways. We shall thus never be able, however much we may want +to, to rediscover each other in all this wide world. That is my plan.' + +She looked me in the face, smiling her smile: and the answer was not +long in coming. + +'I will go in the tlain with you,' says she with slow decisiveness: 'but +where you leave me, there I will stay, till I die; and I will patiently +wait till my God convert you, and send you back to me.' + +'That means that you refuse to do what I say?' + +'Yes,' said she, bowing the head with great dignity. + +'Well, you speak, not like a girl, Leda,' said I, 'but like a full woman +now. But still, reflect a minute.... O reflect! If you stayed where I +left you, I _should_ go back to you, and pretty soon, too: I know that I +should. Tell me, then--reflect well, and tell me--do you definitely +refuse to part with me?' + +The answer was pretty prompt, cool, and firm: + +'Yes; I lefuse.' + +I left her then, took a turn down the path, and came back. + +'Then,' said I, 'here are two matches in my grasp: be good enough to +draw one.' + +_Now_ she was hit to the heart: I saw her eyes widen to the width of +horror, with a glassy stare: she had read of the drawing of lots in the +Bible: she knew that it meant death for me, or for her. + +But she obeyed without a word, after one backward start and then a brief +hovering in decision of thumb and forefinger over my held-out hand. I +had fixed it in my mind that if she drew the shorter of the matches, +then she should die; if the longer, then I should die. + +She drew the shorter.... + + * * * * * + +This was only what I should have expected: for I knew that God loved +her, and hated me. + +But instantly upon the first shock of the enormity that I should be her +executioner, I made my resolve: to drop shot, too, at the moment after +she dropped shot, so disposing my body, that it would fall half upon +her, and half by her, so that we might be close always: and that would +not be so bad, after all. + +With a sudden movement I snatched the revolver from my pocket: she did +not move, except her white lips, which, I think, whispered: + +'_Not yet_....' + +I stood with hanging arm, forefinger on trigger, looking at her. I saw +her glance once at the weapon, and then she fixed her eyes upwards upon +my face: and now that same smile, which had disappeared, was on her lips +again, meaning confidence, meaning disdain. + +I waited for her to open her mouth to say something--to stop that +smile--that I might shoot her quick and sudden: and she would not, +knowing that I could not kill her while she was smiling; and suddenly, +all my pity and love for her changed into a strange resentment and rage +against her, for she was purposely making hard for me what I was doing +for her sake: and the bitter thought was in my mind: 'You are nothing to +me: if you want to die, you do your own killing; and I will do my own +killing.' And without one word to her, I strode away, and left her +there. + +I see now that this whole drawing of lots was nothing more than a farce: +I never could have killed her, smiling, or no smiling: for to each thing +and man is given a certain strength: and a thing cannot be stronger than +its strength, strive as it may: it is so strong, and no stronger, and +there is an end of the matter. + +I walked up to the Grand Bailli's _bureau_, a room about twenty-five +feet from the ground. By this time it was getting pretty dark, but I +could see, by peering, the face of a grandfather's-clock which I had +long since set going, and kept wound. It is on the north side of the +room, over the writing-desk opposite the oriels. It then pointed to +half-past six, and in order to fix some definite moment for the bitter +effort of the mortal act, I said: 'At Seven.' I then locked the door +which opens upon three little steps near the desk, and also the +stair-door; and I began to pace the chamber. There was not a breath of +air here, and I was hot; I seemed to be stifling, tore open my shirt at +the throat, and opened the lower half of the central mullion-space of +one oriel. Some minutes later, at twenty-five to seven, I lit two +candles on the desk, and sat to write to her, the pistol at my right +hand; but I had hardly begun, when I thought that I heard a sound at the +three-step door, which was only four feet to my left: a sound which +resembled a scraping of her slipper; I stole to the door, and crouched, +listening: but I could hear nothing further. I then returned to the +desk, and set to writing, giving her some last directions for her life, +telling her why I died, how I loved her, much better than my own soul, +begging her to love me always, and to live on to please me, but if she +_would_ die, then to be sure to die near me. Tears were pouring down my +face, when, turning, I saw her standing in a terrified pose hardly two +feet behind me. The absolute stealth which had brought and put her +there, unknown to me, was like miracle: for the ladder, whose top I saw +intruding into the open oriel, I knew well, having often seen it in a +room below, and its length was quite thirty feet, nor could its weight +be trifling: yet I had heard not one hint of its impact upon the window. +But there, at all events, she was, wan as a ghost. + +Immediately, as my consciousness realised her, my hand instinctively +went out to secure the weapon: but she darted upon it, and was an +instant before me. I flew after her to wrench it away, but she flew, +too: and before I caught her, had thrown it cleanly through two rungs of +the ladder and the window. I dashed to the window, and after a hurried +peer thought that I saw it below at the foot of a rock; away I flew to +the stair-door, wrung open the lock, and down the stairs, three at a +time, I ran to recover it. I remember being rather surprised that she +did not follow, forgetting all about the ladder. + +But with a horrid shock I was reminded of it the moment I reached the +bottom, before ever I had passed from the house: for I heard the report +of the weapon--that crack, my God! and crying out: 'Well, Lord, she has +died for me, then!' I tottered forward, and tumbled upon her, where she +lay under the incline of the ladder in her blood. + + * * * * * + +That night! what a night it was! of fingers shivering with haste, of +harum-scarum quests and searches, of groans, and piteous appeals to God. +For there were no surgical instruments, lint, anaesthetics, nor +antiseptics that I knew of in the Chteau; and though I knew of a house +in Montreux where I could find them, the distance was quite infinite, +and the time an eternity in which to leave her all alone, bleeding to +death; and, to my horror, I remembered that there was barely enough +petrol in the motor, and the store usually kept in the house exhausted. +However, I did it, leaving her there unconscious on her bed: but _how_ I +did it, and lived sane afterwards, that is another matter. + +If I had not been a medical man, she must, I think, have died: for the +bullet had broken the left fifth rib, had been deflected, and I found +it buried in the upper part of the abdominal wall. I did not go from her +bed-side: I did not sleep, though I nodded and staggered: for all things +were nothing to me, but her: and for a frightfully long time she +remained comatose. While she was still in this state I took her to a +chalet beyond Villeneuve, three miles away on the mountain-side, a +homely, but very salubrious place which I knew, imbedded in verdures, +for I was desperate at her long collapse, and had hope in the higher +air. And there after three more days, she opened her eyes, and smiled +with me. + +It was then that I said to myself: 'This is the noblest, sagest, and +also the most loveable, of the creatures whom God has made in heaven or +earth. She has won my life, and I will live.... But at least, to save +myself, I will put the broadest Ocean that there is between her and me: +for I wish to be a decent being, for the honour of my race, being the +last, and to turn out trumps ... though I do love my dear, God +knows....' + +And thus, after only fifty-five days at the chalet, were we forced still +further Westward. + + * * * * * + +I wished her to remain at Chillon, intending, myself, to start for the +Americas, whence any sudden impulse to return to her could not be +easily accomplished: but she refused, saying that she would come with me +to the coast of France: and I could not say her no. + +And at the coast, after thirteen days we arrived, three days before the +New Year, traversing France by steam, air, and petrol traction. + +We came to Havre--infirm, infirm of will that I was: for in my deep +heart was the secret, hidden away from my own upper self, that, she +being at Havre, and I at Portsmouth, we could still speak together. + +We came humming into the dark town of Havre in a four-seat motor-car +about ten in the evening of the 29th December: a raw bleak night, she, +it was clear, poor thing, bitterly cramped with cold. I had some +recollection of the place, for I had been there, and drove to the quays, +near which I stopped at the _Maire's_ large house, a palatial place +overlooking the sea, in which she slept, I occupying another near. + +The next morning I was early astir, searched in the _mairie_ for a map +of the town, where I also found a _Bottin_: I could thus locate the +Telephone Exchange. In the _Maire's_ house, which I had fixed upon to be +her home, the telephone was set up in an alcove adjoining a very stately +_salon_ Louis Quinze; and though I knew that these little dry batteries +would not be run down in twenty odd years, yet, fearing any weakness, I +broke open the box, and substituted a new one from the Company's stores +two streets away, at the same time noting the exchange-number of the +instrument. This done, I went down among the ships by the wharves, and +fixed upon the first old green air-boat that seemed fairly sound, broke +open a near shop, procured some buckets of oil, and by three o'clock had +tested and prepared my ship. It was a dull and mournful day, drizzling, +chilly. I returned then to the _mairie_, where for the first time I saw +her, and she was heavy of heart that day: but when I broke the news that +she would be able to speak to me, every day, all day, first she was all +incredulous astonishment, then, for a moment, her eyes turned white to +Heaven, then she was skipping like a kid. We were together three +precious hours, examining the place, and returning with stores of +whatever she might require, till I saw darkness coming on, and we went +down to the ship. + +And when those long-dead screws awoke and moved, bearing me toward the +Outer Basin, I saw her stand darkling, lonely, on the Quai through +heart-rending murk and drizzly inclemency: and oh my God, the gloomy +under-look of those red eyes, and the piteous out-push of that little +lip, and the hurried burying of that face! My heart broke, for I had not +given her even one little, last kiss, and she had been so good, quietly +acquiescing, like a good wife, not attempting to force her presence upon +me in the ship; and I left her there, all widowed, alone on the +Continent of Europe, watching after me: and I went out to the bleak and +dreary fields of the sea. + + * * * * * + +Arriving at Portsmouth the next morning, I made my residence in the +first house in which I found an instrument, a spacious dwelling facing +the Harbour Pier. I then hurried round to the Exchange, which is on the +Hard near the Docks, a large red building with facings of Cornish +moor-stone, a bank on the ground-floor, and the Exchange on the first. +Here I plugged her number on to mine, ran back, rang--and, to my great +thanksgiving, heard her speak. (This instrument, however, did not prove +satisfactory: I broke the box, and put in another battery, and still the +voice was muffled: finally, I furnished the middle room at the Exchange +with a truckle-bed, stores, and a few things, and here have taken up +residence.) + +I believe that she lives and sleeps under the instrument, as I here +live and sleep, sleep and live, under it. My instrument is quite near +one of the harbour-windows, so that, hearing her, I can gaze out toward +her over the expanse of waters, yet see her not; and she, too, looking +over the sea toward me, can hear a voice from the azure depths of +nowhere, yet see me not. + + * * * * * + +I this morning early to her: + +'Good morning! Are you there?' + +'Good morning! No: I am there,' says she. + +'Well, that was what I asked--"are you there"?' + +'But I not here, I am there,' says she. + +'I know very well that you are not "here,"' said I, 'for I do not see +you: but I asked if you were there, and you say "No," and then "Yes."' + +'It is the paladox of the heart,' says she. + +'The what?' + +'The paladox,' says she. + +'But still I do not understand: how can you be both there and not +there?' + +'If my ear is here, and I elsewhere?' says she. + +'An operation?' + +'Yes!' says she. + +'What doctor?' + +'A specialist!' says she. + +'An ear-specialist?' + +'A heart!' says she. + +'And you let a heart-specialist operate on your ear?' + +'On myself he operlated, and left the ear behind!' says she. + +'Well, and how are you after it?' + +'Fairly well. Are you?' says she. + +'Quite well. Did you sleep well?' + +'Except when you lang me up at midnight. I have had such a dleam ...' + +'What?' + +'I dleamed that I saw two little boys of the same age--only I could not +see their faces, I never can see anybody's face, only yours and mine, +mine and yours always--of the same age--playing in a wood....' + +'Ah, I hope that one of them was not called Cain, my poor girl.' + +'Not at all! neither of them! Suppose I tell a stoly, and say that one +was called Caius and the other Tibelius, or one John and the other +Jesus?' + +'Ah. Well, tell me the _dleam_....' + +'Now you do not deserve.' + +'Well, what will you do to-day?' + +'I? It is a lovely day ... have you nice weather in England?' + +'Very.' + +'Well, between eleven and twelve I will go out and gather Spling-flowers +in the park, and cover the salon deep, deep. Wouldn't you like to be +here?' + +'Not I.' + +'You would!' + +'Why should I? I prefer England.' + +'But Flance is nice too: and Flance wants to be fliends with England, +and is waiting, oh waiting, for England to come over, and be fliends. +Couldn't some _lapplochement_ be negotiated?' + +'Good-bye. This talking spoils my morning smoke....' + +So we speak together across the sea, my God. + + * * * * * + +On the morning of the 8th April, when I had been separated thirteen +weeks from her, I boarded several ships in the Inner Port, a lunacy in +my heart, and selected what looked like a very swift boat, one of the +smaller Atlantic air-steamers called the _Stettin_, which seemed to +require the least labour in oiling, &c., in order to fit her for the +sea: for the boat in which I had come to England was a mere tub, though +sound, and I pined for the wings of a dove, that I might fly away to +her, and be at rest. + +I toiled with fluttering hands that day, and I believe that I was of the +colour of ashes to my very lips. By half-past two o'clock I was +finished, and by three was coasting down Southampton Water by Netley +Hospital and the Hamble-mouth, having said not one word about anything +at the telephone, or even to my own guilty heart not a word. But in the +silent depths of my being I felt this fact: that this must be a 35-knot +boat, and that, if driven hard, hard, in spite of the heavy garment of +seaweed which she trailed, she would do 30; also that Havre was 120 +miles away, and at 7 P.M. I should be on its quay. + +And when I was away, and out on the bright and breezy sea, I called to +her, crying out: '_I am coming!_' And I knew that she heard me, and that +her heart leapt to meet me, for mine leapt, too, and felt her answering. + +The sun went down: it set. I was tired of the day's work, and of +standing at the high-set wheel; and I could not yet see the coast of +France. And a thought smote me, and after another ten minutes I turned +the ship's head back, my face screwed with pain, God knows, like a man +whose thumbs are ground between the screws, and his body drawn out and +out on the rack to tenuous length, and his flesh massacred with pincers: +and I fell upon the floor of the bridge contorted with anguish: for I +could not go to her. But after a time that paroxysm passed, and I rose +up sullen and resentful, and resumed my place at the wheel, steering +back for England: for a fixed resolve was in my breast, and I said: 'Oh +no, no more. If I could bear it, I would, I would ... but if it is +impossible, how can I? To-morrow night as the sun sets--without fail--so +help me God--I will kill myself.' + + * * * * * + +So it is finished, my good God. + +On the early morning of the next day, the 9th, I having come back to +Portsmouth about eleven the previous night, when I bid her 'Good +morning' through the telephone, she said 'Good morning,' and not another +word. I said: + +'I got my hookah-bowl broken last night, and shall be trying to mend it +to-day.' + +No answer. + +'Are you there?' said I. + +'Yes,' says she. + +'Then why don't you answer?' said I. + +'Where were you all yesterday?' says she. + +'I went for a little cruise in the basin,' said I. + +Silence for three minutes: then she says: + +'What is the matter?' + +'Matter?' said I, 'nothing!' + +'_Tell me!_' she says--with such an intensity and rage, as to make me +shudder. + +'There is nothing to tell, Leda!' + +'Oh, but how can you be so _cluel_ to me?' she cries, and ah, there was +anguish in that voice! 'There is something to tell--there _is!_ Don't I +know it vely well by your voice?' + +Ah, the thought took me then, how, on the morrow, she would ring, and +have no answer; and she would ring again, and have no answer; and she +would ring all day, and ring, and ring; and for ever she would ring, +with white-flowing hair and the staring eye-balls of frenzy, battering +reproaches at the doors of God, and the Universe would cry back to her +howls and ravings only one eternal answer of Silence, of Silence. And as +I thought of that--for very pity, for very pity, my God--I could not +help sobbing aloud: + +'May God pity you, woman!' + +I do not know if she heard it: she _must_, I think, have heard: but no +reply came; and there I, shivering like the sheeted dead, stood waiting +for her next word, waiting long, dreading, hoping for, her voice, +thinking that if she spoke and sobbed but once, I should drop dead, +dead, where I stood, or bite my tongue through, or shriek the high laugh +of distraction. But when at last, after quite thirty or forty minutes +she spoke, her voice was perfectly firm and calm. She said: + +'Are you there?' + +'Yes,' said I, 'yes, Leda.' + +'What was the color,' says she, 'of the poison-cloud which destroyed the +world?' + +'Purple, Leda,' said I. + +'And it had a smell like almonds or peach blossoms, did it not?' says +she. + +'Yes,' said I, 'yes.' + +'Then,' says she, 'there is _another_ eruption. Every now and again I +seem to scent strange whiffs like that ... and there is a purple vapour +in the East which glows and glows ... just see if you can see it....' + +I flew across the room to an east window, threw up the grimy sash, and +looked. But the view was barred by the plain brick back of a tall +warehouse. I rushed back, gasped to her to wait, rushed down the two +stairs, and out upon the Hard. For a minute I ran dodging wildly about, +seeking a purview to the East, and finally ran up the dockyard, behind +the storehouses to the Semaphore, and reached the top, panting for life. +I looked abroad. The morning sky, but for a bank of cloud to the +north-west, was cloudless, the sun blazing in a region of clear azure +pallor. And back again I flew. + +'I cannot see it...!' I cried. + +'Then it has not tlavelled far enough to the north-west yet,' she said +with decision. + +'My wife!' I cried: 'you are my wife now!' + +'Am I?' says she: 'at last? Are you glad?... But shall I not soon die?' + +'No! You can escape! My home! My heart! If only for an hour or two, then +death--just think, together--on the same couch, for ever, heart to +heart--how sweet!' + +'Yes! how sweet! But how escape?' + +'It travelled slowly before. Get quick--will you?--into one of the +smaller boats by the quay--there is one just under the crane that is an +air-boat--you have seen me turn on the air, haven't you?--that handle on +the right as you descend the steps under the dial-thing--get first a +bucket of oil from the shop next to the clock-tower in the quay-street, +and throw it over everything that you see rusted. Only, spend no +time--for me, my heaven! You can steer by the tiller and compass: well, +the wheel is quite the same, only just the opposite. First unmoor, then +to the handle, then to the wheel. The course is directly North-East by +North. I will meet you on the sea--go now--' + +I was wild with bliss. I thought that I should take her between my arms, +and have the little freckles against my face, and taste her short +firm-fleshed upper-lip, and moan upon her, and whimper upon her, and +mutter upon her, and say 'My wife.' And even when I knew that she was +gone from the telephone, I still stood there, hoarsely calling after +her: 'My wife! My wife!' + + * * * * * + +I flew down to where the steamer lay moored that had borne me the +previous day. Her joint speed with the speed of Leda's boat would be +forty knots: in three hours we must meet. I had not the least fear of +her dying before I saw her: for, apart from the deliberate movement of +the vapour that first time, I fore-tasted and trusted my love, that she +would surely come, and not fail: as dying saints fore-tasted and trusted +Eternal Life. + +I was no sooner on board the _Stettin_ than her engines were straining +under what was equivalent to forced draught. On the previous day it +would have little surprised me at any moment, while I drove her, to be +carried to the clouds in an explosion from her deep-rusted steel tanks: +but this day such a fear never crossed my mind: for I knew very well +that I was immortal till I saw her. + +The sea was not only perfectly smooth, but placid, as on the previous +day: only it seemed far placider, and the sun brighter, and there was a +levity in the breezes that frilled the sea in fugitive dark patches, +like _frissons_ of tickling; and I thought that the morning was a true +marriage-morning, and remembered that it was a Sabbath; and sweet odours +our wedding would not lack of peach and almond, though, looking +eastward, I could see no faintest sign of any purple cloud, but only +rags of chiffon under the sun; and it would be an eternal wedding, for +one day in our sight would be as a thousand years, and our thousand +years of bliss would be but one day, and in the evening of all that +eternity death would come and sweetly lay its finger upon our languid +lids, and we should die of weary bliss; and all manner of dancings and +singings--fandango and light galliard, corantoes and the solemn +gavotte--were a-tune in my heart that happy day; and running by the +chart-house to the wheel, I saw under the table a great roll of old +flags, and presently they were flying in a long curve of gala from the +main; and the sea rumpled in a long tract of tumbling milk behind me; +and I hasted homeward, to meet my heart. + + * * * * * + +No purple cloud could I see as, on and on, for two hours, I tore +southward: but at hot noon, on the weather beam I spied through the +glass across the water something else which moved, and it was you who +came to me, Oh Leda, my spirit's breath! + +I bore down upon her, waving: and soon I saw her stand like an ancient +mariner, but in white muslins that fluttered, at her wheel on the +bridge--it was one of those little old Havre-Antwerp craft very high in +the bows--and she waved a little white thing. And we came nearer, till I +could spy her face, her smile, and I shouted her to stop, and in a +minute stopped myself, and by happy steering came with slowing headway +to a slight crash by her side, and ran down the trellised steps to her, +and led her up; and on the deck, without saying a word, I fell to my +knees before her, and I bowed my brow to the floor, with obeisance, and +I worshipped her there as Heaven. + +And we were wedded: for she, too, bowed the knee with me under the +jovial blue sky; and under her eyes were the little moist semicircles of +dreamy pensive fatigue, so dear and wifish: and God was there, and saw +her kneel: for He loves the girl. + +And I got the two ships apart, and they rested there some yards divided +all the day, and we were in the main-deck cabin, where I had locked a +door, so that no one might come in to be with my love and me. + + * * * * * + +I said to her: + +'We will fly west to one of the Somersetshire coal-mines, or to one of +the Cornwall tin-mines, and we will barricade ourselves against the +cloud, and provision ourselves for six months--for it is perfectly +feasible, and we have plenty of time, and no crowds to break down our +barricades--and there in the deep earth we will live sweetly together, +till the danger is overpast.' + +And she smiled, and drew her hand across my face, and said: + +'No, no: don't you tlust in my God? do you think He would leally let me +die?' + +For she has appropriated the Almighty God to herself, naming Him '_my_ +God'--the impudence: though she generally knows what she is saying, too. +And she would not fly the cloud. + +And I am now writing three weeks later at a little place called +Chteau-les-Roses, and no poison-cloud, and no sign of any poison-cloud, +has come. And this I do not understand. + +It may be that she divined that I was about to destroy myself ... she +may be quite capable.... But no, I do not understand, and shall never +ask her. + +But _this_ I understand: that it is _the White_ who is Master here: that +though he wins but by a hair, yet he wins, he wins: and since he wins, +dance, dance, my heart. + +I look for a race that shall resemble its Mother: nimble-witted, +light-minded, pious--like her; all-human, ambidextrous, ambicephalous, +two-eyed--like her; and if, like her, they talk the English language +with all the r's turned into l's, I shall not care. + +They will be vegetable-eaters, I suppose, when all the meat now extant +is eaten up: but it is not certain that meat is good for men: and if it +is really good, then they will _invent_ a meat: for they will be _her_ +sons, and she, to the furthest cycle in which the female human mind is +permitted to orbit, is, I swear, all-wise. + +There was a preaching man--a Scotchman he was, named Macintosh, or +something like that--who said that the last end of Man shall be well, +and very well: and she says the same: and the agreement of these two +makes a Truth. And to that I now say: Amen, Amen. + +For I, Adam Jeffson, second Parent of the world, hereby lay down, +ordain, and decree for all time, clearly perceiving it now: That the one +Motto and Watch-word essentially proper to each human individual, and to +the whole Race of Man, as distinct from other races in heaven or in +earth, was always, and remains, even this: 'Though He slay me, yet will +I trust in Him.' + +THE END. + + + + + +End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of The Purple Cloud, by M.P. 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Shiel + +Release Date: February 22, 2004 [EBook #11229] + +Language: English + +Character set encoding: ASCII + +*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE PURPLE CLOUD *** + + + + +Produced by Suzanne Shell, Garrett Alley, Maria Khomenko and PG +Distributed Proofreaders + + + + + +THE PURPLE CLOUD + +By + +M.P. Shiel + +1901 + + + + +[Greek: estai kai Samos ammos, eseitai Daelos adaelos] + +_Sibylline Prophecy_ + + + + +INTRODUCTION + + +About three months ago--that is to say, toward the end of May of this +year of 1900--the writer whose name appears on the title-page received +as noteworthy a letter, and packet of papers, as it has been his lot to +examine. They came from a very good friend of mine, whose name there is +no reason that I should now conceal--Dr. Arthur Lister Browne, M.A. +(Oxon.), F.R.C.P. It happened that for two years I had been spending +most of my time in France, and as Browne had a Norfolk practice, I had +not seen him during my visits to London. Moreover, though our friendship +was of the most intimate kind, we were both atrocious correspondents: so +that only two notes passed between us during those years. + +Till, last May, there reached me the letter--and the packet--to which I +refer. The packet consisted of four note-books, quite crowded +throughout with those giddy shapes of Pitman's shorthand, whose +_ensemble_ so resembles startled swarms hovering in flighty poses on the +wing. They were scribbled in pencil, with little distinction between +thick and thin strokes, few vowels: so that their slow deciphering, I +can assure the reader, has been no holiday. The letter also was +pencilled in shorthand; and this letter, together with the second of the +note-books which I have deciphered (it was marked 'III.'), I now +publish. + +[I must say, however, that in some five instances there will occur +sentences rather crutched by my own guess-work; and in two instances the +characters were so impossibly mystical, that I had to abandon the +passage with a head-ache. But all this will be found immaterial to the +general narrative.] + +The following is Browne's letter: + +'DEAR OLD SHIEL,--I have just been lying thinking of you, and wishing +that you were here to give one a last squeeze of the hand before +I--"_go_": for, by all appearance, "going" I am. Four days ago, I began +to feel a soreness in the throat, and passing by old Johnson's surgery +at Selbridge, went in and asked him to have a look at me. He muttered +something about membranous laryngitis which made me smile, but by the +time I reached home I was hoarse, and not smiling: before night I had +dyspnoca and laryngeal stridor. I at once telegraphed to London for +Morgan, and, between him and Johnson, they have been opening my trachea, +and burning my inside with chromic acid and the galvanic cautery. The +difficulty as to breathing has subsided, and it is wonderful how little +I suffer: but I am much too old a hand not to know what's what: the +bronchi are involved--_too far_ involved--and as a matter of absolute +fact, there isn't any hope. Morgan is still, I believe, fondly dwelling +upon the possibility of adding me to his successful-tracheotomy +statistics, but prognosis was always my strong point, and I say No. The +very small consolation of my death will be the beating of a specialist +in his own line. So we shall see. + +'I have been arranging some of my affairs this morning, and remembered +these notebooks. I intended letting you have them months ago, but my +habit of putting things off, and the fact that the lady was alive from +whom I took down the words, prevented me. Now she is dead, and as a +literary man, and a student of life, you should be interested, if you +can manage to read them. You may even find them valuable. + +'I am under a little morphia at present, propped up in a nice little +state of languor, and as I am able to write without much effort, I will +tell you in the old Pitman's something about her. Her name was Miss Mary +Wilson; she was about thirty when I met her, forty-five when she died, +and I knew her intimately all those fifteen years. Do you know anything +about the philosophy of the hypnotic trance? Well, that was the relation +between us--hypnotist and subject. She had been under another man before +my time, but no one was ever so successful with her as I. She suffered +from _tic douloureux_ of the fifth nerve. She had had most of her teeth +drawn before I saw her, and an attempt had been made to wrench out the +nerve on the left side by the external scission. But it made no +difference: all the clocks in hell tick-tacked in that poor woman's jaw, +and it was the mercy of Providence that ever she came across _me_. My +organisation was found to have almost complete, and quite easy, control +over hers, and with a few passes I could expel her Legion. + +'Well, you never saw anyone so singular in personal appearance as my +friend, Miss Wilson. Medicine-man as I am, I could never behold her +suddenly without a sensation of shock: she suggested so inevitably what +we call "the _other_ world," one detecting about her some odour of the +worm, with the feeling that here was rather ghost than woman. And yet I +can hardly convey to you the why of this, except by dry details as to +the contours of her lofty brow, meagre lips, pointed chin, and ashen +cheeks. She was tall and deplorably emaciated, her whole skeleton, +except the thigh-bones, being quite visible. Her eyes were of the bluish +hue of cigarette smoke, and had in them the strangest, feeble, unearthly +gaze; while at thirty-five her paltry wisp of hair was quite white. + +'She was well-to-do, and lived alone in old Wooding Manor-house, five +miles from Ash Thomas. As you know, I was "beginning" in these parts at +the time, and soon took up my residence at the manor. She insisted that +I should devote myself to her alone; and that one patient constituted +the most lucrative practice which I ever had. + +'Well, I quickly found that, in the state of trance, Miss Wilson +possessed very remarkable powers: remarkable, I mean, not, of course, +because peculiar to herself in _kind_, but because they were so +constant, reliable, exact, and far-reaching, in degree. The veriest +fledgling in psychical science will now sit and discourse finically to +you about the reporting powers of the mind in its trance state--just as +though it was something quite new! This simple fact, I assure you, which +the Psychical Research Society, only after endless investigation, admits +to be scientific, has been perfectly well known to every old crone since +the Middle Ages, and, I assume, long previously. What an unnecessary air +of discovery! The certainty that someone in trance in Manchester can +tell you what is going on in London, or in Pekin, was not, of course, +left to the acumen of an office in Fleet Street; and the society, in +establishing the fact beyond doubt for the general public, has not gone +one step toward explaining it. They have, in fact, revealed nothing that +many of us did not, with absolute assurance, know before. + +'But talking of poor Miss Wilson, I say that her powers were +_remarkable_, because, though not exceptional in _genre_, they were so +special in quantity,--so "constant," and "far-reaching." I believe it to +be a fact that, _in general_, the powers of trance manifest themselves +more particularly with regard to space, as distinct from time: the +spirit roams in the present--it travels over a plain--it does not +_usually_ attract the interest of observers by great ascents, or by +great descents. I fancy that is so. But Miss Wilson's gift was special +to this extent, that she travelled in every direction, and easily in all +but one, north and south, up and down, in the past, the present, and the +future. + +This I discovered, not at once, but gradually. She would emit a stream +of sounds in the trance state--I can hardly call it _speech_, so +murmurous, yet guttural, was the utterance, mixed with puffy +breath-sounds at the languid lips. This state was accompanied by an +intense contraction of the pupils, absence of the knee-jerk, +considerable rigor, and a rapt and arrant expression. I got into the +habit of sitting long hours at her bed-side, quite fascinated by her, +trying to catch the import of that opiate and visionary language which +came puffing and fluttering in deliberate monotone from her lips. +Gradually, in the course of months, my ear learned to detect the words; +"the veil was rent" for me also; and I was able to follow somewhat the +course of her musing and wandering spirit. + +At the end of six months I heard her one day repeat some words which +were familiar to me. They were these: "Such were the arts by which the +Romans extended their conquests, and attained the palm of victory; and +the concurring testimony of different authors enables us to describe +them with precision..." I was startled: they are part of Gibbon's +"Decline and Fall," which I easily guessed that she had never read. + +I said in a stern voice: "Where are you?" + +She replied, "Us are in a room, eight hundred and eleven miles above. A +man is writing. Us are reading." + +I may tell you two things: first, that in trance she never spoke of +herself as "I," nor even as "we," but, for some unknown reason, in the +_objective_ way, as "_us_": "us are," she would say--"us will," "us +went"; though, of course, she was an educated lady, and I don't think +ever lived in the West of England, where they say "us" in that way; +secondly, when wandering in the past, she always represented herself as +being "_above_" (the earth?), and higher the further back in time she +went; in describing present events she appears to have felt herself _on_ +(the earth); while, as regards the future, she invariably declared that +"_us_" were so many miles "within" (the earth). + +To her excursions in this last direction, however, there seemed to exist +certain fixed limits: I say seemed, for I cannot be sure, and only mean +that, in spite of my efforts, she never, in fact, went far in this +direction. Three, four thousand "miles" were common figures on her lips +in describing her distance "above"; but her distance "within" never got +beyond sixty-three. Usually, she would say twenty, twenty-five. She +appeared, in relation to the future, to resemble a diver in the deep +sea, who, the deeper he strives, finds a more resistant pressure, till, +at no great depth, resistance becomes prohibition, and he can no further +strive. + +'I am afraid I can't go on: though I had a good deal to tell you about +this lady. During fifteen years, off and on, I sat listening by her dim +bed-side to her murmuring trances! At last my expert ear could detect +the sense of her faintest sigh. I heard the "Decline and Fall" from +beginning to end. Some of her reports were the most frivolous nonsense: +over others I have hung in a horror of interest. Certainly, my friend, I +have heard some amazing words proceed from those wan lips of Mary +Wilson. Sometimes I could hitch her repeatedly to any scene or subject +that I chose by the mere exercise of my will; at others, the flighty +waywardness of her spirit eluded and baffled me: she resisted--she +disobeyed: otherwise I might have sent you, not four note-books, but +twenty, or forty. About the fifth year it struck me that it would be +well to jot down her more connected utterances, since I knew shorthand. + +The note-book marked "I.," [1] which seems to me the most curious, +belongs to the seventh year. Its history, like those of the other three, +is this: I heard her one afternoon murmuring in the intonation used when +_reading_; the matter interested me; I asked her where she was. She +replied: "Us are forty-five miles within: us read, and another writes"; +from which I concluded that she was some fifteen to thirty years in the +future, perusing an as yet unpublished work. After that, during some +weeks, I managed to keep her to the same subject, and finally, I fancy, +won pretty well the whole work. I believe you would find it striking, +and hope you will be able to read my notes. + +'But no more of Mary Wilson now. Rather let us think a little of A.L. +Browne, F.R.C.P.!--with a breathing-tube in his trachea, and Eternity +under his pillow...' [Dr. Browne's letter then continues on a subject of +no interest here.] + +[The present writer may add that Dr. Browne's prognosis of his own case +proved correct, for he passed away two days after writing the above. My +transcription of the shorthand book marked 'III.' I now proceed to give +without comment, merely reminding the reader that the words form the +substance of a book or document to be written, or to be motived +(according to Miss Wilson) in that Future, which, no less than the Past, +substantively exists in the Present--though, like the Past, we see it +not. I need only add that the title, division into paragraphs, &c., have +been arbitrarily contrived by myself for the sake of form and +convenience.] + + +[Footnote 1: This I intend to publish under the title of 'The Last +Miracle; 'II.' will bear that of 'The Lord of the Sea'; the present book +is marked 'III.' The perusal of 'IV.' I have yet finished, but so far do +not consider it suitable for publication.] + + + + +(_Here begins the note-book marked 'III.'_) + + + + +THE PURPLE CLOUD + + +Well, the memory seems to be getting rather impaired now, rather weak. +What, for instance, was the name of that parson who preached, just +before the _Boreal_ set out, about the wickedness of any further attempt +to reach the North Pole? I have forgotten! Yet four years ago it was +familiar to me as my own name. + +Things which took place before the voyage seem to be getting a little +cloudy in the memory now. I have sat here, in the loggia of this Cornish +villa, to write down some sort of account of what has happened--God +knows why, since no eye can ever read it--and at the very beginning I +cannot remember the parson's name. + +He was a strange sort of man surely, a Scotchman from Ayrshire, big and +gaunt, with tawny hair. He used to go about London streets in shough +and rough-spun clothes, a plaid flung from one shoulder. Once I saw him +in Holborn with his rather wild stalk, frowning and muttering to +himself. He had no sooner come to London, and opened chapel (I think in +Fetter Lane), than the little room began to be crowded; and when, some +years afterwards, he moved to a big establishment in Kensington, all +sorts of men, even from America and Australia, flocked to hear the +thunderstorms that he talked, though certainly it was not an age apt to +fly into enthusiasms over that species of pulpit prophets and +prophecies. But this particular man undoubtedly did wake the strong dark +feelings that sleep in the heart; his eyes were very singular and +powerful; his voice from a whisper ran gathering, like snow-balls, and +crashed, as I have heard the pack-ice in commotion far yonder in the +North; while his gestures were as uncouth and gawky as some wild man's +of the primitive ages. + +Well, this man--what _was_ his name?--Macintosh? Mackay? I think--yes, +that was it! _Mackay_. Mackay saw fit to take offence at the new attempt +to reach the Pole in the _Boreal_; and for three Sundays, when the +preparations were nearing completion, stormed against it at Kensington. + +The excitement of the world with regard to the North Pole had at this +date reached a pitch which can only be described as _fevered_, though +that word hardly expresses the strange ecstasy and unrest which +prevailed: for the abstract interest which mankind, in mere desire for +knowledge, had always felt in this unknown region, was now, suddenly, a +thousand and a thousand times intensified by a new, concrete interest--a +tremendous _money_ interest. + +And the new zeal had ceased to be healthy in its tone as the old zeal +was: for now the fierce demon Mammon was making his voice heard in this +matter. + +Within the ten years preceding the _Boreal_ expedition, no less than +twenty-seven expeditions had set out, and failed. + +The secret of this new rage lay in the last will and testament of Mr. +Charles P. Stickney of Chicago, that king of faddists, supposed to be +the richest individual who ever lived: he, just ten years before the +_Boreal_ undertaking, had died, bequeathing 175 million dollars to the +man, of whatever nationality, who first reached the Pole. + +Such was the actual wording of the will--_'the man who first reached'_: +and from this loose method of designating the person intended had +immediately burst forth a prolonged heat of controversy in Europe and +America as to whether or no the testator meant _the Chief_ of the first +expedition which reached: but it was finally decided, on the highest +legal authority, that, in any case, the actual wording of the document +held good: and that it was the individual, whatever his station in the +expedition, whose foot first reached the 90th degree of north latitude, +who would have title to the fortune. + +At all events, the public ferment had risen, as I say, to a pitch of +positive fever; and as to the _Boreal_ in particular, the daily progress +of her preparations was minutely discussed in the newspapers, everyone +was an authority on her fitting, and she was in every mouth a bet, a +hope, a jest, or a sneer: for now, at last, it was felt that success was +probable. So this Mackay had an acutely interested audience, if a +somewhat startled, and a somewhat cynical, one. + +A truly lion-hearted man this must have been, after all, to dare +proclaim a point-of-view so at variance with the spirit of his age! One +against four hundred millions, they bent one way, he the opposite, +saying that they were wrong, all wrong! People used to call him 'John +the Baptist Redivivus': and without doubt he did suggest something of +that sort. I suppose that at the time when he had the face to denounce +the _Boreal_ there was not a sovereign on any throne in Europe who, but +for shame, would have been glad of a subordinate post on board. + +On the third Sunday night of his denunciation I was there in that +Kensington chapel, and I heard him. And the wild talk he talked! He +seemed like a man delirious with inspiration. + +The people sat quite spell-bound, while Mackay's prophesying voice +ranged up and down through all the modulations of thunder, from the +hurrying mutter to the reverberant shock and climax: and those who came +to scoff remained to wonder. + +Put simply, what he said was this: That there was undoubtedly some sort +of Fate, or Doom, connected with the Poles of the earth in reference to +the human race: that man's continued failure, in spite of continual +efforts, to reach them, abundantly and super-abundantly proved this; and +that this failure constituted a lesson--_and a warning_--which the race +disregarded at its peril. + +The North Pole, he said, was not so very far away, and the difficulties +in the way of reaching it were not, on the face of them, so very great: +human ingenuity had achieved a thousand things a thousand times more +difficult; yet in spite of over half-a-dozen well-planned efforts in +the nineteenth century, and thirty-one in the twentieth, man had never +reached: always he had been baulked, baulked, by some seeming +chance--some restraining Hand: and herein lay the lesson--_herein the +warning_. Wonderfully--really _wonderfully_--like the Tree of +Knowledge in Eden, he said, was that Pole: all the rest of earth lying +open and offered to man--but _That_ persistently veiled and 'forbidden.' +It was as when a father lays a hand upon his son, with: 'Not here, my +child; wheresoever you will--but not here.' + +But human beings, he said, were free agents, with power to stop their +ears, and turn a callous consciousness to the whispers and warning +indications of Heaven; and he believed, he said, that the time was now +come when man would find it absolutely in his power to stand on that +90th of latitude, and plant an impious right foot on the head of the +earth--just as it had been given into the absolute power of Adam to +stretch an impious right hand, and pluck of the Fruit of Knowledge; but, +said he--his voice pealing now into one long proclamation of awful +augury--just as the abuse of that power had been followed in the one +case by catastrophe swift and universal, so, in the other, he warned the +entire race to look out thenceforth for nothing from God but a lowering +sky, and thundery weather. + +The man's frantic earnestness, authoritative voice, and savage gestures, +could not but have their effect upon all; as for me, I declare, I sat as +though a messenger from Heaven addressed me. But I believe that I had +not yet reached home, when the whole impression of the discourse had +passed from me like water from a duck's back. The Prophet in the +twentieth century was not a success. John Baptist himself, camel-skin +and all, would, have met with only tolerant shrugs. I dismissed Mackay +from my mind with the thought: 'He is behind his age, I suppose.' + +But haven't I thought differently of Mackay since, my God...? + + * * * * * + +Three weeks--it was about that--before that Sunday night discourse, I +was visited by Clark, the chief of the coming expedition--a mere visit +of friendship. I had then been established about a year at No. II, +Harley Street, and, though under twenty-five, had, I suppose, as _elite_ +a practice as any doctor in Europe. + +_Elite_--but small. I was able to maintain my state, and move among the +great: but now and again I would feel the secret pinch of +moneylessness. Just about that time, in fact, I was only saved from +considerable embarrassment by the success of my book, 'Applications of +Science to the Arts.' + +In the course of conversation that afternoon, Clark said to me in his +light hap-hazard way: + +'Do you know what I dreamed about you last night, Adam Jeffson? I +dreamed that you were with us on the expedition.' + +I think he must have seen my start: on the same night I had myself +dreamed the same thing; but not a word said I about it now. There was a +stammer in my tongue when I answered: + +'Who? I?--on the expedition?--I would not go, if I were asked.' + +'Oh, you would.' + +'I wouldn't. You forget that I am about to be married.' + +'Well, we need not discuss the point, as Peters is not going to die,' +said he. 'Still, if anything did happen to him, you know, it is you I +should come straight to, Adam Jeffson.' + +'Clark, you jest,' I said: 'I know really very little of astronomy, or +magnetic phenomena. Besides, I am about to be married....' + +'But what about your botany, my friend? _There's_ what we should be +wanting from you: and as for nautical astronomy, poh, a man with your +scientific habit would pick all that up in no time.' + +'You discuss the matter as gravely as though it were a possibility, +Clark,' I said, smiling. 'Such a thought would never enter my head: +there is, first of all, my _fiancee_----' + +'Ah, the all-important Countess, eh?--Well, but she, as far as I know +the lady, would be the first to force you to go. The chance of stamping +one's foot on the North Pole does not occur to a man every day, my son.' + +'Do talk of something else!' I said. 'There is Peters....' + +'Well, of course, there is Peters. But believe me, the dream I had was +so clear----' + +'Let me alone with your dreams, and your Poles!' I laughed. + +Yes, I remember: I pretended to laugh loud! But my secret heart knew, +even _then_, that one of those crises was occurring in my life which, +from my youth, has made it the most extraordinary which any creature of +earth ever lived. And I knew that this was so, firstly, because of the +two dreams, and secondly, because, when Clark was gone, and I was +drawing on my gloves to go to see my _fiancee_, I heard distinctly the +old two Voices talk within me: and One said: 'Go not to see her now!' +and the Other: 'Yes, go, go!' + +The two Voices of my life! An ordinary person reading my words would +undoubtedly imagine that I mean only two ordinary contradictory +impulses--or else that I rave: for what modern man could comprehend how +real-seeming were those voices, how loud, and how, ever and again, I +heard them contend within me, with a nearness 'nearer than breathing,' +as it says in the poem, and 'closer than hands and feet.' + +About the age of seven it happened first to me. I was playing one summer +evening in a pine-wood of my father's; half a mile away was a +quarry-cliff; and as I played, it suddenly seemed as if someone said to +me, inside of me: 'Just take a walk toward the cliff'; and as if someone +else said: 'Don't go that way at all'--mere whispers then, which +gradually, as I grew up, seemed to swell into cries of wrathful +contention! I did go toward the cliff: it was steep, thirty feet high, +and I fell. Some weeks later, on recovering speech, I told my astonished +mother that 'someone had pushed me' over the edge, and that someone else +'had caught me' at the bottom! + +One night, soon after my eleventh birthday, lying in bed, the thought +struck me that my life must be of great importance to some thing or +things which I could not see; that two Powers, which hated each other, +must be continually after me, one wishing for some reason to kill me, +and the other for some reason to keep me alive, one wishing me to do so +and so, and the other to do the opposite; that I was not a boy like +other boys, but a creature separate, special, marked for--something. +Already I had notions, touches of mood, passing instincts, as occult and +primitive, I verily believe, as those of the first man that stepped; so +that such Biblical expressions as 'The Lord spake to So-and-so, saying' +have hardly ever suggested any question in my mind as to how the Voice +was heard: I did not find it so very difficult to comprehend that +originally man had more ears than two; nor should have been surprised to +know that I, in these latter days, more or less resembled those primeval +ones. + +But not a creature, except perhaps my mother, has ever dreamed me what I +here state that I was. I seemed the ordinary youth of my time, bow in my +'Varsity eight, cramming for exams., dawdling in clubs. When I had to +decide as to a profession, who could have suspected the conflict that +transacted itself in my soul, while my brain was indifferent to the +matter--that agony of strife with which the brawling voices shouted, the +one: 'Be a scientist--a doctor,' and the other: 'Be a lawyer, an +engineer, an artist--be _anything_ but a doctor!' + +A doctor I became, and went to what had grown into the greatest of +medical schools--Cambridge; and there it was that I came across a man, +named Scotland, who had a rather odd view of the world. He had rooms, I +remember, in the New Court at Trinity, and a set of us were generally +there. He was always talking about certain 'Black' and 'White Powers, +till it became absurd, and the men used to call him +'black-and-white-mystery-man,' because, one day, when someone said +something about 'the black mystery of the universe,' Scotland +interrupted him with the words: 'the black-and-white mystery.' + +Quite well I remember Scotland now--the sweetest, gentle soul he was, +with a passion for cats, and Sappho, and the Anthology, very short in +stature, with a Roman nose, continually making the effort to keep his +neck straight, and draw his paunch in. He used to say that the universe +was being frantically contended for by two Powers: a White and a Black; +that the White was the stronger, but did not find the conditions on our +particular planet very favourable to his success; that he had got the +best of it up to the Middle Ages in Europe, but since then had been +slowly and stubbornly giving way before the Black; and that finally the +Black would win--not everywhere perhaps, but _here_--and would carry +off, if no other earth, at least _this_ one, for his prize. + +This was Scotland's doctrine, which he never tired of repeating; and +while others heard him with mere toleration, little could they divine +with what agony of inward interest, I, cynically smiling there, drank in +his words. Most profound, most profound, was the impression they made +upon me. + + * * * * * + +But I was saying that when Clark left me, I was drawing on my gloves to +go to see my _fiancee_, the Countess Clodagh, when I heard the two +voices most clearly. + +Sometimes the urgency of one or other impulse is so overpowering, that +there is no resisting it: and it was so then with the one that bid me +go. + +I had to traverse the distance between Harley Street and Hanover Square, +and all the time it was as though something shouted at my physical ear: +'Since you go, breathe no word of the _Boreal_, and Clark's visit'; and +another shout: 'Tell, tell, hide nothing!' + +It seemed to last a month: yet it was only some minutes before I was in +Hanover Square, and Clodagh in my arms. + +She was, in my opinion, the most superb of creatures, Clodagh--that +haughty neck which seemed always scorning something just behind her left +shoulder. Superb! but ah--I know it now--a godless woman, Clodagh, a +bitter heart. + +Clodagh once confessed to me that her favourite character in history was +Lucrezia Borgia, and when she saw my horror, immediately added: 'Well, +no, I am only joking!' Such was her duplicity: for I see now that she +lived in the constant effort to hide her heinous heart from me. Yet, now +I think of it, how completely did Clodagh enthral me! + +Our proposed marriage was opposed by both my family and hers: by mine, +because her father and grandfather had died in lunatic asylums; and by +hers, because, forsooth, I was neither a rich nor a noble match. A +sister of hers, much older than herself, had married a common country +doctor, Peters of Taunton, and this so-called _mesalliance_ made the +so-called _mesalliance_ with me doubly detestable in the eyes of her +relatives. But Clodagh's extraordinary passion for me was to be stemmed +neither by their threats nor prayers. What a flame, after all, was +Clodagh! Sometimes she frightened me. + +She was at this date no longer young, being by five years my senior, as +also, by five years, the senior of her nephew, born from the marriage of +her sister with Peters of Taunton. This nephew was Peter Peters, who was +to accompany the _Boreal_ expedition as doctor, botanist, and +meteorological assistant. + +On that day of Clark's visit to me I had not been seated five minutes +with Clodagh, when I said: + +'Dr. Clark--ha! ha! ha!--has been talking to me about the Expedition. He +says that if anything happened to Peters, I should be the first man he +would run to. He has had an absurd dream...' + +The consciousness that filled me as I uttered these words was the +_wickedness_ of me--the crooked wickedness. But I could no more help it +than I could fly. + +Clodagh was standing at a window holding a rose at her face. For quite a +minute she made no reply. I saw her sharp-cut, florid face in profile, +steadily bent and smelling. She said presently in her cold, rapid way: + +'The man who first plants his foot on the North Pole will certainly be +ennobled. I say nothing of the many millions... I only wish that I was +a man!' + +'I don't know that I have any special ambition that way,' I rejoined. 'I +am very happy in my warm Eden with my Clodagh. I don't like the outer +Cold.' + +'Don't let me think little of you!' she answered pettishly. + +'Why should you, Clodagh? I am not bound to desire to go to the North +Pole, am I?' + +'But you _would_ go, I suppose, if you could?' + +'I might--I--doubt it. There is our marriage....' + +'Marriage indeed! It is the one thing to transform our marriage from a +sneaking difficulty to a ten times triumphant event.' + +'You mean if _I_ personally were the first to stand at the Pole. But +there are many in an expedition. It is very unlikely that _I_, +personally--' + +'For _me_ you will, Adam--' she began. + +'"_Will_," Clodagh?' I cried. 'You say "_will_"? there is not even the +slightest shadow of a probability--!' + +'But why? There are still three weeks before the start. They say...' + +She stopped, she stopped. + +'They say what?' + +Her voice dropped: + +'That Peter takes atropine.' + +Ah, I started then. She moved from the window, sat in a rocking-chair, +and turned the leaves of a book, without reading. We were silent, she +and I; I standing, looking at her, she drawing the thumb across the +leaf-edges, and beginning again, contemplatively. Then she laughed dryly +a little--a dry, mad laugh. + +'Why did you start when I said that?' she asked, reading now at random. + +'_I_! I did not start, Clodagh! What made you think that I started? I +did not start! Who told you, Clodagh, that Peters takes atropine?' + +'He is my nephew: I should know. But don't look dumbfoundered in that +absurd fashion: I have no intention of poisoning him in order to see you +a multimillionaire, and a Peer of the Realm....' + +'My dearest Clodagh!' + +'I easily might, however. He will be here presently. He is bringing Mr. +Wilson for the evening.' (Wilson was going as electrician of the +expedition.) + +'Clodagh.' I said, 'believe me, you jest in a manner which does not +please me.' + +'Do I really?' she answered with that haughty, stiff half-turn of her +throat: 'then I must be more exquisite. But, thank Heaven, it is only a +jest. Women are no longer admired for doing such things.' + +'Ha! ha! ha!--no--no longer admired, Clodagh! Oh, my good Lord! let us +change this talk....' + +But now she could talk of nothing else. She got from me that afternoon +the history of all the Polar expeditions of late years, how far they +reached, by what aids, and why they failed. Her eyes shone; she listened +eagerly. Before this time, indeed, she had been interested in the +_Boreal_, knew the details of her outfitting, and was acquainted with +several members of the expedition. But now, suddenly, her mind seemed +wholly possessed, my mention of Clark's visit apparently setting her +well a-burn with the Pole-fever. + +The passion of her kiss as I tore myself from her embrace that day I +shall not forget. I went home with a pretty heavy heart. + +The house of Dr. Peter Peters was three doors from mine, on the opposite +side of the street. Toward one that night, his footman ran to knock me +up with the news that Peters was very ill. I hurried to his bed-side, +and knew by the first glance at his deliriums and his staring pupils +that he was poisoned with atropine. Wilson, the electrician, who had +passed the evening with him at Clodagh's in Hanover Square, was there. + +'What on earth is the matter?' he said to me. + +'Poisoned,' I answered. + +'Good God! what with?' + +'Atropine.' + +'Good Heavens!' + +'Don't be frightened: I think he will recover.' + +'Is that certain?' + +'Yes, I think--that is, if he leaves off taking the drug, Wilson.' + +'What! it is he who has poisoned himself?' + +I hesitated, I hesitated. But I said: + +'He is in the habit of taking atropine, Wilson.' + +Three hours I remained there, and, God knows, toiled hard for his life: +and when I left him in the dark of the fore-day, my mind was at rest: he +would recover. + +I slept till 11 A.M., and then hurried over again to Peters. In the room +were my two nurses, and Clodagh. + +My beloved put her forefinger to her lips, whispering: + +'Sh-h-h! he is asleep....' + +She came closer to my ear, saying: + +'I heard the news early. I am come to stay with him, till--the last....' + +We looked at each other some time--eye to eye, steadily, she and I: but +mine dropped before Clodagh's. A word was on my mouth to say, but I said +nothing. + +The recovery of Peters was not so steady as I had expected. At the end +of the first week he was still prostrate. It was then that I said to +Clodagh: + +'Clodagh, your presence at the bed-side here somehow does not please me. +It is so unnecessary.' + +'Unnecessary certainly,' she replied: 'but I always had a genius for +nursing, and a passion for watching the battles of the body. Since no +one objects, why should you?' + +'Ah!... I don't know. This is a case that I dislike. I have half a mind +to throw it to the devil.' + +'Then do so.' + +'And you, too--go home, go home, Clodagh!' + +'But _why_?--if one does no harm. In these days of "the corruption of +the upper classes," and Roman decadence of everything, shouldn't every +innocent whim be encouraged by you upright ones who strive against the +tide? Whims are the brakes of crimes: and this is mine. I find a +sensuous pleasure, almost a sensual, in dabbling in delicate drugs--like +Helen, for that matter, and Medea, and Calypso, and the great antique +women, who were all excellent chymists. To study the human ship in a +gale, and the slow drama of its foundering--isn't that a quite thrilling +distraction? And I want you to get into the habit at once of letting me +have my little way----' + +Now she touched my hair with a lofty playfulness that soothed me: but +even then I looked upon the rumpled bed, and saw that the man there was +really very sick. + +I have still a nausea to write about it! Lucrezia Borgia in her own age +may have been heroic: but Lucrezia in this late century! One could retch +up the heart... + +The man grew sick on that bed, I say. The second week passed, and only +ten days remained before the start of the expedition. + +At the end of that second week, Wilson, the electrician, was one evening +sitting by Peter's bedside when I entered. + +At the moment, Clodagh was about to administer a dose to Peters; but +seeing me, she put down the medicine-glass on the night table, and came +toward me; and as she came, I saw a sight which stabbed me: for Wilson +took up the deposited medicine-glass, elevated it, looked at it, +smelled into it: and he did it with a kind of hurried, light-fingered +stealth; and he did it with an under-look, and a meaningness of +expression which, I thought, proved mistrust.... + +Meantime, Clark came each day. He had himself a medical degree, and +about this time I called him in professionally, together with Alleyne of +Cavendish Square, to consultation over Peters. The patient lay in a +semi-coma broken by passionate vomitings, and his condition puzzled us +all. I formally stated that he took atropine--had been originally +poisoned by atropine: but we saw that his present symptoms were not +atropine symptoms, but, it almost seemed, of some other vegetable +poison, which we could not precisely name. + +'Mysterious thing,' said Clark to me, when we were alone. + +'_I_ don't understand it,' I said. + +'Who are the two nurses?' + +'Oh, highly recommended people of my own.' + +'At any rate, my dream about you comes true, Jeffson. It is clear that +Peters is out of the running now.' + +I shrugged. + +'I now formally invite you to join the expedition,' said Clark: 'do you +consent?' + +I shrugged again. + +'Well, if that means consent,' he said, 'let me remind you that you have +only eight days, and all the world to do in them.' + +This conversation occurred in the dining-room of Peters' house: and as +we passed through the door, I saw Clodagh gliding down the passage +outside--rapidly--away from us. + +Not a word I said to her that day about Clark's invitation. Yet I asked +myself repeatedly: Did she not know of it? Had she not _listened_, and +heard? + +However that was, about midnight, to my great surprise, Peters opened +his eyes, and smiled. By noon the next day, his fine vitality, which so +fitted him for an Arctic expedition, had re-asserted itself. He was then +leaning on an elbow, talking to Wilson, and except his pallor, and +strong stomach-pains, there was now hardly a trace of his late approach +to death. For the pains I prescribed some quarter-grain tablets of +sulphate of morphia, and went away. + +Now, David Wilson and I never greatly loved each other, and that very +day he brought about a painful situation as between Peters and me, by +telling Peters that I had taken his place in the expedition. Peters, a +touchy fellow, at once dictated a letter of protest to Clark; and Clark +sent Peters' letter to me, marked with a big note of interrogation in +blue pencil. + +Now, all Peters' preparations were made, mine not; and he had six days +in which to recover himself. I therefore wrote to Clark, saying that the +changed circumstances of course annulled my acceptance of his offer, +though I had already incurred the inconvenience of negotiating with a +_locum tenens_. + +This decided it: Peters was to go, I stay. The fifth day before the +departure dawned. It was a Friday, the 15th June. Peters was now in an +arm-chair. He was cheerful, but with a fevered pulse, and still the +stomach-pains. I was giving him three quarter-grains of morphia a day. +That Friday night, at 11 P.M., I visited him, and found Clodagh there, +talking to him. Peters was smoking a cigar. + +'Ah,' Clodagh said, 'I was waiting for you, Adam. I didn't know whether +I was to inject anything to-night. Is it Yes or No?' + +'What do you think, Peters?' I said: 'any more pains?' + +'Well, perhaps you had better give us another quarter,' he answered: +'there's still some trouble in the tummy off and on.' + +'A quarter-grain, then, Clodagh, 'I said. + +As she opened the syringe-box, she remarked with a pout: + +'Our patient has been naughty! He has taken some more atropine.' + +I became angry at once. + +'Peters,' I cried, 'you know you have no right to be doing things like +that without consulting me! Do that once more, and I swear I have +nothing further to do with you!' + +'Rubbish,' said Peters: 'why all this unnecessary heat? It was a mere +flea-bite. I felt that I needed it.' + +'He injected it with his own hand...' remarked Clodagh. + +She was now standing at the mantel-piece, having lifted the syringe-box +from the night-table, taken from its velvet lining both the syringe and +the vial containing the morphia tablets, and gone to the mantel-piece to +melt one of the tablets in a little of the distilled water there. Her +back was turned upon us, and she was a long time. I was standing; Peters +in his arm-chair, smoking. Clodagh then began to talk about a Charity +Bazaar which she had visited that afternoon. + +She was long, she was long. The crazy thought passed through some dim +region of my soul: 'Why is she so _long_?' + +'Ah, that was a pain!' went Peters: 'never mind the bazaar, aunt--think +of the morphia.' + +Suddenly an irresistible impulse seized me--to rush upon her, to dash +syringe, tabloids, glass, and all, from her hands. I _must_ have obeyed +it--I was on the tip-top point of obeying--my body already leant prone: +but at that instant a voice at the opened door behind me said: + +'Well, how is everything?' + +It was Wilson, the electrician, who stood there. With lightning +swiftness I remembered an under-look of mistrust which I had once seen +on his face. Oh, well, I would not, and could not!--she was my love--I +stood like marble... + +Clodagh went to meet Wilson with frank right hand, in the left being the +fragile glass containing the injection. My eyes were fastened on her +face: it was full of reassurance, of free innocence. I said to myself: +'I must surely be mad!' + +An ordinary chat began, while Clodagh turned up Peters' sleeve, and, +kneeling there, injected his fore-arm. As she rose, laughing at +something said by Wilson, the drug-glass dropped from her hand, and her +heel, by an apparent accident, trod on it. She put the syringe among a +number of others on the mantel-piece. + +'Your friend has been naughty, Mr. Wilson,' she said again with that +same pout: 'he has been taking more atropine.' + +'Not really?' said Wilson. + +'Let me alone, the whole of you,' answered Peters: 'I ain't a child.' + +These were the last intelligible words he ever spoke. He died shortly +before 1 A.M. He had been poisoned by a powerful dose of atropine. + +From that moment to the moment when the _Boreal_ bore me down the +Thames, all the world was a mere tumbling nightmare to me, of which +hardly any detail remains in my memory. Only I remember the inquest, and +how I was called upon to prove that Peters had himself injected himself +with atropine. This was corroborated by Wilson, and by Clodagh: and the +verdict was in accordance. + +And in all that chaotic hurry of preparation, three other things only, +but those with clear distinctness now, I remember. + +The first--and chief--is that tempest of words which I heard at +Kensington from that big-mouthed Mackay on the Sunday night. What was it +that led me, busy as I was, to that chapel that night? Well, perhaps I +know. + +There I sat, and heard him: and most strangely have those words of his +peroration planted themselves in my brain, when, rising to a passion of +prophecy, he shouted: 'And as in the one case, transgression was +followed by catastrophe swift and universal, so, in the other, I warn +the entire race to look out thenceforth for nothing from God but a +lowering sky, and thundery weather.' + +And this second thing I remember: that on reaching home, I walked into +my disordered library (for I had had to hunt out some books), where I +met my housekeeper in the act of rearranging things. She had apparently +lifted an old Bible by the front cover to fling it on the table, for as +I threw myself into a chair my eye fell upon the open print near the +beginning. The print was very large, and a shaded lamp cast a light upon +it. I had been hearing Mackay's wild comparison of the Pole with the +tree of Eden, and that no doubt was the reason why such a start +convulsed me: for my listless eyes had chanced to rest upon some words. + +'The woman gave me of the tree, and I did eat....' + +And a third thing I remember in all that turmoil of doubt and flurry: +that as the ship moved down with the afternoon tide a telegram was put +into my hand; it was a last word from Clodagh; and she said only this: + +'Be first--for Me.' + + * * * * * + +The _Boreal_ left St. Katherine's Docks in beautiful weather on the +afternoon of the 19th June, full of good hope, bound for the Pole. + +All about the docks was one region of heads stretched far in innumerable +vagueness, and down the river to Woolwich a continuous dull roar and +murmur of bees droned from both banks to cheer our departure. + +The expedition was partly a national affair, subvented by Government: +and if ever ship was well-found it was the _Boreal_. She had a frame +tougher far than any battle-ship's, capable of ramming some ten yards of +drift-ice; and she was stuffed with sufficient pemmican, codroe, +fish-meal, and so on, to last us not less than six years. + +We were seventeen, all told, the five Heads (so to speak) of the +undertaking being Clark (our Chief), John Mew (commander), Aubrey +Maitland (meteorologist), Wilson (electrician), and myself (doctor, +botanist, and assistant meteorologist). + +The idea was to get as far east as the 100 deg., or the 120 deg., of longitude; +to catch there the northern current; to push and drift our way +northward; and when the ship could no further penetrate, to leave her +(either three, or else four, of us, on ski), and with sledges drawn by +dogs and reindeer make a dash for the Pole. + +This had also been the plan of the last expedition--that of the +_Nix_--and of several others. The _Boreal_ only differed from the _Nix_, +and others, in that she was a thing of nicer design, and of more +exquisite forethought. + +Our voyage was without incident up to the end of July, when we +encountered a drift of ice-floes. On the 1st August we were at Kabarova, +where we met our coal-ship, and took in a little coal for emergency, +liquid air being our proper motor; also forty-three dogs, four reindeer, +and a quantity of reindeer-moss; and two days later we turned our bows +finally northward and eastward, passing through heavy 'slack' ice under +sail and liquid air in crisp weather, till, on the 27th August, we lay +moored to a floe off the desolate island of Taimur. + +The first thing which we saw here was a bear on the shore, watching for +young white-fish: and promptly Clark, Mew, and Lamburn (engineer) went +on shore in the launch, I and Maitland following in the pram, each party +with three dogs. + +It was while climbing away inland that Maitland said to me: + +'When Clark leaves the ship for the dash to the Pole, it is three, not +two, of us, after all, that he is going to take with him, making a party +of four.' + +_I_: 'Is that so? Who knows?' + +_Maitland_: 'Wilson does. Clark has let it out in conversation with +Wilson.' + +_I_: 'Well, the more the merrier. Who will be the three?' + +_Maitland_: 'Wilson is sure to be in it, and there may be Mew, making +the third. As to the fourth, I suppose _I_ shall get left out in the +cold.' + +_I_: 'More likely I.' + +_Maitland_: 'Well, the race is between us four: Wilson, Mew, you and I. +It is a question of physical fitness combined with special knowledge. +You are too lucky a dog to get left out, Jeffson.' + +_I_: 'Well, what does it matter, so long as the expedition as a whole is +successful? That is the main thing.' + +_Maitland_: 'Oh yes, that's all very fine talk, Jeffson! But is it quite +sincere? Isn't it rather a pose to affect to despise $175,000,000? _I_ +want to be in at the death, and I mean to be, if I can. We are all more +or less self-interested.' + +'Look,' I whispered--'a bear.' + +It was a mother and cub: and with determined trudge she came wagging her +low head, having no doubt smelled the dogs. We separated on the +instant, doubling different ways behind ice-boulders, wanting her to go +on nearer the shore, before killing; but, passing close, she spied, and +bore down at a trot upon me. I fired into her neck, and at once, with a +roar, she turned tail, making now straight in Maitland's direction. I +saw him run out from cover some hundred yards away, aiming his long-gun: +but no report followed: and in half a minute he was under her fore-paws, +she striking out slaps at the barking, shrinking dogs. Maitland roared +for my help: and at that moment, I, poor wretch, in far worse plight +than he, stood shivering in ague: for suddenly one of those wrangles of +the voices of my destiny was filling my bosom with loud commotion, one +urging me to fly to Maitland's aid, one passionately commanding me be +still. But it lasted, I believe, some seconds only: I ran and got a shot +into the bear's brain, and Maitland leapt up with a rent down his face. + +But singular destiny! Whatever I did--if I did evil, if I did good--the +result was the same: tragedy dark and sinister! Poor Maitland was doomed +that voyage, and my rescue of his life was the means employed to make +his death the more certain. + +I think that I have already written, some pages back, about a man +called Scotland, whom I met at Cambridge. He was always talking about +certain 'Black' and 'White' beings, and their contention for the earth. +We others used to call him the black-and-white mystery-man, because, one +day--but that is no matter now. Well, with regard to all that, I have a +fancy, a whim of the mind--quite wide of the truth, no doubt--but I have +it here in my brain, and I will write it down now. It is this: that +there may have been some sort of arrangement, or understanding, between +Black and White, as in the case of Adam and the fruit, that, should +mankind force his way to the Pole and the old forbidden secret biding +there, then some mishap should not fail to overtake the race of man; +that the White, being kindly disposed to mankind, did not wish this to +occur, and intended, for the sake of the race, to destroy our entire +expedition before it reached; and that the Black, knowing that the White +meant to do this, and by what means, used me--_me_!--to outwit this +design, first of all working that I should be one of the party of four +to leave the ship on ski. + +But the childish attempt, my God, to read the immense riddle of the +world! I could laugh loud at myself, and at poor Black-and-White +Scotland, too. The thing can't be so simple. + +Well, we left Taimur the same day, and good-bye now to both land and +open sea. Till we passed the latitude of Cape Chelyuskin (which we did +not sight), it was one succession of ice-belts, with Mew in the +crow's-nest tormenting the electric bell to the engine-room, the anchor +hanging ready to drop, and Clark taking soundings. Progress was slow, +and the Polar night gathered round us apace, as we stole still onward +and onward into that blue and glimmering land of eternal frore. We now +left off bed-coverings of reindeer-skin and took to sleeping-bags. Eight +of the dogs had died by the 25th September, when we were experiencing +19 deg. of frost. In the darkest part of our night, the Northern Light +spread its silent solemn banner over us, quivering round the heavens in +a million fickle gauds. + +The relations between the members of our little crew were +excellent--with one exception: David Wilson and I were not good friends. + +There was a something--a tone--in the evidence which he had given at the +inquest on Peters, which made me mad every time I thought of it. He had +heard Peters admit just before death that he, Peters, had administered +atropine to himself: and he had had to give evidence of that fact. But +he had given it in a most half-hearted way, so much so, that the coroner +had asked him: 'What, sir, are you hiding from me?' Wilson had replied: +'Nothing. I have nothing to tell.' + +And from that day he and I had hardly exchanged ten words, in spite of +our constant companionship in the vessel; and one day, standing alone on +a floe, I found myself hissing with clenched fist: 'If he dared suspect +Clodagh of poisoning Peters, I could _kill_ him!' + +Up to 78 deg. of latitude the weather had been superb, but on the night of +the 7th October--well I remember it--we experienced a great storm. Our +tub of a ship rolled like a swing, drenching the whimpering dogs at +every lurch, and hurling everything on board into confusion. The +petroleum-launch was washed from the davits; down at one time to 40 deg. +below zero sank the thermometer; while a high aurora was whiffed into a +dishevelled chaos of hues, resembling the smeared palette of some +turbulent painter of the skies, or mixed battle of long-robed seraphim, +and looking the very symbol of tribulation, tempest, wreck, and +distraction. I, for the first time, was sick. + +It was with a dizzy brain, therefore, that I went off watch to my bunk. +Soon, indeed, I fell asleep: but the rolls and shocks of the ship, +combined with the heavy Greenland anorak which I had on, and the state +of my body, together produced a fearful nightmare, in which I was +conscious of a vain struggle to move, a vain fight for breath, for the +sleeping-bag turned to an iceberg on my bosom. Of Clodagh was my gasping +dream. I dreamed that she let fall, drop by drop, a liquid, coloured +like pomegranate-seeds, into a glass of water; and she presented the +glass to Peters. The draught, I knew, was poisonous as death: and in a +last effort to break the bands of that dark slumber, I was conscious, as +I jerked myself upright, of screaming aloud: + +'Clodagh! Clodagh! _Spare the man...!_' + +My eyes, starting with horror, opened to waking; the electric light was +shining in the cabin; and there stood David Wilson looking at me. + +Wilson was a big man, with a massively-built, long face, made longer by +a beard, and he had little nervous contractions of the flesh at the +cheek-bones, and plenty of big freckles. His clinging pose, his smile of +disgust, his whole air, as he stood crouching and lurching there, I can +shut my eyes, and see now. + +What he was doing in my cabin I did not know. To think, my good God, +that he should have been led there just then! This was one of the +four-men starboard berths: _his_ was a-port: yet there he was! But he +explained at once. + +'Sorry to interrupt your innocent dreams, says he: 'the mercury in +Maitland's thermometer is frozen, and he asked me to hand him his +spirits-of-wine one from his bunk...' + +I did not answer. A hatred was in my heart against this man. + +The next day the storm died away, and either three or four days later +the slush-ice between the floes froze definitely. The _Boreal's_ way was +thus blocked. We warped her with ice-anchors and the capstan into the +position in which she should lay up for her winter's drift. This was in +about 79 deg. 20' N. The sun had now totally vanished from our bleak sky, +not to reappear till the following year. + +Well, there was sledging with the dogs, and bear-hunting among the +hummocks, as the months, one by one, went by. One day Wilson, by far our +best shot, got a walrus-bull; Clark followed the traditional pursuit of +a Chief, examining Crustacea; Maitland and I were in a relation of close +friendship, and I assisted his meteorological observations in a snow-hut +built near the ship. Often, through the twenty-four hours, a clear blue +moon, very spectral, very fair, suffused all our dim and livid clime. + +It was five days before Christmas that Clark made the great +announcement: he had determined, he said, if our splendid northward +drift continued, to leave the ship about the middle of next March for +the dash to the Pole. He would take with him the four reindeer, all the +dogs, four sledges, four kayaks, and three companions. The companions +whom he had decided to invite were: Wilson, Mew, and Maitland. + +He said it at dinner; and as he said it, David Wilson glanced at my wan +face with a smile of pleased malice: for _I_ was left out. + +I remember well: the aurora that night was in the sky, and at its edge +floated a moon surrounded by a ring, with two mock-moons. But all shone +very vaguely and far, and a fog, which had already lasted some days, +made the ship's bows indistinct to me, as I paced the bridge on my +watch, two hours after Clark's announcement. + +For a long time all was very still, save for the occasional whine of a +dog. I was alone, and it grew toward the end of my watch, when Maitland +would succeed me. My slow tread tolled like a passing-bell, and the +mountainous ice lay vague and white around me, its sheeted ghastliness +not less dreadfully silent than eternity itself. + +Presently, several of the dogs began barking together, left off, and +began again. + +I said to myself; 'There is a bear about somewhere.' + +And after some five minutes I saw--I thought that I saw--it. The fog +had, if anything thickened; and it was now very near the end of my +watch. + +It had entered the ship, I concluded, by the boards which slanted from +an opening in the port bulwarks down to the ice. Once before, in +November, a bear, having smelled the dogs, had ventured on board at +midnight: but _then_ there had resulted a perfect hubbub among the dogs. +_Now_, even in the midst of my excitement, I wondered at their +quietness, though some whimpered--with fear, I thought. I saw the +creature steal forward from the hatchway toward the kennels a-port; and +I ran noiselessly, and seized the watch-gun which stood always loaded by +the companionway. + +By this time, the form had passed the kennels, reached the bows, and now +was making toward me on the starboard side. I took aim. Never, I +thought, had I seen so huge a bear--though I made allowance for the +magnifying effect of the fog. + +My finger was on the trigger: and at that moment a deathly shivering +sickness took me, the wrangling voices shouted at me, with 'Shoot!' +'Shoot not!' 'Shoot!' Ah well, that latter shout was irresistible. I +drew the trigger. The report hooted through the Polar night. + +The creature dropped; both Wilson and Clark were up at once: and we +three hurried to the spot. + +But the very first near glance showed a singular kind of bear. Wilson +put his hand to the head, and a lax skin came away at his touch.... It +was Aubrey Maitland who was underneath it, and I had shot him dead. + +For the past few days he had been cleaning skins, among them the skin of +the bear from which I had saved him at Taimur. Now, Maitland was a born +pantomimist, continually inventing practical jokes; and perhaps to +startle me with a false alarm in the very skin of the old Bruin which +had so nearly done for him, he had thrown it round him on finishing its +cleaning, and so, in mere wanton fun, had crept on deck at the hour of +his watch. The head of the bear-skin, and the fog, must have prevented +him from seeing me taking aim. + +This tragedy made me ill for weeks. I saw that the hand of Fate was upon +me. When I rose from bed, poor Maitland was lying in the ice behind the +great camel-shaped hummock near us. + +By the end of January we had drifted to 80 deg. 55'; and it was then that +Clark, in the presence of Wilson, asked me if I would make the fourth +man, in the place of poor Maitland, for the dash in the spring. As I +said 'Yes, I am willing,' David Wilson spat with a disgusted emphasis. A +minute later he sighed, with 'Ah, poor Maitland...' and drew in his +breath with a _tut! tut!_ + +God knows, I had an impulse to spring then and there at his throat, and +strangle him: but I curbed myself. + +There remained now hardly a month before the dash, and all hands set to +work with a will, measuring the dogs, making harness and seal-skin shoes +for them, overhauling sledges and kayaks, and cutting every possible +ounce of weight. But we were not destined, after all, to set out that +year. About the 20th February, the ice began to pack, and the ship was +subjected to an appalling pressure. We found it necessary to make +trumpets of our hands to shout into one another's ears, for the whole +ice-continent was crashing, popping, thundering everywhere in terrific +upheaval. Expecting every moment to see the _Boreal_ crushed to +splinters, we had to set about unpacking provisions, and placing +sledges, kayaks, dogs and everything in a position for instant flight. +It lasted five days, and was accompanied by a tempest from the north, +which, by the end of February, had driven us back south into latitude +79 deg. 40'. Clark, of course, then abandoned the thought of the Pole for +that summer. + +And immediately afterwards we made a startling discovery: our stock of +reindeer-moss was found to be somehow ridiculously small. Egan, our +second mate, was blamed; but that did not help matters: the sad fact +remained. Clark was advised to kill one or two of the deer, but he +pig-headedly refused: and by the beginning of summer they were all dead. + +Well, our northward drift recommenced. Toward the middle of February we +saw a mirage of the coming sun above the horizon; there were flights of +Arctic petrels and snow-buntings; and spring was with us. In an ice-pack +of big hummocks and narrow lanes we made good progress all the summer. + +When the last of the deer died, my heart sank; and when the dogs killed +two of their number, and a bear crushed a third, I was fully expecting +what actually came; it was this: Clark announced that he could now take +only two companions with him in the spring: and they were Wilson and +Mew. So once more I saw David Wilson's pleased smile of malice. + +We settled into our second winter-quarters. Again came December, and all +our drear sunless gloom, made worse by the fact that the windmill would +not work, leaving us without the electric light. + +Ah me, none but those who have felt it could dream of one half the +mental depression of that long Arctic night; how the soul takes on the +hue of the world; and without and within is nothing but gloom, gloom, +and the reign of the Power of Darkness. + +Not one of us but was in a melancholic, dismal and dire mood; and on the +13th December Lamburn, the engineer, stabbed Cartwright, the old +harpooner, in the arm. + +Three days before Christmas a bear came close to the ship, and then +turned tail. Mew, Wilson, I and Meredith (a general hand) set out in +pursuit. After a pretty long chase we lost him, and then scattered +different ways. It was very dim, and after yet an hour's search, I was +returning weary and disgusted to the ship, when I saw some shadow like a +bear sailing away on my left, and at the same time sighted a man--I did +not know whom--running like a handicapped ghost some little distance to +the right. So I shouted out: + +'There he is--come on! This way!' + +The man quickly joined me, but as soon as ever he recognised me, stopped +dead. The devil must have suddenly got into him, for he said: + +'No, thanks, Jeffson: alone with you I am in danger of my life....' + +It was Wilson. And I, too, forgetting at once all about the bear, +stopped and faced him. + +'I see,' said I. 'But, Wilson, you are going to explain to me _now_ what +you mean, you hear? What _do_ you mean, Wilson?' + +'What I say,' he answered deliberately, eyeing me up and down: 'alone +with you I am in danger of my life. Just as poor Maitland was, and just +as poor Peters was. Certainly, you are a deadly beast.' + +Fury leapt, my God, in my heart. Black as the tenebrous Arctic night was +my soul. + +'Do you mean,' said I, 'that I want to put you out of the way in order +to go in your place to the Pole? Is that your meaning, man?' + +'That's about my meaning, Jeffson,' says he: 'you are a deadly beast, +you know.' + +'Stop!' I said, with blazing eye. 'I am going to kill _you_, Wilson--as +sure as God lives: but I want to hear first. Who _told_ you that I +killed Peters?' + +'Your lover killed him--with _your_ collusion. Why, I heard you, man, in +your beastly sleep, calling the whole thing out. And I was pretty sure +of it before, only I had no proofs. By God, I should enjoy putting a +bullet into you, Jeffson!' + +'You wrong me--you, you wrong me!' I shrieked, my eyes staring with +ravenous lust for his blood; 'and now I am going to pay you well for it. +_Look out, you!_' + +I aimed my gun for his heart, and I touched the trigger. He held up his +left hand. + +'Stop,' he said, 'stop.' (He was one of the coolest of men ordinarily.) +'There is no gallows on the _Boreal_, but Clark could easily rig one for +you. I want to kill you, too, because there are no criminal courts up +here, and it would be doing a good action for my country. But not +here--not now. Listen to me--don't shoot. Later we can meet, when all is +ready, so that no one may be the wiser, and fight it all out.' + +As he spoke I let the gun drop. It was better so. I knew that he was +much the best shot on the ship, and I an indifferent one: but I did not +care, I did not care, if I was killed. + +It is a dim, inclement land, God knows: and the spirit of darkness and +distraction is there. + +Twenty hours later we met behind the great saddle-shaped hummock, some +six miles to the S.E. of the ship. We had set out at different times, so +that no one might suspect. And each brought a ship's-lantern. + +Wilson had dug an ice-grave near the hummock, leaving at its edge a +heap of brash-ice and snow to fill it. We stood separated by an interval +of perhaps seventy yards, the grave between us, each with a lantern at +his feet. + +Even so we were mere shadowy apparitions one to the other. The air +glowered very drearily, and present in my inmost soul were the frills of +cold. A chill moon, a mere abstraction of light, seemed to hang far +outside the universe. The temperature was at 55 deg. below zero, so that we +had on wind-clothes over our anoraks, and heavy foot-bandages under our +Lap boots. Nothing but a weird morgue seemed the world, haunted with +despondent madness; and exactly like that world about us were the minds +of us two poor men, full of macabre, bleak, and funereal feelings. + +Between us yawned an early grave for one or other of our bodies. + +I heard Wilson cry out: + +'Are you ready, Jeffson?' + +'Aye, Wilson!' cried I. + +'_Then here goes!_' cries he. + +Even as he spoke, he fired. Surely, the man was in deadly earnest to +kill me. + +But his shot passed harmlessly by me: as indeed was only likely: we +were mere shadows one to the other. + +I fired perhaps ten seconds later than he: but in those ten seconds he +stood perfectly revealed to me in clear, lavender light. + +An Arctic fire-ball had traversed the sky, showering abroad, a +sulphurous glamour over the snow-landscape. Before the intenser blue of +its momentary shine had passed away, I saw Wilson stagger forward, and +drop. And him and his lantern I buried deep there under the rubble ice. + + * * * * * + +On the 13th March, nearly three months later, Clark, Mew and I left the +Boreal in latitude 85 deg. 15'. + +We had with us thirty-two dogs, three sledges, three kayaks, human +provisions for 112 days, and dog provisions for 40. Being now about 340 +miles from the Pole, we hoped to reach it in 43 days, then, turning +south, and feeding living dogs with dead, make either Franz Josef Land +or Spitzbergen, at which latter place we should very likely come up with +a whaler. + +Well, during the first days, progress was very slow, the ice being rough +and laney, and the dogs behaving most badly, stopping dead at every +difficulty, and leaping over the traces. Clark had had the excellent +idea of attaching a gold-beater's-skin balloon, with a lifting power of +35 pounds, to each sledge, and we had with us a supply of zinc and +sulphuric-acid to repair the hydrogen-waste from the bags; but on the +third day Mew over-filled and burst his balloon, and I and Clark had to +cut ours loose in order to equalise weights, for we could neither leave +him behind, turn back to the ship, nor mend the bag. So it happened that +at the end of the fourth day out, we had made only nineteen miles, and +could still from a hummock discern afar the leaning masts of the old +Boreal. Clark led on ski, captaining a sledge with 400 lbs. of +instruments, ammunition, pemmican, aleuronate bread; Mew followed, his +sledge containing provisions only; and last came I, with a mixed +freight. But on the third day Clark had an attack of snow-blindness, and +Mew took his place. + +Pretty soon our sufferings commenced, and they were bitter enough. The +sun, though constantly visible day and night, gave no heat. Our +sleeping-bags (Clark and Mew slept together in one, I in another) were +soaking wet all the night, being thawed by our warmth; and our fingers, +under wrappings of senne-grass and wolf-skin, were always bleeding. +Sometimes our frail bamboo-cane kayaks, lying across the sledges, would +crash perilously against an ice-ridge--and they were our one hope of +reaching land. But the dogs were the great difficulty: we lost six +mortal hours a day in harnessing and tending them. On the twelfth day +Clark took a single-altitude observation, and found that we were only in +latitude 86 deg. 45'; but the next day we passed beyond the furthest point +yet reached by man, viz. 86 deg. 53', attained by the _Nix_ explorers four +years previously. + + * * * * * + +Our one secret thought now was food, food--our day-long lust for the +eating-time. Mew suffered from 'Arctic thirst. + + * * * * * + +Under these conditions, man becomes in a few days, not a savage only, +but a mere beast, hardly a grade above the bear and walrus. Ah, the ice! +A long and sordid nightmare was that, God knows. + +On we pressed, crawling our little way across the Vast, upon whose hoar +silence, from Eternity until then, Bootes only, and that Great Bear, had +watched. + + * * * * * + +After the eleventh day our rate of march improved: all lanes +disappeared, and ridges became much less frequent. By the fifteenth day +I was leaving behind the ice-grave of David Wilson at the rate of ten to +thirteen miles a day. + +Yet, as it were, his arm reached out and touched me, even there. + +His disappearance had been explained by a hundred different guesses on +the ship--all plausible enough. I had no idea that anyone connected me +in any way with his death. + +But on our twenty-second day of march, 140 miles from our goal, he +caused a conflagration of rage and hate to break out among us three. + +It was at the end of a march, when our stomachs were hollow, our frames +ready to drop, and our mood ravenous and inflamed. One of Mew's dogs was +sick: it was necessary to kill it: he asked me to do it. + +'Oh,' said I, 'you kill your own dog, of course.' + +'Well, I don't know,' he replied, catching fire at once, 'you ought to +be used to killing, Jeffson.' + +'How do you mean, Mew?' said I with a mad start, for madness and the +flames of Hell were instant and uppermost in us all: 'you mean because +my profession----' + +'Profession! damn it, no,' he snarled like a dog: 'go and dig up David +Wilson--I dare say you know where to find him--and he will tell you my +meaning, right enough.' + +I rushed at once to Clark, who was stooping among the dogs, +unharnessing: and savagely pushing his shoulder, I exclaimed: + +'That beast accuses me of murdering David Wilson!' + +'Well?' said Clark. + +'I'd split his skull as clean----!' + +'Go away, Adam Jeffson, and let me be!' snarled Clark. + +'Is that all you've got to say about it, then--you?' + +'To the devil with you, man, say I, and let me be!' cried he: 'you know +your own conscience best, I suppose.' + +Before this insult I stood with grinding teeth, but impotent. However, +from that moment a deeper mood of brooding malice occupied my spirit. +Indeed the humour of us all was one of dangerous, even murderous, +fierceness. In that pursuit of riches into that region of cold, we had +become almost like the beasts that perish. + + * * * * * + +On the 10th April we passed the 89th parallel of latitude, and though +sick to death, both in spirit and body, pressed still on. Like the lower +animals, we were stricken now with dumbness, and hardly once in a week +spoke a word one to the other, but in selfish brutishness on through a +real hell of cold we moved. It is a cursed region--beyond doubt +cursed--not meant to be penetrated by man: and rapid and awful was the +degeneration of our souls. As for me, never could I have conceived that +savagery so heinous could brood in a human bosom as now I felt it brood +in mine. If men could enter into a country specially set apart for the +habitation of devils, and there become possessed of evil, as we were so +would they be. + + * * * * * + +As we advanced, the ice every day became smoother; so that, from four +miles a day, our rate increased to fifteen, and finally (as the sledges +lightened) to twenty. + +It was now that we began to encounter a succession of strange-looking +objects lying scattered over the ice, whose number continually +increased as we proceeded. They had the appearance of rocks, or pieces +of iron, incrusted with glass-fragments of various colours, and they +were of every size. Their incrustations we soon determined to be +diamonds, and other precious stones. On our first twenty-mile day Mew +picked up a diamond-crystal as large as a child's foot, and such objects +soon became common. We thus found the riches which we sought, beyond all +dream; but as the bear and the walrus find them: for ourselves we had +lost; and it was a loss of riches barren as ashes, for all those +millions we would not have given an ounce of fish-meal. Clark grumbled +something about their being meteor-stones, whose ferruginous substance +had been lured by the magnetic Pole, and kept from frictional burning in +their fall by the frigidity of the air: and they quickly ceased to +interest our sluggish minds, except in so far as they obstructed our +way. + + * * * * * + +We had all along had good weather: till, suddenly, on the morning of the +13th April, we were overtaken by a tempest from the S.W., of such mighty +and solemn volume that the heart quailed beneath it. It lasted in its +full power only an hour, but during that time snatched two of our +sledges long distances, and compelled us to lie face-downward. We had +travelled all the sun-lit night, and were gasping with fatigue; so as +soon as the wind allowed us to huddle together our scattered things, we +crawled into the sleeping-bags, and instantly slept. + +We knew that the ice was in awful upheaval around us; we heard, as our +eyelids sweetly closed, the slow booming of distant guns, and brittle +cracklings of artillery. This may have been a result of the tempest +stirring up the ocean beneath the ice. Whatever it was, we did not care: +we slept deep. + +We were within ten miles of the Pole. + + * * * * * + +In my sleep it was as though someone suddenly shook my shoulder with +urgent '_Up! up_!' It was neither Clark nor Mew, but a dream merely: for +Clark and Mew, when I started up, I saw lying still in their +sleeping-bag. + +I suppose it must have been about noon. I sat staring a minute, and my +first numb thought was somehow this: that the Countess Clodagh had +prayed me 'Be first'--for her. Wondrous little now cared I for the +Countess Clodagh in her far unreal world of warmth--precious little for +the fortune which she coveted: millions on millions of fortunes lay +unregarded around me. But that thought, _Be first!_ was deeply suggested +in my brain, as if whispered there. Instinctively, brutishly, as the +Gadarean swine rushed down a steep place, I, rubbing my daft eyes, +arose. + +The first thing which my mind opened to perceive was that, while the +tempest was less strong, the ice was now in extraordinary agitation. I +looked abroad upon a vast plain, stretched out to a circular, but waving +horizon, and varied by many hillocks, boulders, and sparkling +meteor-stones that everywhere tinselled the blinding white, some big as +houses, most small as limbs. And this great plain was now rearranging +itself in a widespread drama of havoc, withdrawing in ravines like +mutual backing curtsies, then surging to clap together in passionate +mountain-peaks, else jostling like the Symplegades, fluent and +inconstant as billows of the sea, grinding itself, piling itself, +pouring itself in cataracts of powdered ice, while here and there I saw +the meteor-stones leap spasmodically, in dusts and heaps, like geysers +or spurting froths in a steamer's wake, a tremendous uproar, meantime, +filling all the air. As I stood, I plunged and staggered, and I found +the dogs sprawling, with whimperings, on the heaving floor. + +I did not care. Instinctively, daftly, brutishly, I harnessed ten of +them to my sledge; put on Canadian snow-shoes: and was away +northward--alone. + +The sun shone with a clear, benign, but heatless shining: a ghostly, +remote, yet quite limpid light, which seemed designed for the lighting +of other planets and systems, and to strike here by happy chance. A +great wind from the S.W., meantime, sent thin snow-sweepings flying +northward past me. + +The odometer which I had with me had not yet measured four miles, when I +began to notice two things: first that the jewelled meteor-stones were +now accumulating beyond all limit, filling my range of vision to the +northern horizon with a dazzling glister: in mounds, and parterres, and +scattered disconnection they lay, like largesse of autumn leaves, spread +out over those Elysian fields and fairy uplands of wealth, trillions of +billions, so that I had need to steer my twining way among them. Now, +too, I noticed that, but for these stones, all roughness had +disappeared, not a trace of the upheaval going on a little further south +being here, for the ice lay positively as smooth as a table before me. +It is my belief that this stretch of smooth ice has never, never felt +one shock, or stir, or throe, and reaches right down to the bottom of +the deep. + + * * * * * + +And now with a wild hilarity I flew. Gradually, a dizziness, a lunacy, +had seized upon me, till finally, up-buoyed on air, and dancing mad, I +sped, I spun, with grinning teeth that chattered and gibbered, and +eyeballs of distraction: for a Fear, too--most cold and dreadful--had +its hand of ice upon my heart, I being so alone in that place, face to +face with the Ineffable: but still with a giddy levity, and a fatal joy, +and a blind hilarity, on I sped, I spun. + + * * * * * + +The odometer measured nine miles from my start. I was in the immediate +neighbourhood of the Pole. + +I cannot say when it began, but now I was conscious of a sound in my +ears, distinct and near, a steady sound of splashing, or fluttering, +resembling the noising of a cascade or brook: and it grew. Forty more +steps I took (slide I could not now for the meteorites)--perhaps +sixty--perhaps eighty: and now, to my sudden horror, I stood by a +circular clean-cut lake. + +One minute only, swaying and nodding there, I stood: and then I dropped +down flat in swoon. + + * * * * * + +In a hundred years, I suppose, I should never succeed in analysing +_why_ I swooned: but my consciousness still retains the impression of +that horrid thrill. I saw nothing distinctly, for my whole being reeled +and toppled drunken, like a spinning-top in desperate death-struggle at +the moment when it flags, and wobbles dissolutely to fall; but the very +instant that my eyes met what was before me, I knew, I knew, that here +was the Sanctity of Sanctities, the old eternal inner secret of the Life +of this Earth, which it was a most burning shame for a man to see. The +lake, I fancy, must be a mile across, and in its middle is a pillar of +ice, very low and broad; and I had the clear impression, or dream, or +notion, that there was a name, or word, graven all round in the ice of +the pillar in characters which I could never read; and under the name a +long date; and the fluid of the lake seemed to me to be wheeling with a +shivering ecstasy, splashing and fluttering, round the pillar, always +from west to east, in the direction of the spinning of the earth; and it +was borne in upon me--I can't at all say how--that this fluid was the +substance of a living creature; and I had the distinct fancy, as my +senses failed, that it was a creature with many dull and anguished eyes, +and that, as it wheeled for ever round in fluttering lust, it kept its +eyes always turned upon the name and the date graven in the pillar. But +this must be my madness.... + + * * * * * + +It must have been not less than an hour before a sense of life returned +to me; and when the thought stabbed my brain that a long, long time I +had lain there in the presence of those gloomy orbs, my spirit seemed to +groan and die within me. + +In some minutes, however, I had scrambled to my feet, clutched at a +dog's harness, and without one backward glance, was flying from that +place. + +Half-way to the halting-place, I waited Clark and Mew, being very sick +and doddering, and unable to advance. But they did not come. + +Later on, when I gathered force to go further, I found that they had +perished in the upheaval of the ice. One only of the sledges, half +buried, I saw near the spot of our bivouac. + + * * * * * + +Alone that same day I began my way southward, and for five days made +good progress. On the eighth day I noticed, stretched right across the +south-eastern horizon, a region of purple vapour which luridly obscured +the face of the sun: and day after day I saw it steadily brooding +there. But what it could be I did not understand. + + * * * * * + +Well, onward through the desert ice I continued my lonely way, with a +baleful shrinking terror in my heart; for very stupendous, alas! is the +burden of that Arctic solitude upon one poor human soul. + +Sometimes on a halt I have lain and listened long to the hollow silence, +recoiling, crushed by it, hoping that at least one of the dogs might +whine. I have even crept shivering from the thawed sleeping-bag to flog +a dog, so that I might hear a sound. + +I had started from the Pole with a well-filled sledge, and the sixteen +dogs left alive from the ice-packing which buried my comrades. This was +on the evening of the 13th April. I had saved from the wreck of our +things most of the whey-powder, pemmican, &c., as well as the +theodolite, compass, chronometer, train-oil lamp for cooking, and other +implements: I was therefore in no doubt as to my course, and I had +provisions for ninety days. But ten days from the start my supply of +dog-food failed, and I had to begin to slaughter my only companions, one +by one. + +Well, in the third week the ice became horribly rough, and with moil +and toil enough to wear a bear to death, I did only five miles a day. +After the day's work I would crawl with a dying sigh into the +sleeping-bag, clad still in the load of skins which stuck to me a mere +filth of grease, to sleep the sleep of a swine, indifferent if I never +woke. + +Always--day after day--on the south-eastern horizon, brooded sullenly +that curious stretched-out region of purple vapour, like the smoke of +the conflagration of the world. And I noticed that its length constantly +reached out and out, and silently grew. + + * * * * * + +Once I had a very pleasant dream. I dreamed that I was in a garden--an +Arabian paradise--so sweet was the perfume. All the time, however, I had +a sub-consciousness of the gale which was actually blowing from the S.E. +over the ice, and, at the moment when I awoke, was half-wittedly droning +to myself; 'It is a Garden of Peaches; but I am not really in the +garden: I am really on the ice; only, the S.E. storm is wafting to me +the aroma of this Garden of Peaches.' + +I opened my eyes--I started--I sprang to my feet! For, of all the +miracles!--I could not doubt--an actual aroma like peach-blossom was in +the algid air about me! + +Before I could collect my astonished senses, I began to vomit pretty +violently, and at the same time saw some of the dogs, mere skeletons as +they were, vomiting, too. For a long time I lay very sick in a kind of +daze, and, on rising, found two of the dogs dead, and all very queer. +The wind had now changed to the north. + +Well, on I staggered, fighting every inch of my deplorably weary way. +This odour of peach-blossom, my sickness, and the death of the two dogs, +remained a wonder to me. + +Two days later, to my extreme mystification (and joy), I came across a +bear and its cub lying dead at the foot of a hummock. I could not +believe my eyes. There she lay on her right side, a spot of dirty-white +in a disordered patch of snow, with one little eye open, and her +fierce-looking mouth also; and the cub lay across her haunch, biting +into her rough fur. I set to work upon her, and allowed the dogs a +glorious feed on the blubber, while I myself had a great banquet on the +fresh meat. I had to leave the greater part of the two carcasses, and I +can feel again now the hankering reluctance--quite unnecessary, as it +turned out--with which I trudged onwards. Again and again I found +myself asking: 'Now, what could have killed those two bears?' + +With brutish stolidness I plodded ever on, almost like a walking +machine, sometimes nodding in sleep while I helped the dogs, or +manouvred the sledge over an ice-ridge, pushing or pulling. On the 3rd +June, a month and a half from my start, I took an observation with the +theodolite, and found that I was not yet 400 miles from the Pole, in +latitude 84 deg. 50'. It was just as though some Will, some Will, was +obstructing and retarding me. + +However, the intolerable cold was over, and soon my clothes no longer +hung stark on me like armour. Pools began to appear in the ice, and +presently, what was worse, my God, long lanes, across which, somehow, I +had to get the sledge. But about the same time all fear of starvation +passed away: for on the 6th June I came across another dead bear, on the +7th three, and thenceforth, in rapidly growing numbers, I met not bears +only, but fulmars, guillemots, snipes, Ross's gulls, little awks--all, +all, lying dead on the ice. And never anywhere a living thing, save me, +and the two remaining dogs. + +If ever a poor man stood shocked before a mystery, it was I now. I had a +big fear on my heart. + +On the 2nd July the ice began packing dangerously, and soon another +storm broke loose upon me from the S.W. I left off my trek, and put up +the silk tent on a five-acre square of ice surrounded by lanes: and +_again_--for the second time--as I lay down, I smelled that delightful +strange odour of peach-blossom, a mere whiff of it, and presently +afterwards was taken sick. However, it passed off this time in a couple +of hours. + +Now it was all lanes, lanes, alas! yet no open water, and such was the +difficulty and woe of my life, that sometimes I would drop flat on the +ice, and sob: 'Oh, no more, no more, my God: here let me die.' The +crossing of a lane might occupy ten or twelve entire hours, and then, on +the other side I might find another one opening right before me. +Moreover, on the 8th July, one of the dogs, after a feed on blubber, +suddenly died; and there was left me only 'Reinhardt,' a white-haired +Siberian dog, with little pert up-sticking ears, like a cat's. Him, too, +I had to kill on coming to open water. + +This did not happen till the 3rd August, nearly four months from the +Pole. + +I can't think, my God, that any heart of man ever tholed the appalling +nightmare and black abysm of sensations in which, during those four +long desert months, I weltered: for though I was as a brute, I had a +man's heart to feel. What I had seen, or dreamed, at the Pole followed +and followed me; and if I shut my poor weary eyes to sleep, those others +yonder seemed to watch me still with their distraught and gloomy gaze, +and in my spinning dark dreams spun that eternal ecstasy of the lake. + +However, by the 28th July I knew from the look of the sky, and the +absence of fresh-water ice, that the sea could not be far; so I set to +work, and spent two days in putting to rights the now battered kayak. +This done, I had no sooner resumed my way than I sighted far off a +streaky haze, which I knew to be the basalt cliffs of Franz Josef Land; +and in a craziness of joy I stood there, waving my ski-staff about my +head, with the senile cheers of a very old man. + +In four days this land was visibly nearer, sheer basaltic cliffs mixed +with glacier, forming apparently a great bay, with two small islands in +the mid-distance; and at fore-day of the 3rd August I arrived at the +definite edge of the pack-ice in moderate weather at about the +freezing-point. + +I at once, but with great reluctance, shot Reinhardt, and set to work to +get the last of the provisions, and the most necessary of the +implements, into the kayak, making haste to put out to the toilless +luxury of being borne on the water, after all the weary trudge. Within +fourteen hours I was coasting, with my little lug-sail spread, along the +shore-ice of that land. It was midnight of a calm Sabbath, and low on +the horizon smoked the drowsing red sun-ball, as my canvas skiff lightly +chopped her little way through this silent sea. Silent, silent: for +neither snort of walrus, nor yelp of fox, nor cry of startled kittiwake, +did I hear: but all was still as the jet-black shadow of the cliffs and +glacier on the tranquil sea: and many bodies of dead things strewed the +surface of the water. + + * * * * * + +When I found a little fjord, I went up it to the end where stood a +stretch of basalt columns, looking like a shattered temple of +Antediluvians; and when my foot at last touched land, I sat down there a +long, long time in the rubbly snow, and silently wept. My eyes that +night were like a fountain of tears. For the firm land is health and +sanity, and dear to the life of man; but I say that the great ungenial +ice is a nightmare, and a blasphemy, and a madness, and the realm of the +Power of Darkness. + + * * * * * + +I knew that I was at Franz Josef Land, somewhere or other in the +neighbourhood of C. Fligely (about 82 deg. N.), and though it was so late, +and getting cold, I still had the hope of reaching Spitzbergen that +year, by alternately sailing all open water, and dragging the kayak over +the slack drift-ice. All the ice which I saw was good flat fjord-ice, +and the plan seemed feasible enough; so after coasting about a little, +and then three days' good rest in the tent at the bottom of a ravine of +columnar basalt opening upon the shore, I packed some bear and walrus +flesh, with what artificial food was left, into the kayak, and I set out +early in the morning, coasting the shore-ice with sail and paddle. In +the afternoon I managed to climb a little way up an iceberg, and made +out that I was in a bay whose terminating headlands were invisible. I +accordingly decided to make S.W. by W. to cross it, but, in doing so, I +was hardly out of sight of land, when a northern storm overtook me +toward midnight; before I could think, the little sail was all but +whiffed away, and the kayak upset. I only saved it by the happy chance +of being near a floe with an ice-foot, which, projecting under the +water, gave me foot-hold; and I lay on the floe in a mooning state the +whole night under the storm, for I was half drowned. + +And at once, on recovering myself, I abandoned all thought of whalers +and of Europe for that year. Happily, my instruments, &c., had been +saved by the kayak-deck when she capsized. + + * * * * * + +A hundred yards inland from the shore-rim, in a circular place where +there was some moss and soil, I built myself a semi-subterranean Eskimo +den for the long Polar night. The spot was quite surrounded by high +sloping walls of basalt, except to the west, where they opened in a +three-foot cleft to the shore, and the ground was strewn with slabs and +boulders of granite and basalt. I found there a dead she-bear, two +well-grown cubs, and a fox, the latter having evidently fallen from the +cliffs; in three places the snow was quite red, overgrown with a red +lichen, which at first I took for blood. I did not even yet feel secure +from possible bears, and took care to make my den fairly tight, a work +which occupied me nearly four weeks, for I had no tools, save a hatchet, +knife, and metal-shod ski-staff. I dug a passage in the ground two feet +wide, two deep, and ten long, with perpendicular sides, and at its north +end a circular space, twelve feet across, also with perpendicular sides, +which I lined with stones; the whole excavation I covered with +inch-thick walrus-hide, skinned during a whole bitter week from four of +a number that lay about the shore-ice; for ridge-pole I used a thin +pointed rock which I found near, though, even so, the roof remained +nearly flat. This, when it was finished, I stocked well, putting in +everything, except the kayak, blubber to serve both for fuel and +occasional light, and foods of several sorts, which I procured by merely +stretching out the hand. The roof of both circular part and passage was +soon buried under snow and ice, and hardly distinguishable from the +general level of the white-clad ground. Through the passage, if I passed +in or out, I crawled flat, on hands and knees: but that was rare: and in +the little round interior, mostly sitting in a cowering attitude, I +wintered, harkening to the large and windy ravings of darkling December +storms above me. + + * * * * * + +All those months the burden of a thought bowed me; and an unanswered +question, like the slow turning of a mechanism, revolved in my gloomy +spirit: for everywhere around me lay bears, walruses, foxes, thousands +upon thousands of little awks, kittiwakes, snow-owls, eider-ducks, +gulls-dead, dead. Almost the only living things which I saw were some +walruses on the drift-floes: but very few compared with the number +which I expected. It was clear to me that some inconceivable catastrophe +had overtaken the island during the summer, destroying all life about +it, except some few of the amphibia, cetacea, and crustacea. + +On the 5th December, having crept out from the den during a southern +storm, I had, for the third time, a distant whiff of that self-same +odour of peach-blossom: but now without any after-effects. + + * * * * * + +Well, again came Christmas, the New Year--Spring: and on the 22nd May I +set out with a well-stocked kayak. The water was fairly open, and the +ice so good, that at one place I could sail the kayak over it, the wind +sending me sliding at a fine pace. Being on the west coast of Franz +Josef Land, I was in as favourable a situation as possible, and I turned +my bow southward with much hope, keeping a good many days just in sight +of land. Toward the evening of my third day out I noticed a large flat +floe, presenting far-off a singular and lovely sight, for it seemed +freighted thick with a profusion of pink and white roses, showing in its +clear crystal the empurpled reflection. On getting near I saw that it +was covered with millions of Ross's gulls, all dead, whose pretty rosy +bosoms had given it that appearance. + +Up to the 29th June I made good progress southward and westward (the +weather being mostly excellent), sometimes meeting dead bears, floating +away on floes, sometimes dead or living walrus-herds, with troop after +troop of dead kittiwakes, glaucus and ivory gulls, skuas, and every kind +of Arctic fowl. On that last day--the 29th June--I was about to encamp +on a floe soon after midnight, when, happening to look toward the sun, +my eye fell, far away south across the ocean of floes, upon +something--_the masts of a ship_. + +A phantom ship, or a real ship: it was all one; real, I must have +instantly felt, it could not be: but at a sight so incredible my heart +set to beating in my bosom as though I must surely die, and feebly +waving the cane oar about my head, I staggered to my knees, and thence +with wry mouth toppled flat. + +So overpoweringly sweet was the thought of springing once more, like the +beasts of Circe, from a walrus into a man. At this time I was tearing my +bear's-meat just like a bear; I was washing my hands in walrus-blood to +produce a glairy sort of pink cleanliness, in place of the black grease +which chronically coated them. + +Worn as I was, I made little delay to set out for that ship; and I had +not travelled over water and ice four hours when, to my in-describable +joy, I made out from the top of a steep floe that she was the _Boreal_. +It seemed most strange that she should be anywhere hereabouts: I could +only conclude that she must have forced and drifted her way thus far +westward out of the ice-block in which our party had left her, and +perhaps now was loitering here in the hope of picking us up on our way +to Spitzbergen. + +In any case, wild was the haste with which I fought my way to be at her, +my gasping mouth all the time drawn back in a _rictus_ of laughter at +the anticipation of their gladness to see me, their excitement to hear +the grand tidings of the Pole attained. Anon I waved the paddle, though +I knew that they could not yet see me, and then I dug deep at the +whitish water. What astonished me was her main-sail and fore-mast +square-sail--set that calm morning; and her screws were still, for she +moved not at all. The sun was abroad like a cold spirit of light, +touching the great ocean-room of floes with dazzling spots, and a tint +almost of rose was on the world, as it were of a just-dead bride in her +spangles and white array. The _Boreal_ was the one little distant +jet-black spot in all this purity: and upon her, as though she were +Heaven, I paddled, I panted. But she was in a queerish state: by 9 A.M. +I could see that. Two of the windmill arms were not there, and half +lowered down her starboard beam a boat hung askew; moreover, soon after +10 I could clearly see that her main-sail had a long rent down the +middle. + +I could not at all make her out. She was not anchored, though a +sheet-anchor hung over at the starboard cathead; she was not moored; and +two small ice-floes, one on each side, were sluggishly bombarding her +bows. + +I began now to wave the paddle, battling for my breath, ecstatic, crazy +with excitement, each second like a year to me. Very soon I could make +out someone at the bows, leaning well over, looking my way. Something +put it into my head that it was Sallitt, and I began an impassioned +shouting. 'Hi! Sallitt! Hallo! Hi!' I called. + +I did not see him move: I was still a good way off: but there he stood, +leaning steadily over, looking my way. Between me and the ship now was +all navigable water among the floes, and the sight of him so visibly +near put into me such a shivering eagerness, that I was nothing else but +a madman for the time, sending the kayak flying with venomous digs in +quick-repeated spurts, and mixing with the diggings my crazy wavings, +and with both the daft shoutings of 'Hallo! Hi! Bravo! I have _been to +the Pole!_' + +Well, vanity, vanity. Nearer still I drew: it was broad morning, going +on toward noon: I was half a mile away, I was fifty yards. But on board +the _Boreal_, though now they _must_ have heard me, seen me, I observed +no movement of welcome, but all, all was still as death that still +Arctic morning, my God. Only, the ragged sail flapped a little, and--one +on each side--two ice-floes sluggishly bombarded the bows, with hollow +sounds. + +I was certain now that Sallitt it was who looked across the ice: but +when the ship swung a little round, I noticed that the direction of his +gaze was carried with her movement, he no longer looking my way. + +'Why, Sallitt!' I shouted reproachfully: 'why, Sallitt, man...!' I +whined. + +But even as I shouted and whined, a perfect wild certainty was in my +heart: for an aroma like peach, my God, had been suddenly wafted from +the ship upon me, and I must have very well known then that that +watchful outlook of Sallitt saw nothing, and on the _Boreal_ were dead +men all; indeed, very soon I saw one of his eyes looking like a glass +eye which has slid askew, and glares distraught. And now again my +wretched body failed, and my head dropped forward, where I sat, upon +the kayak-deck. + + * * * * * + +Well, after a long time, I lifted myself to look again at that forlorn +and wandering craft. There she lay, quiet, tragic, as it were culpable +of the dark secret she bore; and Sallitt, who had been such good friends +with me, would not cease his stare. I knew quite well why he was there: +he had leant over to vomit, and had leant ever since, his forearms +pressed on the bulwark-beam, his left knee against the boards, and his +left shoulder propped on the cathead. When I came quite near, I saw that +with every bump of the two floes against the bows, his face shook in +response, and nodded a little; strange to say, he had no covering on his +head, and I noted the play of the faint breezes in his uncut hair. After +a time I would approach no more, for I was afraid; I did not dare, the +silence of the ship seemed so sacred and awful; and till late afternoon +I sat there, watching the black and massive hull. Above her water-line +emerged all round a half-floating fringe of fresh-green sea-weed, +proving old neglect; an abortive attempt had apparently been made to +lower, or take in, the larch-wood pram, for there she hung by a jammed +davit-rope, stern up, bow in the water; the only two arms of the +windmill moved this way and that, through some three degrees, with an +_andante_ creaking sing-song; some washed clothes, tied on the bow-sprit +rigging to dry, were still there; the iron casing all round the bluff +bows was red and rough with rust; at several points the rigging was in +considerable tangle; occasionally the boom moved a little with a +tortured skirling cadence; and the sail, rotten, I presume, from +exposure--for she had certainly encountered no bad weather--gave out +anon a heavy languid flap at a rent down the middle. Besides Sallitt, +looking out there where he had jammed himself, I saw no one. + +By a paddle-stroke now, and another presently, I had closely approached +her about four in the afternoon, though my awe of the ship was +complicated by that perfume of hers, whose fearful effects I knew. My +tentative approach, however, proved to me, when I remained unaffected, +that, here and now, whatever danger there had been was past; and +finally, by a hanging rope, with a thumping desperation of heart, I +clambered up her beam. + + * * * * * + +They had died, it seemed, very suddenly, for nearly all the twelve were +in poses of activity. Egan was in the very act of ascending the +companion-way; Lamburn was sitting against the chart-room door, +apparently cleaning two carbines; Odling at the bottom of the +engine-room stair seemed to be drawing on a pair of reindeer komagar; +and Cartwright, who was often in liquor, had his arms frozen tight round +the neck of Martin, whom he seemed to be kissing, they two lying stark +at the foot of the mizzen-mast. + +Over all--over men, decks, rope-coils--in the cabin, in the +engine-room--between skylight leaves--on every shelf, in every +cranny--lay a purplish ash or dust, very impalpably fine. And steadily +reigning throughout the ship, like the very spirit of death, was that +aroma of peach-blossom. + + * * * * * + +Here it had reigned, as I could see from the log-dates, from the rust on +the machinery, from the look of the bodies, from a hundred indications, +during something over a year. It was, therefore, mainly by the random +workings of winds and currents that this fragrant ship of death had been +brought hither to me. + +And this was the first direct intimation which I had that the Unseen +Powers (whoever and whatever they may be), who through the history of +the world had been so very, very careful to conceal their Hand from the +eyes of men, hardly any longer intended to be at the pains to conceal +their Hand from me. It was just as though the Boreal had been openly +presented to me by a spiritual agency, which, though I could not see it, +I could readily apprehend. + + * * * * * + +The dust, though very thin and flighty above-decks, lay thickly +deposited below, and after having made a tour of investigation +throughout the ship, the first thing which I did was to examine +that--though I had tasted nothing all day, and was exhausted to death. I +found my own microscope where I had left it in the box in my berth to +starboard, though I had to lift up Egan to get at it, and to step over +Lamburn to enter the chart-room; but there, toward evening, I sat at the +table and bent to see if I could make anything of the dust, while it +seemed to me as if all the myriad spirits of men that have sojourned on +the earth, and angel and devil, and all Time and all Eternity, hung +silent round for my decision; and such an ague had me, that for a long +time my wandering finger-tips, all ataxic with agitation, eluded every +delicate effort which I made, and I could nothing do. Of course, I know +that an odour of peach-blossom in the air, resulting in death, could +only be associated with some vaporous effluvium of cyanogen, or of +hydrocyanic ('prussic') acid, or of both; and when I at last managed to +examine some of the dust under the microscope, I was not therefore +surprised to find, among the general mass of purplish ash, a number of +bright-yellow particles, which could only be minute crystals of potassic +ferrocyanide. What potassic ferrocyanide was doing on board the _Boreal_ +I did not know, and I had neither the means, nor the force of mind, +alas! to dive then further into the mystery; I understood only that by +some extraordinary means the air of the region just south of the Polar +environ had been impregnated with a vapour which was either cyanogen, or +some product of cyanogen; also, that this deadly vapour, which is very +soluble, had by now either been dissolved by the sea, or else dispersed +into space (probably the latter), leaving only its faint after-perfume; +and seeing this, I let my poor abandoned head drop again on the table, +and long hours I sat there staring mad, for I had a suspicion, my God, +and a fear, in my breast. + + * * * * * + +The _Boreal,_ I found, contained sufficient provisions, untouched by +the dust, in cases, casks, &c., to last me, probably, fifty years. After +two days, when I had partially scrubbed and boiled the filth of fifteen +months from my skin, and solaced myself with better food, I overhauled +her thoroughly, and spent three more days in oiling and cleaning the +engine. Then, all being ready, I dragged my twelve dead and laid them +together in two rows on the chart-room floor; and I hoisted for love the +poor little kayak which had served me through so many tribulations. At +nine in the morning of the 6th July, a week from my first sighting of +the _Boreal_, I descended to the engine-room to set out. + +The screws, like those of most quite modern ships, were driven by the +simple contrivance of a constant stream of liquid air, contained in very +powerful tanks, exploding through capillary tubes into non-expansion +slide-valve chests, much as in the ordinary way with steam: a motor +which gave her, in spite of her bluff hulk, a speed of sixteen knots. It +is, therefore, the simplest thing for one man to take these ships round +the world, since their movement, or stopping, depend upon nothing but +the depressing or raising of a steel handle, provided that one does not +get blown to the sky meantime, as liquid air, in spite of its thousand +advantages, occasionally blows people. At any rate, I had tanks of air +sufficient to last me through twelve years' voyaging; and there was the +ordinary machine on board for making it, with forty tons of coal, in +case of need, in the bunkers, and two excellent Belleville boilers: so I +was well supplied with motors at least. + +The ice here was quite slack, and I do not think I ever saw Arctic +weather so bright and gay, the temperature at 41 deg.. I found that I was +midway between Franz Josef and Spitzbergen, in latitude 79 deg. 23' N. and +longitude 39 deg. E.; my way was perfectly clear; and something almost like +a mournful hopefulness was in me as the engines slid into their clanking +turmoil, and those long-silent screws began to churn the Arctic sea. I +ran up with alacrity and took my stand at the wheel; and the bows of my +eventful Argo turned southward and westward. + + * * * * * + +When I needed food or sleep, the ship slept, too: when I awoke, she +continued her way. + +Sixteen hours a day sometimes I stood sentinel at that wheel, +overlooking the varied monotony of the ice-sea, till my knees would +give, and I wondered why a wheel at which one might sit was not +contrived, rather delicate steering being often required among the floes +and bergs. By now, however, I was less weighted with my ball of Polar +clothes, and stood almost slim in a Lap great-coat, a round Siberian fur +cap on my head. + +At midnight when I threw myself into my old berth, it was just as though +the engines, subsided now into silence, were a dead thing, and had a +ghost which haunted me; for I heard them still, and yet not them, but +the silence of their ghost. + +Sometimes I would startle from sleep, horrified to the heart at some +sound of exploding iceberg, or bumping floe, noising far through that +white mystery of quietude, where the floes and bergs were as floating +tombs, and the world a liquid cemetery. Never could I describe the +strange Doom's-day shock with which such a sound would recall me from +far depths of chaos to recollection of myself: for often-times, both +waking and in nightmare, I did not know on which planet I was, nor in +which Age, but felt myself adrift in the great gulf of time and space +and circumstance, without bottom for my consciousness to stand upon; and +the world was all mirage and a new show to me; and the boundaries of +dream and waking lost. + +Well, the weather was most fair all the time, and the sea like a pond. +During the morning of the fifth day, the 11th July, I entered, and went +moving down, an extraordinary long avenue of snow-bergs and floes, most +regularly placed, half a mile across and miles long, like a Titanic +double-procession of statues, or the Ming Tombs, but rising and sinking +on the cadenced swell; many towering high, throwing placid shadows on +the aisle between; some being of a lucid emerald tint; and three or four +pouring down cascades that gave a far and chaunting sound. The sea +between was of a strange thick bluishness, almost like raw egg-white; +while, as always here, some snow-clouds, white and woolly, floated in +the pale sky. Down this avenue, which produced a mysterious impression +of Cyclopean cathedrals and odd sequesteredness, I had not passed a +mile, when I sighted a black object at the end. + +I rushed to the shrouds, and very soon made out a whaler. + +Again the same panting agitations, mad rage to be at her, at once +possessed me; I flew to the indicator, turned the lever to full, then +back to give the wheel a spin, then up the main-mast ratlins, waving a +long foot-bandage of vadmel tweed picked up at random, and by the time I +was within five hundred yards of her, had worked myself to such a pitch, +that I was again shouting that futile madness: 'Hullo! Hi! Bravo! _I +have been to the Pole!_' + +And those twelve dead that I had in the chart-room there must have heard +me, and the men on the whaler must have heard me, and smiled their +smile. + +For, as to that whaler, I should have known better at once, if I had not +been crazy, since she _looked_ like a ship of death, her boom slamming +to port and starboard on the gentle heave of the sea, and her fore-sail +reefed that serene morning. Only when I was quite near her, and hurrying +down to stop the engines, did the real truth, with perfect suddenness, +drench my heated brain; and I almost ran into her, I was so stunned. + +However, I stopped the _Boreal_ in time, and later on lowered the kayak, +and boarded the other. + +This ship had evidently been stricken silent in the midst of a perfect +drama of activity, for I saw not one of her crew of sixty-two who was +not busy, except one boy. I found her a good-sized thing of 500 odd +tons, ship-rigged, with auxiliary engine of seventy horse-power, and +pretty heavily armour-plated round the bows. There was no part of her +which I did not over-haul, and I could see that they had had a great +time with whales, for a mighty carcass, attached to the outside of the +ship by the powerful cant-purchase tackle, had been in process of +flensing and cutting-in, and on the deck two great blankets of blubber, +looking each a ton-weight, surrounded by twenty-seven men in many +attitudes, some terrifying to see, some disgusting, several grotesque, +all so unhuman, the whale dead, and the men dead, too, and death was +there, and the rank-flourishing germs of Inanity, and a mesmerism, and a +silence, whose dominion was established, and its reign was growing old. +Four of them, who had been removing the gums from a mass of stratified +whalebone at the mizzen-mast foot, were quite imbedded in whale-flesh; +also, in a barrel lashed to the top of the main top-gallant masthead was +visible the head of a man with a long pointed beard, looking steadily +out over the sea to the S.W., which made me notice that five only of the +probable eight or nine boats were on board; and after visiting the +'tween-decks, where I saw considerable quantities of stowed whalebone +plates, and about fifty or sixty iron oil-tanks, and cut-up blubber; and +after visiting cabin, engine-room, fo'cas'le, where I saw a lonely boy +of fourteen with his hand grasping a bottle of rum under all the +turned-up clothes in a chest, he, at the moment of death, being +evidently intent upon hiding it; and after two hours' search of the +ship, I got back to my own, and half an hour later came upon all the +three missing whale-boats about a mile apart, and steered zig-zag near +to each. They contained five men each and a steerer, and one had the +harpoon-gun fired, with the loose line coiled round and round the head +and upper part of the stroke line-manager; and in the others hundreds of +fathoms of coiled rope, with toggle-irons, whale-lances, hand-harpoons, +and dropped heads, and grins, and lazy _abandon_, and eyes that stared, +and eyes that dozed, and eyes that winked. + +After this I began to sight ships not infrequently, and used regularly +to have the three lights burning all night. On the 12th July I met one, +on the 15th two, on the 16th one, on the 17th three, on the 18th +two--all Greenlanders, I think: but, of the nine, I boarded only three, +the glass quite clearly showing me, when yet far off, that on the others +was no life; and on the three which I boarded were dead men; so that +that suspicion which I had, and that fear, grew very heavy upon me. + +I went on southward, day after day southward, sentinel there at my +wheel; clear sunshine by day, when the calm pale sea sometimes seemed +mixed with regions of milk, and at night the immense desolation of a +world lit by a sun that was long dead, and by a light that was gloom. It +was like Night blanched in death then; and wan as the very kingdom of +death and Hades I have seen it, most terrifying, that neuter state and +limbo of nothingness, when unreal sea and spectral sky, all boundaries +lost, mingled in a vast shadowy void of ghastly phantasmagoria, pale to +utter huelessness, at whose centre I, as if annihilated, seemed to swoon +in immensity of space. Into this disembodied world would come anon +waftures of that peachy scent which I knew: and their frequency rapidly +grew. But still the _Boreal_ moved, traversing, as it were, bottomless +Eternity: and I reached latitude 72 deg., not far now from Northern Europe. + +And now, as to that blossomy peach-scent--even while some floes were yet +around me--I was just like some fantastic mariner, who, having set out +to search for Eden and the Blessed Islands, finds them, and balmy gales +from their gardens come out, while he is yet afar, to meet him with +their perfumes of almond and champac, cornel and jasmin and lotus. For I +had now reached a zone where the peach-aroma was constant; all the world +seemed embalmed in its spicy fragrance; and I could easily imagine +myself voyaging beyond the world toward some clime of perpetual and +enchanting Spring. + + * * * * * + +Well, I saw at last what whalers used to call 'the blink of the ice'; +that is to say, its bright apparition or reflection in the sky when it +is left behind, or not yet come-to. By this time I was in a region where +a good many craft of various sorts were to be seen; I was continually +meeting them; and not one did I omit to investigate, while many I +boarded in the kayak or the larch-wood pram. Just below latitude 70 deg. I +came upon a good large fleet of what I supposed to be Lafoden cod and +herring fishers, which must have drifted somewhat on a northward +current. They had had a great season, for the boats were well laden with +curing fish. I went from one to the other on a zig-zag course, they +being widely scattered, some mere dots to the glass on the horizon. The +evening was still and clear with that astral Arctic clearness, the sun +just beginning his low-couched nightly drowse. These sturdy-looking +brown boats stood rocking gently there with slow-creaking noises, as of +things whining in slumber, without the least damage, awaiting the +appalling storms of the winter months on that tenebrous sea, when a +dark doom, and a deep grave, would not fail them. The fishers were braw +carles, wearing, many of them, fringes of beard well back from the +chin-point, with hanging woollen caps. In every case I found below-decks +a number of cruses of corn-brandy, marked _aquavit_, two of which I took +into the pram. In one of the smacks an elderly fisher was kneeling in a +forward sprawling pose, clasping the lug-mast with his arms, the two +knees wide apart, head thrown back, and the yellow eye-balls with their +islands of grey iris staring straight up the mast-pole. At another of +them, instead of boarding in the pram, I shut off the _Boreal's_ liquid +air at such a point that, by delicate steering, she slackened down to a +stoppage just a-beam of the smack, upon whose deck I was thus able to +jump down. After looking around I descended the three steps aft into the +dark and garrety below-decks, and with stooping back went calling in an +awful whisper: '_Anyone? Anyone?_' Nothing answered me: and when I went +up again, the _Boreal_ had drifted three yards beyond my reach. There +being a dead calm, I had to plunge into the water, and in that +half-minute there a sudden cold throng of unaccountable terrors beset +me, and I can feel again now that abysmal desolation of loneliness, and +sense of a hostile and malign universe bent upon eating me up: for the +ocean seemed to me nothing but a great ghost. + +Two mornings later I came upon another school, rather larger boats +these, which I found to be Brittany cod-fishers. Most of these, too, I +boarded. In every below-decks was a wooden or earthenware image of the +Virgin, painted in gaudy faded colours; and in one case I found a boy +who had been kneeling before the statue, but was toppled sideways now, +his knees still bent, and the cross of Christ in his hand. These +stalwart blue woollen blouses and tarpaulin sou'-westers lay in every +pose of death, every detail of feature and expression still perfectly +preserved. The sloops were all the same, all, all: with sing-song creaks +they rocked a little, nonchalantly: each, as it were, with a certain +sub-consciousness of its own personality, and callous unconsciousness of +all the others round it: yet each a copy of the others: the same hooks +and lines, disembowelling-knives, barrels of salt and pickle, piles and +casks of opened cod, kegs of biscuit, and low-creaking rockings, and a +bilgy smell, and dead men. The next day, about eighty miles south of the +latitude of Mount Hekla, I sighted a big ship, which turned out to be +the French cruiser _Lazare Treport_. I boarded and overhauled her +during three hours, her upper, main, and armoured deck, deck by deck, to +her lowest black depths, even childishly spying up the tubes of her two +big, rusted turret-guns. Three men in the engine-room had been much +mangled, after death, I presume, by a burst boiler; floating about 800 +yards to the north-east lay a long-boat of hers, low in the water, +crammed with marines, one oar still there, jammed between the row-lock +and the rower's forced-back chin; on the ship's starboard deck, in the +long stretch of space between the two masts, the blue-jackets had +evidently been piped up, for they lay there in a sort of serried +disorder, to the number of two hundred and seventy-five. Nothing could +be of suggestion more tragic than the wasted and helpless power of this +poor wandering vessel, around whose stolid mass myriads of wavelets, +busy as aspen-leaves, bickered with a continual weltering splash that +was quite loud to hear. I sat a good time that afternoon in one of her +steely port main-deck casemates on a gun-carriage, my head sunken on my +breast, furtively eyeing the bluish turned-up feet, all shrunk, +exsanguined, of a sailor who lay on his back before me; his soles were +all that I could see, the rest of him lying head-downwards beyond the +steel door-sill. + +Drenched in seas of lugubrious reverie I sat, till, with a shuddering +start, I awoke, paddled back to the _Boreal_, and, till sleep conquered +me, went on my way. At ten the next morning, coming on deck, I spied to +the west a group of craft, and turned my course upon them. They turned +out to be eight Shetland sixerns, which must have drifted north-eastward +hither. I examined them well, but they were as the long list of the +others: for all the men, and all the boys, and all the dogs on them were +dead. + + * * * * * + +I could have come to land a long time before I did: but I would not: I +was so afraid. For I was used to the silence of the ice: and I was used +to the silence of the sea: but, God knows it, I was afraid of the +silence of the land. + + * * * * * + +Once, on the 15th July, I had seen a whale, or thought I did, spouting +very remotely afar on the S.E. horizon; and on the 19th I distinctly saw +a shoal of porpoises vaulting the sea-surface, in their swift-successive +manner, northward: and seeing them, I had said pitifully to myself: +'Well, I am not quite alone in the world, then, my good God--not quite +alone.' + +Moreover, some days later, the _Boreal_ had found herself in a bank of +cod making away northward, millions of fish, for I saw them, and one +afternoon caught three, hand-running, with the hook. + +So the sea, at least, had its tribes to be my mates. + +But if I should find the land as still as the sea, without even the +spouting whale, or school of tumbling sea-hogs--_if Paris were dumber +than the eternal ice_--what then, I asked myself, should I do? + + * * * * * + +I could have made short work, and landed at Shetland, for I found myself +as far westward as longitude 11 deg. 23' W.: but I would not: I was so +afraid. The shrinking within me to face that vague suspicion which I +had, turned me first to a foreign land. + +I made for Norway, and on the first night of this definite intention, at +about nine o'clock, the weather being gusty, the sky lowering, the air +sombrous, and the sea hard-looking, dark, and ridged, I was steaming +along at a good rate, holding the wheel, my poor port and starboard +lights still burning there, when, without the least notice, I received +the roughest physical shock of my life, being shot bodily right over +the wheel, thence, as from a cannon, twenty feet to the cabin-door, +through it head-foremost down the companion-way, and still beyond some +six yards along the passage. I had crashed into some dark and dead ship, +probably of large size, though I never saw her, nor any sign of her; and +all that night, and the next day till four in the afternoon, the +_Boreal_ went driving alone over the sea, whither she would: for I lay +unconscious. When I woke, I found that I had received really very small +injuries, considering: but I sat there on the floor a long time in a +sulky, morose, disgusted, and bitter mood; and when I rose, pettishly +stopped the ship's engines, seeing my twelve dead all huddled and +disfigured. Now I was afraid to steam by night, and even in the daytime +I would not go on for three days: for I was childishly angry with I know +not what, and inclined to quarrel with Those whom I could not see. + +However, on the fourth day, a rough swell which knocked the ship about, +and made me very uncomfortable, coaxed me into moving; and I did so with +bows turned eastward and southward. + +I sighted the Norway coast four days later, in latitude 63 deg. 19', at noon +of the 11th August, and pricked off my course to follow it; but it was +with a slow and dawdling reluctance that I went, at much less than +half-speed. In some eight hours, as I knew from the chart, I ought to +sight the lighthouse light on Smoelen Island; and when quiet night came, +the black water being branded with trails of still moonlight, I passed +quite close to it, between ten and twelve, almost under the shadow of +the mighty hills: but, oh my God, no light was there. And all the way +down I marked the rugged sea-board slumber darkling, afar or near, with +never, alas! one friendly light. + + * * * * * + +Well, on the 15th August I had another of those maniac raptures, whose +passing away would have left an elephant racked and prostrate. During +four days I had seen not one sign of present life on the Norway coast, +only hills, hills, dead and dark, and floating craft, all dead and dark; +and my eyes now, I found, had acquired a crazy fixity of stare into the +very bottom of the vacant abyss of nothingness, while I remained +unconscious of being, save of one point, rainbow-blue, far down in the +infinite, which passed slowly from left to right before my consciousness +a little way, then vanished, came back, and passed slowly again, from +left to right continually; till some prick, or voice, in my brain would +startle me into the consciousness that I was staring, whispering the +profound confidential warning: _You must not stare so, or it is over +with you!_' Well, lost in a blank trance of this sort, I was leaning +over the wheel during the afternoon of the 15th, when it was as if some +instinct or premonition in my soul leapt up, and said aloud: 'If you +look just yonder, _you will see...!_' I started, and in one instant had +surged up from all that depth of reverie to reality: I glanced to the +right: and there, at last, my God, I saw something human which moved, +rapidly moved: at last!--and it came to me. + +That sense of recovery, of waking, of new solidity, of the comfortable +usual, a million-fold too intense for words--how sweetly consoling it +was! Again now, as I write, I can fancy and feel it--the rocky solidity, +the adamant ordinary, on which to base the feet, and live. From the day +when I stood at the Pole, and saw there the dizzy thing that made me +swoon, there had come into my way not one sign or trace that other +beings like myself were alive on the earth with me: till now, suddenly, +I had the sweet indubitable proof: for on the south-western sea, not +four knots away, I saw a large, swift ship: and her bows, which were +sharp as a hatchet, were steadily chipping through the smooth sea at a +pretty high pace, throwing out profuse ribbony foams that went +wide-vawering, with outward undulations, far behind her length, as she +ran the sea in haste, straight northward. + +At the moment, I was steering about S.E. by S., fifteen miles out from a +shadowy-blue series of Norway mountains; and just giving the wheel one +frantic spin to starboard to bring me down upon her, I flew to the +bridge, leant my back on the main-mast, which passed through it, put a +foot on the white iron rail before me, and there at once felt all the +mocking devils of distracted revelry possess me, as I caught the cap +from my long hairs, and commenced to wave and wave and wave, red-faced +maniac that I was: for at the second nearer glance, I saw that she was +flying an ensign at the main, and a long pennant at the main-top, and I +did not know what she was flying those flags there for: and I was +embittered and driven mad. + +With distinct minuteness did she print herself upon my consciousness in +that five minutes' interval: she was painted a dull and cholera yellow, +like many Russian ships, and there was a faded pink space at her bows +under the line where the yellow ceased: the ensign at her main I made +out to be the blue-and-white saltire, and she was clearly a Russian +passenger-liner, two-masted, two-funnelled, though from her funnels came +no trace of smoke, and the position of her steam-cones was anywhere. All +about her course the sea was spotted with wobbling splendours of the low +sun, large coarse blots of glory near the eye, but lessening to a +smaller pattern in the distance, and at the horizon refined to a +homogeneous band of livid silver. + +The double speed of the _Boreal_ and the other, hastening opposite ways, +must have been thirty-eight or forty knots, and the meeting was +accomplished in certainly less than five minutes: yet into that time I +crowded years of life. I was shouting passionately at her, my eyes +starting from my head, my face all inflamed with rage the most prone, +loud and urgent. For she did not stop, nor signal, nor make sign of +seeing me, but came furrowing down upon me like Juggernaut, with +steadfast run. I lost reason, thought, memory, purpose, sense of +relation, in that access of delirium which transported me, and can only +remember now that in the midst of my shouting, a word, uttered by the +fiends who used my throat to express their frenzy, set me laughing high +and madly: for I was crying: 'Hi! Bravo! Why don't you stop? _Madmen! I +have been to the Pole!'_ + +That instant an odour arose, and came, and struck upon my brain, most +detestable, most execrable; and while one might count ten, I was aware +of her near-sounding engines, and that cursed charnel went tearing past +me on her maenad way, not fifteen yards from my eyes and nostrils. She +was a thing, my God, from which the vulture and the jackal, prowling for +offal, would fly with shrieks of loathing. I had a glimpse of decks +piled thick with her festered dead. + +In big black letters on the round retreating yellow stern my eye-corner +caught the word _Yaroslav_, as I bent over the rail to retch and cough +and vomit at her. She was a horrid thing. + +This ship had certainly been pretty far south in tropical or +sub-tropical latitudes with her great crowd of dead: for all the bodies +which I had seen till then, so far from smelling ill, seemed to give out +a certain perfume of the peach. She was evidently one of those many +ships of late years which have substituted liquid air for steam, yet +retained their old steam-funnels, &c., in case of emergency: for air, I +believe, was still looked at askance by several builders, on account of +the terrible accidents which it sometimes caused. The _Boreal_ herself +is a similar instance of both motors. This vessel, the _Yaroslav_, must +have been left with working engines when her crew were overtaken by +death, and, her air-tanks being still unexhausted, must have been +ranging the ocean with impunity ever since, during I knew not how many +months, or, it might be, years. + +Well, I coasted Norway for nearly a hundred and sixty miles without once +going nearer land than two or three miles: for something held me back. +But passing the fjord-mouth where I knew that Aadheim was, I suddenly +turned the helm to port, almost before I knew that I was doing it, and +made for land. + +In half an hour I was moving up an opening in the land with mountains on +either hand, streaky crags at their summit, umbrageous boscage below; +and the whole softened, as it were, by veils woven of the rainbow. + +This arm of water lies curved about like a thread which one drops, only +the curves are much more pointed, so that every few minutes the scene +was changed, though the vessel just crawled her way up, and I could see +behind me nothing of what was passed, or only a land-locked gleam like a +lake. + +I never saw water so polished and glassy, like clarid polished marble, +reflecting everything quite clean-cut in its lucid abysm, over which +hardly the faintest zephyr breathed that still sun-down; it wimpled +about the bluff _Boreal_, which seemed to move as if careful not to +bruise it, in rich wrinkles and creases, like glycerine, or +dewy-trickling lotus-oil; yet it was only the sea: and the spectacle +yonder was only crags, and autumn-foliage and mountain-slope: yet all +seemed caught-up and chaste, rapt in a trance of rose and purple, and +made of the stuff of dreams and bubbles, of pollen-of-flowers, and rinds +of the peach. + +I saw it not only with delight, but with complete astonishment: having +forgotten, as was too natural in all that long barrenness of ice and +sea, that anything could be so ethereally fair: yet homely, too, human, +familiar, and consoling. The air here was richly spiced with that peachy +scent, and there was a Sabbath and a nepenthe and a charm in that place +at that hour, as it were of those gardens of Hesperus, and fields of +asphodel, reserved for the spirits of the just. + +Alas! but I had the glass at my side, and for me nepenthe was mixed with +a despair immense as the vault of heaven, my good God: for anon I would +take it up to spy some perched hut of the peasant, or burg of the +'bonder,' on the peaks: and I saw no one there; and to the left, at the +third marked bend of the fjord, where there is one of those watch-towers +that these people used for watching in-coming fish, I spied, lying on a +craggy slope just before the tower, a body which looked as if it must +surely tumble head-long, but did not. And when I saw that, I felt +definitely, for the first time, that shoreless despair which I alone of +men have felt, high beyond the stars, and deep as hell; and I fell to +staring again that blank stare of Nirvana and the lunacy of Nothingness, +wherein Time merges in Eternity, and all being, like one drop of water, +flies scattered to fill the bottomless void of space, and is lost. + +The _Boreal's_ bow walking over a little empty fishing-boat roused me, +and a minute later, just before I came to a new promontory and bend, I +saw two people. The shore there is some three feet above the water, and +edged with boulders of rock, about which grows a fringe of shrubs and +small trees: behind this fringe is a path, curving upward through a +sombre wooded little gorge; and on the path, near the water, I saw a +driver of one of those Norwegian sulkies that were called karjolers: he, +on the high front seat, was dead, lying sideways and backwards, with low +head resting on the wheel; and on a trunk strapped to a frame on the +axle behind was a boy, his head, too, resting sideways on the wheel, +near the other's; and the little pony was dead, pitched forward on its +head and fore-knees, tilting the shafts downward; and some distance from +them on the water floated an empty skiff. + + * * * * * + +When I turned the next fore-land, I all at once began to see a number of +craft, which increased as I advanced, most of them small boats, with +some schooners, sloops, and larger craft, the majority a-ground: and +suddenly now I was conscious that, mingling with that delicious odour of +spring-blossoms--profoundly modifying, yet not destroying it--was +another odour, wafted to me on the wings of the very faint land-breeze: +and 'Man,' I said, 'is decomposing': for I knew it well: it was the +odour of human corruption. + + * * * * * + +The fjord opened finally in a somewhat wider basin, shut-in by quite +steep, high-towering mountains, which reflected themselves in the water +to their last cloudy crag: and, at the end of this I saw ships, a quay, +and a modest, homely old town. + +Not a sound, not one: only the languidly-working engines of the +_Boreal_. Here, it was clear, the Angel of Silence had passed, and his +scythe mown. + +I ran and stopped the engines, and, without anchoring, got down into an +empty boat that lay at the ship's side when she stopped; and I paddled +twenty yards toward the little quay. There was a brigantine with all her +courses set, three jibs, stay-sails, square-sails, main and fore-sails, +and gaff-top-sail, looking hanging and listless in that calm place, and +wedded to a still copy of herself, mast-downward, in the water; there +were three lumber-schooners, a forty-ton steam-boat, a tiny barque, five +Norway herring-fishers, and ten or twelve shallops: and the +sailing-craft had all fore-and-aft sails set, and about each, as I +passed among them, brooded an odour that was both sweet and abhorrent, +an odour more suggestive of the very genius of mortality--the inner mind +and meaning of Azrael--than aught that I could have conceived: for all, +as I soon saw, were crowded with dead. + +Well, I went up the old mossed steps, in that strange dazed state in +which one notices frivolous things: I remember, for instance, feeling +the lightness of my new clothes: for the weather was quite mild, and the +day before I had changed to Summer things, having on now only a common +undyed woollen shirt, the sleeves rolled up, and cord trousers, with a +belt, and a cloth cap over my long hair, and an old pair of yellow +shoes, without laces, and without socks. And I stood on the unhewn +stones of the edge of the quay, and looked abroad over a largish piece +of unpaved ground, which lay between the first house-row and the quay. + +What I saw was not only most woeful, but wildly startling: woeful, +because a great crowd of people had assembled, and lay dead, there; and +wildly startling, because something in their _tout ensemble_ told me in +one minute why they were there in such number. + +They were there in the hope, and with the thought, to fly westward by +boat. + +And the something which told me this was a certain _foreign_ air about +that field of the dead as the eye rested on it, something un-northern, +southern, and Oriental. + +Two yards from my feet, as I stepped to the top, lay a group of three: +one a Norway peasant-girl in skirt of olive-green, scarlet stomacher, +embroidered bodice, Scotch bonnet trimmed with silver lace, and big +silver shoe-buckles; the second was an old Norway man in knee-breeches, +and eighteenth-century small-clothes, and red worsted cap; and the third +was, I decided, an old Jew of the Polish Pale, in gaberdine and +skull-cap, with ear-locks. + +I went nearer to where they lay thick as reaped stubble between the +quay and a little stone fountain in the middle of the space, and I saw +among those northern dead two dark-skinned women in costly dress, either +Spanish or Italian, and the yellower mortality of a Mongolian, probably +a Magyar, and a big negro in zouave dress, and some twenty-five obvious +French, and two Morocco fezes, and the green turban of a shereef, and +the white of an Ulema. + +And I asked myself this question: 'How came these foreign stragglers +here in this obscure northern town?' + +And my wild heart answered: 'There has been an impassioned stampede, +northward and westward, of all the tribes of Man. And this that I, Adam +Jeffson, here see is but the far-tossed spray of that monstrous, +infuriate flood.' + + * * * * * + +Well, I passed up a street before me, careful, careful where I trod. It +was not utterly silent, nor was the quay-square, but haunted by a pretty +dense cloud of mosquitoes, and dreamy twinges of music, like the drawing +of the violin-bow in elf-land. The street was narrow, pavered, steep, +and dark; and the sensations with which I, poor bent man, passed +through that dead town, only Atlas, fabled to bear the burden of this +Earth, could divine. + + * * * * * + +I thought to myself: If now a wave from the Deep has washed over this +planetary ship of earth, and I, who alone happened to be in the extreme +bows, am the sole survivor of that crew?... What then, my God, shall I +do? + + * * * * * + +I felt, I felt, that in this townlet, save the water-gnats of Norway, +was no living thing; that the hum and the savour of Eternity filled, and +wrapped, and embalmed it. + +The houses are mostly of wood, some of them fairly large, with a +_porte-cochere_ leading into a semi-circular yard, around which the +building stands, very steep-roofed, and shingled, in view of the heavy +snow-masses of winter. Glancing into one open casement near the ground, +I saw an aged woman, stout and capped, lie on her face before a very +large porcelain stove; but I paced on without stoppage, traversed +several streets, and came out, as it became dark, upon a piece of +grass-land leading downward to a mountain-gorge. It was some distance +along this gorge that I found myself sitting the next morning: and how, +and in what trance, I passed that whole blank night is obliterated from +my consciousness. When I looked about with the return of light I saw +majestic fir-grown mountains on either hand, almost meeting overhead at +some points, deeply shading the mossy gorge. I rose, and careless of +direction, went still onward, and walked and walked for hours, +unconscious of hunger; there was a profusion of wild +mountain-strawberries, very tiny, which must grow almost into winter, a +few of which I ate; there were blue gentianellas, and +lilies-of-the-valley, and luxuriance of verdure, and a noise of waters. +Occasionally, I saw little cataracts on high, fluttering like white wild +rags, for they broke in the mid-fall, and were caught away, and +scattered; patches also of reaped hay and barley, hung up, in a singular +way, on stakes six feet high, I suppose to dry; there were perched huts, +and a seemingly inaccessible small castle or burg, but none of these did +I enter: and five bodies only I saw in the gorge, a woman with a babe, +and a man with two small oxen. + +About three in the afternoon I was startled to find myself there, and +turned back. It was dark when I again passed through those gloomy +streets of Aadheim, making for the quay, and now I felt both my hunger +and a dropping weariness. I had no thought of entering any house, but +as I passed by one open _porte-cochere_, something, I know not what, +made me turn sharply in, for my mind had become as fluff on the winds, +not working of its own action, but the sport of impulses that seemed +external. I went across the yard, and ascended a wooden spiral stair by +a twilight which just enabled me to pick my way among five or six vague +forms fallen there. In that confined place fantastic qualms beset me; I +mounted to the first landing, and tried the door, but it was locked; I +mounted to the second: the door was open, and with a chill reluctance I +took a step inward where all was pitch darkness, the window-stores being +drawn. I hesitated: it was very dark. I tried to utter that word of +mine, but it came in a whisper inaudible to my ears: I tried again, and +this time heard myself say: '_anyone_?' At the same time I had made +another step forward, and trodden upon a soft abdomen; and at that +contact terrors the most cold and ghastly thrilled me through and +through, for it was as though I saw in that darkness the sudden eyeballs +of Hell and frenzy glare upon me, and with a low gurgle of affright I +was gone, helter-skelter down the stairs, treading upon flesh, across +the yard, and down the street, with pelting feet, and open arms, and +sobbing bosom, for I thought that all Aadheim was after me; nor was my +horrid haste appeased till I was on board the _Boreal_, and moving down +the fjord. + +Out to sea, then, I went again; and within the next few days I visited +Bergen, and put in at Stavanger. And I saw that Bergen and Stavanger +were dead. + +It was then, on the 19th August, that I turned my bow toward my native +land. + + * * * * * + +From Stavanger I steered a straight course for the Humber. + +I had no sooner left behind me the Norway coast than I began to meet the +ships, the ships--ship after ship; and by the time I entered the zone +of the ordinary alternation of sunny day and sunless night, I was moving +through the midst of an incredible number of craft, a mighty and +wide-spread fleet. + +Over all that great expanse of the North Sea, where, in its most +populous days of trade, the sailor might perhaps sight a sail or two, I +had now at every moment at least ten or twelve within scope of the +glass, oftentimes as many as forty, forty-five. + +And very still they lay on a still sea, itself a dead thing, livid as +the lips of death; and there was an intensity in the calm that was +appalling: for the ocean seemed weighted, and the air drugged. + +Extremely slow was my advance, for at first I would not leave any ship, +however remotely small, without approaching sufficiently to investigate +her, at least with the spy-glass: and a strange multitudinous mixture of +species they were, trawlers in hosts, war-ships of every nation, used, +it seemed, as passenger-boats, smacks, feluccas, liners, steam-barges, +great four-masters with sails, Channel boats, luggers, a Venetian +_burchiello_, colliers, yachts, _remorqueurs_, training ships, dredgers, +two _dahabeeahs_ with curving gaffs, Marseilles fishers, a Maltese +_speronare_, American off-shore sail, Mississippi steam-boats, Sorrento +lug-schooners, Rhine punts, yawls, old frigates and three-deckers, +called to novel use, Stromboli caiques, Yarmouth tubs, xebecs, Rotterdam +flat-bottoms, floats, mere gunwaled rafts--anything from anywhere that +could bear a human freight on water had come, and was here: and all, I +knew, had been making westward, or northward, or both; and all, I knew, +were crowded; and all were tombs, listlessly wandering, my God, on the +wandering sea with their dead. + +And so fair was the world about them, too: the brightest suavest autumn +weather; all the still air aromatic with that vernal perfume of peach: +yet not so utterly still, but if I passed close to the lee of any +floating thing, the spicy stirrings of morning or evening wafted me +faint puffs of the odour of mortality over-ripe for the grave. + +So abominable and accursed did this become to me, such a plague and a +hissing, vague as was the offence, that I began to shun rather than seek +the ships, and also I now dropped my twelve, whom I had kept to be my +companions all the way from the Far North, one by one, into the sea: for +now I had definitely passed into a zone of settled warmth. + +I was convinced, however, that the poison, whatever it might be, had +some embalming, or antiseptic, effect upon the bodies: at Aadheim, +Bergen and Stavanger, for instance, where the temperature permitted me +to go without a jacket, only the merest hints and whiffs of the +processes of dissolution had troubled me. + + * * * * * + +Very benign, I say, and pleasant to see, was sky and sea during all that +voyage: but it was at sun-set that my sense of the wondrously beautiful +was roused and excited, in spite of that great burden which I carried. +Certainly, I never saw sun-sets resembling those, nor could have +conceived of aught so flamboyant, extravagant, and bewitched: for the +whole heaven seemed turned into an arena for warring Hierarchies, +warring for the universe, or it was like the wild countenance of God +defeated, and flying marred and bloody from His enemies. But many +evenings I watched with unintelligent awe, believing it but a portent of +the un-sheathed sword of the Almighty; till, one morning, a thought +pricked me like a sword, for I suddenly remembered the great sun-sets of +the later nineteenth century, witnessed in Europe, America, and, I +believe, over the world, after the eruption of the volcano of Krakatoa. + +And whereas I had before said to myself: 'If now a wave from the Deep +has washed over this planetary ship of earth...,' I said now: 'A +wave--but not from the Deep: a wave rather which she had reserved, and +has spouted, from her own un-motherly entrails...' + + * * * * * + +I had some knowledge of Morse telegraphy, and of the manipulation of +tape-machines, telegraphic typing-machines, and the ordinary wireless +transmitter and coherer, as of most little things of that sort which +came within the outskirts of the interest of a man of science; I had +collaborated with Professor Stanistreet in the production of a text-book +called 'Applications of Science to the Arts,' which had brought us some +notoriety; and, on the whole, the _minutiae_ of modern things were +still pretty fresh in my memory. I could therefore have wired from +Bergen or Stavanger, supposing the batteries not run down, to somewhere: +but I would not: I was so afraid; afraid lest for ever from nowhere +should come one answering click, or flash, or stirring.... + + * * * * * + +I could have made short work, and landed at Hull: but I would not: I was +so afraid. For I was used to the silence of the ice: and I was used to +the silence of the sea: but I was afraid of the silence of England. + + * * * * * + +I came in sight of the coast on the morning of the 26th August, +somewhere about Hornsea, but did not see any town, for I put the helm to +port, and went on further south, no longer bothering with the +instruments, but coasting at hap-hazard, now in sight of land, and now +in the centre of a circle of sea; not admitting to myself the motive of +this loitering slowness, nor thinking at all, but ignoring the +deep-buried fear of the to-morrow which I shirked, and instinctively +hiding myself in to-day. I passed the Wash, I passed Yarmouth, +Felixstowe. By now the things that floated motionless on the sea were +beyond numbering, for I could hardly lower my eyes ten minutes and lift +them, without seeing yet another there: so that soon after dusk I, too, +had to lie still among them all, till morning: for they lay dark, and to +move at any pace would have been to drown the already dead. + +Well, I came to the Thames-mouth, and lay pretty well in among the Flats +and Pan Sands towards eight one evening, not seven miles from Sheppey +and the North Kent coast: and I did not see any Nore Light, nor Girdler +Light: and all along the coast I had seen no light: but as to that I +said not one word to myself, not admitting it, nor letting my heart know +what my brain thought, nor my brain know what my heart surmised; but +with a daft and mock-mistrustful under-look I would regard the darkling +land, holding it a sentient thing that would be playing a prank upon a +poor man like me. + +And the next morning, when I moved again, my furtive eye-corners were +very well aware of the Prince's Channel light-ship, and also the Tongue +ship, for there they were: but I would not look at them at all, nor go +near them: for I did not wish to have anything to do with whatever might +have happened beyond my own ken, and it was better to look straight +before, seeing nothing, and concerning one's-self with one's-self. + +The next evening, after having gone out to sea again, I was in a little +to the E. by S. of the North Foreland: and I saw no light there, nor any +Sandhead light; but over the sea vast signs of wreckage, and the coasts +were strewn with old wrecked fleets. I turned about S.E., very slowly +moving--for anywhere hereabouts hundreds upon hundreds of craft lay dead +within a ten-mile circle of sea--and by two in the fore-day had wandered +up well in sight of the French cliffs: for I had said: 'I will go and +see the light-beam of the great revolving-drum on Calais pier that +nightly beams half-way over-sea to England.' And the moon shone clear in +the southern heaven that morning, like a great old dying queen whose +Court swarms distantly from around her, diffident, pale, and tremulous, +the paler the nearer; and I could see the mountain-shadows on her spotty +full-face, and her misty aureole, and her lights on the sea, as it were +kisses stolen in the kingdom of sleep; and all among the quiet ships +mysterious white trails and powderings of light, like palace-corridors +in some fairy-land forlorn, full of breathless wan whispers, scandals, +and runnings-to-and-fro, with leers, and agitated last embraces, and +flight of the princess, and death-bed of the king; and on the N.E. +horizon a bank of brown cloud that seemed to have no relation with the +world; and yonder, not far, the white coast-cliffs, not so low as at +Calais near, but arranged in masses separated by vales of sward, each +with its wreck: but no light of any revolving-drum I saw. + + * * * * * + +I could not sleep that night: for all the operations of my mind and body +seemed in abeyance. Mechanically I turned the ship westward again; and +when the sun came up, there, hardly two miles from me, were the cliffs +of Dover; and on the crenulated summit of the Castle I spied the Union +Jack hang motionless. + +I heard eight, nine o'clock strike in the cabin, and I was still at sea. +But some mad, audacious whisper was at my brain: and at 10.30, the 2nd +September, immediately opposite the Cross Wall Custom House, the +_Boreal's_ anchor-chain, after a voyage of three years, two months, and +fourteen days, ran thundering, thundering, through the starboard +hawse-hole. + +Ah heaven! but I must have been stark mad to let the anchor go! for the +effect upon me of that shocking obstreperous hubbub, breaking in upon +all that cemetery repose that blessed morning, and lasting it seemed a +year, was most appalling; and at the sudden racket I stood excruciated, +with shivering knees and flinching heart, God knows: for not less +terrifically uproarious than the clatter of the last Trump it raged and +raged, and I thought that all the billion dead could not fail to start, +and rise, at alarum so excessive, and question me with their eyes.... + + * * * * * + +On the top of the Cross Wall near I saw a grey crab fearlessly crawl; at +the end where the street begins, I saw a single gas-light palely burn +that broad day, and at its foot a black man lay on his face, clad only +in a shirt and one boot; the harbour was almost packed with every sort +of craft, and on a Calais-Dover boat, eight yards from my stern, which +must have left Calais crowded to suffocation, I saw the rotted dead lie +heaped, she being unmoored, and continually grinding against an anchored +green brig. + +And when I saw that, I dropped down upon my knees at the capstan, and my +poor heart sobbed out the frail cry: 'Well, Lord God, Thou hast +destroyed the work of Thy hand...' + + * * * * * + +After a time I got up, went below in a state of somnambulism, took a +packet of pemmican cakes, leapt to land, and went following the railway +that runs from the Admiralty Pier. In an enclosed passage ten yards +long, with railway masonry on one side, I saw five dead lie, and could +not believe that I was in England, for all were dark-skinned people, +three gaudily dressed, and two in flowing white robes. It was the same +when I turned into a long street, leading northward, for here were a +hundred, or more, and never saw I, except in Constantinople, where I +once lived eighteen months, so variegated a mixture of races, black, +brunette, brown, yellow, white, in all the shades, some emaciated like +people dead from hunger, and, overlooking them all, one English boy with +a clean Eton collar sitting on a bicycle, supported by a lamp-post which +his arms clasped, he proving clearly the extraordinary suddenness of the +death which had overtaken them all. + +I did not know whither, nor why, I went, nor had I the least idea +whether all this was visually seen by me in the world which I had known, +or in some other, or was all phantasy of my disembodied spirit--for I +had the thought that I, too, might be dead since old ages, and my spirit +wandering now through the universe of space, in which there is neither +north nor south, nor up nor down, nor measure nor relation, nor aught +whatever, save an uneasy consciousness of a dream about bottomlessness. +Of grief or pain, I think, I felt nothing; though I have a sort of +memory now that some sound, resembling a sob or groan, though it was +neither, came at regular clockwork intervals from my bosom during three +or four days. Meantime, my brain registered like a tape-machine details +the most frivolous, the most ludicrous--the name of a street, Strond +Street, Snargate Street; the round fur cap--black fur for the side, +white ermine for the top--of a portly Karaite priest on his back, whose +robes had been blown to his spread knees, as if lifted and neatly folded +there; a violin-bow gripped between the thick, irregular teeth of a +little Spaniard with brushed-back hair and mad-looking eyes; odd shoes +on the foot of a French girl, one black, one brown. They lay in the +street about as numerous as gunners who fall round their carriage, at +intervals of five to ten feet, the majority--as was the case also in +Norway, and on the ships--in poses of distraction, with spread arms, or +wildly distorted limbs, like men who, the instant before death, called +upon the rocks and hills to cover them. + + * * * * * + +On the left I came to an opening in the land, called, I believe, 'The +Shaft,' and into this I turned, climbing a very great number of steps, +almost covered at one point with dead: the steps I began to count, but +left off, then the dead, and left off. Finally, at the top, which must +be even higher than the Castle, I came to a great open space laid out +with gravel-walks, and saw fortifications, barracks, a citadel. I did +not know the town, except by passings-through, and was surprised at the +breadth of view. Between me and the Castle to the east lay the district +of crowding houses, brick and ragstone, mixed in the distance with vague +azure haze; and to the right the harbour, the sea, with their ships; and +visible around me on the heights seven or eight dead, biting the dust; +the sun now high and warm, with hardly a cloud in the sky; and yonder a +mist, which was the coast of France. + +It seemed too big for one poor man. + +My head nodded. I sat on a bench, black-painted and hard, the seat and +back of horizontal boards, with intervals; and as I looked, I nodded, +heavy-headed and weary: for it was too big for me. And as I nodded, with +forehead propped on my left hand, and the packet of pemmican cakes in my +right, there was in my head, somehow, an old street-song of my +childhood: and I groaned it sleepily, like coronachs and drear funereal +nenias, dirging; and the packet beat time in my right hand, falling and +raising, falling heavily and rising, in time. + + I'll buy the ring, + You'll rear the kids: + Servants to wait on our ting, ting, ting. + . . . . . + . . . . . + Ting, ting, + Won't we be happy? + Ting, ting, + That shall be it: + I'll buy the ring, + You'll rear the kids: + Servants to wait on our ting, ting, ting. + . . . . . + . . . . . + +So maundering, I fell forward upon my face, and for twenty-three hours, +the living undistinguished from the dead, I slept there. + + * * * * * + +I was awakened by drizzle, leapt up, looked at a silver chronometer +which, attached by a leather to my belt, I carried in my +breeches-pocket, and saw that it was 10 A.M. The sky was dark, and a +moaning wind--almost a new thing now to me--had arisen. + +I ate some pemmican, for I had a reluctance--needless as it turned +out--to touch any of the thousand luxuries here, sufficient no doubt, +in a town like Dover alone, to last me five or six hundred years, if I +could live so long; and, having eaten, I descended The Shaft, and spent +the whole day, though it rained and blustered continually, in wandering +about. Reasoning, in my numb way, from the number of ships on the sea, I +expected to find the town over-crowded with dead: but this was not so; +and I should say, at a venture, that not a thousand English, nor fifteen +thousand foreigners, were in it: for that westward rage and stampede +must have operated here also, leaving the town empty but for the ever +new-coming hosts. + +The first thing which I did was to go into an open grocer's shop, which +was also a post and telegraph office, with the notion, I suppose, to get +a message through to London. In the shop a single gas-light was burning +its last, and this, with that near the pier, were the only two that I +saw: and ghastly enough they looked, transparently wannish, and as it +were ashamed, like blinking night-things overtaken by the glare of day. +I conjectured that they had so burned and watched during months, or +years: for they were now blazing diminished, with streaks and rays in +the flame, as if by effort, and if these were the only two, they must +have needed time to all-but exhaust the works. Before the counter lay a +fashionably-dressed negro with a number of tied parcels scattered about +him, and on the counter an empty till, and behind it a tall thin woman +with her face resting sideways in the till, fingers clutching the outer +counter-rim, and such an expression of frantic terror as I never saw. I +got over the counter to a table behind a wire-gauze, and, like a numb +fool, went over the Morse alphabet in my mind before touching the +transmitting key, though I knew no code-words, and there, big enough to +be seen, was the ABC dial, and who was to answer my message I did not +ask myself: for habit was still strong upon me, and my mind refused to +reason from what I saw to what I did not see; but the moment I touched +the key, and peered greedily at the galvanometer-needle at my right, I +saw that it did not move, for no current was passing; and with a kind of +fright, I was up, leapt, and got away from the place, though there was a +great number of telegrams about the receiver which, if I had been in my +senses, I would have stopped and read. + +Turning the corner of the next street, I saw wide-open the door of a +substantial large house, and went in. From bottom to top there was no +one there, except one English girl, sitting back in an easy-chair in the +drawing-room, which was richly furnished with Valenciennes curtains and +azure-satin things. She was a girl of the lowest class, hardly clad in +black rags, and there she lay with hanging jaw, in a very crooked and +awkward pose, a jemmy at her feet, in her left hand a roll of +bank-notes, and in her lap three watches. In fact, the bodies which I +saw here were, in general, either those of new-come foreigners, or else +of the very poor, the very old, or the very young. + +But what made me remember this house was that I found here on one of the +sofas a newspaper: _The Kent Express_; and sitting unconscious of my +dead neighbour, I pored a long while over what was written there. + +It said in a passage which I tore out and kept: + +'Telegraphic communication with Tilsit, Insterburg, Warsaw, Cracow, +Przemysl, Gross Wardein, Karlsburg, and many smaller towns lying +immediately eastward of the 21st parallel of longitude has ceased during +the night. In some at least of them there must have been operators still +at their duty, undrawn into the great westward-rushing torrent: but as +all messages from Western Europe have been answered only by that dread +mysterious silence which, just three months and two days since, +astounded the world in the case of Eastern New Zealand, we can only +assume that these towns, too, have been added to the long and mournful +list; indeed, after last evening's Paris telegrams we might have +prophesied with some certainty, not merely their overthrow, but even the +hour of it: for the rate-uniformity of the slow-riding vapour which is +touring our globe is no longer doubtful, and has even been definitely +fixed by Professor Craven at 100-1/2 miles per day, or 4 miles 330 yards +per hour. Its nature, its origin, remains, of course, nothing but matter +of conjecture: for it leaves no living thing behind it: nor, God knows, +is that of any moment now to us who remain. The rumour that it is +associated with an odour of almonds is declared, on high authority, to +be improbable; but the morose purple of its impending gloom has been +attested by tardy fugitives from the face of its rolling and smoky +march. + +'Is this the end? We do not, and cannot, believe it. Will the pure sky +which we to-day see above us be invaded in nine days, or less, by this +smoke of the Pit of Darkness? In spite of the assurances of the +scientists, we still doubt. For, if so, to what purpose that long drama +of History, in which we seem to see the Hand of the Dramaturgist? +Surely, the end of a Fifth Act should be obvious, satisfying to one's +sense of the complete: but History, so far, long as it has been, +resembles rather a Prologue than a Fifth Act. Can it be that the +Manager, utterly dissatisfied, would sweep all off, and 'hang up' the +piece for ever? Certainly, the sins of mankind have been as scarlet: and +if the fair earth which he has turned into Hell, send forth now upon him +the smoke of Hell, little the wonder. But we cannot yet believe. There +is a sparing strain in nature, and through the world, as a thread, is +spun a silence which smiles, and on the end of events we find placarded +large the words: "Why were ye afraid?" A dignified Hope, therefore--even +now, when we cower beneath this worldwide shadow of the wings of the +Condor of Death--becomes us: and, indeed, we see such an attitude among +some of the humblest of our people, from whose heart ascends the cry: +"Though He slay me, yet will I trust in Him." Here, therefore, O Lord! O +Lord, look down, and save! + +'But even as we thus write of hope, Reason, if we would hear her, +whispers us "fool": and inclement is the sky of earth. No more ships can +New York Harbour contain, and whereas among us men die weekly of +privations by the hundred thousand, yonder across the sea they perish by +the million: for where the rich are pinched, how can the poor live? +Already 700 out of the 1000 millions of our race have perished, and the +empires of civilisation have crumbled like sand-castles in a horror of +anarchy. Thousands upon thousands of unburied dead, anticipating the +more deliberate doom that comes and smokes, and rides and comes and +comes, and does not fail, encumber the streets of London, Manchester, +Liverpool. The guides of the nation have fled; the father stabs his +child, and the wife her husband, for a morsel of food; the fields lie +waste; wanton crowds carouse in our churches, universities, palaces, +banks and hospitals; we understand that late last night three +territorial regiments, the Munster Fusiliers, and the Lotian and East +Lancashire Regiments, riotously disbanded themselves, shooting two +officers; infectious diseases, as we all know, have spread beyond limit; +in several towns the police seem to have disappeared, and, in nearly +all, every vestige of decency; the results following upon the sudden +release of the convicts appear to be monstrous in the respective +districts; and within three short months Hell seems to have acquired +this entire planet, sending forth Horror, like a rabid wolf, and +Despair, like a disastrous sky, to devour and confound her. Hear, +therefore, O Lord, and forgive our iniquities! O Lord, we beseech Thee! +Look down, O Lord, and spare!' + + * * * * * + +When I had read this, and the rest of the paper, which had one whole +sheet-side blank, I sat a long hour there, eyeing a little patch of the +purple ash on a waxed board near the corner where the girl sat with her +time-pieces, so useless in her Eternity; and there was not a feeling in +me, except a pricking of curiosity, which afterwards became morbid and +ravenous, to know something more of that cloud, or smoke, of which this +man spoke, of its dates, its origin, its nature, its minute details. +Afterwards, I went down, and entered several houses, searching for more +papers, but did not find any; then I found a paper-shop which was open, +with boards outside, but either it had been deserted, or printing must +have stopped about the date of the paper which I had read, for the only +three news-papers there were dated long prior, and I did not read them. + +Now it was raining, and a blustering autumn day it was, distributing the +odours of the world, and bringing me continual mixed whiffs of flowers +and the hateful stench of decay. But I would not mind it much. + +I wandered and wandered, till I was tired of spahi and bashi-bazouk, of +Greek and Catalan, of Russian 'pope' and Coptic abuna, of dragoman and +Calmuck, of Egyptian maulawi and Afghan mullah, Neapolitan and sheik, +and the nightmare of wild poses, colours, stuffs and garbs, the +yellow-green kefie of the Bedouin, shawl-turbans of Baghdad, the +voluminous rose-silk tob of women, and face-veils, and stark distorted +nakedness, and sashes of figured muslin, and the workman's cords, and +the red tarboosh. About four, for very weariness, I was sitting on a +door-steep, bent beneath the rain; but soon was up again, fascinated no +doubt by this changing bazaar of sameness, its chance combinations and +permutations, and novelty in monotony. About five I was at a station, +marked Harbour Station, in and about which lay a considerable crowd, but +not one train. I sat again, and rested, rose and roamed again; soon +after six I found myself at another station, called 'Priory'; and here I +saw two long trains, both crowded, one on a siding, and one at the +up-platform. + +I examined both engines, and found them of the old boiler steam-type +with manholes, heaters, autoclaves, feed-pump, &c., now rare in western +countries, except England. In one there was no water, but in that at the +platform, the float-lever, barely tilted toward the float, showed that +there was some in the boiler. Of this one I overhauled all the +machinery, and found it good, though rusted. There was plenty of fuel, +and oil, which I supplemented from a near shop: and during ninety +minutes my brain and hands worked with an intelligence as it were +automatic, of their own motion. After three journeys across the station +and street, I saw the fire blaze well, and the manometer move; when the +lever of the safety-valve, whose load I lightened by half an atmosphere, +lifted, I jumped down, and tried to disconnect the long string of +carriages from the engine: but failed, the coupling being an automatic +arrangement new to me; nor did I care. It was now very dark; but there +was still oil for bull's-eye and lantern, and I lit them. I forgot +nothing. I rolled driver and stoker--the guard was absent--one to the +platform, one upon the rails: and I took their place there. At about +8.30 I ran out from Dover, my throttle-valve pealing high a long +falsetto through the bleak and desolate night. + + * * * * * + +My aim was London. But even as I set out, my heart smote me: I knew +nothing of the metals, their junctions, facing-points, sidings, +shuntings, and complexities. Even as to whether I was going toward, or +away from, London, I was not sure. But just in proportion as my first +timorousness of the engine hardened into familiarity and self-sureness, +I quickened speed, wilfully, with an obstinacy deaf and blind. + +Finally, from a mere crawl at first, I was flying at a shocking +velocity, while something, tongue in cheek, seemed to whisper me: 'There +must be other trains blocking the lines, at stations, in yards, and +everywhere--it is a maniac's ride, a ride of death, and Flying +Dutchman's frenzy: remember your dark five-deep brigade of passengers, +who rock and bump together, and will suffer in a collision.' But with +mulish stubbornness I thought: 'They wished to go to London'; and on I +raged, not wildly exhilarated, so far as I can remember, nor lunatic, +but feeling the dull glow of a wicked and morose Unreason urge in my +bosom, while I stoked all blackened at the fire, or saw the vague mass +of dead horse or cow, running trees and fields, and dark homestead and +deep-slumbering farm, flit ghostly athwart the murky air, as the +half-blind saw 'men like trees walking.' + +Long, however, it did not last: I could not have been twenty miles from +Dover when, on a long reach of straight lines, I made out before me a +tarpaulined mass opposite a signal-point: and at once callousness +changed to terror within me. But even as I plied the brake, I felt that +it was too late: I rushed to the gangway to make a wild leap down an +embankment to the right, but was thrown backward by a quick series of +rough bumps, caused by eight or ten cattle which lay there across the +lines: and when I picked myself up, and leapt, some seconds before the +impact, the speed must have considerably slackened, for I received no +fracture, but lay in semi-coma in a patch of yellow-flowered whin on +level ground, and was even conscious of a fire on the lines forty yards +away, and, all the night, of vague thunder sounding from somewhere. + + * * * * * + +About five, or half-past, in the morning I was sitting up, rubbing my +eyes, in a dim light mixed with drizzle. I could see that the train of +my last night's debauch was a huddled-up chaos of fallen carriages and +disfigured bodies. A five-barred gate on my left opened into a hedge, +and swung with creaks: two yards from my feet lay a little shaggy pony +with swollen wan abdomen, the very picture of death, and also about me a +number of dead wet birds. + +I picked myself up, passed through the gate, and walked up a row of +trees to a house at their end. I found it to be a little country-tavern +with a barn, forming one house, the barn part much larger than the +tavern part. I went into the tavern by a small side-door--behind the +bar--into a parlour--up a little stair--into two rooms: but no one was +there. I then went round into the barn, which was paved with +cobble-stones, and there lay a dead mare and foal, some fowls, with two +cows. A ladder-stair led to a closed trap-door in the floor above. I +went up, and in the middle of a wilderness of hay saw nine +people--labourers, no doubt--five men and four women, huddled together, +and with them a tin-pail containing the last of some spirit; so that +these had died merry. + +I slept three hours among them, and afterwards went back to the tavern, +and had some biscuits of which I opened a new tin, with some ham, jam +and apples, of which I made a good meal, for my pemmican was gone. + +Afterwards I went following the rail-track on foot, for the engines of +both the collided trains were smashed. I knew northward from southward +by the position of the sun: and after a good many stoppages at houses, +and by railway-banks, I came, at about eleven in the night, to a great +and populous town. + +By the Dane John and the Cathedral, I immediately recognised it as +Canterbury, which I knew quite well. And I walked up Castle Street to +the High Street, conscious for the first time of that +regularly-repeated sound, like a sob or groan, which was proceeding from +my throat. As there was no visible moon, and these old streets very dim, +I had to pick my way, lest I should desecrate the dead with my foot, and +they all should rise with hue and cry to hunt me. However, the bodies +here were not numerous, most, as before, being foreigners: and these, +scattered about this strict old English burg that mourning dark night, +presented such a scene of the baneful wrath of God, and all abomination +of desolation, as broke me quite down at one place, where I stood in +travail with jeremiads and sore sobbings and lamentations, crying out +upon it all, God knows. + +Only when I stood at the west entrance of the Cathedral I could discern, +spreading up the dark nave, to the lantern, to the choir, a +phantasmagorical mass of forms: I went a little inward, and striking +three matches, peered nearer: the two transepts, too, seemed +crowded--the cloister-doorway was blocked--the southwest porch thronged, +so that a great congregation must have flocked hither shortly before +their fate overtook them. + +Here it was that I became definitely certain that the after-odour of the +poison was not simply lingering in the air, but was being more or less +given off by the bodies: for the blossomy odour of this church actually +overcame that other odour, the whole rather giving the scent of old +mouldy linens long embalmed in cedars. + +Well, away with stealthy trot I ran from the abysmal silence of that +place, and in Palace Street near made one of those sudden immoderate +rackets that seemed to outrage the universe, and left me so woefully +faint, decrepit, and gasping for life (the noise of the train was +different, for there I was flying, but here a captive, and which way I +ran was capture). Passing in Palace Street, I saw a little lampshop, and +wanting a lantern, tried to get in, but the door was locked; so, after +going a few steps, and kicking against a policeman's truncheon, I +returned to break the window-glass. I knew that it would make a fearful +noise, and for some fifteen or twenty minutes stood hesitating: but +never could I have dreamed, my good God, of _such_ a noise, so +passionate, so dominant, so divulgent, and, O Heaven, so long-lasting: +for I seemed to have struck upon the weak spot of some planet, which +came suddenly tumbling, with protracted bellowing and _debacle_, about +my ears. It was a good hour before I would climb in; but then quickly +found what I wanted, and some big oil-cans; and till one or two in the +morning, the innovating flicker of my lantern went peering at random +into the gloomy nooks of the town. + +Under a deep old Gothic arch that spanned a pavered alley, I saw the +little window of a little house of rubble, and between the two +diamond-paned sashes rags tightly beaten in, the idea evidently being to +make the place air-tight against the poison. When I went in I found the +door of that room open, though it, too, apparently, had been stuffed at +the edges; and on the threshold an old man and woman lay low. I +conjectured that, thus protected, they had remained shut in, till either +hunger, or the lack of oxygen in the used-up air, drove them forth, +whereupon the poison, still active, must have instantly ended them. I +found afterwards that this expedient of making air-tight had been widely +resorted to; and it might well have proved successful, if both the +supply of inclosed air, and of food, had been anywhere commensurate with +the durability of the poisonous state. + +Weary, weary as I grew, some morbid persistence sustained me, and I +would not rest. About four in the morning I was at a station again, +industriously bending, poor wretch, at the sooty task of getting another +engine ready for travel. This time, when steam was up, I succeeded in +uncoupling the carriages from the engine, and by the time morning +broke, I was lightly gliding away over the country, whither I did not +know, but making for London. + + * * * * * + +Now I went with more intelligence and caution, and got on very well, +travelling seven days, never at night, except it was very clear, never +at more than twenty or twenty-five miles, and crawling through tunnels. +I do not know the maze into which the train took me, for very soon after +leaving Canterbury it must have gone down some branch-line, and though +the names were marked at stations, that hardly helped me, for of their +situation relatively to London I was seldom sure. Moreover, again and +again was my progress impeded by trains on the metals, when I would have +to run back to a shunting-point or a siding, and, in two instances, +these being far behind, changed from my own to the impeding engine. On +the first day I travelled unhindered till noon, when I stopped in open +country that seemed uninhabited for ages, only that half a mile to the +left, on a shaded sward, was a large stone house of artistic design, +coated with tinted harling, the roof of red Ruabon tiles, and timbered +gables. I walked to it after another row with putting out the fire and +arranging for a new one, the day being bright and mild, with great +masses of white cloud in the sky. The house had an outer and an inner +hall, three reception rooms, fine oil-paintings, a kind of museum, and a +large kitchen. In a bed-room above-stairs I found three women with +servants' caps, and a footman, arranged in a strange symmetrical way, +head to head, like rays of a star. As I stood looking at them, I could +have sworn, my good God, that I heard someone coming up the stairs. But +it was some slight creaking of the breeze in the house, augmented a +hundredfold to my inflamed and fevered hearing: for, used for years now +to this silence of Eternity, it is as though I hear all sounds through +an ear-trumpet. I went down, and after eating, and drinking some +clary-water, made of brandy, sugar, cinnamon, and rose water, which I +found in plenty, I lay down on a sofa in the inner hall, and slept a +quiet sleep until near midnight. + +I went out then, still possessed with the foolish greed to reach London, +and after getting the engine to rights, went off under a clear black sky +thronged with worlds and far-sown spawn, some of them, I thought, +perhaps like this of mine, whelmed and drowned in oceans of silence, +with one only inhabitant to see it, and hear its silence. And all the +long night I travelled, stopping twice only, once to get the coal from +an engine which had impeded me, and once to drink some water, which I +took care, as always, should be running water. When I felt my head nod, +and my eyes close about 5 A.M., I threw myself, just outside the arch of +a tunnel upon a grassy bank, pretty thick with stalks and flowers, the +workings of early dawn being then in the east: and there, till near +eleven, slept. + +On waking, I noticed that the country now seemed more like Surrey than +Kent: there was that regular swell and sinking of the land; but, in +fact, though it must have been either, it looked like neither, for +already all had an aspect of return to a state of wild nature, and I +could see that for a year at the least no hand had tended the soil. Near +before me was a stretch of lucerne of such extraordinary growth, that I +was led during that day and the succeeding one to examine the condition +of vegetation with some minuteness, and nearly everywhere I detected a +certain hypertrophie tendency in stamens, calycles, pericarps, and +pistils, in every sort of bulbiferous growth that I looked at, in the +rushes, above all, the fronds, mosses, lichens, and all cryptogamia, and +in the trefoils, clover especially, and some creepers. Many +crop-fields, it was clear, had been prepared, but not sown; some had +not been reaped: and in both cases I was struck with their appearance of +rankness, as I was also when in Norway, and was all the more surprised +that this should be the case at a time when a poison, whose action is +the arrest of oxidation, had traversed the earth; I could only conclude +that its presence in large volumes in the lower strata of the atmosphere +had been more or less temporary, and that the tendency to exuberance +which I observed was due to some principle by which Nature acts with +freer energy and larger scope in the absence of man. + +Two yards from the rails I saw, when I got up, a little rill beside a +rotten piece of fence, barely oozing itself onward under masses of foul +and stagnant fungoids: and here there was a sudden splash, and life: and +I caught sight of the hind legs of a diving young frog. I went and lay +on my belly, poring over the clear dulcet little water, and presently +saw two tiny bleaks, or ablets, go gliding low among the swaying +moss-hair of the bottom-rocks, and thought how gladly would I be one of +them, with my home so thatched and shady, and my life drowned in their +wide-eyed reverie. At any rate, these little creatures are alive, the +batrachians also, and, as I found the next day, pupae and chrysales of +one sort or another, for, to my deep emotion, I saw a little white +butterfly staggering in the air over the flower-garden of a rustic +station named Butley. + + * * * * * + +It was while I was lying there, poring upon that streamlet, that a +thought came into my head: for I said to myself: 'If now I be here +alone, alone, alone... alone, alone... one on the earth... and my girth +have a spread of 25,000 miles... what will happen to my mind? Into what +kind of creature shall I writhe and change? I may live two years so! +What will have happened then? I may live five years--ten! What will have +happened after the five? the ten? I may live twenty, thirty, forty...' + +Already, already, there are things that peep and sprout within me...! + + * * * * * + +I wanted food and fresh running water, and walked from the engine half a +mile through fields of lucerne whose luxuriance quite hid the +foot-paths, and reached my shoulder. After turning the brow of a hill, I +came to a park, passing through which I saw some dead deer and three +persons, and emerged upon a terraced lawn, at the end of which stood an +Early English house of pale brick with copings, plinths, stringcourses +of limestone, and spandrels of carved marble; and some distance from the +porch a long table, or series of tables, in the open air, still spread +with cloths that were like shrouds after a month of burial; and the +table had old foods on it, and some lamps; and all around it, and all on +the lawn, were dead peasants. I seemed to know the house, probably from +some print which I may have seen, but I could not make out the +escutcheon, though I saw from its simplicity that it must be very +ancient. Right across the facade spread still some of the letters in +evergreens of the motto: 'Many happy returns of the day,' so that +someone must have come of age, or something, for inside all was gala, +and it was clear that these people had defied a fate which they, of +course, foreknew. I went nearly throughout the whole spacious place of +thick-carpeted halls, marbles, and famous oils, antlers and arras, and +gilt saloons, and placid large bed-chambers: and it took me an hour. +There were here not less than a hundred and eighty people. In the first +of a vista of three large reception-rooms lay what could only have been +a number of quadrille parties, for to the _coup d'oeil_ they presented a +two-and-two appearance, made very repulsive by their jewels and +evening-dress. I had to steel my heart to go through this house, for I +did not know if these people were looking at me as soon as my back was +turned. Once I was on the very point of flying, for I was going up the +great central stairway, and there came a pelt of dead leaves against a +window-pane in a corridor just above on the first floor, which thrilled +me to the inmost soul. But I thought that if I once fled, they would all +be at me from behind, and I should be gibbering mad long, long before I +reached the outer hall, and so stood my ground, even defiantly +advancing. In a small dark bedroom in the north wing on the second +floor--that is to say, at the top of the house--I saw a tall young lady +and a groom, or wood-man, to judge by his clothes, horribly riveted in +an embrace on a settee, she with a light coronet on her head in +low-necked dress, and their lipless teeth still fiercely pressed +together. I collected in a bag a few delicacies from the under-regions +of this house, Lyons sausages, salami, mortadel, apples, roes, raisins, +artichokes, biscuits, a few wines, a ham, bottled fruit, pickles, +coffee, and so on, with a gold plate, tin-opener, cork-screw, fork, &c., +and dragged them all the long way back to the engine before I could eat. + + * * * * * + +My brain was in such a way, that it was several days before the +perfectly obvious means of finding my way to London, since I wished to +go there, at all occurred to me; and the engine went wandering the +intricate railway-system of the south country, I having twice to water +her with a coal-bucket from a pool, for the injector was giving no water +from the tank under the coals, and I did not know where to find any near +tank-sheds. On the fifth evening, instead of into London, I ran into +Guildford. + + * * * * * + +That night, from eleven till the next day, there was a great storm over +England: let me note it down. And ten days later, on the 17th of the +month came another; and on the 23rd another; and I should be put to it +to count the great number since. And they do not resemble English +storms, but rather Arctic ones, in a certain very suggestive something +of personalness, and a carousing malice, and a Tartarus gloom, which I +cannot quite describe. That night at Guildford, after wandering about, +and becoming very weary, I threw myself upon a cushioned pew in an old +Norman church with two east apses, called St. Mary's, using a +Bible-cushion for pillow, and placing some distance away a little tin +lamp turned low, whose ray served me for _veilleuse_ through the night. +Happily I had taken care to close up everything, or, I feel sure, the +roof must have gone. Only one dead, an old lady in a chapel on the north +side of the chancel, whom I rather mistrusted, was there with me: and +there I lay listening: for, after all, I could not sleep a wink, while +outside vogued the immense tempest. And I communed with myself, +thinking: 'I, poor man, lost in this conflux of infinitudes and vortex +of the world, what can become of me, my God? For dark, ah dark, is the +waste void into which from solid ground I am now plunged a million +fathoms deep, the sport of all the whirlwinds: and it were better for me +to have died with the dead, and never to have seen the wrath and +turbulence of the Ineffable, nor to have heard the thrilling bleakness +of the winds of Eternity, when they pine, and long, and whimper, and +when they vociferate and blaspheme, and when they expostulate and +intrigue and implore, and when they despair and die, which ear of man +should never hear. For they mean to eat me up, I know, these Titanic +darknesses: and soon like a whiff I shall pass away, and leave the world +to them.' So till next morning I lay mumping, with shivers and +cowerings: for the shocks of the storm pervaded the locked church to my +very heart; and there were thunders that night, my God, like callings +and laughs and banterings, exchanged between distant hill-tops in Hell. + + * * * * * + +'Well, the next morning I went down the steep High Street, and found a +young nun at the bottom whom I had left the previous evening with a +number of girls in uniform opposite the Guildhall--half-way up the +street. She must have been spun down, arm over arm, for the wind was +westerly, and whereas I had left her completely dressed to her wimple +and beads, she was now nearly stripped, and her little flock scattered. +And branches of trees, and wrecked houses, and reeling clouds of dead +leaves were everywhere that wild morning. + +This town of Guildford appeared to be the junction of an extraordinary +number of railway-lines, and before again setting out in the afternoon, +when the wind had lulled, having got an A B C guide, and a railway-map, +I decided upon my line, and upon a new engine, feeling pretty sure now +of making London, only thirty miles away. I then set out, and about five +o'clock was at Surbiton, near my aim; I kept on, expecting every few +minutes to see the great city, till darkness fell, and still, at +considerable risk, I went, as I thought, forward: but no London was +there. I had, in fact, been on a loop-line, and at Surbiton gone wrong +again; for the next evening I found myself at Wokingham, farther away +than ever. + +I slept on a rug in the passage of an inn called The Rose, for there was +a wild, Russian-looking man, with projecting top-teeth, on a bed in the +house, whose appearance I did not like, and it was late, and I too tired +to walk further; and the next morning pretty early I set out again, and +at 10 A.M. was at Reading. + +The notion of navigating the land by precisely the same means as the +sea, simple and natural as it was, had not at all occurred to me: but at +the first accidental sight of a compass in a little shop-window near the +river at Reading, my difficulties as to getting to any desired place in +the world vanished once and for all: for a good chart or map, the +compass, a pair of compasses, and, in the case of longer distances, a +quadrant, sextant or theodolite, with a piece of paper and pencil, were +all that were necessary to turn an engine into a land-ship, one choosing +the lines that ran nearest the direction of one's course, whenever they +did not run precisely. + +Thus provided, I ran out from Reading about seven in the evening, while +there was still some light, having spent there some nine hours. This was +the town where I first observed that shocking crush of humanity, which +I afterwards met in every large town west of London. Here, I should say, +the English were quite equal in number to the foreigners: and there were +enough of both, God knows: for London must have poured many here. There +were houses, in every room of which, and on the stairs, the dead +actually overlay each other, and in the streets before them were points +where only on flesh, or under carriages, was it possible to walk. I went +into the great County Gaol, from which, as I had read, the prisoners had +been released two weeks before-hand, and there I found the same pressed +condition, cells occupied by ten or twelve, the galleries continuously +rough-paved with faces, heads, and old-clothes-shops of robes; and in +the parade-ground, against one wall, a mass of human stuff, like tough +grey clay mixed with rags and trickling black gore, where a crush as of +hydraulic power must have acted. At a corner between a gate and a wall +near the biscuit-factory of this town I saw a boy, whom I believe to +have been blind, standing jammed, at his wrist a chain-ring, and, at the +end of the chain, a dog; from his hap-hazard posture I conjectured that +he, and chain, and dog had been lifted from the street, and placed so, +by the storm of the 7th of the month; and what made it very curious was +that his right arm pointed a little outward just over the dog, so that, +at the moment when I first sighted him, he seemed a drunken fellow +setting his dog at me. In fact, all the dead I found much mauled and +stripped and huddled: and the earth seemed to be making an abortive +effort to sweep her streets. + +Well, some little distance from Reading I saw a big flower-seed farm, +looking dead in some plots, and in others quite rank: and here again, +fluttering quite near the engine, two little winged aurelians in the +quiet evening air. I went on, passing a great number of crowded trains +on the down-line, two of them in collision, and very broken up, and one +exploded engine; even the fields and cuttings on either hand of the line +had a rather populous look, as if people, when trains and vehicles +failed, had set to trudging westward in caravans and streams. When I +came to a long tunnel near Slough, I saw round the foot of the arch an +extraordinary quantity of wooden _debris_, and as I went very slowly +through, was alarmed by the continuous bumping of the train, which, I +knew, was passing over bodies; at the other end were more _debris_; and +I easily guessed that a company of desperate people had made the tunnel +air-tight at the two arches, and provisioned themselves, with the hope +to live there till the day of destiny was passed; whereupon their +barricades must have been crashed through by some up-train and +themselves crushed, or else, other crowds, mad to share their cave of +refuge, had stormed the boardings. This latter, as I afterwards found, +was a very usual event. + +I should very soon have got to London now, but, as my bad luck would +have it, I met a long up-train on the metals, with not one creature in +any part of it. There was nothing to do but to tranship, with all my +things, to its engine, which I found in good condition with plenty of +coal and water, and to set it going, a hateful labour: I being already +jet-black from hair to toes. However, by half-past ten I found myself +stopped by another train only a quarter of a mile from Paddington, and +walked the rest of the way among trains in which the standing dead still +stood, propped by their neighbours, and over metals where bodies were as +ordinary and cheap as waves on the sea, or twigs in a forest. I believe +that wild crowds had given chase on foot to moving trains, or fore-run +them in the frenzied hope of inducing them to stop. + +I came to the great shed of glass and girders which is the station, the +night being perfectly soundless, moonless, starless, and the hour about +eleven. + +I found later that all the electric generating-stations, or all that I +visited, were intact; that is to say, must have been shut down before +the arrival of the doom; also that the gas-works had almost certainly +been abandoned some time previously: so that this city of dreadful +night, in which, at the moment when Silence choked it, not less than +forty to sixty millions swarmed and droned, must have more resembled +Tartarus and the foul shades of Hell than aught to which my fancy can +liken it. + +For, coming nearer the platforms, I saw that trains, in order to move at +all, must have moved through a slough of bodies pushed from behind, and +forming a packed homogeneous mass on the metals: and I knew that they +_had_ moved. Nor could _I_ now move, unless I decided to wade: for flesh +was everywhere, on the roofs of trains, cramming the interval between +them, on the platforms, splashing the pillars like spray, piled on +trucks and lorries, a carnal quagmire; and outside, it filled the space +between a great host of vehicles, carpeting all that region of London. +And all here that odour of blossoms, which nowhere yet, save on one vile +ship, had failed, was now wholly overcome by another: and the thought +was in my head, my God, that if the soul of man had sent up to Heaven +the odour which his body gave to me, then it was not so strange that +things were as they were. + +I got out from the station, with ears, God knows, that still awaited the +accustomed noising of this accursed town, habituated as I now was to all +the dumb and absent void of Soundlessness; and I was overwhelmed in a +new awe, and lost in a wilder woesomeness, when, instead of lights and +business, I saw the long street which I knew brood darker than Babylons +long desolate, and in place of its ancient noising, heard, my God, a +shocking silence, rising higher than I had ever heard it, and blending +with the silence of the inane, eternal stars in heaven. + + * * * * * + +I could not get into any vehicle for some time, for all thereabouts was +practically a mere block; but near the Park, which I attained by +stooping among wheels, and selecting my foul steps, I overhauled a +Daimler car, found in it two cylinders of petrol, lit the ignition-lamp, +removed with averted abhorrence three bodies, mounted, and broke that +populous stillness. And through streets nowhere empty of bodies I went +urging eastward my jolting, and spattered, and humming way. + +That I should have persisted, with so much pains, to come to this +unbounded catacomb, seems now singular to me: for by that time I could +not have been sufficiently daft to expect to find another being like +myself on the earth, though I cherished, I remember, the irrational hope +of yet somewhere finding dog, or cat, or horse, to be with me, and would +anon think bitterly of Reinhardt, my Arctic dog, which my own hand had +shot. But, in reality, a morbid curiosity must have been within me all +the time to read the real truth of what had happened, so far as it was +known, or guessed, and to gloat upon all that drama, and cup of +trembling, and pouring out of the vials of the wrath of God, which must +have preceded the actual advent of the end of Time. This inquisitiveness +had, at every town which I reached, made the search for newspapers +uppermost in my mind; but, by bad luck, I had found only four, all of +them ante-dated to the one which I had read at Dover, though their dates +gave me some idea of the period when printing must have ceased, viz. +soon after the 17th July--about three months subsequent to my arrival at +the Pole--for none I found later than this date; and these contained +nothing scientific, but only orisons and despairings. On arriving, +therefore, at London, I made straight for the office of the _Times_, +only stopping at a chemist's in Oxford Street for a bottle of antiseptic +to hold near my nose, though, having once left the neighbourhood of +Paddington, I had hardly much need of this. + +I made my way to the square where the paper was printed, to find that, +even there, the ground was closely strewn with calpac and pugaree, black +abayeh and fringed praying-shawl, hob-nail and sandal, figured lungi and +striped silk, all very muddled and mauled. Through the dark square to +the twice-dark building I passed, and found open the door of an +advertisement-office; but on striking a match, saw that it had been +lighted by electricity, and had therefore to retrace my stumbling steps, +till I came to a shop of lamps in a near alley, walking meantime with +timid cares that I might hurt no one--for in this enclosed neighbourhood +I began to feel strange tremors, and kept striking matches, which, so +still was the black air, hardly flickered. + +When I returned to the building with a little lighted lamp, I at once +saw a file on a table, and since there were a number of dead there, and +I wished to be alone, I took the heavy mass of paper between my left arm +and side, and the lamp in my right hand; passed then behind a counter; +and then, to the right, up a stair which led me into a very great +building and complexity of wooden steps and corridors, where I went +peering, the lamp visibly trembling in my hand, for here also were the +dead. Finally, I entered a good-sized carpeted room with a baize-covered +table in the middle, and large smooth chairs, and on the table many +manuscripts impregnated with purple dust, and around were books in +shelves. This room had been locked upon a single man, a tall man in a +frock-coat, with a pointed grey beard, who at the last moment had +decided to fly from it, for he lay at the threshold, apparently fallen +dead the moment he opened the door. Him, by drawing his feet aside, I +removed, locked the door upon myself, sat at the table before the dusty +file, and, with the little lamp near, began to search. + +I searched and read till far into the morning. But God knows, He +alone.... + +I had not properly filled the little reservoir with oil, and at about +three in the fore-day, it began to burn sullenly lower, letting sparks, +and turning the glass grey: and in my deepest chilly heart was the +question: 'Suppose the lamp goes out before the daylight....' + +I knew the Pole, and cold, I knew them well: but to be frozen by panic, +my God! I read, I say, I searched, I would not stop: but I read that +night racked by terrors such as have never yet entered into the heart +of man to conceive. My flesh moved and crawled like a lake which, here +and there, the breeze ruffles. Sometimes for two, three, four minutes, +the profound interest of what I read would fix my mind, and then I would +peruse an entire column, or two, without consciousness of the meaning of +one single word, my brain all drawn away to the innumerable host of the +wan dead that camped about me, pierced with horror lest they should +start, and stand, and accuse me: for the grave and the worm was the +world; and in the air a sickening stirring of cerements and shrouds; and +the taste of the pale and insubstantial grey of ghosts seemed to infect +my throat, and faint odours of the loathsome tomb my nostrils, and the +toll of deep-toned passing-bells my ears; finally the lamp smouldered +very low, and my charnel fancy teemed with the screwing-down of coffins, +lych-gates and sextons, and the grating of ropes that lower down the +dead, and the first sound of the earth upon the lid of that strait and +gloomy home of the mortal; that lethal look of cold dead fingers I +seemed to see before me, the insipidness of dead tongues, the pout of +the drowned, and the vapid froths that ridge their lips, till my flesh +was moist as with the stale washing-waters of morgues and mortuaries, +and with such sweats as corpses sweat, and the mawkish tear that lies +on dead men's cheeks; for what is one poor insignificant man in his +flesh against a whole world of the disembodied, he alone with them, and +nowhere, nowhere another of his kind, to whom to appeal against them? I +read, and I searched: but God, God knows ... If a leaf of the paper, +which I slowly, warily, stealingly turned, made but one faintest rustle, +how did that _reveille_ boom in echoes through the vacant and haunted +chambers of my poor aching heart, my God! and there was a cough in my +throat which for a cruelly long time I would not cough, till it burst in +horrid clamour from my lips, sending crinkles of cold through my inmost +blood. For with the words which I read were all mixed up visions of +crawling hearses, wails, and lugubrious crapes, and piercing shrieks of +madness in strange earthy vaults, and all the mournfulness of the black +Vale of Death, and the tragedy of corruption. Twice during the ghostly +hours of that night the absolute and undeniable certainty that some +presence--some most gashly silent being--stood at my right elbow, so +thrilled me, that I leapt to my feet to confront it with clenched fists, +and hairs that bristled stiff in horror and frenzy. After that second +time I must have fainted; for when it was broad day, I found my dropped +head over the file of papers, supported on my arms. And I resolved then +never again after sunset to remain in any house: for that night was +enough to kill a horse, my good God; and that this is a haunted planet I +know. + + * * * * * + +What I read in the _Times_ was not very definite, for how could it be? +but in the main it confirmed inferences which I had myself drawn, and +fairly satisfied my mind. + +There had been a battle royal in the paper between my old collaborator +Professor Stanistreet and Dr. Martin Rogers, and never could I have +conceived such an indecorous piece of business, men like them calling +one another 'tyro,' 'dreamer,' and in one place 'block-head.' +Stanistreet denied that the perfumed odour of almonds attributed to the +advancing cloud could be due to anything but the excited fancy of the +reporting fugitives, because, said he, it was unknown that either Cn, +HCn, or K_4FeCn_6 had been given out by volcanoes, and the +destructiveness to life of the travelling cloud could only be owing to +CO and CO_2. To this Rogers, in an article characterised by +extraordinary heat, replied that he could not understand how even a +'tyro'(!) in chemical and geological phenomena would venture to rush +into print with the statement that HCn had not commonly been given out +by volcanoes: that it _had_ been, he said, was perfectly certain; though +whether it had been or not could not affect the decision of a reasoning +mind as to whether it was being: for that cyanogen, as a matter of fact, +was not rare in nature, though not directly occurring, being one of the +products of the common distillation of pit-coal, and found in roots, +peaches, almonds, and many tropical flora; also that it had been +actually pointed out as probable by more than one thinker that some salt +or salts of Cn, the potassic, or the potassic ferrocyanide, or both, +must exist in considerable stores in the earth at volcanic depths. In +reply to this, Stanistreet in a two-column article used the word +'dreamer,' and Rogers, when Berlin had been already silenced, finally +replied with his amazing 'block-head.' But, in my opinion, by far the +most learned and lucid of the scientific dicta was from the rather +unexpected source of Sloggett, of the Dublin Science and Art Department: +he, without fuss, accepted the statements of the fugitive eye-witnesses, +down to the assertion that the cloud, as it rolled travelling, seemed +mixed from its base to the clouds with languid tongues of purple flame, +rose-coloured at their edges. This, Sloggett explained, was the +characteristic flame of both cyanogen and hydrocyanic acid vapour, +which, being inflammable, may have become locally ignited in the passage +over cities, and only burned in that limited and languid way on account +of the ponderous volumes of carbonic anhydride with which they must, of +course, be mixed: the dark empurpled colour was due to the presence of +large quantities of the scoriae of the trappean rocks: basalts, +green-stone, trachytes, and the various porphyries. This article was +most remarkable for its clear divination, because written so early--not +long, in fact, after the cessation of telegraphic communication with +Australia and China; and at a date so early Sloggett stated that the +character of the devastation not only proved an eruption--another, but +far greater Krakatoa--probably in some South Sea region, but indicated +that its most active product must be, not CO, but potassic ferrocyanide +(K_4FeCn_6), which, undergoing distillation with the products of sulphur +in the heat of eruption, produced hydrocyanic acid (HCn); and this +volatile acid, he said, remaining in a vaporous state in all climates +above a temperature of 26.5 deg. C., might involve the entire earth, if the +eruption proved sufficiently powerful, travelling chiefly in a direction +contrary to the earth's west-to-east motion, the only regions which +would certainly be exempt being the colder regions of the Arctic +circles, where the vapour of the acid would assume the liquid state, and +fall as rain. He did not anticipate that vegetation would be permanently +affected, unless the eruption were of inconceivable duration and +activity, for though the poisonous quality of hydrocyanic acid consisted +in its sudden and complete arrest of oxidation, vegetation had two +sources of life--the soil as well as the air; with this exception, all +life, down to the lowest evolutionary forms, would disappear (here was +the one point in which he was somewhat at fault), until the earth +reproduced them. For the rest, he fixed the rate of the on-coming cloud +at from 100 to 105 miles a day; and the date of eruption, either the +14th, 15th, or 16th of April--which was either one, two, or three days +after the arrival of the _Boreal_ party at the Pole; and he concluded by +saying that, if the facts were as he had stated them, then he could +suggest no hiding-place for the race of man, unless such places as mines +and tunnels could be made air-tight; nor could even they be of use to +any considerable number, except in the event of the poisonous state of +the air being of very short duration. + + * * * * * + +I had thought of mines before: but in a very languid way, till this +article, and other things that I read, as it were struck my brain a slap +with the notion. For 'there,' I said, 'if anywhere, shall I find a +man....' + + * * * * * + +I went out from that building that morning feeling like a man bowed down +with age, for the depths of unutterable horror into which I had had +glimpses during that one night made me very feeble, and my steps +tottered, and my brain reeled. + +I got out into Farringdon Street, and at the near Circus, where four +streets meet, had under my furthest range of vision nothing but four +fields of bodies, bodies, clad in a rag-shop of every faded colour, or +half-clad, or not clad at all, actually, in many cases, over-lying one +another, as I had seen at Reading, but here with a markedly more +skeleton appearance: for I saw the swollen-looking shoulders, sharp +hips, hollow abdomens, and stiff bony limbs of people dead from famine, +the whole having the grotesque air of some _macabre_ battle-field of +fallen marionettes. Mixed with these was an extraordinary number of +vehicles of all sorts, so that I saw that driving among them would be +impracticable, whereas the street which I had taken during the night +was fairly clear. I thought a minute what I should do: then went by a +parallel back-street, and came out to a shop in the Strand, where I +hoped to find all the information which I needed about the excavations +of the country. The shutters were up, and I did not wish to make any +noise among these people, though the morning was bright, it being about +ten o'clock, and it was easy to effect entrance, for I saw a crow-bar in +a big covered furniture-van near. I, therefore, went northward, till I +came to the British Museum, the cataloguing-system of which I knew well, +and passed in. There was no one at the library-door to bid me stop, and +in the great round reading-room not a soul, except one old man with a +bag of goitre hung at his neck, and spectacles, he lying up a +book-ladder near the shelves, a 'reader' to the last. I got to the +printed catalogues, and for an hour was upstairs among the dim sacred +galleries of this still place, and at the sight of certain Greek and +Coptic papyri, charters, seals, had such a dream of this ancient earth, +my good God, as even an angel's pen could not half express on paper. +Afterwards, I went away loaded with a good hundred-weight of +Ordnance-maps, which I had stuffed into a bag found in the cloak-room, +with three topographical books; I then, at an instrument-maker's in +Holborn, got a sextant and theodolite, and at a grocer's near the river +put into a sack-bag provisions to last me a week or two; at Blackfriars +Bridge wharf-station I found a little sharp white steamer of a few tons, +which happily was driven by liquid air, so that I had no troublesome +fire to light: and by noon I was cutting my solitary way up the Thames, +which flowed as before the ancient Britons were born, and saw it, and +built mud-huts there amid the primaeval forest; and afterwards the +Romans came, and saw it, and called it Tamesis, or Thamesis. + + * * * * * + +That night, as I lay asleep on the cabin-cushions of my little boat +under the lee of an island at Richmond, I had a clear dream, in which +something, or someone, came to me, and asked me a question: for it said: +'Why do you go seeking another man?--that you may fall upon him, and +kiss him? or that you may fall upon him, and murder him?' And I answered +sullenly in my dream: 'I would not murder him. I do not wish to murder +anyone.' + + * * * * * + +What was essential to me was to know, with certainty, whether I was +really alone: for some instinct began to whisper me: 'Find that out: be +sure, be sure: for without the assurance you can never be--yourself.' + +I passed into the great Midland Canal, and went northward, leisurely +advancing, for I was in no hurry. The weather remained very warm, and +great part of the country was still dressed in autumn leaves. I have +written, I think, of the terrific character of the tempests witnessed in +England since my return: well, the calms were just as intense and novel. +This observation was forced upon me: and I could not but be surprised. +There seemed no middle course now: if there was a wind, it was a storm: +if there was not a storm, no leaf stirred, not a roughening zephyr ran +the water. I was reminded of maniacs that laugh now, and rave now--but +never smile, and never sigh. + +On the fourth afternoon I passed by Leicester, and the next morning left +my pleasant boat, carrying maps and compass, and at a small station took +engine, bound for Yorkshire, where I loitered and idled away two foolish +months, sometimes travelling by steam-engine, sometimes by automobile, +sometimes by bicycle, and sometimes on foot, till the autumn was quite +over. + + * * * * * + +There were two houses in London to which especially I had thought to +go: one in Harley Street, and one in Hanover Square: but when it came to +the point, I would not; and there was a little embowered home in +Yorkshire, where I was born, to which I thought to go: but I would not, +confining myself for many days to the eastern half of the county. + +One morning, while passing on foot along the coast-wall from Bridlington +to Flambro', on turning my eyes from the sea, I was confronted by a +thing which for a moment or two struck me with the most profound +astonishment. I had come to a mansion, surrounded by trees, three +hundred yards from the cliffs: and there, on a path at the bottom of the +domain, right before me, was a board marked: 'Trespassers will be +Prosecuted.' At once a mad desire--the first which I had had--to laugh, +to roar with laughter, to send wild echoes of merriment clapping among +the chalk gullies, and abroad on the morning air, seized upon me: but I +kept it under, though I could not help smiling at this poor man, with +his little delusion that a part of the earth was his. + +Here the cliffs are, I should say, seventy feet high, broken by frequent +slips in the upper stratum of clay, and, as I proceeded, climbing +always, I encountered some rather formidable gullies in the chalk, down +and then up which I had to scramble, till I came to a great mound or +barrier, stretching right across the great promontory, and backed by a +natural ravine, this, no doubt, having been raised as a rampart by some +of those old invading pirate-peoples, who had their hot life-scuffle, +and are done now, like the rest. Going on, I came to a bay in the cliff, +with a great number of boats lodged on the slopes, some quite high, +though the declivities are steep; toward the inner slopes is a lime-kiln +which I explored, but found no one there. When I came out on the other +side, I saw the village, with an old tower at one end, on a bare stretch +of land; and thence, after an hour's rest in the kitchen of a little +inn, went out to the coast-guard station, and the lighthouse. + +Looking across the sea eastward, the light-keepers here must have seen +that thick cloud of convolving browns and purples, perhaps mixed with +small tongues of fire, slowly walking the water, its roof in the clouds, +upon them: for this headland is in precisely the same longitude as +London; and, reckoning from the hour when, as recorded in the _Times_, +the cloud was seen from Dover over Calais, London and Flambro' must have +been overtaken soon after three o'clock on the Sunday afternoon, the +25th July. At sight in open daylight of a doom so gloomy--prophesied, +but perhaps hoped against to the last, and now come--the light-keepers +must have fled howling, supposing them to have so long remained faithful +to duty: for here was no one, and in the village very few. In this +lighthouse, which is a circular white tower, eighty feet high, on the +edge of the cliff, is a book for visitors to sign their names: and I +will write something down here in black and white: for the secret is +between God only, and me: After reading a few of the names, I took my +pencil, and I wrote my name there. + + * * * * * + +The reef before the Head stretches out a quarter of a mile, looking bold +in the dead low-water that then was, and showing to what extent the sea +has pushed back this coast, three wrecks impaled on them, and a big +steamer quite near, waiting for the first movements of the already +strewn sea to perish. All along the cliff-wall to the bluff crowned by +Scarborough Castle northward, and to the low vanishing coast of +Holderness southward, appeared those cracks and caves which had brought +me here, though there seemed no attempts at barricades; however, I got +down a rough slope on the south side to a rude wild beach, strewn with +wave-worn masses of chalk: and never did I feel so paltry and short a +thing as there, with far-outstretched bays of crags about me, their +bluffs encrusted at the base with stale old leprosies of shells and +barnacles, and crass algae-beards, and, higher up, the white cliff all +stained and weather-spoiled, the rock in some parts looking quite +chalky, and elsewhere gleaming hard and dull like dirty marbles, while +in the huge withdrawals of the coast yawn darksome gullies and caverns. +Here, in that morning's walk, I saw three little hermit-crabs, a limpet, +and two ninnycocks in a pool of weeds under a bearded rock. What +astonished me here, and, indeed, above, and everywhere, in London even, +and other towns, was the incredible number of birds that strewed the +ground, at some points resembling a real rain, birds of nearly every +sort, including tropic specimens: so that I had to conclude that they, +too, had fled before the cloud from country to country, till conquered +by weariness and grief, and then by death. + +By climbing over rocks thick with periwinkles, and splashing through +great sloppy stretches of crinkled sea-weed, which give a raw stench of +brine, I entered the first of the gullies: a narrow, long, winding one, +with sides polished by the sea-wash, and the floor rising inwards. In +the dark interior I struck matches, able still to hear from outside the +ponderous spasmodic rush and jostle of the sea between the crags of the +reef, but now quite faintly. Here, I knew, I could meet only dead men, +but urged by some curiosity, I searched to the end, wading in the middle +through a three-feet depth of sea-weed twine: but there was no one; and +only belemnites and fossils in the chalk. I searched several to the +south of the headland, and then went northward past it toward another +opening and place of perched boats, called in the map North Landing: +where, even now, a distinct smell of fish, left by the old crabbers and +herring-fishers, was perceptible. A number of coves and bays opened as I +proceeded; a faded green turf comes down in curves at some parts on the +cliff-brows, like wings of a young soldier's hair, parted in the middle, +and plastered on his brow; isolated chalk-masses are numerous, obelisks, +top-heavy columns, bastions; at one point no less than eight headlands +stretched to the end of the world before me, each pierced by its arch, +Norman or Gothic, in whole or in half; and here again caves, in one of +which I found a carpet-bag stuffed with a wet pulp like bread, and, +stuck to the rock, a Turkish tarboosh; also, under a limestone quarry, +five dead asses: but no man. The east coast had evidently been shunned. +Finally, in the afternoon I reached Filey, very tired, and there slept. + + * * * * * + +I went onward by train-engine all along the coast to a region of +iron-ore, alum, and jet-excavations round Whitby and Middlesborough. By +by-ways near the small place of Goldsborough I got down to the shore at +Kettleness, and reached the middle of a bay in which is a cave called +the Hob-Hole, with excavations all around, none of great depth, made by +jet-diggers and quarrymen. In the cave lay a small herd of cattle, +though for what purpose put there I cannot guess; and in the +jet-excavations I found nothing. A little further south is the chief +alum-region, as at Sandsend, but as soon as I saw a works, and the great +gap in the ground like a crater, where the lias is quarried, containing +only heaps of alum-shale, brushwood-stacks, and piles of cement-nodules +extracted from the lias, I concluded that here could have been found no +hiding; nor did I purposely visit the others, though I saw two later. +From round Whitby, and those rough moors, I went on to Darlington, not +far now from my home: but I would not continue that way, and after two +days' indecisive lounging, started for Richmond and the lead mines +about Arkengarth Dale, near Reeth. Here begins a region of mountain, +various with glens, fells, screes, scars, swards, becks, passes, +villages, river-heads, and dales. Some of the faces which I saw in it +almost seemed to speak to me in a broad dialect which I knew. But they +were not numerous in proportion: for all this country-side must have had +its population multiplied by at least some hundreds; and the villages +had rather the air of Danube, Levant, or Spanish villages. In one, named +Marrick, I saw that the street had become the scene either of a great +battle or a great massacre; and soon I was everywhere coming upon men +and women, English and foreign, dead from violence: cracked heads, +wounds, unhung jaws, broken limbs, and so on. Instead of going direct to +the mines from Reeth, that waywardness which now rules my mind, as +squalls an abandoned boat, took me somewhat further south-west to the +village of Thwaite, which I actually could not enter, so occupied with +dead was every spot on which the eye rested a hundred yards about it. +Not far from here I turned up, on foot now, a very steep, stony road to +the right, which leads over the Buttertubs Pass into Wensleydale, the +day being very warm and bright, with large clouds that looked like +lakes of molten silver giving off grey fumes in their centre, casting +moody shadows over the swardy dale, which below Thwaite expands, showing +Muker two miles off, the largest village of Upper Swaledale. Soon, +climbing, I could look down upon miles of Swaledale and the hills +beyond, a rustic panorama of glens and grass, river and cloudshadow, and +there was something of lightness in my step that fair day, for I had +left all my maps and things, except one, at Reeth, to which I meant to +return, and the earth, which is very good, was--mine. The ascent was +rough, and also long: but if I paused and looked behind--I saw, I saw. +Man's notion of a Heaven, a Paradise, reserved for the spirits of the +good, clearly arose from impressions which the earth made upon his mind: +for no Paradise can be fairer than this; just as his notion of a Hell +arose from the squalid mess into which his own foolish habits of thought +and action turned this Paradise. At least, so it struck me then: and, +thinking it, there was a hiss in my breath, as I went up into what more +and more acquired the character of a mountain pass, with points of +almost Alpine savagery: for after I had skirted the edge of a deep glen +on the left, the slopes changed in character, heather was on the +mountain-sides, a fretting beck sent up its noise, then screes, and +scars, and a considerable waterfall, and a landscape of crags; and +lastly a broad and rather desolate summit, palpably nearer the clouds. + + * * * * * + +Two days later I was at the mines: and here I first saw that wide-spread +scene of horror with which I have since become familiar. The story of +six out of ten of them all is the same, and short: selfish 'owners,' an +ousted world, an easy bombardment, and the destruction of all concerned, +before the arrival of the cloud in many cases. About some of the Durham +pit-mouths I have been given the impression that the human race lay +collected there; and that the notion of hiding himself in a mine must +have occurred to every man alive, and sent him thither. + +In these lead mines, as in most vein-mining, there are more shafts than +in collieries, and hardly any attempt at artificial ventilation, except +at rises, winzes and cul-de-sacs. I found accordingly that, though their +depth does not exceed three hundred feet, suffocation must often have +anticipated the other dreaded death. In nearly every shaft, both up-take +and down-take, was a ladder, either of the mine, or of the fugitives, +and I was able to descend without difficulty, having dressed myself in a +house at the village in a check flannel shirt, a pair of two-buttoned +trousers with circles of leather at the knees, thick boots, and a +miner's hat, having a leather socket attached to it, into which fitted a +straight handle from a cylindrical candlestick; with this light, and +also a Davy-lamp, which I carried about with me for a good many months, +I lived for the most part in the deeps of the earth, searching for the +treasure of a life, to find everywhere, in English duckies and guggs, +Pomeranian women in gaudy stiff cloaks, the Walachian, the Mameluk, the +Khirgiz, the Bonze, the Imaum, and almost every type of man. + + * * * * * + +One most brilliant Autumn day I walked by the village market-cross at +Barnard, come at last, but with a tenderness in my heart, and a +reluctance, to where I was born; for I said I would go and see my sister +Ada, and--the other old one. I leaned and loitered a long time on the +bridge, gazing up to the craggy height, which is heavy with waving wood, +and crowned by the Castle-tower, the Tees sweeping round the +mountain-base, smooth here and sunlit, but a mile down, where I wished +to go, but would not, brawling bedraggled and lacerated, like a sweet +strumpet, all shallow among rocks under reaches of shadow--the shadow of +Rokeby Woods. I climbed very leisurely up the hill-side, having in my +hand a bag with a meal, and up the stair in the wall to the top I went, +where there is no parapet, but a massiveness of wall that precludes +danger; and here in my miner's attire I sat three hours, brooding +sleepily upon the scene of lush umbrageous old wood that marks the long +way the river takes, from Marwood Chase up above, and where the rapid +Balder bickers in, down to bowery Rokeby, touched now with autumn; the +thickness of trees lessening away toward the uplands, where there are +far etherealized stretches of fields within hedgerows, and in the sunny +mirage of the farthest azure remoteness hints of lonesome moorland. It +was not till near three that I went down along the river, then, near +Rokeby, traversing the old meadow, and ascending the old hill: and +there, as of old, was the little black square with yellow letters on the +gate-wall: + + HUNT HILL HOUSE. + +No part, no house, I believe, of this country-side was empty of strange +corpses: and they were in Hunt Hill, too. I saw three in the weedy plot +to the right of the garden-path, where once the hawthorn and lilac tree +had grown from well-rollered grass, and in the little bush-wilderness to +the left, which was always a wilderness, one more: and in the +breakfast-room, to the right of the hall, three; and in the new wooden +clinker-built attachment opening upon the breakfast-room, two, half +under the billiard-table; and in her room overlooking the porch on the +first floor, the long thin form of my mother on her bed, with crushed-in +left temple, and at the foot of the bed, face-downward on the floor, +black-haired Ada in a night-dress. + +Of all the men and women who died, they two alone had burying. For I +digged a hole with the stable-spade under the front lilac; and I wound +them in the sheets, foot and form and head; and, not without throes and +qualms, I bore and buried them there. + + * * * * * + +Some time passed after this before the long, multitudinous, and +perplexing task of visiting the mine-regions again claimed me. I found +myself at a place called Ingleborough, which is a big table-mountain, +with a top of fifteen to twenty acres, from which the sea is visible +across Lancashire to the west; and in the sides of this strange hill are +a number of caves which I searched during three days, sleeping in a +garden-shed at a very rural and flower-embowered village, for every room +in it was thronged, a place marked Clapham in the chart, in Clapdale, +which latter is a dale penetrating the slopes of the mountain: and there +I found by far the greatest of the caves which I saw, having ascended a +path from the village to a hollow between two grass slopes, where there +is a beck, and so entering an arch to the left, screened by trees, into +the limestone cliff. The passage narrows pretty rapidly inwards, and I +had not proceeded two yards before I saw the clear traces of a great +battle here. All this region had, in fact, been invaded, for the cave +must have been famous, though I did not remember it myself, and for some +miles round the dead were pretty frequent, making the immediate approach +to the cave a matter for care, if the foot was to be saved from +pollution. It is clear that there had been an iron gate across the +entrance, that within this a wall had been built across, shutting in I +do not know how many, perhaps one or two, perhaps hundreds: and both +gate and wall had been stormed and broken down, for there still were the +sledges and rocks which, without doubt, had done it. I had a lamp, and +at my forehead the lighted candle, and I went on quickly, seeing it +useless now to choose my steps where there was no choice, through a +passage incrusted, roof and sides, with a scabrous petrified lichen, the +roof low for some ninety yards, covered with down-looking cones, like +an inverted forest of children's toy-trees. I then came to a round hole, +apparently artificial, opening through a curtain of stalagmitic +formation into a great cavern beyond, which was quite animated and +festal with flashes, sparkles, and diamond-lustres, hung in their +myriads upon a movement of the eye, these being produced by large +numbers of snowy wet stalagmites, very large and high, down the centre +of which ran a continuous long lane of clothes and hats and faces; with +hasty reluctant feet I somehow passed over them, the cave all the time +widening, thousands of stalactites appearing on the roof of every size, +from virgin's breast to giant's club, and now everywhere the wet drip, +drip, as it were a populous busy bazaar of perspiring brows and hurrying +feet, in which the only business is to drip. Where stalactite meets +stalagmite there are pillars: where stalactite meets stalactite in +fissures long or short there are elegances, flimsy draperies, delicate +fantasies; there were also pools of water in which hung heads and feet, +and there were vacant spots at outlying spaces, where the arched roof, +which continually heightened itself, was reflected in the chill gleam of +the floor. Suddenly, the roof came down, the floor went up, and they +seemed to meet before me; but looking, I found a low opening, through +which, drawing myself on the belly over slime for some yards in +repulsive proximity to dead personalities, I came out upon a floor of +sand and pebbles under a long dry tunnel, arched and narrow, grim and +dull, without stalactites, suggestive of monks, and catacomb-vaults, and +the route to the grave; and here the dead were much fewer, proving +either that the general mob had not had time to penetrate so far inward, +or else that those within, if they were numerous, had gone out to +defend, or to harken to, the storm of their citadel. This passage led me +into an open space, the grandest of all, loftily vaulted, full of genie +riches and buried treasures of light, the million-fold _ensemble_ of +lustres dancing schottishe with the eye, as it moved or was still: this +place, I should guess, being quite half a mile from the entrance. My +prying lantern showed me here only nineteen dead, men of various +nations, and at the far end two holes in the floor, large enough to +admit the body, through which from below came up a sound of falling +water. Both of these holes, I could see, had been filled with cement +concrete--wisely, I fancy, for a current of air from somewhere seemed to +be now passing through them: and this would have resulted in the death +of the hiders. Both, however, of the fillings had been broken through, +one partially, the other wholly, by the ignorant, I presume, who +thought to hide in a secret place yet beyond, where they may have +believed, on seeing the artificial work, that others were. I had my ear +a long time at one of these openings, listening to that mysterious chant +down below in a darkness most murky and dismal; and afterwards, spurred +by the stubborn will which I had to be thorough, I went back, took a +number of outer robes from the bodies, tied them well together, then one +end round the nearest pillar, and having put my mouth to the hole, +calling: _'Anyone? Anyone?'_ let myself down by the rope of garments, +the candle at my head: I had not, however, descended far into those +mournful shades, when my right foot plunged into water: and instantly +the feeling of terror pierced me that all the evil things in the +universe were at my leg to drag me down to Hell: and I was up quicker +than I went down: nor did my flight cease till, with a sigh of +deliverance, I found myself in open air. + + * * * * * + +After this, seeing that the autumn warmth was passing away, I set myself +with more system to my task, and within the next six months worked with +steadfast will, and strenuous assiduity, seeking, not indeed for a man +in a mine, but for some evidence of the possibility that a man might be +alive, visiting in that time Northumberland and Durham, Fife and +Kinross, South Wales and Monmouthshire, Cornwall and the Midlands, the +lead mines of Derbyshire, of Allandale and other parts of +Northumberland, of Alston Moor and other parts of Cumberland, of +Arkendale and other parts of Yorkshire, of the western part of Durham, +of Salop, of Cornwall, of the Mendip Hills of Somersetshire, of Flint, +Cardigan, and Montgomery, of Lanark and Argyll, of the Isle of Man, of +Waterford and Down; I have gone down the 360-ft. Grand Pipe iron ladder +of the abandoned graphite-mine at Barrowdale in Cumberland, half-way up +a mountain 2,000 feet high; and visited where cobalt and manganese ore +is mined in pockets at the Foel Hiraeddog mine near Rhyl in Flintshire, +and the lead and copper Newton Stewart workings in Galloway; the Bristol +coal-fields, and mines of South Staffordshire, where, as in Somerset, +Gloucester, and Shropshire, the veins are thin, and the mining-system is +the 'long-wall,' whereas in the North, and Wales, the system is the +'pillar-and stall'; I have visited the open workings for iron ores of +Northamptonshire, and the underground stone-quarries, and the +underground slate-quarries, with their alternate pillars and chambers, +in the Festiniog district of North Wales; also the rock-salt workings; +the tin, copper and cobalt workings of Cornwall; and where the minerals +were brought to the surface on the backs of men, and where they were +brought by adit-levels provided with rail-roads, and where, as in old +Cornish mines, there are two ladders in the shaft, moved up and down +alternately, see-saw, and by skipping from one to the other at right +moments you ascended or descended, and where the drawing-up is by a gin +or horse-whinn, with vertical drum; the Tisbury and Chilmark quarries in +Wiltshire, the Spinkwell and Cliffwood quarries in Yorkshire; and every +tunnel, and every recorded hole: for something urged within me, saying: +'You must be sure first, or you can never be--yourself.' + + * * * * * + +At the Farnbrook Coal-field, in the Red Colt Pit, my inexperience nearly +ended my life: for though I had a minute theoretical knowledge of all +British workings, I was, in my practical relation to them, like a man +who has learnt seamanship on shore. At this place the dead were +accumulated, I think beyond precedent, the dark plain around for at +least three miles being as strewn as a reaped field with stacks, and, +near the bank, much more strewn than stack-fields, filling the only +house within sight of the pit-mouth--the small place provided for the +company's officials--and even lying over the great mountain-heap of +wark, composed of the shale and _debris_ of the working. Here I arrived +on the morning of the 15th December, to find that, unlike the others, +there was here no rope-ladder or other contrivance fixed by the +fugitives in the ventilating-shaft, which, usually, is not very deep, +being also the pumping-shaft, containing a plug-rod at one end of the +beam-engine which works the pumps; but looking down the shaft, I +discerned a vague mass of clothes, and afterwards a thing that could +only be a rope-ladder, which a batch of the fugitives, by hanging to it +their united weight, must have dragged down upon themselves, to prevent +the descent of yet others. My only way of going down, therefore, was by +the pit-mouth, and as this was an important place, after some hesitation +I decided, very rashly. First I provided for my coming up again by +getting a great coil of half-inch rope, which I found in the bailiff's +office, probably 130 fathoms long, rope at most mines being so +plentiful, that it almost seemed as if each fugitive had provided +himself in that way. This length of rope I threw over the beam of the +beam-engine in the bite where it sustains the rod, and paid one end +down the shaft, till both were at the bottom: in this way I could come +up, by tying one rope-end to the rope-ladder, hoisting it, fastening the +other end below, and climbing the ladder; and I then set to work to +light the pit-mouth engine-fire to effect my descent. This done, I +started the engine, and brought up the cage from the bottom, the 300 +yards of wire-rope winding with a quaint deliberateness round the drum, +reminding me of a camel's nonchalant leisurely obedience. When I saw the +four meeting chains of the cage-roof emerge, the pointed roof, and +two-sided frame, I stopped the ascent, and next attached to the +knock-off gear a long piece of twine which I had provided; carried the +other end to the cage, in which I had five companions; lit my +hat-candle, which was my test for choke-damp, and the Davy; and without +the least reflection, pulled the string. That hole was 900 feet deep. +First the cage gave a little up-leap, and then began to descend--quite +normally, I thought, though the candle at once went out--nor had I the +least fear; a strong current of air, indeed, blew up the shaft: but that +happens in shafts. _This_ current, however, soon became too vehemently +boisterous for anything: I saw the lamp-light struggle, the dead cheeks +quiver, I heard the cage-shoes go singing down the wire-rope guides, +and quicker we went, and quicker, that facile descent of Avernus, +slipping lightly, then raging, with sparks at the shoes and guides, and +a hurricane in my ears and eyes and mouth. When we bumped upon the +'dogs' at the bottom, I was tossed a foot upwards with the stern-faced +others, and then lay among them in the eight-foot space without +consciousness. + +It was only when I sat, an hour later, disgustedly reflecting on this +incident, that I remembered that there was always some 'hand-working' of +the engine during the cage-descents, an engineman reversing the action +by a handle at every stroke of the piston, to prevent bumping. However, +the only permanent injury was to the lamp: and I found many others +inside. + +I got out into the coal-hole, a large black hall 70 feet square by 15 +high, the floor paved with iron sheets; there were some little holes +round the wall, dug for some purpose which I never could discover, some +waggons full of coal and shale standing about, and all among the +waggons, and on them, and under them, bodies, clothes. I got a new lamp, +pouring in my own oil, and went down a long steep ducky-road, very +rough, with numerous rollers, over which ran a rope to the pit-mouth +for drawing up the waggons; and in the sides here, at regular intervals, +man-holes, within which to rescue one's self from down-tearing waggons; +and within these man-holes, here and there, a dead, and in others every +sort of food, and at one place on the right a high dead heap, and the +air here hot at 64 or 65 degrees, and getting hotter with the descent. + +The ducky led me down into a standing--a space with a turn-table--of +unusual size, which I made my base of operations for exploring. Here was +a very considerable number of punt-shaped putts on carriages, and also +waggons, such as took the new-mined coal from putt to pit-mouth; and +raying out from this open standing, several avenues, some ascending as +guggs, some descending as dipples, and the dead here all arranged in +groups, the heads of this group pointing up this gugg, of that group +toward that twin-way, of that other down that dipple, and the central +space, where weighing was done, almost empty: and the darksome silence +of this deep place, with all these multitudes, I found extremely +gravitating and hypnotic, drawing me, too, into their great Passion of +Silence in which they lay, all, all, so fixed and veteran; and at one +time I fell a-staring, nearer perhaps to death and the empty Gulf than +I knew; but I said I would be strong, and not sink into their habit of +stillness, but let them keep to their own way, and follow their own +fashion, and I would keep to my own way, and follow my own fashion, nor +yield to them, though I was but one against many; and I roused myself +with a shudder; and setting to work, caught hold of the drum-chain of a +long gugg, and planting my feet in the chogg-holes in which rested the +wheels of the putt-carriages that used to come roaring down the gugg, I +got up, stooping under a roof only three feet high, till I came, near +the end of the ascent, upon the scene of another battle: for in this +gugg about fifteen of the mine-hands had clubbed to wall themselves in, +and had done it, and I saw them lie there all by themselves through the +broken cement, with their bare feet, trousers, naked bodies all black, +visage all fierce and wild, the grime still streaked with sweat-furrows, +the candle in their rimless hats, and, outside, their own 'getting' +mattocks and boring-irons to besiege them. From the bottom of this gugg +I went along a very undulating twin-way, into which, every thirty yards +or so, opened one of those steep putt-ways which they called topples, +the twin-ways having plates of about 2-1/2 ft. gauge for the putts from +the headings, or workings, above to come down upon, full of coal and +shale: and all about here, in twin-way and topples, were ends and +corners, and not one had been left without its walling-in, and only one +was then intact, some, I fancied, having been broken open by their own +builders at the spur of suffocation, or hunger; and the one intact I +broke into with a mattock--it was only a thin cake of plaster, but +air-tight--and in a space not seven feet long behind it I found the very +ill-smelling corpse of a carting-boy, with guss and tugger at his feet, +and the pad which protected his head in pushing the putts, and a great +heap of loaves, sardines, and bottled beer against the walls, and five +or six mice that suddenly pitched screaming through the opening which I +made, greatly startling me, there being of dead mice an extraordinary +number in all this mine-region. I went back to the standing, and at one +point in the ground, where there was a windlass and chain, lowered +myself down a 'cut'--a small pit sunk perpendicularly to a lower +coal-stratum, and here, almost thinking I could hear the perpetual +rat-tat of notice once exchanged between the putt-boys below and the +windlass-boys above, I proceeded down a dipple to another place like a +standing, for in this mine there were six, or perhaps seven, veins: and +there immediately I came upon the acme of the horrible drama of this +Tartarus, for all here was not merely crowded, but, at some points, a +packed congestion of flesh, giving out a strong smell of the peach, +curiously mixed with the stale coal-odour of the pit, for here +ventilation must have been very limited; and a large number of these +masses had been shot down by only three hands, as I found: for through +three hermetical holes in a plaster-wall, built across a large gugg, +projected a little the muzzles of three rifles, which must have glutted +themselves with slaughter; and when, after a horror of disgust, having +swum as it were through a dead sea, I got to the wall, I peeped from a +small clear space before it through a hole, and made out a man, two +youths in their teens, two women, three girls, and piles of cartridges +and provisions; the hole had no doubt been broken from within at the +spur of suffocation, when the poison must have entered; and I +conjectured that here must be the mine-owner, director, manager, or +something of that sort, with his family. In another dipple-region, when +I had re-ascended to a higher level, I nearly fainted before I could +retire from the commencement of a region of after-damp, where there had +been an explosion, the bodies lying all hairless, devastated, and +grotesque. But I did not desist from searching every other quarter, no +momentary work, for not till near six did I go up by the pumping-shaft +rope-ladder. + + * * * * * + +One day, standing in that wild region of bare rock and sea, called +Cornwall Point, whence one can see the crags and postillion wild rocks +where Land's End dashes out into the sea, and all the wild blue sea +between, and not a house in sight, save the chimney of some little +mill-like place peeping between the rocks inland--on that day I finished +what I may call my official search. + +In going away from that place, walking northward, I came upon a lonely +house by the sea, a very beautiful house, made, it was clear, by an +artist, of the bungalow type, with an exquisitely sea-side expression. I +went to it, and found its special feature a spacious loggia or verandah, +sheltered by the overhanging upper story. Up to the first floor, the +exterior is of stone in rough-hewn blocks with a distinct batter, while +extra protection from weather is afforded by green slating above. The +roofs, of low pitch, are also covered with green slates, and a feeling +of strength and repose is heightened by the very long horizontal lines. +At one end of the loggia is a hexagonal turret, opening upon the loggia, +containing a study or nook. In front, the garden slopes down to the +sea, surrounded by an architectural sea-wall; and in this place I lived +three weeks. It was the house of the poet Machen, whose name, when I saw +it, I remembered very well, and he had married a very beautiful young +girl of eighteen, obviously Spanish, who lay on the bed in the large +bright bedroom to the right of the loggia, on her left exposed breast +being a baby with an india-rubber comforter in its mouth, both mother +and child wonderfully preserved, she still quite lovely, white brow +under low curves of black hair. The poet, strange to say, had not died +with them, but sat in the sitting-room behind the bedroom in a long +loose silky-grey jacket, at his desk--actually writing a poem! writing, +I could see, furiously fast, the place all littered with the written +leaves--at three o'clock in the morning, when, as I knew, the cloud +overtook this end of Cornwall, and stopped him, and put his head to rest +on the desk; and the poor little wife must have got sleepy, waiting for +it to come, perhaps sleepless for many long nights before, and gone to +bed, he perhaps promising to follow in a minute to die with her, but +bent upon finishing that poem, and writing feverishly on, running a race +with the cloud, thinking, no doubt, 'just two couplets more,' till the +thing came, and put his head to rest on the desk, poor carle: and I do +not know that I ever encountered aught so complimentary to my race as +this dead poet Machen, and his race with the cloud: for it is clear now +that the better kind of those poet men did not write to please the vague +inferior tribes who might read them, but to deliver themselves of the +divine warmth that thronged in their bosom; and if all the readers were +dead, still they would have written; and for God to read they wrote. At +any rate, I was so pleased with these poor people, that I stayed with +them three weeks, sleeping under blankets on a couch in the +drawing-room, a place full of lovely pictures and faded flowers, like +all the house: for I would not touch the young mother to remove her. And +finding on Machen's desk a big note-book with soft covers, dappled red +and yellow, not yet written in, I took it, and a pencil, and in the +little turret-nook wrote day after day for hours this account of what +has happened, nearly as far as it has now gone. And I think that I may +continue to write it, for I find in it a strange consolation, and +companionship. + + * * * * * + +In the Severn Valley, somewhere in the plain between Gloucester and +Cheltenham, in a rather lonely spot, I at that time travelling on a +tricycle-motor, I spied a curious erection, and went to it. I found it +of considerable size, perhaps fifty feet square, and thirty high, made +of pressed bricks, the perfectly flat roof, too, of brick, and not one +window, and only one door: this door, which I found open, was rimmed all +round its slanting rims with india-rubber, and when closed must have +been perfectly air-tight. Just inside I came upon fifteen English people +of the dressed class, except two, who were evidently bricklayers: six +ladies, and nine men: and at the further end, two more, men, who had +their throats cut; along one wall, from end to end were provisions; and +I saw a chest full of mixed potassic chlorate and black oxide of +manganese, with an apparatus for heating it, and producing oxygen--a +foolish thing, for additional oxygen could not alter the quantity of +breathed carbonic anhydride, which is a direct narcotic poison. Whether +the two with cut throats had sacrificed themselves for the others when +breathing difficulties commenced, or been killed by the others, was not +clear. When they could bear it no longer, they must have finally opened +the door, hoping that by then, after the passage of many days perhaps, +the outer air would be harmless, and so met their death. I believe that +this erection must have been run up by their own hands under the +direction of the two bricklayers, for they could not, I suppose, have +got workmen, except on the condition of the workmen's admission: on +which condition they would naturally employ as few as possible. + +In general, I remarked that the rich must have been more urgent and +earnest in seeking escape than the others: for the poor realised only +the near and visible, lived in to-day, and cherished the always-false +notion that to-morrow would be just like to-day. In an out-patients' +waiting-room, for instance, in the Gloucester infirmary, I chanced to +see an astonishing thing: five bodies of poor old women in shawls, come +to have their ailments seen-to on the day of doom; and these, I +concluded, had been unable to realise that anything would really happen +to the daily old earth which they knew, and had walked with assurance +on: for if everybody was to die, they must have thought, who would +preach in the Cathedral on Sunday evenings?--so they could not have +believed. In an adjoining room sat an old doctor at a table, the +stethoscope-tips still clinging in his ears: a woman with bared chest +before him; and I thought to myself: 'Well, this old man, too, died +doing his work....' + +In this same infirmary there was one surgical ward--for in a listless +mood I went over it--where the patients had died, not of the poison, nor +of suffocation, but of hunger: for the doctors, or someone, had made the +long room air-tight, double-boarding the windows, felting the doors, and +then locking them outside; they themselves may have perished before +their precautions for the imprisoned patients were complete: for I found +a heap of maimed shapes, mere skeletons, crowded round the door within. +I knew very well that they had not died of the cloud-poison, for the +pestilence of the ward was unmixed with that odour of peach which did +not fail to have more or less embalming effects upon the bodies which it +saturated. I rushed stifling from that place; and thinking it a pity, +and a danger, that such a horror should be, I at once set to work to +gather combustibles to burn the building to the ground. + +It was while I sat in an arm-chair in the street the next afternoon, +smoking, and watching the flames of this structure, that something was +suddenly born in me, something from the lowest Hell: and I smiled a +smile that never yet man smiled. And I said: 'I will burn, I will burn: +I will return to London....' + + * * * * * + +While I was on this Eastward journey, stopping for the night at the +town of Swindon, I had a dream: for I dreamed that a little brown bald +old man, with a bent back, whose beard ran in one thin streamlet of +silver from his chin to trail along the ground, said to me: 'You think +that you are alone on the earth, its sole Despot: well, have your fling: +but as sure as God lives, as God lives, as God lives'--he repeated it +six times--'sooner or later, later or sooner, you will meet another....' + +And I started from that frightful sleep with the brow of a corpse, wet +with sweat.... + + * * * * * + +I returned to London on the 29th of March, arriving within a hundred +yards of the Northern Station one windy dark evening about eight, where +I alighted, and walked to Euston Road, then eastward along it, till I +came to a shop which I knew to be a jeweller's, though it was too dark +to see any painted words. The door, to my annoyance, was locked, like +nearly all the shop-doors in London: I therefore went looking near the +ground, and into a cart, for something heavy, very soon saw a labourer's +ponderous boots, cut one from the shrivelled foot, and set to beat at +the glass till it came raining; then knocked away the bottom splinters, +and entered. + +No horrors now at that clatter of broken glass; no sick qualms; my +pulse steady; my head high; my step royal; my eye cold and calm. + + * * * * * + +Eight months previously, I had left London a poor burdened, cowering +wight. I could scream with laughter now at that folly! But it did not +last long. I returned to it--the Sultan. + + * * * * * + +No private palace being near, I was going to that great hotel in +Bloomsbury: but though I knew that numbers of candle-sticks would be +there, I was not sure that I should find sufficient: for I had acquired +the habit within the past few months of sleeping with at least sixty +lighted about me, and their form, pattern, style, age, and material was +of no small importance I selected ten from the broken shop, eight gold +and silver, and two of old ecclesiastical brass, and having made a +bundle, went out, found a bicycle at the Metropolitan Station, pumped +it, tied my bundle to the handle-bar, and set off riding. But since I +was too lazy to walk, I should certainly have procured some other means +of travelling, for I had not gone ten jolted and creaking yards, when +something went snap--it was a front fork--and I found myself half on +the ground, and half across the bare knees of a Highland soldier. I flew +with a shower of kicks upon the foolish thing: but that booted nothing; +and this was my last attempt in that way in London, the streets being in +an unsuitable condition. + +All that dismal night it blew great guns: and during nearly three weeks, +till London was no more, there was a storm, with hardly a lull, that +seemed to behowl her destruction. + + * * * * * + +I slept in a room on the second-floor of a Bloomsbury hotel that night; +and waking the next day at ten, ate with accursed shiverings in the cold +banqueting-room; went out then, and under drear low skies walked a long +way to the West district, accompanied all the time by a sound of +flapping flags--fluttering robes and rags--and grotesquely grim glimpses +of decay. It was pretty cold, and though I was warmly clad, the base +_bizarrerie_ of the European clothes which I wore had become a perpetual +offence and mockery in my eyes: at the first moment, therefore, I set +out whither I knew that I should find such clothes as a man might wear: +to the Turkish Embassy in Bryanston Square. + +I found it open, and all the house, like most other houses, almost +carpeted with dead forms. I had been acquainted with Redouza Pasha, and +cast an eye about for him amid that invasion of veiled hanums, +fierce-looking Caucasians in skins of beasts, a Sheik-ul-Islam in green +cloak, a khalifa, three emirs in cashmere turbans, two tziganes, their +gaudy brown mortality more glaringly abominable than even the Western's. +I could recognise no Redouza here: but the stair was fairly clear, and I +soon came to one of those boudoirs which sweetly recall the deep-buried +inner seclusion and dim sanctity of the Eastern home: a door encrusted +with mother-of-pearl, sculptured ceiling, candles clustered in tulips +and roses of opal, a brazen brasero, and, all in disarray, the silken +chemise, the long winter-cafetan doubled with furs, costly cabinets, +sachets of aromas, babooshes, stuffs of silk. When, after two hours, I +went from the house, I was bathed, anointed, combed, scented, and robed. + + * * * * * + +I have said to myself: 'I will ravage and riot in my Kingdoms. I will +rage like the Caesars, and be a withering blight where I pass like +Sennacherib, and wallow in soft delights like Sardanapalus. I will build +me a palace, vast as a city, in which to strut and parade my Monarchy +before the Heavens, with stones of pure molten gold, and rough +frontispiece of diamond, and cupola of amethyst, and pillars of pearl. +For there were many men to the eye: but there was One only, really: and +I was he. And always I knew it:--some faintest secret whisper which +whispered me: "_You_ are the Arch-one, the _motif_ of the world, Adam, +and the rest of men not much." And they are gone--all! all!--as no doubt +they deserved: and I, as was meet, remain. And there are wines, and +opiums, and haschish; and there are oils, and spices, fruits and +bivalves, and soft-breathing Cyclades, and scarlet luxurious Orients. I +will be restless and turbulent in my territories: and again, I will be +languishing and fond. I will say to my soul: "Be Full."' + + * * * * * + +I watch my mind, as in the old days I would watch a new precipitate in a +test-tube, to see into what sediment it would settle. + +I am very averse to trouble of any sort, so that the necessity for the +simplest manual operations will rouse me to indignation: but if a thing +will contribute largely to my ever-growing voluptuousness, I will +undergo a considerable amount of labour to accomplish it, though +without steady effort, being liable to side-winds and whims, and +purposeless relaxations. + +In the country I became very irritable at the need which confronted me +of occasionally cooking some green vegetable--the only item of food +which it was necessary to take some trouble over: for all meats, and +many fish, some quite delicious, I find already prepared in forms which +will remain good probably a century after my death, should I ever die. +In Gloucester, however, I found peas, asparagus, olives, and other +greens, already prepared to be eaten without base cares: and these, I +now see, exist everywhere in stores so vast comparatively to the needs +of a single man, that they may be called infinite. Everything, in fact, +is infinite compared with my needs. I take my meals, therefore, without +more trouble than a man who had to carve his joint, or chicken: though +even that little I sometimes find most irksome. There remains the +detestable degradation of lighting fires for warmth, which I have +occasionally to do: for the fire at the hotel invariably goes out while +I sleep. But that is an inconvenience of this vile northern island only, +to which I shall soon bid eternal glad farewells. + +During the afternoon of my second day in London, I sought out a strong +petrol motor in Holborn, overhauled and oiled it a little, and set off +over Blackfriars Bridge, making for Woolwich through that other more +putrid London on the south river-side. One after the other, I connected, +as I came upon them, two drays, a cab, and a private carriage, to my +motor in line behind, having cut away the withered horses, and using the +reins, chain-harness, &c., as impromptu couplings. And with this novel +train, I rumbled eastward. + +Half-way I happened to look at my old silver chronometer of +_Boreal_-days, which I have kept carefully wound--and how I can be still +thrown into these sudden frantic agitations by a nothing, a nothing, my +good God! I do not know. This time it was only the simple fact that the +hands chanced to point to 3.10 P.M., the precise moment at which all the +clocks of London had stopped--for each town has its thousand weird +fore-fingers, pointing, pointing still, to the moment of doom. In London +it was 3.10 on a Sunday afternoon. I first noticed it going up the river +on the face of the 'Big Ben' of the Parliament-house, and I now find +that they all, all, have this 3.10 mania, time-keepers still, but +keepers of the end of Time, fixedly noting for ever and ever that one +moment. The cloud-mass of fine penetrating _scoriae_ must have instantly +stopped their works, and they had fallen silent with man. But in their +insistence upon this particular minute I had found something so +hideously solemn, yet mock-solemn, personal, and as it were addressed to +_me_, that when my own watch dared to point to the same moment, I was +thrown into one of those sudden, paroxysmal, panting turmoils of mind, +half rage, half horror, which have hardly once visited me since I left +the _Boreal_. On the morrow, alas, another awaited me; and again on the +second morrow after. + + * * * * * + +My train was execrably slow, and not until after five did I arrive at +the entrance-gates of the Woolwich Royal Arsenal; and seeing that it was +too late to work, I uncoupled the motor, and leaving the others there, +turned back; but overtaken by lassitude, I procured candles, stopped at +the Greenwich Observatory, and in that old dark pile, remained for the +night, listening to a furious storm. But, a-stir by eight the next +morning, I got back by ten to the Arsenal, and proceeded to analyse that +vast and multiple entity. Many parts of it seemed to have been abandoned +in undisciplined haste, and in the Cap Factory, which I first entered, I +found tools by which to effect entry into any desired part. My first +search was for time-fuses of good type, of which I needed two or three +thousand, and after a wearily long time found a great number +symmetrically arranged in rows in a range of buildings called the +Ordnance Store Department. I then descended, walked back to the wharf, +brought up my train, and began to lower the fuses in bag-fulls by ropes +through a shoot, letting go each rope as the fuses reached the cart. +However, on winding one fuse, I found that the mechanism would not go, +choked with scoriae; and I had to resign myself to the task of opening +and dusting every one: a wretched labour in which I spent that day, like +a workman. But about four I threw them to the devil, having done two +hundred odd, and then hummed back in the motor to London. + + * * * * * + +That same evening at six I paid, for the first time, a visit to my old +self in Harley Street. It was getting dark, and a bleak storm that +hooted like whooping-cough swept the world. At once I saw that even _I_ +had been invaded: for my door swung open, banging, a lowered catch +preventing it from slamming; in the passage the car-lamp shewed me a +young man who seemed a Jew, sitting as if in sleep with dropped head, a +back-tilted silk-hat pressed down upon his head to the ears; and lying +on face, or back, or side, six more, one a girl with Arlesienne +head-dress, one a negress, one a Deal lifeboat's-man, and three of +uncertain race; the first room--the waiting-room--is much more +numerously occupied, though there still, on the table, lies the volume +of _Punch_, the _Gentlewoman_, and the book of London views in +heliograph. Behind this, descending two steps, is the study and +consulting-room, and there, as ever, the revolving-cover oak +writing-desk: but on my little shabby-red sofa, a large lady much too +big for it, in shimmering brown silk, round her left wrist a _trousseau_ +of massive gold trinkets, her head dropped right back, almost severed by +an infernal gash from the throat. Here were two old silver +candle-sticks, which I lit, and went upstairs: in the drawing-room sat +my old house-keeper, placidly dead in a rocking-chair, her left hand +pressing down a batch of the open piano-keys, among many strangers. But +she was very good: she had locked my bedroom against intrusion; and as +the door stands across a corner behind a green-baize curtain, it had not +been seen, or, at least, not forced. I did not know where the key might +be, but a few thumps with my back drove it open: and there lay my bed +intact, and everything tidy. This was a strange coming-back to it, Adam. + +But what intensely interested me in that room was a big thing standing +at the maroon-and-gold wall between wardrobe and dressing-table--that +gilt frame--and that man painted within it there. It was myself in oils, +done by--I forget his name now: a towering celebrity he was, and rather +a close friend of mine at one time. In a studio in St. John's Wood, I +remember, he did it; and many people said that it was quite a great work +of art. I suppose I was standing before it quite thirty minutes that +night, holding up the bits of candle, lost in wonder, in amused contempt +at that thing there. It is I, certainly: that I must admit. There is the +high-curving brow--really a King's brow, after all, it strikes me +now--and that vacillating look about the eyes and mouth which used to +make my sister Ada say: 'Adam is weak and luxurious.' Yes, that is +wonderfully done, the eyes, that dear, vacillating look of mine; for +although it is rather a staring look, yet one can almost see the dark +pupils stir from side to side: very well done. And there is the longish +face; and the rather thin, stuck-out moustache, shewing both lips which +pout a bit; and there is the nearly black hair; and there is the rather +visible paunch; and there is, oh good Heaven, the neat pink cravat--ah, +it must have been _that--the cravat_--that made me burst out into +laughter so loud, mocking, and uncontrollable the moment my eye rested +there! 'Adam Jeffson,' I muttered reproachfully when it was over, 'could +that poor thing in the frame have been you?' + +I cannot quite state why the tendency toward Orientalism--Oriental +dress--all the manner of an Oriental monarch--has taken full possession +of me: but so it is: for surely I am hardly any longer a Western, +'modern' mind, but a primitive and Eastern one. Certainly, that cravat +in the frame has receded a million, million leagues, ten thousand +forgotten aeons, from me! Whether this is a result due to my own +personality, of old acquainted with Eastern notions, or whether, +perhaps, it is the natural accident to any mind wholly freed from +trammels, I do not know. But I seem to have gone right back to the very +beginnings, and resemblance with man in his first, simple, gaudy +conditions. My hair, as I sit here writing, already hangs a black, oiled +string down my back; my scented beard sweeps in two opening whisks to my +ribs; I have on the _izar_, a pair of drawers of yomani cloth like +cotton, but with yellow stripes; over this a soft shirt, or quamis, of +white silk, reaching to my calves; over this a short vest of +gold-embroidered crimson, the _sudeyree_; over this a khaftan of +green-striped silk, reaching to the ankles, with wide, long sleeves +divided at the wrist, and bound at the waist with a voluminous gaudy +shawl of Cashmere for girdle; over this a warm wide-flowing torrent of +white drapery, lined with ermine. On my head is the skull-cap, covered +by a high crimson cap with deep-blue tassel; and on my feet is a pair of +thin yellow-morocco shoes, covered over with thick red-morocco +babooshes. My ankles--my ten fingers--my wrists--are heavy with gold and +silver ornaments; and in my ears, which, with considerable pain, I bored +three days since, are two needle-splinters, to prepare the holes for +rings. + + * * * * * + +O Liberty! I am free.... + + * * * * * + +While I was going to visit my old home in Harley Street that night, at +the very moment when I turned from Oxford Street into Cavendish Square, +this thought, fiercely hissed into my ears, was all of a sudden seething +in me: 'If now I should lift my eyes, and see a man walking yonder--just +yonder--_at the corner there_--turning from Harewood Place into Oxford +Street--what, my good God, should I do?--I without even a knife to run +and plunge into his heart?' + +And I turned my eyes--ogling, suspicious eyes of furtive +horror--reluctantly, lingeringly turned--and I peered deeply with +lowered brows across the murky winds at that same spot: but no man was +there. + +Hideously frequent is this nonsense now become with me--in streets of +towns--in deep nooks of the country: the invincible assurance that, if I +but turn the head, and glance _there_--at a certain fixed spot--I shall +surely see--I _must_ see--a man. And glance I must, glance I must, +though I perish: and when I glance, though my hairs creep and stiffen +like stirring amobse, yet in my eyes, I know, is monarch indignation +against the intruder, and my neck stands stiff as sovereignty itself, +and on my brow sits more than all the lordship of Persepolis and Iraz. + +To what point of wantonness this arrogance of royalty may lead me, I do +not know: I will watch, and see. It is written: 'It is not good for man +to be alone!' But good or no, the arrangement of One planet, One +inhabitant, already seems to me, not merely a natural and proper, but +the _only_ natural and proper, condition; so much so, that any other +arrangement has now, to my mind, a certain improbable, wild, and +far-fetched unreality, like the Utopian schemes of dreamers and +faddists. That the whole world should have been made for _me_ +alone--that London should have been built only in order that _I_ might +enjoy the vast heroic spectacle of its burning--that all history, and +all civilisation should have existed only in order to accumulate for +_my_ pleasures its inventions and facilities, its stores of purple and +wine, of spices and gold--no more extraordinary does it all seem to me +than to some little unreflecting Duke of my former days seemed the +possessing of lands which his remote forefathers seized, and slew the +occupiers: nor, in reality, is it even so extraordinary, I being alone. +But what sometimes strikes me with some surprise is, not that the +present condition of the world, with one sole master, should seem the +common-place and natural condition, but that it should have come to seem +_so_ common-place and natural--in nine months. The mind of Adam Jeffson +is adaptable. + + * * * * * + +I sat a long time thinking such things by my bed that night, till +finally I was disposed to sleep there. But I had no considerable number +of candle-sticks, nor was even sure of candles. I remembered, however, +that Peter Peters, three doors away on the other side of the street, +had had four handsome silver candelabra in his drawing-room, each +containing six stems; and I said to myself: 'I will search for candles +in the kitchen, and if I find any, I will go and get Peter Peters' +candelabra, and sleep here.' + +I took then the two lights which I had, my good God; went down to the +passage; then down to the basement; and there had no difficulty in +finding three packets of large candles, the fact being, I suppose, that +the cessation of gas-lighting had compelled everyone to provide +themselves in this way, for there were a great many wherever I looked. +With these I re-ascended, went into a little alcove on the second-floor +where I had kept some drugs, got a bottle of carbolic oil, and for ten +minutes went dashing all the corpses in the house. I then left the two +lighted bits of candle on the waiting-room table, and, with the +car-lamp, passed along the passage to the front-door, which was very +violently banging. I stepped out to find that the storm had increased to +a mighty turbulence (though it was dry), which at once caught my +clothes, and whirled them into a flapping cloud about and above me; +also, I had not crossed the street when my lamp was out. I persisted, +however, half blinded, to Peters door. It was locked: but immediately +near the pavement was a window, the lower sash up, into which, with +little trouble, I lifted myself and passed. My foot, as I lowered it, +stood on a body: and this made me angry and restless. I hissed a curse, +and passed on, scraping the carpet with my soles, that I might hurt no +one: for I did not wish to hurt any one. Even in the almost darkness of +the room I recognised Peters' furniture, as I expected: for the house +was his on a long lease, and I knew that his mother had had the +intention to occupy it after his death. But as I passed into the +passage, all was mere blank darkness, and I, depending upon the lamp, +had left the matches in the other house. I groped my way to the stairs, +and had my foot on the first step, when I was stopped by a vicious +shaking of the front-door, which someone seemed to be at with hustlings +and the most urgent poundings: I stood with peering stern brows two or +three minutes, for I knew that if I once yielded to the flinching at my +heart, no mercy would be shown me in this house of tragedy, and +thrilling shrieks would of themselves arise and ring through its haunted +chambers. The rattling continued an inordinate time, and so instant and +imperative, that it seemed as if it could not fail to force the door. +But, though horrified, I whispered to my heart that it could only be the +storm which was struggling at it like the grasp of a man, and after a +time went on, feeling my way by the broad rail, in my brain somehow the +thought of a dream which I had had in the _Boreal_ of the woman Clodagh, +how she let drop a fluid like pomegranate-seeds into water, and tendered +it to Peter Peters: and it was a mortal purging draught; but I would not +stop, but step by step went up, though I suffered very much, my brows +peering at the utter darkness, and my heart shocked at its own rashness. +I got to the first landing, and as I turned to ascend the second part of +the stair, my left hand touched something icily cold: I made some quick +instinctive movement of terror, and, doing so, my foot struck against +something, and I stumbled, half falling over what seemed a small table +there. Immediately a horrible row followed, for something fell to the +ground: and at that instant, ah, I heard something--a voice--a human +voice, which uttered words close to my ear--the voice of Clodagh, for I +knew it: yet not the voice of Clodagh in the flesh, but her voice +clogged with clay and worms, and full of effort, and thick-tongued: and +in that ghastly speech of the grave I distinctly heard the words: + +'_Things being as they are in the matter of the death of Peter ..._' + +And there it stopped dead, leaving me so sick, my God, so sick, that I +could hardly snatch my robes about me to fly, fly, fly, soft-footed, +murmuring in pain, down the steps, down like a sneaking thief, but +quick, snatching myself away, then wrestling with the cruel catch of the +door which she would not let me open, feeling her all the time behind +me, watching me. And when I did get out, I was away up the length of the +street, trailing my long _jubbah_, glancing backward, panting, for I +thought that she might dare to follow, with her daring evil will. And +all that night I lay on a common bench in the wind-tossed and dismal +Park. + + * * * * * + +The first thing which I did when the sun was up was to return to that +place: and I returned with hard and masterful brow. + +Approaching Peters' house I saw now, what the darkness had hidden from +me, that on his balcony was someone--quite alone there. The balcony is a +slight open-work wrought-iron structure, connected to a small roof by +three slender voluted pillars, two at the ends, one in the middle: and +at the middle one I saw someone, a woman--kneeling--her arms clasped +tight about the pillar, and her face rather upward-looking. Never did I +see aught more horrid: there were the gracious curves of the woman's +bust and hips still well preserved in a clinging dress of red cloth, +very faded now; and her reddish hair floated loose in a large flimsy +cloud about her; but her face, in that exposed position, had been quite +eaten away by the winds to a noseless skeleton, which grinned from ear +to ear, with slightly-dropped under-jaw--most horrid in contrast with +the body, and frame of hair. I meditated upon her a long time that +morning from the opposite pavement. An oval locket at her throat +contained, I knew, my likeness: for eight years previously I had given +it her. It was Clodagh, the poisoner. + +I thought that I would go into that house, and walk through it from top +to bottom, and sit in it, and spit in it, and stamp in it, in spite of +any one: for the sun was now high. I accordingly went in again, and up +the stairs to the spot where I had been frightened, and had heard the +words. And here a great rage took me, for I at once saw that I had been +made the dupe of the malign wills that beset me, and the laughing-stock +of Those for whom I care not a fig. From a little mahogany table there I +had knocked sideways to the ground, in my stumble, a small phonograph +with a great 25-inch japanned-tin horn, which, the moment that I now +noticed it, I took and flung with a great racket down the stairs: for +that this it was which had addressed me I did not doubt; it being indeed +evident that its clock-work mechanism had been stopped by the volcanic +scoriae in the midst of the delivery of a record, but had been started +into a few fresh oscillations by the shock of the fall, making it utter +those thirteen words, and stop. I was sufficiently indignant at the +moment, but have since been glad, for I was thereby put upon the notion +of collecting a number of cylinders with records, and have been touched +with indescribable sensations, sometimes thrilled, at hearing the +silence of this Eternity broken by those singing and speaking voices, so +life-like, yet most ghostly, of the old dead. + + * * * * * + +Well, the most of that same day I spent in a high chamber at Woolwich, +dusting out, and sometimes oiling, time-fuses: a work in which I +acquired such facility in some hours, that each finally occupied me no +more than ninety to a hundred seconds, so that by evening I had, with +the previous day's work, close on 600. The construction of these little +things is very simple, and, I believe, effective, so that I should have +no difficulty in making them myself in large numbers, if it were +necessary. Most contain a tiny dry battery, which sends a current along +a bell or copper wire at the running-down moment, the clocks being +contrived to be set for so many days, hours, and minutes, while others +ignite by striking. I arranged in rows in the covered van those which I +had prepared, and passed the night in an inn near the Barracks. I had +brought candle-sticks from London in the morning, and arranged the +furniture--a settee, chest-of-drawers, basin-stand, table, and a number +of chairs--in three-quarter-circle round the bed, so getting a +triple-row altar of lights, mixed with vases of the house containing +small palms and evergreens; with this I mingled a smell of ambergris +from the scattered contents of some Turkish sachets which I had; in the +bed a bottle of sweet Chypre-wine, with _bonbons_, nuts, and Havannas. +As I lay me down, I could not but reflect, with a smile which I knew to +be evil, upon that steady, strong, smouldering lust within me which was +urging me through all those pains at the Arsenal, I who shirked every +labour as unkingly. So, however, it was: and the next morning I was at +it again after an early breakfast, my fingers at first quite stiff with +cold, for it blew a keen and January gale. By nine I had 820 fuses; and +judging those sufficient to commence with, got into the motor, and took +it round to a place called the East Laboratory, a series of detached +buildings, where I knew that I should find whatever I wanted: and I +prepared my mind for a day's labour. In this place I found incredible +stores: mountains of percussion-caps, more chambers of fuses, small-arm +cartridges, shells, and all those murderous explosive mixtures, a-making +and made, with which modern savagery occupied its leisure in +exterminating itself: or, at least, savagery civilised in its top-story +only: for civilisation was apparently from the head downwards, and never +once grew below the neck in all those centuries, those people being +certainly much more mental than cordial, though I doubt if they were +genuinely mental either--reminding one rather of that composite image of +Nebuchadnezzar, head of gold, breast brazen, feet of clay--head +man-like, heart cannibal, feet bestial--like aegipeds, and mermaids, and +puzzling undeveloped births. However, it is of no importance: and +perhaps I am not much better than the rest, for I, too, after all, am of +them. At any rate, their lyddites, melanites, cordites, dynamites, +powders, jellies, oils, marls, and civilised barbarisms and obiahs, came +in very well for their own destruction: for by two o'clock I had so +worked, that I had on the first cart the phalanx of fuses; on the +second a goodly number of kegs, cartridge-cases and cartridge-boxes, +full of powder, explosive cottons and gelatines, and liquid +nitro-glycerine, and earthy dynamite, with some bombs, two reels of +cordite, two pieces of tarred cloth, a small iron ladle, a shovel, and a +crow-bar; the cab came next, containing a considerable quantity of loose +coal; and lastly, in the private carriage lay four big cans of common +oil. And first, in the Laboratory, I connected a fuse-conductor with a +huge tun of blasting-gelatine, and I set the fuse on the ground, timed +for the midnight of the twelfth day thence; and after that I visited the +Main Factory, the Carriage Department, the Ordnance Store Department, +the Royal Artillery Barracks, and the Powder Magazines in the Marshes, +traversing, as it seemed to me, miles of building; and in some I laid +heaps of oil-saturated coal with an explosive in suitable spots on the +ground-floor near wood-work, and in some an explosive alone: and all I +timed for ignition at midnight of the twelfth day. Hot now, and black as +ink, I proceeded through the town, stopping with perfect system at every +hundredth door: and I laid the faggots of a great burning: and timed +them all for ignition at midnight of the twelfth day. + + * * * * * + +Whatever door I found closed against me I drove at it with a maniac +malice. + + * * * * * + +Shall I commit the whole dark fact to paper?--that deep, deep secret of +the human organism? + +As I wrought, I waxed wicked as a demon! And with lowered neck, and +forward curve of the lower spine, and the blasphemous strut of tragic +play-actors, I went. For here was no harmless burning which I did--but +the crime of arson; and a most fiendish, though vague, malevolence, and +the rage to burn and raven and riot, was upon me like a dog-madness, and +all the mood of Nero, and Nebuchadnezzar: and from my mouth proceeded +all the obscenities of the slum and of the gutter, and I sent up such +hisses and giggles of challenge to Heaven that day as never yet has man +let out. But this way lies a spinning frenzy.... + + * * * * * + +I have taken a dead girl with wild huggings to my bosom; and I have +touched the corrupted lip, and spat upon her face, and tossed her down, +and crushed her teeth with my heel, and jumped and jumped upon her +breast, like the snake-stamping zebra, mad, mad...! + + * * * * * + +I was desolated, however, that first day of the faggot-laying, even in +the midst of my sense of omnipotence, by one thing, which made me give +some kicks to the motor: for it was only crawling, so that a good part +of the way I was stalking by its side; and when I came to that hill near +the Old Dover Road, the whole thing stopped, and refused to move, the +weight of the train being too great for my horse-power traction. I did +not know what to do, and stood there in angry impotence a full +half-hour, for the notion of setting up an electric station, with or +without automatic stoking-gear, presented so hideous a picture of labour +to me, that I would not entertain it. After a time, however, I thought +that I remembered that there was a comparatively new power station in +St. Paneras driven by turbines: and at once, I uncoupled the motor, +covered the drays with the tarpaulins, and went driving at singing +speed, choosing the emptier by-streets, and not caring whom I crushed. +After some trouble I found, in fact, the station in an obscure by-street +made of two long walls, and went in by a window, a rage upon me to have +my will quickly accomplished. I ran up some stairs, across two rooms, +into a gallery containing a switch-board, and in the room below saw the +works, all very neat-looking, but, as I soon found, very dusty. I went +down, and fixed upon a generating set--there were three--that would give +a decent load, and then saw that the switch-gear belonging to this +particular generator was in order. I then got some cloths and thoroughly +cleaned the dust off the commutators; ran next--for I was in a strange +fierce haste--and turned the water into the turbines, and away went the +engine; I hurried to set the lubricators running on the bearings, and in +a couple of minutes had adjusted the speed, and the brushes of the +generators, and switched the current on to the line. By this time, +however, I saw that it was getting dark, and feared that little could be +done that day; still, I hurried out, the station still running, got into +the car, and was off to look for a good electric one, of which there are +hosts in the streets, in order at least to clean up and adjust the motor +that night. I drove down three by-streets, till I turned into Euston +Road: but I had no sooner reached it than I pulled up--with sudden +jerk--with a shout of astonishment. + +That cursed street was all lighted up and gay! and three shimmering +electric globes, not far apart, illuminated every feature of a ghastly +battle-field of dead. + +And there was a thing there, the grinning impression of which I shall +carry to my grave: a thing which spelled and spelled at me, and ceased, +and began again, and ceased, and spelled at me. For, above a shop which +faced me was a flag, a red flag with white letters, fluttering on the +gale the words: 'Metcalfe's Stores'; and beneath the flag, stretched +right across the house, was the thing which spelled, letter by letter, +in letters of light: and it spelled two words, deliberately, coming to +the end, and going back to recommence: + + _Drink_ + ROBORAL. + +And that was the last word of civilised Man to me, Adam Jeffson--its +final counsel--its ultimate gospel and message--to _me_, my good God! +_Drink Roboral!_ + +I was put into such a passion of rage by this blatant ribaldry, which +affected me like the laughter of a skeleton, that I rushed from the car, +with the intention, I believe, of seeking stones to stone it: but no +stones were there: and I had to stand impotently enduring that rape of +my eyes, its victoriously-dogged iteration, its taunting leer, its +Drink Roboral--D, R, I, N, K R, O, B, O, R, A, L. + +It was one of those electrical spelling-advertisements, worked by a +small motor commutator driven by a works-motor, and I had now set it +going: for on some night before that Sabbath of doom the chemist must +have set it to work, but finding the works abandoned, had not troubled +to shut it down again. At any rate, this thing stopped my work for that +day, for when I went to shut down the works it was night; and I drove to +the place which I had made my home in sullen and weary mood: for I knew +that Roboral would not cure the least of all my sores. + + * * * * * + +The next morning I awoke in quite another frame of mind, disposed to +idle, and let things go. After rising, dressing, washing in cold diluted +rose-water, and descending to the _salle-a-manger_, where I had laid my +morning-meal the previous evening, I promenaded an hour the only one of +these long sombrous tufted corridors in which there were not more than +two dead, though behind the doors on either hand, all of which I had +locked, I knew that they lay in plenty. When I was warmed, I again went +down, looked into my motor, got three cylinders from one of a number of +motors standing near, lit up, and drove away--to Woolwich, as I thought +at first: but instead of crossing the river by Blackfriars, I went more +eastward; and having passed from Holborn into Cheapside, which was +impassable, unless I crawled, was about to turn, when I noticed a +phonograph-shop: into this I got by a side-door, suddenly seized by +quite a curiosity to hear what I might hear. I took a good one with +microphone diaphragm, and a number of record-cylinders in a +brass-handled box, and I put them into the car, for there was still a +very strong peach-odour in this closed shop, which displeased me. I then +proceeded southward and westward through by-streets, seeking some +probable house into which to go from the rough cold winds, when I saw +the Parliament-house, and thither, turning river-ward by Westminster +Hall to Palace Yard, I went, and with my two parcels, one weighting each +arm, walked into this old place along a line of purple-dusted busts; I +deposited my boxes on a table beside a massive brass thing lying there, +which, I suppose, must be what they called the Mace; and I sat to hear. + +Unfortunately, the phonograph was a clock-work one, and when I wound it, +it would not go: so that I got very angry at my absurdity in not +bringing an electric mechanism, as I could with much less trouble have +put in a chemical than cleaned the clock-work; and this thing put me +into such a rage, that I nearly tore it to pieces, and was half for +kicking it: but there was a man sitting in an old straight-backed chair +quite near me, which they called the Speaker's Chair, who was in such a +pose, that he had, every time I glanced suddenly at him, precisely the +air of bending forward with interest to watch what I was doing, a +Mohrgrabim kind of man, almost black, with Jewish nose, crinkled hair, +keffie, and flowing robe, probably, I should say, an Abyssinian Galla; +with him were only five or six people about the benches, mostly leaning +forward with rested head, so that this place had quite a void +sequestered mood. At all events, this Galla, or Bedouin, with his +grotesque interest in my doings, restrained my hands: and, finally, by +dint of peering, poking, dusting, and adjusting, in an hour's time I got +the phonograph to go very well. + +And all that morning, and far into late afternoon, forgetful of food, +and of the cold which gradually possessed me, I sat there listening, +musing--cylinder after cylinder: frivolous songs, orchestras, voices of +famous men whom I had spoken with, and shaken their solid hands, +speaking again to me, but thick-tongued, with hoarse effort and +gurgles, from out the vague void beyond the grave: most strange, most +strange. And the third cylinder that I put on, ah, I knew, with a +fearful start, that voice of thunder, I knew it well: it was the +preacher, Mackay's; and many, many times over I heard those words of his +that day, originally spoken, it seems, when the cloud had just passed +the longitude of Vienna; and in all that torrent of speech not one +single word of 'I told you so': but he cries: + +'...praise Him, O Earth, for He is He: and if He slay me, I will laugh +raillery at His Sword, and banter Him to His face: for His Sword is +sharp Mercy, and His poisons kill my death. Fear not, therefore, little +flock of Man! but take my comfort to your heart to-night, and my sweets +to your tongue: for though ye have sinned, and hardened yourselves as +brass, and gone far, far astray in these latter wildernesses, yet He is +infinitely greater than your sin, and will lead you back. Break not, +break not, poor broken heart of Earth: for from Him I run herald to thee +this night with the sweet and secret message, that of old He chose thee, +and once mixed conjugally with thee in an ancient sleep, O Afflicted: +and He is thou, and thou art He, flesh of His flesh, and bone of His +bone; and if thou perish utterly, it is that He has perished utterly, +too: for thou art He. Hope, therefore, most, and cheeriest smile, at +the very apsis and black nadir of Despair: for He is nimble as a weasel, +and He twists like Proteus, and His solstices and equinoxes, His tropics +and turning-points and recurrences are innate in Being, and when He +falls He falls like harlequin and shuttlecocks, shivering plumb to His +feet, and each third day, lo, He is risen again, and His defeats are but +the stepping-stones and rough scaffolding from which He builds His +Parthenons, and from the densest basalt gush His rills, and the last end +of this Earth shall be no poison-cloud, I say to you, but Carnival and +Harvest-home ... though ye have sinned, poor hearts ...' + + * * * * * + +So Mackay, with thick-tongued metallic effort. I found this brown room +of the Commons-house, with its green benches, and grilled galleries, so +agreeable to my mood, that I went again the next morning, and listened +to more records, till they tired me: for what I had was a prurient itch +to hear secret scandals, and revelations of the festering heart, but +these cylinders, gathered from a shop, divulged nothing. I then went out +to make for Woolwich, but in the car saw the poet's note-book in which I +had written: and I took it, went back, and was writing an hour, till I +was tired of that, too; and judging it too late for Woolwich that day, +wandered about the dusty committee-rooms and recesses of this +considerable place. In one room another foolishness suddenly seized upon +me, shewing how my slightest whim has become more imperious within me +than all the Jaws of the Medes and Persians: for in that room, Committee +Room No. 15, I found an apparently young policeman lying flat on his +back, who pleased me: his helmet tilted under his head, and near one +white-gloved hand a blue official envelope; the air of that stagnant +quiet room was still perceptibly peach-scented, and he gave not the +slightest odour that I could detect, though he had been corporal and +stalwart, his face now the colour of dark ashes, in each hollow cheek a +ragged hole about the size of a sixpence, the flimsy vaulted eye-lids +well embedded in their caverns, from under whose fringe of eye-lash +seemed whispered the word: '_Eternity._' His hair seemed very long for a +policeman, or perhaps it had grown since death; but what interested me +about him, was the envelope at his hand: for 'what,' I asked myself, +'was this fellow doing here with an envelope at three o'clock on a +Sunday afternoon?' This made me look closer, and then I saw by a mark at +the left temple that he had been shot, or felled; whereupon I was +thrown into quite a great rage, for I thought that this poor man was +killed in the execution of his duty, when many of his kind perhaps, and +many higher than he, had fled their post to pray or riot. So, after +looking at him a long time, I said to him: 'Well, D. 47, you sleep very +well: and you did well, dying so: I am pleased with you, and to mark my +favour, I decree that you shall neither rot in the common air, nor burn +in the common flames: for by my own hand shall you be distinguished with +burial.' And this wind so possessed me, that I at once went out: with +the crow-bar from the car I broke the window of a near iron-monger's in +Parliament Street, got a spade, and went into Westminster Abbey. I soon +prised up a grave-slab of some famous man in the north transept, and +commenced to shovel: but, I do not know how, by the time I had digged a +foot the whole impulse passed from me: I left off the work, promising to +resume it: but nothing was ever done, for the next day I was at +Woolwich, and busy enough about other matters. + + * * * * * + +During the next nine days I worked with a fever on me, and a map of +London before me. + +There were places in that city!--secrets, vastnesses, horrors! In the +wine-vaults at London Docks was a vat which must certainly have +contained between twenty and thirty thousand gallons: and with dancing +heart I laid a train there; the tobacco-warehouse must have covered +eighty acres: and there I laid a fuse. In a house near Regent's Park, +standing in a garden, and shut from the street by a high wall, I saw a +thing...! and what shapes a great city hid I now first know. + + * * * * * + +I left no quarter unremembered, taking a train, no longer of four, but +of eight, vehicles, drawn by an electric motor which I re-charged every +morning, mostly from the turbine station in St. Pancras, once from a +steam-station with very small engine and dynamo, found in the Palace +Theatre, which gave little trouble, and once from a similar little +station in a Strand hotel. With these I visited West Ham and Kew, +Finchley and Clapham, Dalston and Marylebone; I exhausted London; I +deposited piles in the Guildhall, in Holloway Gaol, in the new pillared +Justice-hall of Newgate, in the Tower, in the Parliament-house, in St. +Giles' Workhouse, in the Crypt and under the organ of St. Paul's, in the +South Kensington Museum, in the Royal Agricultural Society, in +Whiteley's place, in the Trinity House, in Liverpool Street, in the +Office of Works, in the secret recesses of the British Museum; in a +hundred inflammable warehouses, in five hundred shops, in a thousand +private dwellings. And I timed them all for ignition at midnight of the +23rd April. + +By five in the afternoon of the 22nd, when I left my train in Maida +Vale, and drove alone to the solitary house on high ground near +Hampstead Heath which I had chosen, the work was well finished. + + * * * * * + +The great morning dawned, and I was early a-stir: for I had much to do +that day. + +I intended to make for the sea-shore the next morning, and had therefore +to choose a good petrol motor, store it, and have it in a place of +safety; I had also to drag another vehicle after me, stored with trunks +of time-fuses, books, clothes, and other little things. + +My first journey was to Woolwich, whence I took all that I might ever +require in the way of mechanism; thence to the National Gallery, where I +cut from their frames the 'Vision of St. Helena,' Murillo's 'Boy +Drinking,' and 'Christ at the Column'; and thence to the Embassy to +bathe, anoint myself, and dress. + +As I had anticipated, and hoped, a blustering spring gale was blowing +from the north. + +Even as I set out from Hampstead, about 9 A.M., I had been able to guess +that some of my fuses had somehow anticipated the appointed hour: for I +saw three red hazes at various points in the air, and heard the far +vague booming of an occasional explosion; and by 11 A.M. I felt sure +that a large region of north-eastern London must be in flames. With the +solemn feelings of bridegrooms and marriage-mornings--with a flinching, +a flinching heart, God knows, yet a heart up-buoyed on thrilling joys--I +went about making preparations for the Gargantuan orgy of the night. + + * * * * * + +The house at Hampstead, which no doubt still stands, is of rather +pleasing design in quite a stone and rural style, with good breadths of +wall-surface, two plain coped gables, mullioned windows, and oversailing +slate verge roofs, but, rather spoiling it, a high square three-storied +tower at the south-east angle, on the topmost floor of which I had slept +the previous night. There I had provided myself with a jar of pale +tobacco mixed with rose-leaves and opium, found in a foreign house in +Seymour Street, also a genuine Saloniki hookah, together with the best +wines, nuts, and so on, and a gold harp of the musician Krasinski, +stamped with his name, taken from his house in Portland Street. + +But so much did I find to do that day, and so many odd things turned up +which I thought that I would take with me, that it was not till near six +that I drove finally northward through Camden Town. And now an ineffable +awe possessed my soul at the solemn noise which everywhere encompassed +me, an ineffable awe, a blissful terror. Never, never could I have +dreamed of aught so great and potent. All above my head there rushed +southward with wide-spread wing of haste a sparkling smoke; and mixed +with the immense roaring I heard mysterious hubbubs of tumblings and +rumblings, which I could not at all comprehend, like the moving-about of +furniture in the houses of Titans; while pervading all the air was a +most weird and tearful sound, as it were threnody, and a wild wail of +pain, and dying swan-songs, and all lamentations and tribulations of the +world. Yet I was aware that, at an hour so early, the flames must be far +from general; in fact, they had not well commenced. + + * * * * * + +As I had left a good semicircular region of houses, with a radius of +four hundred yards, without combustibles to the south of the isolated +house which I was to occupy, and as the wind was so strongly from the +north, I simply left my two vehicles at the door of the house, without +fear of any injury: nor did any occur. I then went up to the top of the +tower, lit the candles, and ate voraciously of the dinner which I had +left ready, for since the morning I had taken nothing; and then, with +hands and heart that quivered, I arranged the clothes of the low +spring-bed upon which to throw my frame in the morning hours. Opposite +the wall, where lay the bed, was a Gothic window, pretty large, with low +sill, hung with poppy-figured muslin, and looking directly south, so +that I could recline at ease in the red-velvet easy-chair, and see. It +had evidently been a young lady's room: for on the toilette were +cut-glass bottles, a plait of brown hair, powders, _rouge-aux-levres,_ +one little bronze slipper, and knick-knacks, and I loved her and hated +her, though I did not see her anywhere. About half-past eight I sat at +the window to watch, all being arranged and ready at my right hand, the +candles extinguished in the red room: for the theatre was opened, was +opened: and the atmosphere of this earth seemed turned into Hell, and +Hell was in my soul. + + * * * * * + +Soon after midnight there was a sudden and very visible increase in the +conflagration. On all hands I began to see blazing structures soar, with +grand hurrahs, on high. In fives and tens, in twenties and thirties, all +between me and the remote limit of my vision, they leapt, they lingered +long, they fell. My spirit more and more felt, and danced--deeper +mysteries of sensation, sweeter thrills. I sipped exquisitely, I drew +out enjoyment leisurely. Anon, when some more expansive angel of flame +would arise from the Pit with steady aspiration, and linger with +outspread arms, and burst, I would lift a little from the chair, leaning +forward to clap, as at some famous acting; or I would call to them in +shouts of cheer, giving them the names of Woman. For now I seemed to see +nothing but some bellowing pandemonic universe through crimson glasses, +and the air was wildly hot, and my eye-balls like theirs that walk +staring in the inner midst of burning fiery furnaces, and my skin itched +with a fierce and prickly itch. Anon I touched the chords of the harp to +the air of Wagner's 'Walkueren-ritt.' + +Near three in the morning, I reached the climax of my guilty sweets. My +drunken eye-lids closed in a luxury of pleasure, and my lips lay +stretched in a smile that dribbled; a sensation of dear peace, of +almighty power, consoled me: for now the whole area which through +streaming tears I surveyed, mustering its ten thousand thunders, and +brawling beyond the stars the voice of its southward-rushing torment, +billowed to the horizon one grand Atlantic of smokeless and flushing +flame; and in it sported and washed themselves all the fiends of Hell, +with laughter, shouts, wild flights, and holiday; and I--first of my +race--had flashed a signal to the nearer planets.... + + + * * * * * + + * * * * * + +Those words: 'signal to the nearer planets' I wrote nearly fourteen +months ago, some days after the destruction of London, I being then on +board the old _Boreal_, making for the coast of France: for the night +was dark, though calm, and I was afraid of running into some ship, yet +not sleepy, so I wrote to occupy my fingers, the ship lying still. The +book in which I wrote has been near me: but no impulse to write anything +has visited me, till now I continue; not, however, that I have very much +to put down. + +I had no intention of wearing out my life in lighting fires every +morning to warm myself in the inhospitable island of Britain, and set +out to France with the view of seeking some palace in the Riviera, +Spain, or perhaps Algiers, there, for the present at least, to make my +home. + +I started from Calais toward the end of April, taking my things along, +the first two days by train, and then determining that I was in no +hurry, and a petrol motor easier, took one, and maintained a generally +southern and somewhat eastern direction, ever-anew astonished at the +wildness of the forest vegetation which, within so short a space since +the disappearance of man, chokes this pleasant land, even before the +definite advent of summer. + +After three weeks of very slow travelling--for though I know several +countries very well, France with her pavered villages, hilly character, +vines, forests, and primeval country-manner, is always new and charming +to me--after three weeks I came unexpectedly to a valley which had never +entered my head; and the moment that I saw it, I said: 'Here I will +live,' though I had no idea what it was, for the monastery which I saw +did not look at all like a monastery, according to my ideas: but when I +searched the map, I discovered that it must be La Chartreuse de +Vauclaire in Perigord. + +It is my belief that this word 'Vauclaire' is nothing else than a +corruption of the Latin _Vallis Clara,_ or Bright Valley, for _l'_s and +_u'_s did interchange about in this way, I remember: _cheval_ becoming +_chevau(x)_ in the plural, like 'fool' and 'fou,' and the rest: which +proves the dear laziness of French people, for the 'l' was too much +trouble for them to sing, and when they came to _two_ 'l's' they quite +succumbed, shying that vault, or vo_u_te, and calling it some _y_. But +at any rate, this Vauclaire, or Valclear, was well named: for here, if +anywhere, is Paradise, and if anyone knew how and where to build and +brew liqueurs, it was those good old monks, who followed their Master +with _entrain_ in that Cana miracle, and in many other things, I fancy, +but aesthetically shirked to say to any mountain: 'Be thou removed.' + + * * * * * + +The general hue of the vale is a deep cerulean, resembling that blue of +the robes of Albertinelli's Madonnas; so, at least, it strikes the eye +on a clear forenoon of spring or summer. The monastery consists of an +oblong space, or garth, around three sides of which stand sixteen small +houses, with regular intervals between, all identical, the cells of the +fathers; between the oblong space and the cells come the cloisters, with +only one opening to the exterior; in the western part of the oblong is +a little square of earth under a large cypress-shade, within which, as +in a home of peace, it sleeps: and there, straight and slanting, stand +little plain black crosses over graves.... + +To the west of the quadrangle is the church, with the hostelry, and an +asphalted court with some trees and a fountain; and beyond, the +entrance-gate. + +All this stands on a hill of gentle slope, green as grass; and it is +backed close against a steep mountain-side, of which the tree-trunks are +conjectural, for I never saw any, the trees resembling rather one +continuous leafy tree-top, run out high and far over the extent of the +mountain. + + * * * * * + +I was there four months, till something drove me away. I do not know +what had become of the fathers and brothers, for I only found five, four +of whom I took in two journeys in the motor beyond the church of Saint +Martial d'Artenset, and left them there; and the fifth remained three +weeks with me, for I would not disturb him in his prayer. He was a +bearded brother of forty years or thereabouts, who knelt in his cell +robed and hooded in all his phantom white: for in no way different from +whatever is most phantom, visionary and eerie must a procession of these +people have seemed by gloaming, or dark night This particular brother +knelt, I say, in his small chaste room, glaring upward at his Christ, +who hung long-armed in a little recess between the side of three narrow +bookshelves and a projection of the wall; and under the Christ a gilt +and blue Madonna; the books on the three shelves few, leaning different +ways. His right elbow rested on a square plain table, at which was a +wooden chair; behind him, in a corner, the bed: a bed all enclosed in +dark boards, a broad perpendicular board along the foot, reaching the +ceiling, a horizontal board at the side over which he got into bed, +another narrower one like it at the ceiling for fringe and curtain, and +another perpendicular one hiding the pillow, making the clean bed within +a very shady and cosy little den, on the wall of this den being another +smaller Christ and a little picture. On the perpendicular board at the +foot hung two white garments, and over a second chair at the bed-side +another: all very neat and holy. He was a large stern man, blond as +corn, but with some red, too, in his hairy beard; and appalling was the +significance of those eyes that prayed, and the long-drawn cavity of +those saffron cheeks. I cannot explain to myself my deep reverence for +this man; but I had it, certainly. Many of the others, it is clear, had +fled: but not he: and to the near-marching cloud he opposed the Cross, +holding one real as the other--he alone among many. For Christianity was +an _elite_ religion, in which all were called, but few chosen, differing +from Mohammedanism and Buddhism, which grasped and conquered all within +their reach: the effect of Christ rather resembling Plato's and Dante's, +it would seem: but Mahomet's more like Homer's and Shakespeare's. + +It was my way to plant at the portal the big, carved chair from the +chancel on the hot days, and rest my soul, refusing to think of +anything, drowsing and smoking for hours. All down there in the plain +waved gardens of delicious fruit about the prolonged silver thread of +the river Isle, whose course winds loitering quite near the foot of the +monastery-slope. This slope dominates a tract of distance that is not +only vast, but looks immense, although the horizon is bounded by a +semicircle of low hills, rather too stiff and uniform for perfect +beauty; the interval of plain being occupied by yellow ploughed lands +which were never sown, weedy now, and crossed and recrossed by +vividly-green ribbons of vine, with stretches of pale-green lucerne, +orchards, and the white village of Monpont near the railway, all +embowered, the Isle drawing its mercurial streams through the +village-meadow, which is dark with shades of oaks: and to have played +there a boy, and used it familiarly from birth as one's own hand or +foot, must have been very sweet and homely; after this, the river +divides, and takes the shape of a heart; and very far away are visible +the grey banks of the Gironde. On the semicircle of hills, when there +was little distance-mist, I saw the ruins of some seigneurial chateau, +for the seigneurs, too, knew where to build; and to my left, between a +clump of oaks and an avenue of poplars, the bell-tower of the +village--church of Saint Martial d'Artenset--a very ancient type of +tower, I believe, and common in France, rather ponderous, consisting of +a square mass with a smaller square mass stuck on, the latter having +large Gothic windows; and behind me the west face of the +monastery-church, over the door being the statue of Saint Bruno. + +Well, one morning after four months, I opened my eyes in my cell to the +piercing consciousness that I had burned Monpont over-night: and so +overcome was I with regret for this poor inoffensive little place, that +for two days, hardly eating, I paced between the oak and walnut pews of +the nave, massive stalls they are, separated by grooved Corinthian +pilasters, wondering what was to become of me, and if I was not already +mad; and there are some little angels with extraordinarily human +Greuze-like faces, supporting the nerves of the apse, which, after a +time, every time I passed them, seemed conscious of me and my existence +there; and the wood-work which ornaments the length of the nave, and of +the choir also, elaborate with carved marguerites and roses, here and +there took in my eyes significant forms from certain points of view; and +there is a partition--for the nave is divided into two chapels, one for +the brothers and one for the fathers, I conclude--and in this partition +a massive door, which yet looks quite light and graceful, carved with +oak and acanthus leaves, and every time I passed through I had the +impression that the door was a sentient thing, subconscious of me; and +the delicate Italian-Renaissance brick vault which springs from the vast +nave seemed to look upon me with a gloomy knowledge of me, and of the +heart within me; and at about four in the afternoon of the second day, +after pacing the church for hours, I fell down at one of the two altars +near that carved door of the screen, praying God to have mercy upon my +soul; and in the very midst of my praying, I was up and away, the devil +in me, and I got into the motor, and did not come back to Vauclaire for +another month, and came leaving great tracts of burned desolation behind +me, towns and forests, Bordeaux burned, Lebourne burned, Bergerac +burned. + + * * * * * + +I returned to Vauclaire, for it seemed now my home; and there I +experienced a true, a deep repentance; and I humbled myself before my +Maker. And while in this state, sitting one bright day in front of the +monastery-gate, something said to me: 'You will never be a good man, nor +permanently escape Hell and Frenzy, unless you have an aim in life, +devoting yourself heart and soul to some great work, which will exact +all your science, your thought, your ingenuity, your knowledge of modern +things, your strength of body and will, your skill of head and hand: +otherwise you are bound to succumb. Do this, therefore, beginning, not +to-morrow nor this afternoon, but now: for though no man will see your +work, there is still the Almighty God, who is also something, in His +way: and He will see how you strive, and try, and groan: and perhaps, +seeing, He may have mercy upon you.' + + * * * * * + +In this way arose the idea of the Palace--an idea, indeed, which had +entered my brain before, but merely as a bombastic and visionary outcome +of my raving moods: now, however, in a very different way, soberly, and +soon concerning itself with details, difficulties, means, limitations, +and every kind of practical matter-of-fact; and every obstruction which, +one by one, I foresaw was, one by one, as the days passed, over-borne by +the vigour with which that thought, rapidly becoming a mania, possessed +me. After a week of incessant meditation, I decided Yes: and I said: I +will build a palace, which shall be both a palace and a temple: the +first human temple worthy the King of Heaven, and the only human palace +worthy the King of Earth. + + * * * * * + +After this decision I remained at Vauclaire another week, a very +different man to the lounger it had seen, strenuous, converted, humble, +making plans of this and of that, of the detail, and of the whole, +drawing, multiplying, dividing, adding, conic sections and the +rule-of-three, totting up the period of building, which came out at a +little over twelve years, estimating the quantities of material, weight +and bulk, my nights full of nightmare as to the _sort_, deciding as to +the size and structure of the crane, forge, and work-shop, and the +necessarily-limited weights of their component parts, making a list of +over 2,400 objects, and finally, up to the third week after my departure +from Vauclaire, skimming through the topography of nearly the whole +earth, before fixing upon the island of Imbros for my site. + + * * * * * + +I returned to England, and, once more, to the hollow windows and strewn +streets of black, burned-out and desolate London: for its bank-vaults, +etc., contained the necessary complement of the gold brought from Paris, +and then lying in the _Speranza_ at Dover; nor had I sufficient +familiarity with French industries and methods to find, even with the +aid of _Bottins_, one half of the 4,000 odd objects which I had now +catalogued. My ship was the _Speranza_, which brought me from Havre, for +at Calais, to which I first went, I could find nothing suitable for all +purposes, the _Speranza_ being an American yacht, very palatially +fitted, three-masted, air-driven, with a carrying capacity of 2,000 +tons, Tobin-bronzed, in good condition, containing sixteen interacting +tanks, with a five-block pulley-arrangement amid-ships that enables me +to lift very considerable weights without the aid of the hoisting +air-engine, high in the water, sharp, handsome, containing a few tons +only of sand-ballast, and needing when I found her only three days' work +at the water-line and engines to make her decent and fit. I threw out +her dead, backed her from the Outer to the Inner Basin to my train on +the quai, took in the twenty-three hundred-weight bags of gold, and the +half-ton of amber, and with this alone went to Dover, thence to +Canterbury by motor, and thence in a long train, with a store of +dynamite from the Castle for blasting possible obstructions, to London: +meaning to make Dover my _depot_, and the London rails my thoroughfare +from all parts of the country. + +Instead of three months, as I had calculated, it took me nine: a +harrowing slavery. I had to blast no less than forty-three trains from +the path of my loaded wagons, several times blasting away the metals as +well, and then having to travel hundreds of yards without metals: for +the labour of kindling the obstructing engines, to shunt them down +sidings perhaps distant, was a thing which I would not undertake. +However, all's well that ends well, though if I had it to go through +again, certainly I should not. The _Speranza_ is now lying seven miles +off Cape Roca, a heavy mist on the still water, this being the 19th of +June at 10 in the night: no wind, no moon: cabin full of mist: and I +pretty listless and disappointed, wondering in my heart why I was such +a fool as to take all that trouble, nine long servile months, my good +God, and now seriously thinking of throwing the whole vile thing to the +devil; she pretty deep in the water, pregnant with the palace. When the +thirty-three ... + + * * * * * + + * * * * * + + * * * * * + + * * * * * + + * * * * * + +Those words: 'when the thirty-three' were written by me over seventeen +years since--long years--seventeen in number, nor have I now any idea to +what they refer. The book in which I wrote I had lost in the cabin of +the _Speranza_, and yesterday, returning to Imbros from an hour's +aimless cruise, discovered it there behind a chest. + +I find now considerable difficulty in guiding the pencil, and these few +lines now written have quite an odd look, like the handwriting of a man +not very proficient in the art: it is seventeen years, seventeen, +seventeen ... ah! And the expression of my ideas is not fluent either: I +have to think for the word a minute, and I should not be surprised if +the spelling of some of them is queer. My brain has been thinking +inarticulately perhaps, all these years: and the English words and +letters, as they now stand written, have rather an improbable and +foreign air to me, as a Greek or Russian book might look to a man who +has not so long been learning those languages as to forget the +impossibly foreign impression received from them on the first day of +tackling them. Or perhaps it is only my fancy: for that I have fancies I +know. + +But what to write? The history of those seventeen years could not be put +down, my good God: at least, it would take me seventeen more to do it. +If I were to detail the building of the palace alone, and how it killed +me nearly, and how I twice fled from it, and had to return, and became +its bounden slave, and dreamed of it, and grovelled before it, and +prayed, and raved, and rolled; and how I forgot to make provision on the +west side for the contraction and expansion of the gold in the colder +weather and the heats of summer, and had to break down nine months' +work, and how I cursed Thee, how I cursed Thee; and how the lake of wine +evaporated faster than the conduits replenished it, and the three +journeys which I had to take to Constantinople for shiploads of wine, +and my frothing despairs, till I had the thought of placing the +reservoir in the platform; and how I had then to break down the south +side of the platform to the very bottom, and of the month-long nightmare +of terror that I had lest the south side of the palace would undergo +subsidence; and how the petrol failed, and of the three-weeks' search +for petrol along the coast; and how, after list-rubbing all the jet, I +found that I had forgotten the necessary rouge for polishing; and how, +in the third year, I found the fluate, which I had for water-proofing +the pores of the platform-stone, nearly all leaked away in the +_Speranza's_ hold, and I had to get silicate of soda at Gallipoli; and +how, after two years' observation, I had to come to the conclusion that +the lake was leaking, and discovered that this Imbros sand was not +suitable for mixing with the skin of Portland cement which covered the +cement concrete, and had to substitute sheet-bitumen in three places; +and how I did all, all for the sake of God, thinking: 'I will work, and +be a good man, and cast Hell from me: and when I see it stand finished, +it will be an Altar and a Testimony to me, and I shall find peace, and +be well': and how I have been cheated--seventeen years, long years of my +life--for there is no God; and how my plasterers'-hair failed me, and I +had to use flock, hessian, scrym, wadding, wood-street paving-blocks, +and whatever I could find, for filling the interspaces between the +platform cross-walls; and of the espagnolette bolts, how a number of +them mysteriously disappeared, as if snatched to Hell by harpies, and I +had to make them; and how the crane-chain would not reach two of the +silver-panel castings when they were finished, and they were too heavy +for me to lift, and the wringing of the hands of my despair, and my +biting of the earth, and the transport of my fury; and how, for a whole +wild week, I searched in vain for the text-book which describes the +ambering process; and how, when all was nearly over, in the blasting +away of the forge and crane with dynamite, a long crack appeared down +the gold of the east platform-steps, and how I would not be consoled, +but mourned and mourned; and how, in spite of all my tribulations, it +was sweetly interesting to watch my power slowly grow from the first +feeble beginnings of the landing of materials and unloading them from +the motor, a hundred-weight at a time, till I could swing four tons--see +the solid metals flow--enjoy the gliding sounds of the handle, +crank-shaft, and system of levers, forcing inwards the mould-end, and +the upper and lower plungers, for pressing the material--build at ease +in a travelling-cage--and watch from my hut-door through sleepless +hours, under the electric moonlight of this land, the three piles of +gold stones, the silver panels, the two-foot squares of jet, and be +comforted; and how the putty-wash--but it is past, it is past: and not +to live over again that vulgar nightmare of means and ends have I taken +to this writing again--but to put down something else, if I dare. + +Seventeen years, my good God, of that delusion! I could write down no +sort of explanation for all those groans and griefs, at which a +reasoning being would not shriek with laughter. I should have lived at +ease in some palace of the Middle-Orient, and burned my cities: but no, +I must be 'a good man'--vain thought. The words of a wild madman, that +preaching man in England who prophesied what happened, were with me, +where he says: 'the defeat of Man is _His_ defeat'; and I said to +myself: 'Well, the last man shall not be quite a fiend, just to spite +That Other.' And I worked and groaned, saying: 'I will be a good man, +and burn nothing, nor utter aught unseemly, nor debauch myself, but +choke back the blasphemies that Those Others shriek through my throat, +and build and build, with moils and groans.' And it was Vanity: though I +do love the house, too, I love it well, for it is my home on the waste +earth. + +I had calculated to finish it in twelve years, and I should undoubtedly +have finished it in fourteen, instead of in sixteen and seven months, +but one day, when the south, north, and east platform-steps were already +finished--it was in the July of the third year, and near sunset--as I +left off work, instead of going to the tent where my dinner lay ready, I +walked down to the ship--most strangely--in a daft, mechanical sort of +way, without saying a word to myself, an evil-meaning smile of malice on +my lips; and at midnight I was lying off Mitylene, thirty miles to the +south, having bid, as I thought, a last farewell to all those toils. I +was going to burn Athens. + +I did not, however: but kept on my way westward round Cape Matapan, +intending to destroy the forests and towns of Sicily, if I found there a +suitable motor for travelling, for I had not been at the pains to take +the motor on board at Imbros; otherwise I would ravage parts of southern +Italy. But when I came thereabouts, I was confronted with an awful +horror: for no southern Italy was there, and no Sicily was there, unless +a small new island, probably not five miles long, was Sicily; and +nothing else I saw, save the still-smoking crater of Stromboli. I +cruised northward, searching for land, and for a long time would not +believe the evidence of the instruments, thinking that they wilfully +misled me, or I stark mad. But no: no Italy was there, till I came to +the latitude of Naples, it, too, having disappeared, engulfed, engulfed, +all that stretch. From this monstrous thing I received so solemn a shock +and mood of awe, that the evil mind in me was quite chilled and quelled: +for it was, and is, my belief that a wide-spread re-arrangement of the +earth's surface is being purposed, and in all that drama, O my God, how +shall _I_ be found? + +However, I went on my way, but more leisurely, not daring for a long +time to do anything, lest I might offend anyone; and, in this foolish +cowering mind, coasted all the western coast of Spain and France during +five weeks, in that prolonged intensity of calm weather which now +alternates with storms that transcend all thought, till I came again to +Calais: and there, for the first time, landed. + +Here I would no longer contain myself, but burned; and that magnificent +stretch of forest that lay between Agincourt and Abbeville, covering +five square miles, I burned; and Abbeville I burned; and Amiens I +burned; and three forests between Amiens and Paris I burned; and Paris I +burned; burning and burning during four months, leaving behind me +smoking districts, a long tract of ravage, like some being of the Pit +that blights where pass his flaming wings. + + * * * * * + +This of city-burning has now become a habit with me more enchaining--and +infinitely more debased--than ever was opium to the smoker, or alcohol +to the drunkard. I count it among the prime necessaries of my life: it +is my brandy, my bacchanal, my secret sin. I have burned Calcutta, +Pekin, and San Francisco. In spite of the restraining influence of this +palace, I have burned and burned. I have burned two hundred cities and +countrysides. Like Leviathan disporting himself in the sea, so I have +rioted in this earth. + + * * * * * + +After an absence of six months, I returned to Imbros: for I was for +looking again upon the work which I had done, that I might mock myself +for all that unkingly grovelling: and when I saw it, standing there as I +had left it, frustrate and forlorn, and waiting its maker's hand, some +pity and instinct to build took me--for something of God was in Man--and +I fell upon my knees, and spread my arms to God, and was converted, +promising to finish the palace, with prayers that as I built so He +would build my soul, and save the last man from the enemy. And I set to +work that day to list-rub the last few dalles of the jet. + + * * * * * + +I did not leave Imbros after that during four years, except for +occasional brief trips to the coast--to Kilid-Bahr, Gallipoli, Lapsaki, +Gamos, Rodosto, Erdek, Erekli, or even once to Constantinople and +Scutari--if I happened to want anything, or if I was tired of work: but +without once doing the least harm to anything, but containing my +humours, and fearing my Maker. And full of peaceful charm were those +little cruises through this Levantic world, which, truly, is rather like +a light sketch in water-colours done by an angel than like the dun real +earth; and full of self-satisfaction and pious contentment would I +return to Imbros, approved of my conscience, for that I had surmounted +temptation, and lived tame and stainless. + +I had set up the southern of the two closed-lotus pillars, and the +platform-top was already looking as lovely as heaven, with its alternate +two-foot squares of pellucid gold and pellucid jet, when I noticed one +morning that the _Speranza's_ bottom was really now too foul, and the +whim took me then and there to leave all, and clean her as far as I +could. I at once went on board, descended to the hold, took off my +sudeyrie, and began to shift the ballast over to starboard, so as to +tilt up her port bottom to the scraper. This was wearying labour, and +about noon I was sitting on a bag, resting in the almost darkness, when +something seemed to whisper to me these words: '_You dreamed last night +that there is an old Chinaman alive in Pekin._' Horridly I started: I +_had_ dreamed something of the sort, but, from the moment of waking, +till then, had forgotten it: and I leapt livid to my feet. + +I cleaned no _Speranza_ that day, nor for four days did I anything, but +sat on the cabin-house and mused, my supporting palm among the hairy +draperies of my chin: for the thought of such a thing, if it could by +any possibility be true, was detestable as death to me, changing the +colour of the sun, and the whole aspect of the world: and anon, at the +outrage of that thing, my brow would flush with wrath, and my eyes +blaze: till, on the fourth afternoon, I said to myself: 'That old +Chinaman in Pekin is likely to get burned to death, I think, or blown to +the clouds!' + +So, a second time, on the 4th March, the poor palace was left to build +itself. For, after a short trip to Gallipoli, where I got some young +lime-twigs in boxes of earth, and some preserved limes and ginger, I set +out for a long voyage to the East, passing through the Suez Canal, and +visiting Bombay, where I was three weeks, and then destroyed it. + + * * * * * + +I had the thought of going across Hindustan by engine, but did not like +to leave my ship, to which I was very attached, not sure of finding +anything so suitable and good at Calcutta; and, moreover, I was afraid +to abandon my petrol motor, which I had taken on board with the +air-windlass, since I was going to uncivilised land. I therefore coasted +down western Hindustan. + +All that northern shore of the Arabian Sea has at the present time an +odour which it wafts far over the water, resembling odours of happy +vague dream-lands, sweet to smell in the early mornings as if the earth +were nothing but a perfume, and life an inhalation. + +On that voyage, however, I had, from beginning to end, twenty-seven +fearful storms, or, if I count that one near the Carolines, then +twenty-eight. But I do not wish to write of these rages: they were too +inhuman: and how I came alive through them against all my wildest hope, +Someone, or Something, only knows. + +I will write down here a thing: it is this, my God--something which I +have observed: a definite obstreperousness in the mood of the elements +now, when once roused, which grows, which grows continually. Tempests +have become very very far more wrathful, the sea more truculent and +unbounded in its insolence; when it thunders, it thunders with a venom +new to me, cracking as though it would split the firmament, and bawling +through the heaven of heavens, as if roaring to devour all things; in +Bombay once, and in China thrice, I was shaken by earthquakes, the +second and third marked by a certain extravagance of agitation, that +might turn a man grey. Why should this be, my God? I remember reading +very long ago that on the American prairies, which from time immemorial +had been swept by great storms, the storms gradually subsided when man +went to reside permanently there. If this be true, it would seem that +the mere presence of man had a certain subduing or mesmerising effect +upon the native turbulence of Nature, and his absence now may have +removed the curb. It is my belief that within fifty years from now the +huge forces of the earth will be let fully loose to tumble as they will; +and this planet will become one of the undisputed playgrounds of Hell, +and the theatre of commotions stupendous as those witnessed on the face +of Saturn. + + * * * * * + +The Earth is all on my brain, on my brain, O dark-minded Mother, with +thy passionate cravings after the Infinite, thy regrets, and mighty +griefs, and comatose sleeps, and sinister coming doom, O Earth: and I, +poor man, though a king, sole witness of thy bleak tremendous woes. Upon +her I brood, and do not cease, but brood and brood--the habit, if I +remember right, first becoming fixed and fated during that long voyage +eastward: for what is in store for her God only knows, and I have seen +in my broodings long visions of her future, which, if a man should see +with the eye of flesh, he would spread the arms, and wheel and wheel +through the mazes of a hiccuping giggling frenzy, for the vision only is +the very verge of madness. If I might cease but for one hour that +perpetual brooding upon her! But I am her child, and my mind grows and +grows to her like the off-shoots of the banyan-tree, that take root +downward, and she sucks and draws it, as she draws my feet by +gravitation, and I cannot take wing from her: for she is greater than I, +and there is no escaping her; and at the last, I know, my soul will +dash itself to ruin, like erring sea-fowl upon pharos-lights, against +her wild and mighty bosom. Often a whole night through I lie open-eyed +in the dark, with bursting brain, thinking of that hollow Gulf of +Mexico, how identical in shape and size with the protuberance of Africa +just opposite, and how the protuberance of the Venezuelan and Brazilian +coast fits in with the in-curve of Africa: so that it is obvious to +me--it is quite _obvious_--that they once were one; and one night rushed +so far apart; and the wild Atlantic knew that thing, and ran gladly, +hasting in between: and how if eye of flesh had been there to see, and +ear to hear that cruel thundering, my God, my God--what horror! And if +now they meet again, so long apart ...but that way fury lies. Yet one +cannot help but think: I lie awake and think, for she fills my soul, and +absorbs it, with all her moods and ways. She has meanings, secrets, +plans. Strange, strange, for instance, that similarity between the +scheme of Europe and the scheme of Asia: each with three southern +peninsulas pointing south: Spain corresponding with Arabia, Italy with +India, the Morea and Greece, divided by the Gulf of Corinth, +corresponding with the Malay Peninsula and Annam, divided by the Gulf of +Siam; each with two northern peninsulas pointing south, Sweden and +Norway, and Korea and Kamschatka; each with two great islands similarly +placed, Britain and Ireland, and the Japanese Hondo and Yezo; the Old +World and the New has each a peninsula pointing north--Denmark and +Yucatan: a forefinger with long nail--and a thumb--pointing to the Pole. +What does she mean? What can she mean, O Ye that made her? Is she +herself a living being, with a will and a fate, as sailors said that +ships were living entities? And that thing that wheeled at the Pole, +wheels it still yonder, yonder, in its dark ecstasy? Strange that +volcanoes are all near the sea: I don't know why; I don't think that +anyone ever knew. This fact, in connection with submarine explosions, +used to be cited in support of the chemical theory of volcanoes, which +supposed the infiltration of the sea into ravines containing the +materials which form the fuel of eruptions: but God knows if that is +true. The lofty ones are intermittent--a century, two, ten, of silent +waiting, and then their talk silenced for ever some poor district; the +low ones are constant in action. Who could know the dark way of the +world? Sometimes they form a linear system, consisting of several vents +which extend in one direction, near together, like chimneys of some long +foundry beneath. In mountains, a series of serrated peaks denotes the +presence of dolomites; rounded heads mean calcareous rocks; and needles, +crystalline schists. The preponderance of land in the northern +hemisphere denotes the greater intensity there of the causes of +elevation at a remote geologic epoch: that is all that one can say about +it: but whence that greater intensity? I have some knowledge of the +earth for only ten miles down: but she has eight thousand miles: and +whether through all that depth she is flame or fluid, hard or soft, I do +not know, I do not know. Her method of forming coal, geysers and hot +sulphur-springs, and the jewels, and the atols and coral reefs; the +metamorphic rocks of sedimentary origin, like gneiss, the plutonic and +volcanic rocks, rocks of fusion, and the unstratified masses which +constitute the basis of the crust; and harvests, the burning flame of +flowers, and the passage from the vegetable to the animal: I do not know +them, but they are of her, and they are like me, molten in the same +furnace of her fiery heart. She is dark and moody, sudden and ill-fated, +and rends her young like a cannibal lioness; and she is old and wise, +and remembers Hur of the Chaldees which Uruk built, and that Temple of +Bel which rose in seven pyramids to symbolise the planets, and +Birs-i-Nimrud, and Haran, and she bears still, as a thing of yesterday, +old Persepolis and the tomb of Cyrus, and those cloister-like +viharah-temples of the ancient Buddhists, cut from the Himalayan rock; +and returning from the Far East, I stopped at Ismailia, and so to Cairo, +and saw where Memphis was, and stood one bright midnight before that +great pyramid of Shafra, and that dumb Sphynx, and, seated at the well +of one of the rock-tombs, looked till tears of pity streamed down my +cheeks: for great is the earth, and her Ages, but man 'passeth away.' +These tombs have pillars extremely like the two palace-pillars, only +that these are round, and mine are square: for I chose it so: but the +same band near the top, then over this the closed lotus-flower, then the +small square plinth, which separates them from the architrave, only mine +have no architrave; the tombs consist of a little outer temple or court, +then comes a well, and inside another chamber, where, I suppose, the +dead were, a ribbon-like astragal surrounding the walls, which are +crowned with boldly-projecting cornices, surmounted by an abacus. And +here, till the pressing want of food drove me back, I remained: for more +and more the earth over-grows me, wooes me, assimilates me; so that I +ask myself this question: 'Must I not, in time, cease to be a man, and +become a small earth, precisely her copy, extravagantly weird and +fierce, half-demoniac, half-ferine, wholly mystic--morose and +turbulent--fitful, and deranged, and sad--like her?' + + * * * * * + +A whole month of that voyage, from May the 15th to June the 13th, I +wasted at the Andaman Islands near Malay: for that any old Chinaman +could be alive in Pekin began, after some time, to seem the most +quixotic notion that ever entered a human brain; and these jungled +islands, to which I came after a shocking vast orgy one night at +Calcutta, when I fired not only the city but the river, pleased my fancy +to such an extent, that at one time I intended to abide there. I was at +the one called in the chart 'Saddle Hill,' the smallest of them, I +think: and seldom have I had such sensations of peace as I lay a whole +burning day in a rising vale, deeply-shaded in palm and tropical +ranknesses, watching thence the _Speranza_ at anchor: for there was a +little offing here at the shore whence the valley arose, and I could see +one of its long peaks lined with cocoanut-trees, and all cloud burned +out of the sky except the flimsiest lawn-figments, and the sea as +absolutely calm as a lake roughened with breezes, yet making a +considerable noise in its breaking on the shore, as I have noticed in +these sorts of places: I do not know why. These poor Andaman people seem +to have been quite savage, for I met a number of them in roaming the +island, nearly skeletons, yet with limbs and vertebrae still, in +general, cohering, and in some cases dry-skinned and mummified relics of +flesh, and never anywhere a sign of clothes: a very singular thing, +considering their nearness to high old civilisations all about them. +They looked small and black, or almost; and I never found a man without +finding on or near him a spear and other weapons: so that they were +eager folk, and the wayward dark earth was in them, too, as she should +be in her children. They had in many cases some reddish discoloration, +which may have been the traces of betel-nut stains: for betel-nuts +abound there. And I was so pleased with these people, that I took on +board with the gig one of their little tree-canoes: which was my +foolishness: for gig and canoe were only three nights later washed from +the decks into the middle of the sea. + + * * * * * + +I passed down the Straits of Malacca, and in that short distance between +the Andaman Islands, and the S.W. corner of Borneo I was thrice so +mauled, that at times it seemed quite out of the question that anything +built by man could escape such unfettered cataclysms, and I resigned +myself, but with bitter reproaches, to perish darkly. The effect of the +third upon me, when it was over, was the unloosening afresh of all my +evil passion: for I said: 'Since they mean to slay me, death shall find +me rebellious'; and for weeks I could not sight some specially happy +village, or umbrageous spread of woodland, that I did not stop the ship, +and land the materials for their destruction; so that nearly all those +spicy lands about the north of Australia will bear the traces of my hand +for many a year: for more and more my voyage became dawdling and +zigzaged, as the merest whim directed it, or the movement of the pointer +on the chart; and I thought of eating the lotus of surcease and nepenthe +in some enchanted nook of this bowering summer, where from my hut-door I +could see through the pearl-hues of opium the sea-lagoon slaver lazily +upon the old coral atol, and the cocoanut-tree would droop like slumber, +and the bread-fruit tree would moan in sweet and weary dream, and I +should watch the _Speranza_ lie anchored in the pale atol-lake, year +after year, and wonder what she was, and whence, and why she dozed so +deep for ever, and after an age of melancholy peace and burdened bliss, +I should note that sun and moon had ceased revolving, and hung inert, +opening anon a heavy lid to doze and drowse again, and God would sigh +'Enough,' and nod, and Being would swoon to sleep: for that any old +Chinaman should be alive in Pekin was a thing so fantastically maniac, +as to draw from me at times sudden fits of wild red laughter that left +me faint. + +During a space of four months, from the 18th June to the 23rd October, I +visited the Fijis, where I saw skulls still surrounded with remnants of +extraordinary haloes of stiff hair, women clad in girdles made of thongs +fixed in a belt, and, in Samoa near, bodies crowned with coronets of +nautilus-shell, and traces of turmeric-paint and tattooing, and in one +townlet a great assemblage of carcasses, suggesting by their look some +festival, or dance: so that I believe that these people were overthrown +without the least fore-knowledge of anything. The women of the Maoris +wore an abundance of green-jade ornaments, and I found a peculiar kind +of shell-trumpet, one of which I have now, also a tattooing chisel, and +a nicely-carved wooden bowl. The people of New Caledonia, on the other +hand, went, I should think, naked, confining their attention to the +hair, and in this resembling the Fijians, for they seemed to wear an +artificial hair made of the fur of some creature like a bat, and also +they wore wooden masks, and great rings--for the ear, no doubt--which +must have fallen to the shoulders: for the earth was in them all, and +made them wild, perverse and various like herself. I went from one to +the other without any system whatever, searching for the ideal +resting-place, and often thinking that I had found it: but only wearying +of it at the thought that there was a yet deeper and dreamier in the +world. But in this search I received a check, my God, which chilled me +to the marrow, and set me flying from these places. + + * * * * * + +One evening, the 29th November, I dined rather late--at eight--sitting, +as was my custom in calm weather, cross-legged on the cabin-rug at the +port aft corner, a small semicircle of _Speranza_ gold-plate before me, +and near above me the red-shaded lamp with green conical reservoir, +whose creakings never cease in the stillest mid-sea, and beyond the +plates the array of preserved soups, meat-extracts, meats, fruit, +sweets, wines, nuts, liqueurs, coffee on the silver spirit-tripod, +glasses, cruet, and so on, which it was always my first care to select +from the store-room, open, and lay out once for all in the morning on +rising. I was late, seven being my hour: for on that day I had been +engaged in the occasionally necessary, but always deferred, task of +overhauling the ship, brushing here a rope with tar, there a board with +paint, there a crank with oil, rubbing a door-handle, a brass-fitting, +filling the three cabin-lamps, dusting mirrors and furniture, dashing +the great neat-joinered plains of deck with bucketfulls, or, high in +air, chopping loose with its rigging the mizzen top-mast, which since a +month was sprained at the clamps, all this in cotton drawers under loose +_quamis_, bare-footed, my beard knotted up, the sun a-blaze, the sea +smooth and pale with the smooth pallor of strong currents, the ship +still enough, no land in sight, yet great tracts of sea-weed making +eastward--I working from 11 A.M. till near 7, when sudden darkness +interrupted: for I wished to have it all over in one obnoxious day. I +was therefore very tired when I went down, lit the central chain-lever +lamp and my own two, washed and dressed in my bedroom, and sat to dinner +in the dining-hall corner. I ate voraciously, with sweat, as usual, +pouring down my eager brow, using knife or spoon in the right hand, but +never the Western fork, licking the plates clean in the Mohammedan +manner, and drinking pretty freely. Still I was tired, and went upon +deck, where I had the threadbare blue-velvet easy-chair with the broken +left arm before the wheel, and in it sat smoking cigar after cigar from +the Indian D box, half-asleep, yet conscious. The moon came up into a +pretty cloudless sky, and she was bright, but not bright enough to +out-shine the enlightened flight of the ocean, which that night was one +continuous swamp of Jack-o'-lantern phosphorescence, a wild but faint +luminosity mingled with stars and flashes of brilliance, the whole +trooping unanimously eastward, as if in haste with elfin momentous +purpose, a boundless congregation, in the sweep of a strong oceanic +current. I could hear it, in my slumbrous lassitude, struggling and +gurgling at the tied rudder, and making wet sloppy noises under the +sheer of the poop; and I was aware that the _Speranza_ was gliding along +pretty fast, drawn into that procession, probably at the rate of four to +six knots: but I did not care, knowing very well that no land was within +two hundred miles of my bows, for I was in longitude 173 deg., in the +latitude of Fiji and the Society Islands, between those two: and after a +time the cigar drooped and dropped from my mouth, and sleep overcame +me, and I slept there, in the lap of the Infinite. + + * * * * * + +So that something preserves me, Something, Someone: _and for what?_ ... +If I had slept in the cabin, I must most certainly have perished: for +lying there on the poop, I dreamed a dream which once I had dreamed on +the ice, far, far yonder in the forgotten hyperborean North: that I was +in an Arabian paradise, a Garden of Peaches; and I had a very long +vision of it, for I walked among the trees, and picked the fruit, and +pressed the blossoms to my nostrils with breathless inhalations of love: +till a horrible sickness woke me: and when I opened my eyes, the night +was black, the moon gone down, everything wet with dew, the sky arrayed +with most glorious stars like a thronged bazaar of tiaraed rajahs and +begums with spangled trains, and all the air fragrant with that mortal +scent; and high and wide uplifted before me--stretching from the +northern to the southern limit--a row of eight or nine inflamed smokes, +as from the chimneys of some Cyclopean foundry a-work all night, most +solemn, most great and dreadful in the solemn night: eight or nine, I +should say, or it might be seven, or it might be ten, for I did not +count them; and from those craters puffed up gusts of encrimsoned +material, here a gust and there a gust, with tinselled fumes that +convolved upon themselves, and sparks and flashes, all veiled in a +garish haze of light: for the foundry worked, though languidly; and upon +a rocky land four miles ahead, which no chart had ever marked, the +_Speranza_ drove straight with the current of the phosphorus sea. + +As I rose, I fell flat: and what I did thereafter I did in a state of +existence whose acts, to the waking mind, appear unreal as dream. I must +at once, I think, have been conscious that here was the cause of the +destruction of mankind; that it still surrounded its own neighbourhood +with poisonous fumes; and that I was approaching it. I must have somehow +crawled, or dragged myself forward. There is an impression on my mind +that it was a purple land of pure porphyry; there is some faint memory, +or dream, of hearing a long-drawn booming of waves upon its crags: I do +not know whence I have them. I think that I remember retching with +desperate jerks of the travailing intestines; also that I was on my face +as I moved the regulator in the engine-room: but any recollection of +going down the stairs, or of coming up again, I have not. Happily, the +wheel was tied, the rudder hard to port, and as the ship moved, she +must, therefore, have turned; and I must have been back to untie the +wheel in good time, for when my senses came, I was lying there, my head +against the under gimbal, one foot on a spoke of the wheel, no land in +sight, and morning breaking. + +This made me so sick, that for either two or three days I lay without +eating in the chair near the wheel, only rarely waking to sufficient +sense to see to it that she was making westward from that place; and on +the morning when I finally roused myself I did not know whether it was +the second or the third morning: so that my calendar, so scrupulously +kept, may be a day out, for to this day I have never been at the pains +to ascertain whether I am here writing now on the 5th or the 6th of +June. + + * * * * * + +Well, on the fourth, or the fifth, evening after this, just as the sun +was sinking beyond the rim of the sea, I happened to look where he hung +motionless on the starboard bow: and there I saw a clean-cut black-green +spot against his red--a most unusual sight here and now--a ship: a poor +thing, as it turned out when I got near her, without any sign of mast, +heavily water-logged, some relics of old rigging hanging over, even her +bowsprit apparently broken in the middle (though I could not see it), +and she nothing more than a hirsute green mass of old weeds and +sea-things from bowsprit-tip to poop, and from bulwarks to water-line, +stout as a hedgehog, only awaiting there the next high sea to founder. + +It being near my dinner-hour and night's rest, I stopped the _Speranza_ +some fifteen yards from her, and commenced to pace my spacious poop, as +usual, before eating; and as I paced, I would glance at her, wondering +at her destiny, and who were the human men that had lived on her, their +Christian names, and family names, their age, and thought, and way of +life, and beards; till the desire arose within me to go to her, and see; +and I threw off my outer garments, uncovered and unroped the cedar +cutter--the only boat, except the air-pinnace, left to me intact--and +got her down by the mizzen five-block pulley-system. But it was a +ridiculous nonsense, for having paddled to her, I was thrown into +paroxysms of rage by repeated failures to scale her bulwarks, low as +they were; my hands, indeed, could reach, but I found no hold upon the +slimy mass, and three rope-ends which I caught were also untenably +slippery: so that I jerked always back into the boat, my clothes a mass +of filth, and the only thought in my blazing brain a twenty-pound +charge of guncotton, of which I had plenty, to blow her to uttermost +Hell. I had to return to the _Speranza_, get a half-inch rope, then back +to the other, for I would not be baulked in such a way, though now the +dark was come, only slightly tempered by a half-moon, and I getting +hungry, and from minute to minute more fiendishly ferocious. Finally, by +dint of throwing, I got the rope-loop round a mast-stump, drew myself +up, and made fast the boat, my left hand cut by some cursed shell: and +all for what? the imperiousness of a whim. The faint moonlight shewed an +ample tract of deck, invisible in most parts under rolled beds of putrid +seaweed, and no bodies, and nothing but a concave, large esplanade of +seaweed. She was a ship of probably 1,500 tons, three-masted, and a +sailer. I got aft (for I had on thick outer babooshes), and saw that +only four of the companion-steps remained; by a small leap, however, I +could descend into that desolation, where the stale sea-stench seemed +concentrated into a very essence of rankness. Here I experienced a +singular ghostly awe and timorousness, lest she should sink with me, or +something: but striking matches, I saw an ordinary cabin, with some +fungoids, skulls, bones and rags, but not one cohering skeleton. In the +second starboard berth was a small table, and on the floor a thick +round ink-pot, whose continual rolling on its side made me look down; +and there I saw a flat square book with black covers, which curved +half-open of itself, for it had been wet and stained. This I took, and +went back to the _Speranza_: for that ship was nothing but an emptiness, +and a stench of the crude elements of life, nearly assimilated now to +the rank deep to which she was wedded, and soon to be absorbed into its +nature and being, to become a sea in little, as I, in time, my God, +shall be nothing but an earth in little. + +During dinner, and after, I read the book, with some difficulty, for it +was pen-written in French, and discoloured, and it turned out to be the +journal of someone, a passenger and voyager, I imagine, who called +himself Albert Tissu, and the ship the _Marie Meyer_. There was nothing +remarkable in the narrative that I could see--common-place descriptions +of South Sea scenes, records of weather, cargoes, and the like--till I +came to the last written page: and that was remarkable enough. It was +dated the 13th of April--strange thing, my good God, incredibly +strange--that same day, twenty long years ago, when I reached the Pole; +and the writing on that page was quite different from the neat look of +the rest, proving immoderate excitement, wildest haste; and he heads it +'_Cinq Heures_,'--I suppose in the evening, for he does not say: and he +writes: 'Monstrous event! phenomenon without likeness! the witnesses of +which must for ever live immortalised in the annals of the universe, an +event which will make even Mama, Henri and Juliette admit that I was +justified in undertaking this most eventful voyage. Talking with Captain +Tombarel on the poop, when a sudden exclamation from him--"_Mon Dieu!_" +His visage whitens! I follow the direction of his gaze to eastward! I +behold! eight kilometres perhaps away--, _ten monstrous waterspouts_, +reaching up, up, high enough--all apparently in one straight line, with +intervals of nine hundred _metres_, very regularly placed. They do not +wander, dance, nor waver, as waterspouts do; nor are they at all +lily-shaped, like waterspouts: but ten hewn pillars of water, with +uniform diameter from top to bottom, only a little twisted here and +there, and, as I divine, fifty _metres_ in girth. Five, ten, stupendous +minutes we look, Captain Tombarel mechanically repeating and repeating +under his breath "_Mon Dieu!_" "_Mon Dieu!_" the whole crew now on the +poop, I agitated, but collected, watch in hand. And suddenly, all is +blotted out: the pillars of water, doubtless still there, can no more be +seen: for the ocean all about them is steaming, hissing higher than the +pillars a dense white vapour, vast in extent, whose venomous sibilation +we at this distance can quite distinctly hear. It is affrighting, it is +intolerable! the eyes can hardly bear to watch, the ears to hear! it +seems unholy travail, monstrous birth! But it lasts not long: all at +once the _Marie Meyer_ commences to pitch and roll violently, and the +sea, a moment since calm, is now rough! and at the same time, through +the white vapour, we see a dark shadow slowly rising--the shadow of a +mighty back, a new-born land, bearing upwards ten flames of fire, +slowly, steadily, out of the sea, into the clouds. At the moment when +that sublime emergence ceases, or seems to cease, the grand thought that +smites me is this: "I, Albert Tissu, am immortalised: my name shall +never perish from among men!" I rush down, I write it. The latitude is +16 deg. 21' 13" South; the longitude 176 deg. 58' 19" West[1]. There is a great +deal of running about on the decks--they are descending. There is surely +a strange odour of almonds--I only hope--it is so dark, _mon D_----' + +So the Frenchman, Tissu. + + +[Footnote 1: This must be French reckoning, from meridian of Paris.] + + * * * * * + +With all that region I would have no more to do: for all here, it used +to be said, lies a great sunken continent; and I thought it would be +rising and shewing itself to my eyes, and driving me stark mad: for the +earth is full of these contortions, sudden monstrous grimaces and +apparitions, which are like the face of Medusa, affrighting a man into +spinning stone; and nothing could be more appallingly insecure than +living on a planet. + +I did not stop till I had got so far northward as the Philippine +Islands, where I was two weeks--exuberant, odorous places, but so hilly +and rude, that at one place I abandoned all attempt at travelling in the +motor, and left it in a valley by a broad, shallow, noisy river, full of +mossy stones: for I said: 'Here I will live, and be at peace'; and then +I had a fright, for during three days I could not re-discover the river +and the motor, and I was in the greatest despair, thinking: 'When shall +I find my way out of these jungles and vastnesses?' For I was where no +paths were, and had lost myself in deeps where the lure of the earth is +too strong and rank for a single man, since in such places, I suppose, a +man would rapidly be transformed into a tree, or a snake, or a tiger. At +last, however, I found the place, to my great joy, but I would not shew +that I was glad, and to hide it, fell upon a front wheel of the car with +some kicks. I could not make out who the people were that lived here: +for the relics of some seemed quite black, like New Zealand races, and I +could still detect the traces of tattooing, while others suggested +Mongolian types, and some looked like pigmies, and some like whites. But +I cannot detail the two-years' incidents of that voyage: for it is past, +and like a dream: and not to write of that--of all that--have I taken +this pencil in hand after seventeen long, long years. + + * * * * * + +Singular my reluctance to put it on paper. I will write rather of the +voyage to China, and how I landed the motor on the wharf at Tientsin, +and went up the river through a maize and rice-land most charming in +spite of intense cold, I thick with clothes as an Arctic traveller; and +of the three dreadful earthquakes within two weeks; and how the only map +which I had of the city gave no indication of the whereabouts of its +military depositories, and I had to seek for them; and of the three +days' effort to enter them, for every gate was solid and closed; and how +I burned it, but had to observe its flames, without deep pleasure, from +beyond the walls to the south, the whole place being one cursed plain; +yet how, at one moment, I cried aloud with wild banterings and glad +laughters of Tophet to that old Chinaman still alive within it; and how +I coasted, and saw the hairy Ainus, man and woman hairy alike; and how, +lying one midnight awake in my cabin, the _Speranza_ being in a still +glassy water under a cliff overhung by drooping trees--it was the +harbour of Chemulpo--to me lying awake came the thought: 'Suppose now +you should hear a step walking to and fro, leisurely, on the poop above +you--_just suppose'_; and the night of horrors which I had, for I could +not help supposing, and at one time really thought that I heard it: and +how the sweat rolled and poured from my brow; and how I went to +Nagasaki, and burned it; and how I crossed over the great Pacific deep +to San Francisco, for I knew that Chinamen had been there, too, and one +of them might be alive; and how, one calm day, the 15th or the 16th +April, I, sitting by the wheel in the mid-Pacific, suddenly saw a great +white hole that ran and wheeled, and wheeled and ran, in the sea, coming +toward me, and I was aware of the hot breath of a reeling wind, and then +of the hot wind itself, which deep-groaned the sound of the letter _V_, +humming like a billion spinning-tops, and the _Speranza_ was on her +side, sea pouring over her port-bulwarks, and myself in the corner +between deck and taffrail, drowning fast, but unable to stir; but all +was soon past and the white hole in the sea, and the hot spinning-top of +wind, ran wheeling beyond, to the southern horizon, and the _Speranza_ +righted herself: so that it was clear that someone wished to destroy me, +for that a typhoon of such vehemence ever blew before I cannot think; +and how I came to San Francisco, and how I burned it, and had my sweets: +for it was mine; and how I thought to pass over the great +trans-continental railway to New York, but would not, fearing to leave +the _Speranza_, lest all the ships in the harbour there should be +wrecked, or rusted, and buried under sea-weed, and turned unto the sea; +and how I went back, my mind all given up now to musings upon the earth +and her ways, and a thought in my soul that I would return to those deep +places of the Filipinas, and become an autochthone--a tree, or a snake, +or a man with snake-limbs, like the old autochthones: but I would not: +for Heaven was in man, too: Earth and Heaven; and how as I steamed round +west again, another winter come, and I now in a mood of dismal +despondencies, on the very brink of the inane abyss and smiling idiotcy, +I saw in the island of Java the great temple of Boro Budor: and like a +tornado, or volcanic event, my soul was changed: for my recent studies +in the architecture of the human race recurred to me with interest, and +three nights I slept in the temple, examining it by day. It is vast, +with that look of solid massiveness which above all characterises the +Japanese and Chinese building, my measurement of its width being 529 +feet, and it rises terrace-like in six stories to a height of about 120 +or 130 feet: here Buddhist and Brahmin forms are combined into a most +richly-developed whole, with a voluptuousness of tracery that is simply +intoxicating, each of the five off-sets being divided up into an +innumerable series of external niches, containing each a statue of the +sitting Boodh, all surmounted by a number of cupolas, and the whole +crowned by a magnificent dagop: and when I saw this, I had the impulse +to return to my home after so long wandering, and to finish the temple +of temples, and the palace of palaces; and I said: 'I will return, and +build it as a testimony to God.' + + * * * * * + +Save for a time, near Cairo, I did not once stop on that homeward +voyage, but turned into the little harbour at Imbros at a tranquil +sunset on the 7th of March (as I reckon), and I moored the _Speranza_ to +the ring in the little quay, and I raised the battered motor from the +hold with the middle air-engine (battered by the typhoon in the +mid-Pacific, which had broken it from the rope-fastenings and tumbled it +head-over-heels to port), and I went through the windowless +village-street, and up through the plantains and cypresses which I knew, +and the Nile mimosas, and mulberries, and Trebizond palms, and pines, +and acacias, and fig-trees, till the thicket stopped me, and I had to +alight: for in those two years the path had finally disappeared; and on, +on foot, I made my way, till I came to the board-bridge, and leant +there, and looked at the rill; and thence climbed the steep path in the +sward toward that rolling table-land where I had built with many a +groan; and half-way up, I saw the tip of the crane-arm, then the blazing +top of the south pillar, then the shed-roof, then the platform, a +blinking blotch of glory to the watery eyes under the setting sun. But +the tent, and nearly all that it contained, was gone. + + * * * * * + +For four days I would do nothing, simply lying and watching, shirking a +load so huge: but on the fifth morning I languidly began something: and +I had not worked an hour, when a fever took me--to finish it, to finish +it--and it lasted upon me, with only three brief intervals, nearly seven +years; nor would the end have been so long in coming, but for the +unexpected difficulty of getting the four flat roofs water-tight, for I +had to take down half the east one. Finally, I made them of gold slabs +one-and-a-quarter inch thick, smooth on both sides, on each beam double +gutters being fixed along each side of the top flange to catch any +leakage at the joints, which are filled with slaters'-cement. The slabs +are clamped to the top flanges by steel clips, having bolts set with +plaster-of-Paris in holes drilled in the slabs. These clips are 1-1/2 +in. by 3/17 in., and are 17 in. apart. The roofs are slightly pitched to +the front edges, where they drain into gold-plated copper-gutters on +plated wrought-iron brackets, with one side flashed up over the blocks, +which raise the slabs from the beam-tops, to clear the joint gutters.... +But now I babble again of that base servitude, which I would forget, but +cannot: for every measurement, bolt, ring, is in my brain, like a +burden: but it is past, it is past--and it was vanity. + + * * * * * + +Six months ago to-day it was finished: six months more protracted, +desolate, burdened, than all those sixteen years in which I built. + +I wonder what a man--another man--some Shah, or Tsar, of that far-off +past, would say now of me, if eye could rest upon me! With what awe +would he certainly shrink before the wild majesty of these eyes; and +though I am not lunatic--for I am not, I am not--how would he fly me +with the exclamation: 'There is the very lunacy of Pride!' + +For there would seem to him--it must be so--in myself, in all about me, +something extravagantly royal, touched with terror. My body has +fattened, and my girth now fills out to a portly roundness its broad +Babylonish girdle of crimson cloth, minutely gold-embroidered, and hung +with silver, copper and gold coins of the Orient; my beard, still black, +sweeps in two divergent sheaves to my hips, flustered by every wind; as +I walk through this palace, the amber-and-silver floor reflects in its +depths my low-necked, short-armed robe of purple, blue, and scarlet, +a-glow with luminous stones. I am ten times crowned Lord and Emperor; I +sit a hundred times enthroned in confirmed, obese old Majesty. Challenge +me who will--challenge me who dare! Among those myriad worlds upon which +I nightly pore, I may have my Peers and Compeers and Fellow-denizens ... +but _here_ I am Sole; Earth acknowledges my ancient sway and hereditary +sceptre: for though she draws me, not yet, not yet, am I hers, but she +is mine. It seems to me not less than a million million aeons since +other beings, more or less resembling me, walked impudently in the open +sunlight on this planet, which is rightly mine--I can indeed no longer +picture to myself, nor even credit, that such a state of things--so +fantastic, so far-fetched, so infinitely droll--could have existed: +though, at bottom, I suppose, I know that it must have been really so. +Up to ten years ago, in fact, I used frequently to dream that there were +others. I would see them walk in the streets like ghosts, and be +troubled, and start awake: but never now could such a thing, I think, +occur to me in sleep: for the wildness of the circumstance would +certainly strike my consciousness, and immediately I should know that +the dream was a dream. For now, at least, I am sole, I am lord. The +golden walls of this palace which I have built look down, enamoured of +their reflection, into a lake of the choicest, purplest wine. + +Not that I made it of wine because wine is rare; nor the walls of gold +because gold is rare: that would have been too childish: but because I +would match for beauty a human work with the works of those Others: and +because it happens, by some persistent freak of the earth, that +precisely things most rare and costly are generally the most beautiful. + +The vision of glorious loveliness which is this palace now risen before +my eyes cannot be described by pen and paper, though there _may_ be +words in the lexicons of language which, if I sought for them with +inspired wit for sixteen years, as I have built for sixteen years, might +as vividly express my thought on paper, as the stones-of-gold, so +grouped and built, express it to the eye: but, failing such labours and +skill, I suppose I could not give, if there were another man, and I +tried to give, the faintest conception of its celestial charm. + +It is a structure positively as clear as the sun, and as fair as the +moon--the sole great human work in the making of which no restraining +thought of cost has played a part: one of its steps alone being of more +cost than all the temples, mosques and besestins, the palaces, pagodas +and cathedrals, built between the ages of the Nimrods and the Napoleons. + +The house itself is very small--only 40 ft. long, by 35 broad, by 27 +high: yet the structure as a whole is sufficiently enormous, high +uplifted: the rest of the bulk being occupied by the platform, on which +the house stands, each side of this measuring at its base 480 ft., its +height from top to bottom 130 ft, and its top 48 ft. square, the +elevation of the steps being just nearly 30 degrees, and the top reached +from each of the four points of the compass by 183 low long steps, very +massively overlaid with smooth molten gold--not forming a continuous +flight, but broken into threes and fives, sixes and nines, with landings +between the series, these from the top looking like a great terraced +parterre of gold. It is thus an Assyrian palace in scheme: only that the +platform has steps on all sides, instead of on one. The platform-top, +from its edge to the golden walls of the house, is a mosaic consisting +of squares of the glassiest clarified gold, and squares of the glassiest +jet, corner to corner, each square 2 ft. wide. Around the edge of the +platform on top run 48 square plain gold pilasters, 12 on each side, 2 +ft. high, tapering upwards, and topped by a knob of solid gold, pierced +with a hole through which passes a lax inch-and-a-half silver chain, +hung with little silver balls which strike together in the breeze. The +mansion consists of an outer court, facing east toward the sea, and the +house proper, which encloses an inner court. The outer court is a hollow +oblong 32 ft. wide by 8 ft. long, the summit of its three walls being +battlemented; they are 18-1/2 ft. in height, or 8-1/2 ft. lower than the +house; around their gold sides, on inside and outside, 3 ft. from the +top, runs a plain flat band of silver, 1 ft. wide, projecting 2/3 in., +and at the gate, which is a plain Egyptian entrance, facing eastwards, +2-1/2 ft. narrower at top than at bottom, stand the two great square +pillars of massive plain gold, tapering upwards, 45 ft. high, with their +capital of band, closed lotus, and thin plinth; in the outer court, +immediately opposite the gate, is an oblong well, 12 ft. by 3 ft, +reproducing in little the shape of the court, its sides, which are +gold-lined, tapering downward to near the bottom of the platform, where +a conduit of 1/8 in. diameter automatically replenishes the ascertained +mean evaporation of the lake during the year, the well containing +105,360 litres when nearly full, and the lake occupying a circle round +the platform of 980 ft. diameter, with a depth of 3-1/2 ft. Round the +well run pilasters connected by silver chains with little balls, and it +communicates by a 1/8 in. conduit with a pool of wine let into the inner +court, this being fed from eight tall and narrow golden tanks, tapering +upwards, which surround it, each containing a different red wine, +sufficient on the whole to last for all purposes during my lifetime. The +ground of the outer court is also a mosaic of jet and gold: but +thenceforth the jet-squares give place throughout to squares of silver, +and the gold-squares to squares of clear amber, clear as solidified oil. +The entrance is by an Egyptian doorway 7 ft. high, with folding-doors of +gold-plated cedar, opening inwards, surrounded by a very large +projecting coping of plain silver, 3-1/2 ft. wide, severe simplicity of +line throughout enormously multiplying the effect of richness of +material. The interior resembles, I believe, rather a Homeric, than an +Assyrian or Egyptian house--except for the 'galleries,' which are purely +Babylonish and Old Hebrew. The inner court, with its wine-pool and +tanks, is a small oblong of 8 ft. by 9 ft., upon which open four +silver-latticed window-oblongs in the same proportion, and two doors, +before and behind, oblongs in the same proportion. Round this run the +eight walls of the house proper, the inner 10 ft. from the outer, each +parallel two forming a single long corridor-like chamber, except the +front (east) two, which are divided into three apartments; in each side +of the house are six panels of massive plain silver, half-an-inch +thinner in their central space, where are affixed paintings, 22 or else +21 taken at the burning of Paris from a place called 'The Louvre,' and 2 +or else 3 from a place in England: so that the panels have the look of +frames, and are surrounded by oval garlands of the palest amethyst, +topaz, sapphire, and turquoise which I could find, each garland being of +only one kind of stone, a mere oval ring two feet wide at the sides and +narrowing to an inch at the top and bottom, without designs. The +galleries are five separate recesses in the outer walls under the roofs, +two in the east facade, and one in the north, south, and west, hung with +pavilions of purple, blue, rose and white silk on rings and rods of +gold, with gold pilasters and banisters, each entered by four steps from +the roof, to which lead, north and south, two spiral stairs of cedar. On +the east roof stands the kiosk, under which is the little lunar +telescope; and from that height, and from the galleries, I can watch +under the bright moonlight of this climate, which is very like +lime-light, the for-ever silent blue hills of Macedonia, and where the +islands of Samothraki, Lemnos, Tenedos slumber like purplish fairies on +the Aegean Sea: for, usually, I sleep during the day, and keep a +night-long vigil, often at midnight descending to bathe my coloured +baths in the lake, and to disport myself in that strange intoxication of +nostrils, eyes, and pores, dreaming long wide-eyed dreams at the bottom, +to return dazed, and weak, and drunken. Or again--_twice_ within these +last void and idle six months--I have suddenly run, bawling out, from +this temple of luxury, tearing off my gaudy rags, to hide in a hut by +the shore, smitten for one intense moment with realisation of the past +of this earth, and moaning: 'alone, alone ... all alone, alone, alone +... alone, alone....' For events precisely resembling eruptions take +place in my brain; and one spangled midnight--ah, how spangled!--I may +kneel on the roof with streaming, uplifted face, with outspread arms, +and awe-struck heart, adoring the Eternal: the next, I may strut like a +cock, wanton as sin, lusting to burn a city, to wallow in filth, and, +like the Babylonian maniac, calling myself the equal of Heaven. + + * * * * * + +But it was not to write of this--of all this--! + +Of the furnishing of the palace I have written nothing.... But why I +hesitate to admit to myself what I _know_, is not clear. If They speak +to me, I may surely write of Them: for I do not fear Them, but am Their +peer. + +Of the island I have written nothing: its size, climate, form, +vegetation.... There are two winds: a north and a south wind; the north +is cool, and the south is warm; and the south blows during the winter +months, so that sometimes on Christmas-day it is quite hot; and the +north, which is cool, blows from May to September, so that the summer is +hardly ever oppressive, and the climate was made for a king. The +mangal-stove in the south hall I have never once lit. + +The length, I should say, is 19 miles; the breadth 10, or thereabouts; +and the highest mountains should reach a height of some 2,000 ft., +though I have not been all over it. It is very densely wooded in most +parts, and I have seen large growths of wheat and barley, obviously +degenerate now, with currants, figs, valonia, tobacco, vines in rank +abundance, and two marble quarries. From the palace, which lies on a +sunny plateau of beautifully-sloping swards, dotted with the circular +shadows thrown by fifteen huge cedars, and seven planes, I can see on +all sides an edge of forest, with the gleam of a lake to the north, and +in the hollow to the east the rivulet with its little bridge, and a few +clumps and beds of flowers. I can also spy right through---- + + * * * * * + +It shall be written now: + +I have this day heard within me the contention of the Voices. + + * * * * * + +I thought that they were done with me! That all, all, all, was ended! I +have not heard them for twenty years! + +But to-day--distinctly--breaking in with brawling impassioned +suddenness upon my consciousness.... I heard. + +This late _far niente_ and vacuous inaction here have been undermining +my spirit; this inert brooding upon the earth; this empty life, and +bursting brain! Immediately after eating at noon to-day, I said to +myself: + +'I have been duped by the palace: for I have wasted myself in building, +hoping for peace, and there is no peace. Therefore now I shall fly from +it, to another, sweeter work--not of building, but of destroying--not of +Heaven, but of Hell--not of self-denial, but of reddest orgy. +Constantinople--beware!' I tossed the chair aside, and with a stamp was +on my feet: and as I stood--again, again--I heard: the startlingly +sudden wrangle, the fierce, vulgar outbreak and voluble controversy, +till my consciousness could not hear its ears: and one urged: 'Go! go!' +and the other: 'Not there...! where you like, ... but not there...! for +your life!' + +I did not--for I could not--go: I was so overcome. I fell upon the couch +shivering. + +These Voices, or impulses, plainly as I felt them of old, quarrel within +me now with an openness new to them. Lately, influenced by my long +scientific habit of thought, I have occasionally wondered whether what I +used to call 'the two Voices' were not in reality two strong +instinctive movements, such as most men may have felt, though with less +force. But to-day doubt is past, doubt is past: nor, unless I be very +mad, can I ever doubt again. + + * * * * * + +I have been thinking, thinking of my life: there is a something which I +cannot understand. + +There was a man whom I met once in that dark backward and abysm of time, +when I must have been very young--I fancy at some college or school in +England, and his name now is far enough beyond scope of my memory, lost +in the vast limbo of past things. But he used to talk continually about +certain 'Black' and 'White' Powers, and of their strife for this world. +He was a short man with a Roman nose, and lived in fear of growing a +paunch. His forehead a-top, in profile, was more prominent than the +nose-end, he parted his hair in the middle, and had the theory that the +male form was more beautiful than the female. I forget what his name +was--the dim clear-obscure being. Very profound was the effect of his +words upon me, though, I think, I used to make a point of slighting +them. This man always declared that 'the Black' would carry off the +victory in the end: and so he has, so he has. + +But assuming the existence of this 'Black' and this 'White' being--and +supposing it to be a fact that my reaching the Pole had any connection +with the destruction of my race, according to the notions of that +extraordinary Scotch parson--then it must have been the power of '_the +Black_' which carried me, in spite of all obstacles, to the Pole. So far +I can understand. + +But _after_ I had reached the Pole, what further use had either White or +Black for me? Which was it--White or Black--that preserved my life +through my long return on the ice--and _why_? It _could_ not have been +'the Black'! For I readily divine that from the moment when I touched +the Pole, the only desire of the Black, which had previously preserved, +must have been to destroy me, with the rest. It must have been 'the +White,' then, that led me back, retarding me long, so that I should not +enter the poison-cloud, and then openly presenting me the _Boreal_ to +bring me home to Europe. But his motive? And the significance of these +recommencing wrangles, after such a silence? This I do not understand! + +Curse Them, curse Them, with their mad tangles! I care nothing for Them! +Are there any White Idiots and Black Idiots--_at all_? Or are these +Voices that I hear nothing but the cries of my own strained nerves, and +I all mad and morbid, morbid and mad, mad, my good God? + +This inertia here is _not good_ for me! This stalking about the palace! +and long thinkings about Earth and Heaven, Black and White, White and +Black, and things beyond the stars! My brain is like bursting through +the walls of my poor head. + +To-morrow, then, to Constantinople. + + * * * * * + +Descending to go to the ship, I had almost reached the middle of the +east platform-steps, when my foot slipped on the smooth gold: and the +fall, though I was not walking carelessly, had, I swear, all the +violence of a fall caused by a push. I struck my head, and, as I rolled +downward, swooned. When I came to myself, I was lying on the very bottom +step, which is thinly washed by the wine-waves: another roll and I +suppose I must have drowned. I sat there an hour, lost in amazement, +then crossed the causeway, came down to the _Speransa_ with the motor, +went through her, spent the day in work, slept on her, worked again +to-day, till four, at both ship and time-fuses (I with only 700 fuses +left, and in Stamboul alone must be 8,000 houses, without counting +Galata, Tophana, Kassim-pacha, Scutari, and the rest), started out at +5.30, and am now at 11 P.M. lying motionless two miles off the north +coast of the island of Marmora, with moonlight gloating on the water, a +faint north breeze, and the little pale land looking immensely +stretched-out, solemn and great, as if that were the world, and there +were nothing else; and the tiny island at its end immense, and the +_Speranza_ vast, and I only little. To-morrow at 11 A.M. I will moor the +_Speranza_ in the Golden Horn at the spot where there is that low damp +nook of the bagnio behind the naval magazines and that hill where the +palace of the Capitan Pacha is. + + * * * * * + +I found that great tangle of ships in the Golden Horn wonderfully +preserved, many with hardly any moss-growths. This must be due, I +suppose, to the little Ali-Bey and Kezat-Hanah, which flow into the Horn +at the top, and made no doubt a constant current. + +Ah, I remember the place: long ago I lived here some months, or, it may +be, years. It is the fairest of cities--and the greatest. I believe that +London in England was larger: but no city, surely, ever _seemed_ so +large. But it is flimsy, and will burn like tinder. The houses are made +of light timber, with interstices filled by earth and bricks, and some +of them look ruinous already, with their lovely faded tints of green +and gold and red and blue and yellow, like the hues of withered flowers: +for it is a city of paints and trees, and all in the little winding +streets, as I write, are volatile almond-blossoms, mixed with +maple-blossoms, white with purple. Even the most splendid of the +Sultan's palaces are built in this combustible way: for I believe that +they had a notion that stone-building was presumptuous, though I have +seen some very thick stone-houses in Galata. This place, I remember, +lived in a constant state of sensation on account of nightly flares-up; +and I have come across several tracts already devastated by fires. The +ministers-of-state used to attend them, and if the fire would not go +out, the Sultan himself was obliged to be there, in order to encourage +the firemen. Now it will burn still better. + +But I have been here six weeks, and still no burning: for the place +seems to plead with me, it is so ravishing, so that I do not know why I +did not live here, and spare my toils during those sixteen nightmare +years; for two whole weeks the impulse to burn was quieted; and since +then there has been an irritating whisper at my ear which said: 'It is +not really like the great King that you are, this burning, but like a +foolish child, or a savage, who liked to see fireworks: or at least, if +you must burn, do not burn poor Constantinople, which is so charming, +and so very old, with its balsamic perfumes, and the blossomy trees of +white and light-purple peeping over the walls of the cloistered painted +houses, and all those lichened tombs--those granite menhirs and regions +of ancient marble tombs between the quarters, Greek tombs, Byzantine, +Jew, Mussulman tombs, with their strange and sacred +inscriptions--overwaved by their cypresses and vast plane-trees.' And +for weeks I would do nothing: but roamed about, with two minds in me, +under the tropic brilliance of the sky by day, and the vast dreamy +nights of this place that are like nights seen through azure-tinted +glasses, and in each of them is not one night, but the thousand-and-one +long crowded nights of glamour and fancy: for I would sit on the immense +esplanade of the Seraskierat, or the mighty grey stones of the porch of +the mosque of Sultan Mehmed-fatih, dominating from its great steps all +old Stamboul, and watch the moon for hours and hours, so passionately +bright she soared through clear and cloud, till I would be smitten with +doubt of my own identity, for whether I were she, or the earth, or +myself, or some other thing or man, I did not know, all being so silent +alike, and all, except myself, so vast, the Seraskierat, and the +Suleimanieh, and Stamboul, and the Marmora Sea, and the earth, and +those argent fields of the moon, all large alike compared with me, and +measure and space were lost, and I with them. + + * * * * * + +These proud Turks died stolidly, many of them. In streets of +Kassim-pacha, in crowded Taxim on the heights of Pera, and under the +long Moorish arcades of Sultan-Selim, I have seen the open-air barber's +razor with his bones, and with him the half-shaved skull of the +faithful, and the long two-hours' narghile with traces of burnt tembaki +and haschish still in the bowl. Ashes now are they all, and dry yellow +bone; but in the houses of Phanar and noisy old Galata, and in the Jew +quarter of Pri-pacha, the black shoe and head-dress of the Greek is +still distinguishable from the Hebrew blue. It was a mixed ritual of +colours here in boot and hat: yellow for Mussulman, red boots, black +calpac for Armenian, for the Effendi a white turban, for the Greek a +black. The Tartar skull shines from under a high taper calpac, the +Nizain-djid's from a melon-shaped head-piece; the Imam's and Dervish's +from a grey conical felt; and there is here and there a Frank in +European rags. I have seen the towering turban of the Bashi-bazouk, and +his long sword, and some softas in the domes on the great wall of +Stamboul, and the beggar, and the street-merchant with large tray of +water-melons, sweetmeats, raisins, sherbet, and the bear-shewer, and the +Barbary organ, and the night-watchman who evermore cried 'Fire!' with +his long lantern, two pistols, dirk, and wooden javelin. Strange how all +that old life has come back to my fancy now, pretty vividly, and for the +first time, though I have been here several times lately. I have gone +out to those plains beyond the walls with their view of rather barren +mountain-peaks, the city looking nothing but minarets shooting through +black cypress-tops, and I seemed to see the wild muezzin at some summit, +crying the midday prayer: '_Mohammed Resoul Allah!_'--the wild man; and +from that great avenue of cypresses which traverses the cemetery of +Scutari, the walled city of Stamboul lay spread entire up to Phanar and +Eyoub in their cypress-woods before me, the whole embowered now in +trees, all that complexity of ways and dark alleys with overhanging +balconies of old Byzantine houses, beneath which a rider had to stoop +the head, where old Turks would lose their way in mazes of the +picturesque; and on the shaded Bosphorus coast, to Foundoucli and +beyond, some peeping yali, snow-white palace, or old Armenian cot; and +the Seraglio by the sea, a town within a town; and southward the Sea of +Marmora, blue-and-white, and vast, and fresh as a sea just born, +rejoicing at its birth and at the jovial sun, all brisk, alert, to the +shadowy islands afar: and as I looked, I suddenly said aloud a wild, mad +thing, my God, a wild and maniac thing, a shrieking maniac thing for +Hell to laugh at: for something said with my tongue: '_This city is not +quite dead._' + + * * * * * + + * * * * * + +Three nights I slept in Stamboul itself at the palace of some sanjak-bey +or emir, or rather dozed, with one slumbrous eye that would open to +watch my visitors Sinbad, and Ali Baba, and old Haroun, to see how they +slumbered and dozed: for it was in the small luxurious chamber where the +bey received those speechless all-night visits of the Turks, long rosy +hours of perfumed romance, and drunkenness of the fancy, and visionary +languor, sinking toward morning into the yet deeper peace of dreamless +sleep; and there, still, were the white _yatags_ for the guests to sit +cross-legged on for the waking dream, and to fall upon for the final +swoon, and the copper brazier still scenting of essence-of-rose, and the +cushions, rugs, hangings, the monsters on the wall, the +haschish-chibouques, narghiles, hookahs, and drugged pale cigarettes, +and a secret-looking lattice beyond the door, painted with trees and +birds; and the air narcotic and grey with the pastilles which I had +burned, and the scented smokes which I had smoked; and I all drugged and +mumbling, my left eye suspicious of Ali there, and Sinbad, and old +Haroun, who dozed. And when I had slept, and rose to wash in a room near +the overhanging latticed balcony of the facade, before me to the north +lay old Galata in sunshine, and that steep large street mounting to +Pera, once full at every night-fall of divans on which grave dervishes +smoked narghiles, and there was no space for passage, for all was +divans, lounges, almond-trees, heaven-high hum, chibouques in forests, +the dervish, and the innumerable porter, the horse-hirer with his horse +from Tophana, and arsenal-men from Kassim, and traders from Galata, and +artillery-workmen from Tophana; and on the other side of the house, the +south end, a covered bridge led across a street, which consisted mostly +of two immense blind walls, into a great tangled wilderness of flowers, +which was the harem-garden, where I passed some hours; and here I might +have remained many days, many weeks perhaps, but that, dozing one +fore-day with those fancied others, it was as if there occurred a laugh +somewhere, and a thing said: 'But this city is not quite dead!' waking +me from deeps of peace to startled wakefulness. And I thought to myself: +'If it be not quite dead, it _will_ be soon--and with some suddenness!' +And the next morning I was at the Arsenal. + + * * * * * + +It is long since I have so deeply enjoyed, even to the marrow. It may be +'the White' who has the guardianship of my life: but assuredly it is +'the Black' who reigns in my soul. + +Grandly did old Stamboul, Galata, Tophana, Kassim, right out beyond the +walls to Phanar and Eyoub, blaze and burn. The whole place, except one +little region of Galata, was like so much tinder, and in the five hours +between 8 P.M. and 1 A.M. all was over. I saw the tops of those vast +masses of cemetery-cypresses round the tombs of the Osmanlis outside the +walls, and those in the cemetery of Kassim, and those round the sacred +mosque of Eyoub, shrivel away instantaneously, like flimsy hair caught +by a flame; I saw the Genoese tower of Galata go heading obliquely on an +upward curve, like Sir Roger de Coverley and wild rockets, and burst +high, high, with a report; in pairs, and threes, and fours, I saw the +blue cupolas of the twelve or fourteen great mosques give in and +subside, or soar and rain, and the great minarets nod the head, and +topple; and I saw the flames reach out and out across the empty breadth +of the Etmeidan--three hundred yards--to the six minarets of the Mosque +of Achmet, wrapping the red Egyptian-granite obelisk in the centre; and +across the breadth of the Serai-Meidani it reached to the buildings of +the Seraglio and the Sublime Porte; and across those vague barren +stretches that lie between the houses and the great wall; and across the +seventy or eighty great arcaded bazaars, all-enwrapping, it reached; and +the spirit of fire grew upon me: for the Golden Horn itself was a tongue +of fire, crowded, west of the galley-harbour, with exploding +battleships, Turkish frigates, corvettes, brigs--and east, with tens of +thousands of feluccas, caiques, gondolas and merchantmen aflame. On my +left burned all Scutari; and between six and eight in the evening I had +sent out thirty-seven vessels under low horse-powers of air, with trains +and fuses laid for 11 P.M., to light with their wandering fires the Sea +of Marmora. By midnight I was encompassed in one great furnace and fiery +gulf, all the sea and sky inflamed, and earth a-flare. Not far from me +to the left I saw the vast Tophana barracks of the Cannoniers, and the +Artillery-works, after long reluctance and delay, take wing together; +and three minutes later, down by the water, the barrack of the +Bombardiers and the Military School together, grandly, grandly; and +then, to the right, in the valley of Kassim, the Arsenal: these +occupying the sky like smoky suns, and shedding a glaring day over many +a mile of sea and land; I saw the two lines of ruddier flaring where the +barge-bridge and the raft-bridge over the Golden Horn made haste to +burn; and all that vastness burned with haste, quicker and quicker--to +fervour--to fury--to unanimous rabies: and when its red roaring stormed +the infinite, and the might of its glowing heart was Gravitation, Being, +Sensation, and I its compliant wife--then my head nodded, and with +crooked lips I sighed as it were my last sigh, and tumbled, weak and +drunken, upon my face. + + * * * * * + + * * * * * + +O wild Providence! Unfathomable madness of Heaven! that ever I should +write what now I write! I will not write it.... + + * * * * * + +The hissing of it! It is only a crazy dream! a tearing-out of the hair +by the roots to scatter upon the raving storms of Saturn! My hand will +not write it! + + * * * * * + +In God's name----! During four nights after the burning I slept in a +house--French as I saw by the books, &c., probably the Ambassador's, for +it has very large gardens and a beautiful view over the sea, situated on +the rapid east declivity of Pera; it is one of the few large houses +which, for my safety, I had left standing round the minaret whence I had +watched, this minaret being at the top of the old Mussulman quarter on +the heights of Taxim, between Pera proper and Foundoucli. At the bottom, +both at the quay of Foundoucli, and at that of Tophana, I had left under +shelter two caiques for double safety, one a Sultan's gilt craft, with +gold spur at the prow, and one a boat of those zaptias that used to +patrol the Golden Horn as water-police: by one or other of these I meant +to reach the _Speranza_, she being then safely anchored some distance up +the Bosphorus coast. So, on the fifth morning I set out for the Tophana +quay; but a light rain had fallen over-night, and this had re-excited +the thin grey smoke resembling quenched steam, which, as from some +reeking province of Abaddon, still trickled upward over many a square +mile of blackened tract, though of flame I could see no sign. I had not +accordingly advanced far over every sort of _debris_, when I found my +eyes watering, my throat choked, and my way almost blocked by roughness: +whereupon I said: 'I will turn back, cross the region of tombs and +barren waste behind Pera, descend the hill, get the zaptia boat at the +Foundoucli quay, and so reach the _Speranza_.' + +Accordingly, I made my way out of the region of smoke, passed beyond the +limits of smouldering ruin and tomb, and soon entered a rich woodland, +somewhat scorched at first, but soon green and flourishing as the +jungle. This cooled and soothed me, and being in no hurry to reach the +ship, I was led on and on, in a somewhat north-western direction, I +fancy. Somewhere hereabouts, I thought, was the place they called 'The +Sweet Waters,' and I went on with the vague notion of coming upon them, +thinking to pass the day, till afternoon, in the forest. Here nature, in +only twenty years has returned to an exuberant savagery, and all was now +the wildest vegetation, dark dells, rills wimpling through deep-brown +shade of sensitive mimosa, large pendulous fuchsia, palm, cypress, +mulberry, jonquil, narcissus, daffodil, rhododendron, acacia, fig. Once +I stumbled upon a cemetery of old gilt tombs, absolutely overgrown and +lost, and thrice caught glimpses of little trellised yalis choked in +boscage. With slow and listless foot I went, munching an almond or an +olive, though I could swear that olives were not formerly indigenous to +any soil so northern: yet here they are now, pretty plentiful, though +elementary, so that modifications whose end I cannot see are certainly +proceeding in everything, some of the cypresses which I met that day +being immense beyond anything I ever heard of: and the thought, I +remember, was in my head, that if a twig or leaf should change into a +bird, or a fish with wings, and fly before my eyes, what then should I +do? and I would eye a branch suspiciously anon. After a long time I +penetrated into a very sombre grove. The day outside the wood was +brilliant and hot, and very still, the leaves and flowers here all +motionless. I seemed, as it were, to hear the vacant silence of the +world, and my foot treading on a twig, produced the report of pistols. I +presently reached a glade in a thicket, about eight yards across, that +had a scent of lime and orange, where the just-sufficient twilight +enabled me to see some old bones, three skulls, and the edge of a +tam-tam peeping from a tuft of wild corn with corn-flowers, and here and +there some golden champac, and all about a profusion of musk-roses. I +had stopped--_why_ I do not recollect--perhaps thinking that if I was +not getting to the Sweet Waters, I should seriously set about finding my +way out. And as I stood looking about me, I remember that some cruising +insect trawled near my ear its lonely drone. + +Suddenly, God knows, I started, I started. + +I imagined--I dreamed--that I saw a pressure in a bed of moss and +violets, _recently made!_ And while I stood gloating upon that +impossible thing, I imagined--I dreamed--the lunacy of it!--that I heard +a laugh...! the laugh, my good God, of a human soul. + +Or it seemed half a laugh, and half a sob: and it passed from me in one +fleeting instant. + +Laughs, and sobs, and idiot hallucinations, I had often heard before, +feet walking, sounds behind me: and even as I had heard them, I had +known that they were nothing. But brief as was this impression, it was +yet so thrillingly _real_, that my poor heart received, as it were, the +very shock of death, and I fell backward into a mass of moss, supported +on the right palm, while the left pressed my working bosom; and there, +toiling to catch my breath, I lay still, all my soul focussed into my +ears. But now I could hear no sound, save only the vast and audible hum +of the silence of the universe. + + +There was, however, the foot-print. If my eye and ear should so +conspire against me, that, I thought, was hard. + +Still I lay, still, in that same pose, without a stir, sick and +dry-mouthed, infirm and languishing, with dying breaths: but keen, +keen--and malign. + +I would wait, I said to myself, I would be artful as snakes, though so +woefully sick and invalid: I would make no sound.... + +After some minutes I became conscious that my eyes were leering--leering +in one fixed direction: and instantly, the mere fact that I had a sense +of direction proved to me that I must, _in truth_, have heard something! +I strove--I managed--to raise myself: and as I stood upright, feebly +swaying there, not the terrors of death alone were in my breast, but the +authority of the monarch was on my brow. + +I moved: I found the strength. + +Slow step by slow step, with daintiest noiselessness, I moved to a +thread of moss that from the glade passed into the thicket, and along +its winding way I stepped, in the direction of the sound. Now my ears +caught the purling noise of a brooklet, and following the moss-path, I +was led into a mass of bush only two or three feet higher than my head. +Through this, prowling like a stealthy cat, I wheedled my painful way, +emerged upon a strip of open long-grass, and now was faced, three yards +before me, by a wall of acacia-trees, prickly-pear and pichulas, between +which and a forest beyond I spied a gleam of running water. + +On hands and knees I crept toward the acacia-thicket, entered it a +little, and leaning far forward, peered. And there--at once--ten yards +to my right--I saw. + +Singular to say, my agitation, instead of intensifying to the point of +apoplexy and death, now, at the actual sight, subsided to something very +like calmness. With malign and sullen eye askance I stood, and steadily +I watched her there. + + * * * * * + +She was on her knees, her palms lightly touching the ground, supporting +her. At the edge of the streamlet she knelt, and she was looking with a +species of startled shy astonishment at the reflexion of her face in the +limpid brown water. And I, with sullen eye askance regarded her a good +ten minutes' space. + + * * * * * + +I believe that her momentary laugh and sob, which I had heard, was the +result of surprise at seeing her own image; and I firmly believe, from +the expression of her face, that this was the first time that she had +seen it. + + * * * * * + +Never, I thought, as I stood moodily gazing, had I seen on the earth a +creature so fair (though, analysing now at leisure, I can quite conclude +that there was nothing at all remarkable about her good looks). Her +hair, somewhat lighter than auburn, and frizzy, was a real garment to +her nakedness, covering her below the hips, some strings of it falling, +too, into the water: her eyes, a dark blue, were wide in a most silly +expression of bewilderment. Even as I eyed and eyed her, she slowly +rose: and at once I saw in all her manner an air of unfamiliarity with +the world, as of one wholly at a loss what to do. Her pupils did not +seem accustomed to light; and I could swear that that was the first day +in which she had seen a tree or a stream. + +Her age appeared eighteen or twenty. I guessed that she was of +Circassian blood, or, at least, origin. Her skin was whitey-brown, or +old ivory-white. + + * * * * * + +She stood up motionless, at a loss. She took a lock of her hair, and +drew it through her lips. There was some look in her eyes, which I +could plainly see now, somehow indicating wild hunger, though the wood +was full of food. After letting go her hair, she stood again feckless +and imbecile, with sideward-hung head, very pitiable to see I think now, +though no faintest pity touched me then. It was clear that she did not +at all know what to make of the look of things. Finally, she sat on a +moss-bank, reached and took a musk-rose on her palm, and looked +hopelessly at it. + + * * * * * + +One minute after my first actual sight of her my extravagance of +agitation, I say, died down to something like calm. The earth was mine +by old right: I felt that: and this creature a mere slave upon whom, +without heat or haste, I might perform my will: and for some time I +stood, coolly enough considering what that will should be. + +I had at my girdle the little cangiar, with silver handle encrusted with +coral, and curved blade six inches long, damascened in gold, and sharp +as a razor; the blackest and the basest of all the devils of the Pit was +whispering in my breast with calm persistence: 'Kill, kill--and eat.' + +_Why_ I should have killed her I do not know. That question I now ask +myself. It must be true, true that it is '_not good_' for man to be +alone. There was a religious sect in the Past which called itself +'Socialist': and with these must have been the truth, man being at his +best and highest when most social, and at his worst and lowest when +isolated: for the Earth gets hold of all isolation, and draws it, and +makes it fierce, base, and materialistic, like sultans, aristocracies, +and the like: but Heaven is where two or three are gathered together. It +may be so: I do not know, nor care. But I know that after twenty years +of solitude on a planet the human soul is more enamoured of solitude +than of life, shrinking like a tender nerve from the rough intrusion of +Another into the secret realm of Self: and hence, perhaps, the +bitterness with which solitary castes, Brahmins, patricians, +aristocracies, always resisted any attempt to invade their +slowly-acquired domain of privileges. Also, it may be true, it may, it +may, that after twenty years of solitary selfishness, a man becomes, +without suspecting it--not at all noticing the slow stages--a real and +true beast, a horrible, hideous beast, mad, prowling, like that King of +Babylon, his nails like birds' claws, and his hair like eagles' +feathers, with instincts all inflamed and fierce, delighting in +darkness and crime for their own sake. I do not know, nor care: but I +know that, as I drew the cangiar, the basest and the slyest of all the +devils was whispering me, tongue in cheek: 'Kill, kill--and be merry.' + +With excruciating slowness, like a crawling glacier, tender as a nerve +of the touching leaves, I moved, I stole, obliquely toward her through +the wall of bush, the knife behind my back. Once only there was a +restraint, a check: I felt myself held back: I had to stop: for one of +the ends of my divided beard had caught in a limb of prickly-pear. + +I set to disentangling it: and it was, I believe, at the moment of +succeeding that I first noticed the state of the sky, a strip of which I +could see across the rivulet: a minute or so before it had been pretty +clear, but now was busy with hurrying clouds. It was a sinister +muttering of thunder which had made me glance upward. + +When my eyes returned to the sitting figure, she was looking foolishly +about the sky with an expression which almost proved that she had never +before heard that sound of thunder, or at least had no idea what it +could bode. My fixed regard lost not one of her movements, while inch by +inch, not breathing, careful as the poise of a balance, I crawled. And +suddenly, with a rush, I was out in the open, running her down.... + +She leapt: perhaps two, perhaps three, paces she fled: then stock still +she stood--within some four yards of me--with panting nostrils, with +enquiring face. + +I saw it all in one instant, and in one instant all was over. I had not +checked the impetus of my run at her stoppage, and I was on the point of +reaching her with uplifted knife, when I was suddenly checked and +smitten by a stupendous violence: a flash of blinding light, attracted +by the steel which I held, struck tingling through my frame, and at the +same time the most passionate crash of thunder that ever shocked a poor +human ear felled me to the ground. The cangiar, snatched from my hand, +fell near the girl's foot. + +I did not entirely lose consciousness, though, surely, the Powers no +longer hide themselves from me, and their close contact is too +intolerably rough and vigorous for a poor mortal man. During, I should +think, three or four minutes, I lay so astounded under that bullying cry +of wrath, that I could not move a finger. When at last I did sit up, the +girl was standing near me, with a sort of smile, holding out to me the +cangiar in a pouring rain. + +I took it from her, and my doddering fingers dropped it into the +stream. + + * * * * * + +Pour, pour came the rain, raining as it can in this place, not long, but +a deluge while it lasts, dripping in thick-liquidity, like a profuse +sweat, through the forest, I seeking to get back by the way I had come, +flying, but with difficulty and slowness, and a feeling in me that I was +being tracked. And so it proved: for when I struck into more open space, +nearly opposite the west walls, but now on the north side of the Golden +Horn, where there is a flat grassy ground somewhere between the valley +of Kassim and Charkoi, with horror I saw that _protegee_ of Heaven, or +of someone, not ten yards behind, following me like a mechanical figure, +it being now near three in the afternoon, and the rain drenching me +through, and I tired and hungry, and from all the ruins of +Constantinople not one whiff of smoke ascending. + +I trudged on wearily till I came to the quay of Foundoucli, and the +zaptia boat; and there she was with me still, her hair nothing but a +thin drowned string down her back. + + * * * * * + +Not only can she not speak to me in any language that I know: but she +can speak in _no_ language: it is my firm belief that she has _never_ +spoken. + +She never saw a boat, or water, or the world, till now--I could swear +it. She came into the boat with me, and sat astern, clinging for dear +life to the gunwale by her finger-nails, and I paddled the eight hundred +yards to the _Speranza_, and she came up to the deck after me. When she +saw the open water, the boat, the yalis on the coast, and then the ship, +astonishment was imprinted on her face. But she appears to know little +fear. She smiled like a child, and on the ship touched this and that, as +if each were a living thing. + +It was only here and there that one could see the ivory-brown colour of +her skin: the rest was covered with dirt, like old bottles long lying in +cellars. + +By the time we reached the _Speranza_, the rain suddenly stopped: I went +down to my cabin to change my clothes, and had to shut the door in her +face to keep her out. When I opened it, she was there, and she followed +me to the windlass, when I went to set the anchor-engine going. I +intended, I suppose, to take her to Imbros, where she might live in one +of the broken-down houses of the village. But when the anchor was not +yet half up, I stopped the engine, and let the chain run again. For I +said, 'No, I will be alone, I am not a child.' + +I knew that she was hungry by the look in her eyes: but I cared nothing +for that. I was hungry, too: and that was all I cared about. + +I would not let her be there with me another instant. I got down into +the boat, and when she followed, I rowed her back all the way past +Foundoucli and the Tophana quay to where one turns into the Golden Horn +by St. Sophia, around the mouth of the Horn being a vast semicircle of +charred wreckage, carried out by the river-currents. I went up the steps +on the Galata side before one comes to where the barge-bridge was. When +she had followed me on to the embankment, I walked up one of those +rising streets, very encumbered now with stone-_debris_ and ashes, but +still marked by some standing black wall-fragments, it being now not far +from night, but the air as clear and washed as the translucency of a +great purple diamond with the rain and the afterglow of the sun, and all +the west aflame. + +When I was about a hundred yards up in this old mixed quarter of Greeks, +Turks, Jews, Italians, Albanians, and noise and cafedjis and +wine-bibbing, having turned two corners, I suddenly gathered my skirts, +spun round, and, as fast as I could, was off at a heavy trot back to +the quay. She was after me, but being taken by surprise, I suppose, was +distanced a little at first. However, by the time I could scurry myself +down into the boat, she was so near, that she only saved herself from +the water by a balancing stoppage at the brink, as I pushed off. I then +set out to get back to the ship, muttering: 'You can have Turkey, if you +like, and I will keep the rest of the world.' + +I rowed sea-ward, my face toward her, but steadily averted, for I would +not look her way to see what she was doing. However, as I turned the +point of the quay, where the open sea washes quite rough and loud, to go +northward and disappear from her, I heard a babbling cry--the first +sound which she had uttered. I did look then: and she was still quite +near me, for the silly maniac had been running along the embankment, +following me. + +'Little fool!' I cried out across the water, 'what are you after now?' +And, oh my good God, shall I ever forget that strangeness, that wild +strangeness, of my own voice, addressing on this earth another human +soul? + +There she stood, whimpering like an abandoned dog after me. I turned the +boat, rowed, came to the first steps, landed, and struck her two +stinging slaps, one on each cheek. While she cowered, surprised no +doubt, I took her by the hand, led her back to the boat, landed on the +Stamboul side, and set off, still leading her, my object being to find +some sort of possible edifice near by, not hopelessly burned, in which +to leave her: for in all Galata there was plainly none, and Pera, I +thought, was too far to walk to. But it would have been better if I had +gone to Pera, for we had to walk quite three miles from Seraglio Point +all along the city battlements to the Seven-towers, she picking her +bare-footed way after me through the great Sahara of charred stuff, and +night now well arrived, and the moon a-drift in the heaven, making the +desolate lonesomeness of the ruins tenfold desolate, so that my heart +smote me then with bitterness and remorse, and I had a vision of myself +that night which I will not put down on paper. At last, however, pretty +late in the evening, I spied a large mansion with green lattice-work +facade, and shaknisier, and terrace-roof, which had been hidden from me +by the arcades of a bazaar, a vast open space at about the centre of +Stamboul, one of the largest of the bazaars, I should think, in the +middle of which stood the mansion, probably the home of pasha or vizier: +for it had a very distinguished look in that place. It seemed very +little hurt, though the vegetation that had apparently choked the great +open space was singed to a black fluff, among which lay thousands of +calcined bones of man, horse, ass, and camel, for all was distinct in +the bright, yet so pensive and forlorn, moonlight, which was that +Eastern moonlight of pure astral mystery which illumines Persepolis, and +Babylon, and ruined cities of the old Anakim. + +The house, I knew, would contain divans, _yatags_, cushions, foods, +wines, sherbets, henna, saffron, mastic, raki, haschish, costumes, and a +hundred luxuries still good. There was an outer wall, but the foliage +over it had been singed away, and the gate all charred. It gave way at a +push from my palm. The girl was close behind me. I next threw open a +little green lattice-door in the facade under the shaknisier, and +entered. Here it was dark, and the moment that she, too, was within, I +slipped out quickly, slammed the door in her face, and hooked it upon +her by a little hook over the latch. + +I now walked some yards beyond the court, then stopped, listening for +her expected cry: but all was still: five minutes--ten--I waited: but no +sound. I then continued my morose and melancholy way, hollow with +hunger, intending to start that night for Imbros. + +But this time I had hardly advanced twenty steps, when I heard a frail +and strangled cry, apparently in mid-air behind me, and glancing, saw +the creature lying at the gateway, a white thing in black stubble-ashes. +She had evidently jumped, well outward, from a small casement of lattice +on a level with the little shaknisier grating, through which once peeped +bright eyes, thirty feet aloft. + +I hardly believe that she was conscious of any danger in jumping, for +all the laws of life are new to her, and, having sought and found the +opening, she may have merely come with blind instinctiveness after me, +taking the first way open to her. I walked back, pulled at her arm, and +found that she could not stand. Her face was screwed with silent +pain--she did not moan. Her left foot, I could see, was bleeding: and by +the wounded ankle I took her, and dragged her so through the ashes +across the narrow court, and tossed her like a little dog with all my +force within the door, cursing her. + +Now I would not go back the long way to the ship, but struck a match, +and went lighting up girandoles, cressets, candelabra, into a confusion +of lights among great numbers of pale-tinted pillars, rose and azure, +with verd-antique, olive, and Portoro marble, and serpentine. The +mansion was large, I having to traverse quite a desert of embroidered +brocade-hangings, slender columns, and Broussa silks, till I saw a +stair-case doorway behind a Smyrna _portiere_, went up, and wandered +some time in a house of gilt-barred windows, with very little furniture, +but palatial spaces, solitary huge pieces of _faience_ of inestimable +age, and arms, my footfalls quite stifled in the Persian carpeting. I +passed through a covered-in hanging-gallery, with one window-grating +overlooking an inner court, and by this entered the harem, which +declared itself by a greater luxury, bric-a-bracerie, and profusion of +manner. Here, descending a short curved stair behind a _portiere_, I +came into a marble-paved sort of larder, in which was an old negress in +blue dress, her hair still adhering, and an infinite supply of +sweetmeats, French preserved foods, sherbets, wines, and so on. I put a +number of things into a pannier, went up again, found some of those +exquisite pale cigarettes which drunken in the hollow of an emerald, +also a jewelled two-yard-long chibouque, and tembaki: and with all +descended by another stair, and laid them on the steps of a little +raised kiosk of green marble in a corner of the court; went up again, +and brought down a still-snowy _yatag_ to sleep on; and there, by the +kiosk-step, ate and passed the night, smoking for several hours in a +state of languor. In the centre of the court is a square marble well, +looking white through a rankness of wild vine, acacias in flower, weeds, +jasmines, and roses, which overgrew it, as well as the kiosk and the +whole court, climbing even the four-square arcade of Moorish arches +round the open space, under one of which I had deposited a long lantern +of crimson silk: for here no breath of the fire had come. About two in +morning I fell to sleep, a deeper peace of shadow now reigning where so +long the melancholy silver of the moon had lingered. + + * * * * * + +About eight in the morning I rose and made my way to the front, +intending that that should be my last night in this ruined place: for +all the night, sleeping and waking, the thing which had happened filled +my brain, growing from one depth of incredibility to a deeper, so that +at last I arrived at a sort of certainty that it could be nothing but a +drunken dream: but as I opened my eyes afresh, the deep-cutting +realisation of that impossibility smote like a pang of lightning-stroke +through my being: and I said: 'I will go again to the far Orient, and +forget': and I started out from the court, not knowing what had become +of her during the night, till, having reached the outer chamber, with a +wild start I saw her lying there at the door in the very spot where I +had flung her, asleep sideways, head on arm ... Softly, softly, I stept +over her, got out, and went running at a cautious clandestine trot. The +morning was in high _fete_, most fresh and pure, and to breathe was to +be young, and to see such a sunlight lighten even upon ruin so vast was +to be blithe. After running two hundred yards to one of the great broken +bazaar-portals, I looked back to see if I was followed: but all that +space was desolately empty. I then walked on past the arch, on which a +green oblong, once inscribed, as usual, with some text in gilt +hieroglyphs, is still discernible; and, emerging, saw the great panorama +of destruction, a few vast standing walls, with hollow Oriental windows +framing deep sky beyond, and here and there a pillar, or half-minaret, +and down within the walls of the old Seraglio still some leafless, +branchless trunks, and in Eyoub and Phanar leafless forests, and on the +northern horizon Pera with the steep upper-half of the Iani-Chircha +street still there, and on the height the European houses, and all +between blackness, stones, a rolling landscape of ravine, like the hilly +pack-ice of the North if its snow were ink, and to the right Scutari, +black, laid low, with its vast region of tombs, and rare stumps of its +forests, and the blithe blue sea, with the widening semicircle of +floating _debris_, looking like brown foul scum at some points, +congested before the bridgeless Golden Horn: for I stood pretty high in +the centre of Stamboul somewhere in the region of the Suleimanieh, or of +Sultan-Selim, as I judged, with immense purviews into abstract distances +and mirage. And to me it seemed too vast, too lonesome, and after +advancing a few hundred yards beyond the bazaar, I turned again. + + * * * * * + +I found the girl still asleep at the house-door, and stirring her with +my foot, woke her. She leapt up with a start of surprise, and a +remarkable sinuous agility, and gazed an astounded moment at me, till, +separating reality from dream and habit, she realised me: but +immediately subsided to the floor again, being in evident pain. I pulled +her up, and made her limp after me through several halls to the inner +court, and the well, where I set her upon the weedy margin, took her +foot in my lap, examined it, drew water, washed it, and bandaged it with +a strip torn from my caftan-hem, now and again speaking gruffly to her, +so that she might no more follow me. + +After this, I had breakfast by the kiosk-steps, and when I was +finished, put a mass of truffled _foie gras_ on a plate, brushed through +the thicket to the well, and gave it her. She took it, but looked +foolish, not eating. I then, with my forefinger, put a little into her +mouth, whereupon she set hungrily to eat it all. I also gave her some +ginger-bread, a handful of bonbons, some Krishnu wine, and some +anisette. + +I then started out afresh, gruffly bidding her stay there, and left her +sitting on the well, her hair falling down the opening, she peering +after me through the bushes. But I had not half reached the ogival +bazaar-portal, when looking anxiously back, I saw that she was limping +after me. So that this creature tracks me in the manner of a nutshell +following about in the wake of a ship. + +I turned back with her to the house, for it was necessary that I should +plan some further method of eluding her. That was five days ago, and +here I have stayed: for the house and court are sufficiently agreeable, +and form a museum of real _objets d'art_. It is settled, however, that +to-morrow I return to Imbros. + + * * * * * + +It seems certain that she never wore, saw, nor knew of, clothes. + +I have dressed her, first sousing her thoroughly with sponge and soap +in luke-warm rose-water in the silver cistern of the harem-bath, which +is a circular marbled apartment with a fountain and the complicated +ceilings of these houses, and frescoes, and gilt texts of the Koran on +the walls, and pale rose-silk hangings. On the divan I had heaped a +number of selected garments, and having shewed her how to towel herself, +I made her step into a pair of the trousers called _shintiyan_ made of +yellow-striped white-silk; this, by a running string, I tied loosely +round the upper part of her hips; then, drawing up the bottoms to her +knees, tied them there, so that their voluminous baggy folds, +overhanging still to the ankles, have rather the look of a skirt; over +this I put upon her a blue-striped chiffon chemise, or quamis, reaching +a little below the hips; I then put on a short jacket or vest of scarlet +satin, thickly embroidered in gold and precious stones, reaching +somewhat below the waist, and pretty tight-fitting; and, making her lie +on the couch, I put upon her little feet little yellow baboosh-slippers, +then anklets, on her fingers rings, round her neck a necklace of +sequins, finally dyeing her nails, which I cut, with henna. There +remained her head, but with this I would have nothing to do, only +pointing to the tarboosh which I had brought, to a square kerchief, to +some corals, and to the fresco of a woman on the wall, which, if she +chose, she might copy. Lastly, I pierced her ears with the silver +needles which they used here: and after two hours of it left her. + +About an hour afterwards I saw her in the arcade round the court, and, +to my great surprise, she had a perfect plait down her back, and over +her head and brows a green-silk feredjeh, or hood, precisely as in the +picture. + + * * * * * + +Here is a question, the answer to which would be interesting to me: +Whether or not for twenty years--or say rather twenty centuries, twenty +eternal aeons--I have been stark mad, a raving maniac; and whether or +not I am now suddenly sane, sitting here writing in my right mind, my +whole mood and tone changed, or rapidly changing? And whether such +change can be due to the presence of only one other being in the world +with me? + + * * * * * + +This singular being! Where she has lived--and how--is a problem to which +not the faintest solution is conceivable. She had, I say, never seen +clothes: for when I began to dress her, her perplexity was unbounded; +also, during her twenty years, she has never seen almonds, figs, nuts, +liqueurs, chocolate, conserves, vegetables, sugar, oil, honey, +sweetmeats, orange-sherbet, mastic, salt, raki, tobacco, and many such +things: for she showed perplexity at all these, hesitation to eat them: +but she has known and tasted _white wine_: I could see that. Here, then, +is a mystery. + + * * * * * + +I have not gone to Imbros, but remained here some days longer observing +her. + +I have allowed her to sit in a corner at meal-time, not far from where I +eat, and I have given her food. + +She is wonderfully clever! I continually find that, after an incredibly +short time, she has most completely adapted herself to this or that. +Already she wears her outfit as coquettishly as though born to clothes. +Without at all seeming observant--for, on the contrary, she gives an +impression of great flightiness--she watches me, I am convinced, with +pretty exact observation. She knows precisely when I am speaking +roughly, bidding her go, bidding her come, tired of her, tolerant of +her, scorning her, cursing her. If I wish her to the devil, she quickly +divines it by my face, and will disappear. Yesterday I noticed +something queer about her, and soon discovered that she had been +staining her lids with black kohol, like the _hanums_, so that, having +found a box, she must have guessed its use from the pictures. +Wonderfully clever!--imitative as a mirror. Two mornings ago I found an +old mother-of-pearl kittur, and sitting under the arcade, touched the +strings, playing a simple air; I could just see her behind one of the +arch-pillars on the opposite side, and she was listening with apparent +eagerness, and, I fancied, panting. Well, returning from a walk beyond +the Phanar walls in the afternoon, I heard the same air coming out from +the house, for she was repeating it pretty faultlessly by ear. + +Also, during the forenoon of the previous day, I came upon her--for +footsteps make no sound in this house--in the pacha's visitors'-hall: +and what was she doing?--copying the poses of three dancing-girls +frescoed there! So that she would seem to have a character as light as a +butterfly's, and is afraid of nothing. + + * * * * * + +Now I know. + +I had observed that at the beginning of every meal she seemed to have +something on her mind, going toward the door, hesitating as if to see +whether I would follow, and then returning. At length yesterday, after +sitting to eat, she jumped up, and to my infinite surprise, said her +first word: said it with a most quaint, experimental effort of the +tongue, as a fledgling trying the air: the word '_Come_.' + +That morning, meeting her in the court, I had told her to repeat some +words after me: but she had made no attempt, as if shy to break the long +silence of her life; and now I felt some sort of foolish pleasure in +hearing her utter that word, often no doubt heard from me: and after +hurriedly eating, I went with her, saying to myself: 'She must be about +to shew me the food to which she is accustomed: and perhaps that will +solve her origin.' + +And so it has proved. I have now discovered that to the moment when she +saw me, she had tasted only her mother's milk, dates, and that white +wine of Ismidt which the Koran permits. + +As it was getting dark, I lit and took with me the big red-silk lantern, +and we set out, she leading, and walking confoundedly fast, slackening +when I swore at her, and getting fast again: and she walks with a +certain levity, flightiness, and liberated _furore_, very hard to +describe, as though space were a luxury to be revelled in. By what +instinctive cleverness, or native vigour of memory, she found her way I +cannot tell, but she led me such a walk that night, miles, miles, till I +became furious, darkness having soon fallen with only a faint moon +obscured by cloud, and a drizzle which haunted the air, she without +light climbing and picking her thinly-slippered steps over mounds of +_debris_ and loosely-strewn masonry with unfailing agility, I +occasionally splashing a foot with horror into one of those little ponds +which always marked the Stamboul streets. When I was nearer her, I would +see her peer across and upward toward Pera, as if that were a remembered +land-mark, and would note the perpetual aspen oscillations of the long +coral drops in her ears, and the nimble ply of her limbs, wondering with +a groan if Pera was our goal. + +Our goal was even beyond Pera. When we came to the Golden Horn, she +pointed to my caique which lay at the Old Seraglio steps, and over the +water we went, she lying quite at ease now, with her face at the level +of the water in the centre of the crescent-shape, as familiarly as a +_hanum_ of old engaged in some escapade through the crowded Babel of +Galata and that north side of the Horn. + +Through Galata we passed, I already cursing the journey: and, following +the line of the coast and the great steep thoroughfare of Pera, we came +at last, almost in the country, to a great wall, and the entrance to an +immense terraced garden, whose limits were invisible, many of the trees +and avenues being still intact. + +I knew it at once: I had lain a special fuse-train in the great palace +at the top of the terraces: it was the royal palace, Yildiz. + +Up and up we went through the grounds, a few unburned old bodies in rags +of uniform still discernible here and there as the lantern swung past +them, a musician in sky-blue, a fantassin and officer-of-the-guard in +scarlet, forming a cross, with domestics of the palace in +red-and-orange. + +The palace itself was quite in ruins, together with all its surrounding +barracks, mosque, and seraglio, and, as we reached the top of the +grounds, presented a picture very like those which I have seen of the +ruins of Persepolis, only that here the columns, both standing and +fallen, were innumerable, and all more or less blackened; and through +doorless doors we passed, down immensely-wide short flights of steps, +and up them, and over strewed courtyards, by tottering fragments of +arcades, all roofless, and tracts of charcoal between interrupted +avenues of pillars, I following, expectant, and she very eager now. +Finally, down a flight of twelve or fourteen rather steep and narrow +steps, very dislocated, we went to a level which, I thought, must be the +floor of the palace vaults: for at the bottom of the steps we stood on a +large plain floor of plaster, which bore the marks of the flames; and +over this the girl ran a few steps, pointed with excited recognition to +a hole in it, ran further, and disappeared down the hole. + +When I followed, and lowered the lantern a little, I saw that the drop +down was about eight feet, made less than six feet by a heap of +stone-rubbish below, the falling of which had caused the hole: and it +was by standing on this rubbish-heap, I knew at once, that she must have +been enabled to climb out into the world. + +I dropped down, and found myself in a low flat-roofed cellar, with a +floor of black earth, very fusty and damp, but so very vast in extent +that even in the day-time, I suppose, I could not have discerned its +boundaries; I fancy, indeed, that it extends beneath the whole palace +and its environs--an enormous stretch of space: with the lantern I could +only see a very limited portion of its area. She still led me eagerly +on, and I presently came upon a whole region of flat boxes, each about +two feet square, and nine inches high, made of very thin laths, packed +to the roof; and about a-hundred-and-fifty feet from these I saw, where +she pointed, another region of bottles, fat-bellied bottles in chemises +of wicker-work, stretching away into gloom and total darkness. The +boxes, of which a great number lay broken open, as they can be by merely +pulling with the fingers at a pliant crack, contain dates; and the +bottles, of which many thousands lay empty, contain, I saw, old +Ismidtwine. Some fifty or sixty casks, covered with mildew, some old +pieces of furniture, and a great cube of rotting, curling parchments, +showed that this cellar had been more or less loosely used for the +occasional storage of superfluous stores and knick-knacks. + +It was also more or less loosely used as a domestic prison. For in the +lane between the region of boxes and the region of bottles, near the +former, there lay on the ground the skeleton of a woman, the details of +whose costume were still appreciable, with thin brass gyves on her +wrists: and when I had examined her well, I knew the whole history of +the creature standing silent by my side. + +She is the daughter of the Sultan, as I assumed when I had once +determined that the skeleton is both the skeleton of her mother, and the +skeleton of the Sultana. + +That the skeleton was her mother is clear: for the cloud occurred just +twenty-one years since, and the dead woman was, of course, at that +moment in the prison, which must have been air-tight, and with her the +girl: but since the girl is quite certainly not much more than +twenty--she looks younger--she must at that time have been either unborn +or a young babe: but a babe would hardly be imprisoned with another than +its own mother. I am rather inclined to think that the girl was unborn +at the moment of the cloud, and was born in the cellar. + +That the mother was the Sultana is clear from her fragments of dress, +and the symbolic character of her every ornament, crescent earrings, +heron-feather, and the blue campaca enamelled in a bracelet. This poor +woman, I have thought, may have been the victim of some unbounded fit of +imperial passion, incurred by some domestic crime, real or imagined, +which may have been pardoned in a day had not death overtaken her master +and the world. + +There are four steep stone steps at about the centre of the cellar, +leading up to a locked iron trap-door, apparently the only opening into +this great hole: and this trap-door must have been so nearly air-tight +as to bar the intrusion of the poison in anything like deadly quantity. + +But how rare--how strange--the coincidence of chances here. For, if the +trap-door was absolutely air-tight, I cannot think that the supply of +oxygen in the cellar, large as it was, would have been sufficient to +last the girl twenty years, to say nothing of what her mother used up +before death: for I imagine that the woman must have continued to live +some time in her dungeon, sufficiently long, at least, to teach her +child to procure its food of dates and wine; so that the door must have +been only just sufficiently hermetic to bar the poison, yet admit some +oxygen; or else, the place may have been absolutely air-tight at the +time of the cloud, and some crack, which I have not seen, opened to +admit oxygen after the poison was dispersed: in any case--the +all-but-infinite rarity of the chance! + +Thinking these things I climbed out, and we walked to Pera, where I +slept in a great white-stone house in five or six acres of garden +overlooking the cemetery of Kassim, having pointed out to the girl +another house in which to sleep. + +This girl! what a history! After existing twenty years in a sunless +world hardly three acres wide, she one day suddenly saw the only sky +which she knew collapse at one point! a hole appeared into yet a world +beyond! It was I who had come, and kindled Constantinople, and set her +free. + + * * * * * + +Ah, I see something now! I see! it was for this that I was preserved: I +to be a sort of new-fangled Adam--and this little creature to be my Eve! +That is it! _The White_ does not admit defeat: he would recommence the +Race again! At the last, the eleventh hour--in spite of all--he would +turn defeat into victory, and outwit that Other. + +However, if this be so--and I seem to see it quite clearly--then in that +White scheme is a singular flaw: at _one point_, it is obvious, that +elaborate Forethought fails: for I have a free will--and I refuse, I +refuse. + +Certainly, in this matter I am on the side of the Black: and since it +depends absolutely upon me, this time Black wins. + +No more men on the earth after me, ye Powers! To _you_ the question may +be nothing more than a gambling excitement as to the final outcome of +your aerial squabble: but to the poor men who had to bear the wrongs, +Inquisitions, rack-rents, Waterloos, unspeakable horrors, it was hard +earnest, you know! Oh the wretchedness--the deep, deep pain--of that +bungling ant-hill, happily wiped out, my God! My sweetheart Clodagh ... +she was not an ideal being! There was a man called Judas who betrayed +the gentle Founder of the Christian Faith, and there was some Roman king +named Galba, a horrid dog, and there was a French devil, Gilles de Raiz: +and the rest were all much the same, much the same. Oh no, it was not a +good race, that small infantry which called itself Man: and here, +falling on my knees before God and Satan as I write, I swear, I swear: +Never through me shall it spring and fester again. + + * * * * * + +I cannot realise her! Not at all, at all, at all! If she is out of my +sight and hearing ten minutes, I fall to doubting her reality. If I lose +her for half a day, all the old feelings, resembling certainties, come +back, that I have only been dreaming--that this appearance cannot be an +actual objective fact of life, since the impossible is impossible. + +Seventeen long years, seventeen long years, of madness.... + + * * * * * + +To-morrow I start for Imbros: and whether this girl chooses to follow +me, or whether she stays behind, I will see her from the moment I land +no more. + + * * * * * + +She must rise very early. I who am now regularly on the palace-roof at +dawn, sometimes from between the pavilion-curtains of the galleries, or +from the steps of the telescope-kiosk, may spy her far down below, a +dainty microscopic figure, generally running about the sward, or gazing +up in wonder at the palace from the lake-edge. + +It is now three months since she came with me to Imbros. + +I left her the first night in that pale-yellow house with the two green +jalousies facing the beach, where there was everything that she would +need; but I knew that, like all the houses there now, it leaked +profusely, and the next day I went down to the curving stair, cut +through the rock at the back and south of the village, climbed, and half +a mile beyond found that park and villa with gables, which I had noted +from the sea. The villa is almost intact, very strongly built of +purplish marble, though small, and very like a Western house, with +shingles, and three gables, so that I think it must have been the yali +of some Englishman, for it contains a number of English books, though +the only body I saw there was what looked like an Aararat Kurd, with +spiral string wound down his turban, yellow ankle-pantaloons, and flung +red shoulder-cloak; and all in the heavily-wooded park, and all about +the low rock-steps up the hill, profusions of man-dragora; and from the +rock-steps to the house a narrow long avenue of acacias, mossy +underfoot, that mingle overhead, the house standing about four yards +from the edge of the perpendicular sea-cliff, whence one can see the +_Speranzas_ main top-mast, and broken mizzen-mast-head, in her quiet +haven. After examining the place I went down again to the village, and +her house: but she was not there: and two hours long I paced about among +the weeds of these amateur little alleys and flat-roofed windowless +houses (though some have terrace-roofs, and a rare aperture), whose +once-raw yellows, greens, and blues look now like sunset tints when the +last flush is gone, and they fade dun. When at last she came running +with open mouth, I took her up the rock-steps, and into the house, and +there she has lived, one of the gable-tips, I now find (that overlooking +the sea), being just visible from the north-east corner of the +palace-roof, two miles from it. + +That night again, when I was leaving her, she made an attempt to follow +me. But I was resolved to end it, then: and cutting a sassafras-whip I +cut her deep, three times, till she ran, crying. + + * * * * * + +So, then, what is my fate henceforth?--to think always, from sun to +moon, and from moon to sun, of one only thing--and that thing an object +for the microscope?--to become a sneaking Paul Pry to spy upon the silly +movements of one little sparrow, like some fatuous motiveless gossip of +old, his occupation to peep, his one faculty to scent, his honey and his +achievement to unearth the infinitely unimportant? I would kill her +first! + + * * * * * + +I am convinced that she is no stay-at-home, but roams continually over +the island: for thrice, wandering myself, I have come upon her. + +The first time she was running with flushed face, intent upon striking +down a butterfly with a twig held in the left hand (for both hands she +uses with dexterity). It was at about nine in the morning, in her park, +near the bottom where there are high grass-growths and ferny luxuriance +between the close tree-trunks, and shadow, and the broken wall of an old +funeral-kiosk sunk aslant under moss, creepers, and wild flowers, behind +which I peeped hidden and wet with dew. She has had the assurance to +modify the dress I put upon her, and was herself a butterfly, for +instead of the shintiyan, she had on a zouave, hardly reaching to the +waist, of saffron satin, no feredje, but a scarlet fez with violet +tassel, and baggy pantaloons of azure silk; down her back the long +auburn plait, quite neat, but all her front hair loose and wanton, the +fez cocked backward, while I caught glimpses of her fugitive heels +lifting out of the dropping slipper-sole. She is pretty clever, but not +clever enough, for that butterfly escaped, and in one instant I saw her +change into weary and sad, for on this earth is nothing more fickle than +that Proteus face, which resembles a landscape swept with cloud-shadows +on a bright day. Fast beat my heart that morning, owing to the +consciousness that, while I saw, I was unseen, yet might be seen. + +Another noontide, three weeks afterwards, I came upon her a good way up +yonder to the west of the palace, sleeping on her arm in an alley +between overgrown old trellises, where rioting wild vine buried her in +gloom: but I had not been peeping through the bushes a minute, when she +started up and looked wildly about, her quick consciousness, I imagine, +detecting a presence: though I think that I managed to get away unseen. +She keeps her face very dirty: all about her mouth was dry-stained with +a polychrome of grape, _murs_, and other coloured juices, like +slobbering _gamins_ of old. I could also see that her nose and cheeks +are now sprinkled with little freckles. + +Four days since I saw her a third time, and then found that the +primitive instinct to represent the world in pictures has been working +in her: for she was drawing. It was down in the middle one of the three +east-and-west village streets, for thither I had strolled toward +evening, and coming out upon the street from between an old wall and a +house, saw her quite near. I pulled up short--and peered. She was lying +on her face all among grasses, a piece of yellow board before her, and +in her fingers a chalk-splinter: and very intently she drew, her +tongue-tip travelling along her short upper-lip from side to side, +regularly as a pendulum, her fez tipped far back, and the left foot +swinging upward from the knee. She had drawn her yali at the top, and +now, as I could see by peering well forward, was drawing underneath the +palace--from memory, for where she lay it is all hidden: yet the palace +it was, for there were the waving lines meant for the steps, the two +slanting pillars, the slanting battlements of the outer court, and +before the portal, with turban reaching above the roof, and my two +whisks of beard sweeping below the knees--myself. + +Something spurred me, and I could not resist shouting a sudden "Hi!" +whereupon she scrambled like a spring-bok to her feet, I pointing to the +drawing, smiling. + +This creature has a way of mincing her pressed lips, while she shakes +the head, intensely cooing a fond laugh: and so she did then. + +"You are a clever little wretch, you know," said I, she cocking her eye, +trying to divine my meaning with vague smile. + +'Oh, yes, a clever little wretch,' I went on in a gruff voice, 'clever +as a serpent, no doubt: for in the first case it was the Black who used +the serpent, but now it is the White. But it will not do, you know. Do +you know what you are to me, you? You are my Eve!--a little fool, a +little piebald frog like you. But it will not do at all, at all! A nice +race it would be with you for mother, and me for father, wouldn't +it?--half-criminal like the father, half-idiot like the mother: just +like the last, in short. They used to say, in fact, that the offspring +of a brother and sister was always weak-headed: and from such a wedlock +certainly came the human race, so no wonder it was what it was: and so +it would have to be again now. Well no--unless we have the children, and +cut their throats at birth: and _you_ would not like that at all, I +know, and, on the whole, it would not work, for the White would be +striking a poor man dead with His lightning, if I attempted that. No, +then: the modern Adam is some eight to twenty thousand years wiser than +the first--you see? less instinctive, more rational. The first disobeyed +by commission: I shall disobey by omission: only his disobedience was a +sin, mine is a heroism. I have not been a particularly ideal sort of +beast so far, you know: but in me, Adam Jeffson--I swear it--the human +race shall at last attain a true nobility, the nobility of +self-extinction. I shall turn out trumps: I shall prove myself stronger +than Tendency, World-Genius, Providence, Currents of Fate, White Power, +Black Power, or whatever is the name for it. No more Clodaghs, Lucrezia +Borgias, Semiramises, Pompadours, Irish Landlords, Hundred-Years' +Wars--you see?' + +She kept her left eye obliquely cocked like a little fool, wondering, no +doubt, what I was saying. + +'And talking of Clodagh,' I went on, 'I shall call you that henceforth, +to keep me reminded. So that is your name--not Eve--but Clodagh, who was +a Poisoner, you see? She poisoned a poor man who trusted her: and that +is your name now--not Eve, but Clodagh--to remind me, you most dangerous +little speckled viper! And in order that I may no more see your foolish +little pretty face, I decree that, for the future, you wear a _yashmak_ +to cover up your lips, which, I can see, were meant to be seductive, +though dirty; and you can leave the blue eyes, and the little +white-skinned freckled nose uncovered, if you like, they being +commonplace enough. Meantime, if you care to see how to draw a palace--I +will show you.' + +Before I stretched my hand, she was presenting the board--so that she +had guessed something of my meaning! But some hard tone in my talk had +wounded her, for she presented it looking very glum, her under-lip +pushing a little obliquely out, very pathetically, I must say, as always +when she is just ready to cry. + +In a few strokes I drew the palace, and herself standing at the portal +between the pillars: and now great was her satisfaction, for she pointed +to the sketched figure, and to herself, interrogatively: and when I +nodded 'yes,' she went cooing her fond murmurous laugh, with pressed +and mincing lips: and it is clear that, in spite of my beatings, she is +in no way afraid of me. + +Before I could move away, I felt some rain-drops, and down in some +seconds rushed a shower. I looked, saw that the sky was rapidly +darkening, and ran into the nearest of the little cubical houses, +leaving her glancing sideways upward, with the quaintest artlessness of +interest in the downpour: for she is not yet quite familiarised with the +operations of nature, and seems to regard them with a certain amiable +inquisitive seriousness, as though they were living beings, comrades as +good as herself. She presently joined me, but even then stretched her +hand out to feel the drops. + +Now there came a thunder-clap, the wind was rising, and rain spattering +about me: for the panes of these houses, made, I believe, of paper +saturated in almond-oil, have long disappeared, and rains, penetrating +by roof and rare window, splash the bones of men. I gathered up my +skirts to run toward other shelter, but she was before me, saying in her +strange experimental voice that word of hers: "_Come_." + +She ran in advance, and I, with the outer robe over my head, followed, +urging flinching way against the whipped rain-wash. She took the way by +the stone horse-pond, through an alley to the left between two blind +walls, then down a steep path through wood to the rock-steps, and up we +ran, and along the hill, to her yali, which is a mile nearer the village +than the palace, though by the time we pelted into its dry shelter we +were wet to the skin. + +Sudden darkness had come, but she quickly found some matches, lit one, +looking at it with a certain meditative air, and applied it to a candle +and to a bronze Western lamp on the table, which I had taught her to oil +and light. Near a Western fire-place was a Turkish mangal, like one +which she had seen me light to warm bath-waters in Constantinople, and +when I pointed to it, she ran to the kitchen, returned with some chopped +wood, and very cleverly lit it. And there for several hours I sat that +night, reading (the first time for many years): it was a book by the +poet Milton, found in a glazed book-case on the other side of the +fire-place: and most strange, most novel, I found those august words +about warring angels that night, while the storm raved: for this man had +evidently taken no end of pains with his book, and done it gallantly +well, too, making the thing hum: and I could not conceive why he should +have been at that trouble--unless it were for the same reason that I +built the palace, because some spark bites a man, and he would be +like--but that is all vanity, and delusion. + +Well, there is a rage in the storms of late years which really +transcends bounds; I do not remember if I have noted it in these sheets +before: but I never could have conceived a turbulence so huge. Hour +after hour I sat there that night, smoking a chibouque, reading, and +listening to the batteries and lamentations of that haunted air, +shrinking from it, fearing even for the _Speranza_ by her quay in the +sequestered harbour, and for the palace-pillars. But what astonished me +was that girl: for, after sitting on the ottoman to my left some time, +she fell sideways asleep, not the least fear about her, though I should +have thought that nervousness at such a turmoil would be so natural to +her: and whence she has this light confidence in the world into which +she has so abruptly come I do not know, for it is as though someone +inspired her with the mood of nonchalance, saying: 'Be of good cheer, +and care not a pin about anything: for God is God.' + +I heard the ocean swing hoarse like heavy ordnance against the cliffs +below, where they meet the outer surface of the southern of the two +claws of land that form the harbour: and the thought came into my mind: +'If now I taught her to speak, to read, I could sometimes make her read +a book to me.' + +The winds seemed wilfully struggling for the house to snatch and wing it +away into the drear Eternities of the night: and I could not but heave +the sigh: 'Alas for us two poor waifs and castaways of our race, little +bits of flotsam and seaweed-hair cast up here a moment, ah me, on this +shore of the Ages, soon to be dragged back, O turgid Eternity, into thy +abysmal gorge; and upon what strand--who shall say?--shall she next be +flung, and I, divided then perhaps by all the stretch of the +trillion-distanced astral gulf?' And such a pity, and a wringing of the +heart, seemed in things, that a tear fell from my eyes that ominous +midnight. + +She started up at a gust of more appalling volume, rubbing her eyes, +with dishevelled hair (it must have been about midnight), listening a +minute, with that demure, droll interest of hers, to the noise of the +elements, and then smiled to me; rose then, left the room, and presently +returned with a pomegranate and some almonds on a plate, also some +delicious old sweet wine in a Samian cruche, and an old silver cup, gilt +inside, standing in a zarf. These she placed on the table near me, I +murmuring: 'Hospitality.' + +She looked at the book, which I read as I ate, with lowered left +eye-lid, seeking to guess its use, I suppose. Most things she +understands at once, but this must have baffled her: for to see one +looking fixedly at a thing, and not know what one is looking at it for, +must be very disconcerting. + +I held it up before her, saying: + +"Shall I teach you to read it? If I did, how would you repay me, you +Clodagh?" + +She cocked her eyes, seeking to comprehend. God knows, at that moment I +pitied the poor dumb waif, alone in all the whole round earth with me. +The candle-flame, moved by the wind like a slow-painting brush, +flickered upon her face, though every cranny was closed. + +"Perhaps, then," I said, "I will teach you. You are a pitiable little +derelict of your race, you know: and two hours every day I will let you +come to the palace, and I will teach you. But be sure, be careful. If +there be danger, I will kill you: assuredly--without fail. And let me +begin with a lesson now: say after me: 'White.'" + +I took her hand, and got her to understand that I wanted her to repeat +after me. + +"White," said I. + +"Hwhite," said she. + +'Power,' said I. + +'Pow-wer,' said she. + +'White Power,' said I. + +'Hwhite Pow-wer,' said she. + +'Shall not,' said I. + +'Sall not,' said she. + +'White Power shall not,' said I. + +'Hwhite Pow-wer sall not,' said she. + +'Prevail,' said I. + +'Fffail,' said she, pronouncing the 'v' with a long fluttering +'f'-sound. + +'Pre-vail,' said I. + +'Pe-vvvail,' said she. + +'White Power shall not prevail,' said I. + +'Hwhite Pow-wer sall not--fffail,' said she. + +A thunder which roared as she said it seemed to me to go laughing +through the universe, and a minute I looked upon her face with positive +shrinking fear; till, starting up, I thrust her with violence from my +path, and dashed forth to re-seek the palace and my bed. + +Such was the ingratitude and fatality which my first attempt, four +nights since, to teach her met with. It remains to be seen whether my +pity for her dumbness, or some servile tendency toward fellowship in +myself, will result in any further lesson. Certainly, I think not: for +though I have given my word, the most solemnly-pledged word may be +broken. + +Surely, surely, her presence in the world with me--for I suppose it is +that--has wrought some profound changes in my mood: for gone now +apparently are those turbulent hours when, stalking like a peacock, I +flaunted my monarchy in the face of the Eternal Powers, with hissed +blasphemies; or else dribbled, shaking my body in a lewd dance; or was +off to fire some vast city and revel in redness and the chucklings of +Hell; or rolled in the drunkenness of drugs. It was mere frenzy!--I see +it now--it was 'not good,' 'not good.' And it rather looks as if it were +past--or almost. I have clipped my beard and hair, removed the earrings, +and thought of modifying my attire. I will just watch to see whether she +comes loitering down there about the gate of the lake. + + * * * * * + +Her progress is like.... + + * * * * * + +It is nine months since I have written, on these sheets, those words, +'Her progress is like....' being the beginning of some narrative in +which something interrupted me: and since then I have had no impulse to +write. + +But I was thinking just now of the curious tricks and uncertainties of +my memory, and seeing the sheets, will record it here. I have lately +been trying to recall the name of a sister of mine--some perfectly +simple name, I know--and the name of my old home in England: and they +have completely passed out of my cognizance, though she was my only +sister, and we grew up closely together: some quite simple name, I +forget it now. Yet I can't say that my memory is bad: there are +things--quite unexpected, unimportant things--which come up in my mind +with considerable clearness. For instance, I remember to have met in +Paris (I think), long before the poison-cloud, a little Brazilian boy of +the colour of weak coffee-and-milk, of whom she now constantly reminds +me. He wore his hair short like a convict's, so that one could spy the +fish-white flesh beneath, and delighted to play solitary about the +stairs of the hotel, dressed up in the white balloon-dress of a Pierrot. +I have the impression now that he must have had very large ears. Clever +as a flea he was, knowing five or six languages, as it were by nature, +without having any suspicion that that was at all extraordinary. She has +that same light, unconscious, and nonchalant cleverness, and easy way of +life. It is little more than a year since I began to teach her, and +already she can speak English with a quite considerable vocabulary, and +perfect correctness (except that she does not pronounce the letter 'r'); +she has also read, or rather devoured, a good many books; and can write, +draw, and play the harp. And all she does without effort: rather with +the flighty naturalness with which a bird takes to the wing. + +What made me teach her to read was this: One afternoon, fourteen months +or so ago, I from the roof-kiosk saw her down at the lake-rim, a book in +hand; and as she had seen me looking steadily at books, so she was +looking steadily at it, with pathetic sideward head: so that I burst +into laughter, for I saw her clearly through the glass, and whether she +is the simplest little fool, or the craftiest serpent that ever +breathed, I am not yet sure. If I thought that she has the least design +upon my honour, it would be ill for her. + +I went to Gallipoli for two days in the month of May, and brought back a +very pretty little caique, a perfect slender crescent of the colour of +the moon, though I had two days' labour in cutting through bush-thicket +for the passage of the motor in bringing it up to the lake. It has +pleased me to see her lie among the silk cushions of the middle, while +I, paddling, taught her her first words and sentences between the hours +of eight and ten in the evening, though later they became 10 A.M. to +noon, when the reading began, we sitting on the palace-steps before the +portal, her mouth invariably well covered with the yashmak, the +lesson-book being a large-lettered old Bible found at her yali. _Why_ +she must needs wear the yashmak she has never once asked; and how much +she divines, knows, or intends, I have no idea, continually questioning +myself as to whether she is all simplicity, or all cunning. + +That she is conscious of some profound difference in our organisation I +cannot doubt: for that I have a long beard, and she none at all, is +among the most patent of facts. + + * * * * * + +I have thought that a certain _Western-ness_--a growing modernity of +tone--may be the result, as far as I am concerned, of her presence with +me? I do not know.... + + * * * * * + +There is the gleam of a lake-end just visible in the north forest from +the palace-top, and in it a good number of fish like carp, tench, roach, +etc., so in May I searched for a tackle-shop in the Gallipoli +Fatmeh-bazaar, and got four 12-foot rods, with reels, silk-line, +quill-floats, a few yards of silk-worm gut, with a packet of No. 7 and +8 hooks, and split-shot for sinkers; and since red-worms, maggots and +gentles are common on the island, I felt sure of a great many more fish +than the number I wanted, which was none at all. However, for the mere +amusement, I fished several times, lying at my length in a patch of +long-grass over-waved by an enormous cedar, where the bank is steep, and +the water deep. And one mid-afternoon she was suddenly there with me, +questioned me with her eyes, and when I consented, stayed: and presently +I said I would teach her bottom-angling, and sent her flying up to the +palace for another rod and tackle. + +That day she did nothing, for after teaching her to thread the worm, and +put the gentles on the smaller hooks, I sent her to hunt for worms to +chop up for ground-baiting the pitch for the next afternoon; and when +this was done it was dinner-time, and I sent her home, for by then I was +giving the reading-lessons in the morning. + +The next day I found her at the bank, taught her to take the sounding +for adjusting the float, and she lay down not far from me, holding the +rod. So I said to her: + +'Well, this is better than living in a dark cellar twenty years, with +nothing to do but walk up and down, sleep, and consume dates and Ismidt +wine.' + +'Yes!' says she. + +'Twenty years!' said I: 'How did you bear it?' + +'I was not closs,' says she. + +'Did you never suspect that there was a world outside that cellar?' said +I. + +'Never,' says she, 'or lather, yes: but I did not suppose that it was +_this_ world, but another where he lived.' + +'He who?' + +'He who spoke with me.' + +'Who was that?' + +'Oh! a bite!' she screamed gladly. + +I saw her float bob under, and started up, rushed to her, and taught her +how to strike and play it, though it turned out when landed to be +nothing but a tiny barbel: but she was in ecstasies, holding it on her +palm, murmuring her fond coo. + +She re-baited, and we lay again. I said: + +'But what a life: no exit, no light, no prospect, no hope--' + +'Plenty of _hope_!' says she. + +'Good Heavens! hope of what?' + +'I knew vely well that something was lipening over the cellar, or under, +or alound it, and would come to pass at a certain fixed hour, and that I +should see it, and feel it, and it would be vely nice.' + +'Ah, well, you had to wait for it, at any rate. Didn't those twenty +years seem _long_?' + +'No--at least sometimes--not often. I was always so occupied.' + +'Occupied in doing what?' + +'In eating, or dlinking, or lunning, or talking.' + +'Talking to your_self_?' + +'Not myself.' + +'To whom, then?' + +'To the one who told me when I was hungly, and put the dates to satisfy +my hunger.' + +'I see. Don't wriggle about in that way, or you will never catch any +fish. The maxim of angling is: "Study to be quiet"--' + +'O! another bite!' she called, and this time, all alone, very agilely +landed a good-sized bream. + +'But do you mean that you were never sad?' said I when she was +re-settled. + +'Sometimes I would sit and cly,' says she--'I did not know why. But if +that was "sadness," I was never miserlable, never, never. And if I +clied, it did not last long, and I would soon fall to sleep, for he +would lock me in his lap, and kiss me, and wipe all my tears away.' + +'He who?' + +'Why, what a question! he who told me when I was hungly, and of the +thing that was lipening outside the cellar, which would be so nice.' + +'I see, I see. But in all that dingy place, and thick gloom, were you +never at all afraid?' + +'Aflaid! _I_! of what?' + +'Of the unknown.' + +'I do not understand you. How could I be _aflaid_? The known was the +very opposite of tellible: it was merely hunger and dates, thirst and +wine, the desire to lun and space to lun in, the desire to sleep and +sleep: there was nothing tellible in that: and the unknown was even less +tellible than the known: for it was the nice thing that was lipening +outside the cellar. I do not understand--' + +'Ah, yes,' said I, 'you are a clever little being: but your continual +fluttering about is fatal to all angling. Isn't it in your nature to +keep still a minute? And with regard now to your habits in the +cellar--?' + +'_Another!_' she cried with happy laugh, and landed a young chub. And +that afternoon she caught seven, and I none. + + * * * * * + +Another day I took her from the pitch to one of the kitchens in the +village with some of the fish, till then always thrown away, and taught +her cooking: for the only cooking-implement in the palace is the silver +alcohol-lamp for coffee and chocolate. We both scrubbed the utensils, +and boil and fry I taught her, and the making of a sauce from vinegar, +bottled olives, and the tinned American butter from the _Speranza_, and +the boiling of rice mixed with flour for ground-baiting our pitch. And +she, at first astonished, was soon all deft housewifeliness, breathless +officiousness, and behind my back, of her own intuitiveness, grated some +dry almonds found there, and with them sprinkled the fried tench. And we +ate them, sitting on the floor together: the first new food, I suppose, +tasted by me for twenty-one years: nor did I find it disagreeable. + +The next day she came up to the palace reading a book, which turned out +to be a cookery-book in English, found at her yali; and a week later, +she appeared, out of hours, presenting me a yellow-earthenware dish +containing a mess of gorgeous colours--a boiled fish under red peppers, +bits of saffron, a greenish sauce, and almonds: but I turned her away, +and would have none of her, or her dish. + + * * * * * + +About a mile up to the west of the palace is a very old ruin in the +deepest forest, I think of a mosque, though only three truncated +internal pillars under ivy, and the weedy floor, with the courtyard and +portal-steps remain, before it being a long avenue of cedars, gently +descending from the steps, the path between the trees choked with +long-grass and wild rye reaching to my middle. Here I saw one day a +large disc of old brass, bossed in the middle, which may have been +either a shield or part of an ancient cymbal, with concentric rings +graven round it, from centre to circumference. The next day I brought +some nails, a hammer, a saw, and a box of paints from the _Speranza_; +and I painted the rings in different colours, cut down a slim +lime-trunk, nailed the thin disc along its top, and planted it well, +before the steps: for I said I would make a bull's-eye, and do rifle and +revolver practice before it, from the avenue. And this the next evening +I was doing at four hundred feet, startling the island, it seemed, with +that unusual noise, when up she came peering with enquiring face: at +which I was very angry, because my arm, long unused, was firing wide: +but I was too proud to say anything, and let her look, and soon she +understood, laughing every time I made a considerable miss, till at last +I turned upon her saying: 'If you think it so easy, you may try.' + +She had been wanting to try, for she came eagerly to the offer, and +after I had opened and showed her the mechanism, the cartridges, and how +to shoot, I put into her hands one of the _Speranza_ Colt's. She took +her bottom-lip between her teeth, shut her left eye, vaulted out the +revolver like an old shot to the level of her intense right eye, and +sent a ball through the geometrical centre of the boss. + +However, it was a fluke-shot, for I had the satisfaction of seeing her +miss every one of the other five, except the last, which hit the black. +That, however, was three weeks since, and now my hitting record is forty +per cent., and hers ninety-six--most extraordinary: so that it is clear +that this creature is the _protegee_ of someone, and favouritism is in +the world. + + * * * * * + +Her book of books is the Old Testament. Sometimes, at noon or afternoon, +I may look abroad from the roof or galleries, and see a remote figure +sitting on the sward under the shade of plane or black cypress: and I +always know that the book she cons there is the Bible--like an old +Rabbi. She has a passion for stories: and there finds a store. + +Three nights since when it was pretty late, and the moon very splendid, +I saw her passing homewards close to the lake, and shouted down to her, +meaning to say 'Good-night'; but she thought that I had called her, and +came: and sitting out on the top step we talked for hours, she without +the yashmak. + +We fell to talking about the Bible. And says she: 'What did Cain to +Abel?' + +'He knocked him over,' I replied, liking sometimes to use such idioms, +with the double object of teaching and perplexing her. + +'Over what?' says she. + +'Over his heels,' said I. + +'I do not complehend!' + +'He killed him, then.' + +'That I know. But how did Abel feel when he was killed? What is it to be +_killed_?' + +'Well,' said I, 'you have seen bones all around you, and the bones of +your mother, and you can feel the bones in your fingers. Your fingers +will become mere bone after you are dead, as die you must. Those bones +which you see around you, are, of course, the bones of the men of whom +we often speak: and the same thing happened to them which happens to a +fish or a butterfly when you catch them, and they lie all still.' + +'And the men and the butterfly feel the same after they are dead?' + +'Precisely the same. They lie in a deep drowse, and dream a +nonsense-dream.' + +'That is not dleadful. I thought that it was much more dleadful. I +should not mind dying.' + +'Ah!... so much the better: for it is possible that you may have to die +a great deal sooner than you think.' + +'I should not mind. Why were men so vely aflaid to die?' + +'Because they were all such shocking cowards.' + +'Oh, not all! not all!' + +(This girl, I know not with what motive, has now definitely set herself +up against me as the defender of the dead race. With every chance she is +at it.) + +'Nearly all,' said I: 'tell me one who was not afraid--' + +'There was Isaac,' says she: 'when Ablaham laid him on the wood to kill +him, he did not jump up and lun to hide.' + +'Isaac was a great exception,' said I: 'in the Bible and such books, you +understand, you read of only the best sorts of people; but there were +millions and millions of others--especially about the time of the +poison-cloud--on a very much lower level--putrid wretches--covetous, +false, murderous, mean, selfish, debased, hideous, diseased, making the +earth a very charnel of festering vices and crimes.' + +This, for several minutes, she did not answer, sitting with her back +half toward me, cracking almonds, continually striking one step with the +ball of her outstretched foot. In the clarid gold of the platform I saw +her fez and corals reflected as an elongated blotch of florid red. She +turned and drank some wine from the great gold Jarvan goblet which I had +brought from the temple of Boro Budor, her head quite covered in by it. +Then, the little hairs at her lip-corners still wet, says she: + +'Vices and climes, climes and vices. Always the same. What were these +climes and vices?' + +'Robberies of a hundred sorts, murders of ten hundred--' + +'But what made them _do_ them?' + +'Their evil nature--their base souls.' + +'But _you_ are one of them, _I_ am another: yet you and I live here +together, and we do no vices and climes.' + +Her astounding shrewdness! Right into the inmost heart of a matter does +her simple wit seem to pierce! + +'No,' I said, 'we do no vices and crimes, because we lack _motive_. +There is no danger that we should hate each other, for we have plenty to +eat and drink, dates, wines, and thousands of things. (Our danger is +rather the other way.) But _they_ hated and schemed, because they were +very numerous, and there arose a question among them of dates and wine.' + +'Was there not, then, enough land to grow dates and wine for all?' + +'There was--yes: much more than enough, I fancy. But some got hold of a +vast lot of it, and as the rest felt the pinch of scarcity, there arose, +naturally, a pretty state of things--including the vices and crimes.' + +'Ah, but then,' says she, 'it was not to their bad souls that the vices +and climes were due, but only to this question of land. It is certain +that if there had been no such question, there would have been no vices +and climes, because you and I, who are just like them, do no vices and +climes here, where there is no such question.' + +The clear limelight of her intelligence! She wriggled on her seat in her +effort of argument. + +'I am not going to argue the matter,' I said. 'There _was_ that question +of dates and wine, you see. And there always must be on an earth where +millions of men, with varying degrees of cunning, reside.' + +'Oh, not at all necessalily!' she cries with conviction: 'not at all, at +all: since there are much more dates and wine than are enough for all. +If there should spling up more men now, having the whole wisdom, +science, and expelience of the past at their hand, and they made an +allangement among themselves that the first man who tlied to take more +than he could work for should be killed, and sent to dleam a +nonsense-dleam, the question could never again alise!' + +'It arose before--it would arise again.' + +'But no! I can guess clearly how it alose before: it alose thlough the +sheer carelessness of the first men. The land was at first so vely, vely +much more than enough for all, that the men did not take the tlouble to +make an allangement among themselves; and afterwards the habit of +carelessness was confirmed; till at last the vely oliginal carelessness +must have got to have the look of an allangement; and so the stleam +which began in a little long ended in a big long, the long glowing more +and more fixed and fatal as the stleam lolled further flom the source. I +see it clearly, can't you? But now, if some more men would spling, they +would be taught--' + +'Ah, but no more men will _spling_, you see--!' + +'There is no telling. I sometimes feel as if they must, and shall. The +tlees blossom, the thunder lolls, the air makes me lun and leap, the +glound is full of lichness, and I hear the voice of the Lord God walking +all among the tlees of the folests.' + +As she said this, I saw her under-lip push out and tremble, as when she +is near to crying, and her eyes moisten: but a moment after she looked +at me full, and smiled, so mobile is her face: and as she looked, it +suddenly struck me what a noble temple of a brow the creature has, +almost pointed at the uplifted summit, and widening down like a +bell-curved Gothic arch, draped in strings of frizzy hair which anon she +shakes backward with her head. + +'Clodagh,' I said after some minutes--'do you know why I called you +Clodagh?' + +'No? Tell me?' + +'Because once, long ago before the poison-cloud, I had a lover called +Clodagh: and she was a....' + +'But tell me first,' cries she: 'how did one know one's lover, or one's +wife, flom all the others?' + +'Well, by their faces....' + +'But there must have been many faces--all alike--' + +'Not all alike. Each was different from the rest.' + +'Still, it must have been vely clever to tell. I can hardly conceive +any face, except yours and mine.' + +'Ah, because you are a little goose, you see.' + +'What was a goose like?' + +'It was a thing like a butterfly, only larger, and it kept its toes +always spread out, with a skin stretched between.' + +'Leally? How caplicious! And am I like that?--but what were you saying +that your lover, Clodagh, was?' + +'She was a Poisoner.' + +'Then why call me Clodagh, since _I_ am not a poisoner?' + +'I call you so to remind me: lest you--lest you--should become +my--lover, too.' + +'I am your lover already: for I love you.' + +'What, girl?' + +'Do I not love you, who are mine?' + +'Come, come, don't be a little maniac!' I went. 'Clodagh was a +_poisoner_....' + +'Why did she poison? Had she not enough dates and wine?' + +'She had, yes: but she wanted more, more, more, the silly idiot.' + +'So that the vices and climes were not confined to those that lacked +things, but were done by the others, too?' + +'By the others chiefly.' + +'Then I see how it was!' + +'How was it?' + +'The others had got _spoiled_. The vices and climes must have +begun with those who lacked things, and then the others, always seeing +vices and climes alound them, began to do them, too--as when one rotten +olive is in a bottle, the whole mass soon becomes collupted: but +originally they were not rotten, but only became so. And all though a +little carelessness at the first. I am sure that if more men could +spling now--' + +'But I _told_ you, didn't I, that no more men will spring? You +understand, Clodagh, that originally the earth produced men by a long +process, beginning with a very low type of creature, and continually +developing it, until at last a man stood up. But that can never happen +again: for the earth is old, old, and has lost her producing vigour now. +So talk no more of men _splinging_, and of things which you do not +understand. Instead, go inside--stop, I will tell you a secret: to-day +in the wood I picked some musk-roses and wound them into a wreath, +meaning to give them you for your head when you came to-morrow: and it +is inside on the pearl tripod in the second room to the left: go, +therefore, and put it on, and bring the harp, and play to me, my dear.' + +She ran quick with a little cry, and coming again, sat crowned, +incarnadine in the blushing depths of the gold. Nor did I send her home +to her lonely yali, till the pale and languished moon, weary of +all-night beatitudes, sank down soft-couched in quilts of curdling opals +to the Hesperian realms of her rest. + +So sometimes we speak together, she and I, she and I. + + * * * * * + +That ever I should write such a thing! I am driven out from Imbros! + +I was walking up in a wood yesterday to the west--it was a calm clear +evening about seven, the sun having just set. I had the book in which I +have written so far in my hand, for I had thought of making a sketch of +an old windmill to the north-west to show her. Twenty minutes before she +had been with me, for I had chanced to meet her, and she had come, but +kept darting on ahead after peeping fruit, gathering armfuls of +amaranth, nenuphar, and red-berried asphodel, till, weary of my life, I +had called to her: 'Go away! out of my sight'--and she, with suddenly +pushed under-lip, had walked off. + +Well, I was continuing my stroll, when I seemed to feel some quaking of +the ground, and before one could count twenty, it was as if the island +was bent upon wracking itself to pieces. My first thought was of her, +and in great scare I went running, calling in the direction which she +had gone, staggering as on the deck of some labouring ship, falling, +picking myself up, running again. The air was quite full of uproar, and +the land waving like the sea: and as I went plunging, not knowing +whither, I saw to my right some three or four acres of forest droop and +sink into a gulf which opened to receive them. Up I flung my arms, +crying out: 'Good God! save the girl!' and a minute later rushed out, to +my surprise, into open space on a hill-side. On the lower ground I could +see the palace, and beyond it, a small space of white sea which had the +awful appearance of being higher than the land. Down the hill-side I +staggered, driven by the impulse to fly somewhither, but about half way +down was startled afresh by a shrill pattering like musical hail, and +the next moment saw the entire palace rush with the jangling clatter of +a thousand bells into the heaving lake. + +Some seconds after this, the earthquake, having lasted fully ten +minutes, began to lull, and soon ceased. I found her an hour later +standing among the ruins of her little yali. + + * * * * * + +Well, what a thing! Probably every building on the island has been +destroyed; the palace-platform, all cracked, leans half-sunken askew +into the lake, like a huge stranded ark, while of the palace itself no +trace remains, except a mound of gold stones emerging above the lake to +the south. Gone, gone--sixteen years of vanity and vexation. But from a +practical point of view, what is a worst calamity of all is that the +_Speranza_ now lies high-and-dry in the village: for she was bodily +picked up from the quay by the tidal wave, and driven bow-foremost into +a street not half her width, and there now lies, looking huge enough in +the little village, wedged for ever, smashed in at the nip like a frail +match-box, a most astonishing spectacle: her bows forty feet up the +street, ten feet above the ground at the stem, rudder resting on the +inner edge of the quay, foremast tilted forward, the other two masts all +right, and that bottom, which has passed through seas so far, buried in +every sort of green and brown seaweed, the old _Speranza_. Her steps +were there, and by a slight leap I could catch them underneath and go up +hand-over-hand, till I got foothold; this I did at ten the same night +when the sea-water had mostly drained back from the land, leaving +everything very swampy, however; she there with me, and soon following +me upon the ship. I found most things cracked into tiny fragments, +twisted, disfigured out of likeness, the house-walls themselves +displaced a little at the nip, the bow of the cedar skiff smashed in to +her middle against the aft starboard corner of the galley; and were it +not for the fact that the air-pinnace had not broken from her heavy +ropings, and one of the compasses still whole, I do not know what I +should have done: for the four old water-logged boats in the cove have +utterly disappeared. + +I made her sleep on the cabin-floor amid the _debris_ of berth and +everything, and I myself slept high up in the wood to the west. I am +writing now lying in the long-grass the morning after, the sun rising, +though I cannot see him. My plan for to-day is to cut three or four logs +with the saw, lay them on the ground by the ship, lower the pinnace upon +them, so get her gradually down into the water, and by evening bid a +long farewell to Imbros, which drives me out in this way. Still, I look +forward with pleasure to our hour's run to the Mainland, when I shall +teach her to steer by the compass, and manipulate liquid-air, as I have +taught her to dress, to talk, to cook, to write, to think, to live. For +she is my creation, this creature: as it were, a 'rib from my side.' + +But what is the design of this expulsion? And what was it that she +called it last night?--'this new going out flom Halan'! 'Haran,' I +believe, being the place from which Abraham went out, when 'called' by +God. + + * * * * * + +We apparently felt only the tail of the earthquake at Imbros: for it has +ravaged Turkey! And we two poor helpless creatures put down here in the +theatre of all these infinite violences: it is too bad, too bad. For the +rages of Nature at present are perfectly astonishing, and what it may +come to I do not know. When we came to the Macedonian coast in good +moonlight, we sailed along it, and up the Dardanelles, looking out for +village, yali, or any habitation where we might put up: but everything +has apparently been wrecked. We saw Kilid-Bahr, Chanak-Kaleh, Gallipoli, +Lapsaki in ruins; at the last place I landed, leaving her in the boat, +and walked a little way, but soon went back with the news that there was +not even a bazaar-arch left standing whole, in most parts even the line +of the streets being obliterated, for the place had fallen like a house +of dice, and had then been shaken up and jumbled. Finally we slept in a +forest on the other side of the strait, beyond Gallipoli, taking our few +provisions, and having to wade at some points through morass a foot deep +before we reached dry woodland. + +Here, the next morning, I sat alone--for we had slept separated by at +least half a mile--thinking out the question of whither I should go: my +choice would have been to remain either in the region where I was, or to +go Eastward: but the region where I was offered no dwelling that I could +see; and to go any distance Eastward, I needed a ship. Of ships I had +seen during the night only wrecks, nor did I know where to find one in +all these latitudes. I was thus, like her 'Ablaham,' urged Westward. + +In order, then, to go Westward, I first went a little further Eastward, +once more entered the Golden Horn, and once more mounted the scorched +Seraglio steps. Here what the wickedness of man had spared, the +wickedness of Nature had destroyed, and the few houses which I had left +standing round the upper part of Pera I now saw low as the rest; also +the house near the Suleimanieh, where we had lived our first days, to +which I went as to a home, I found without a pillar standing; and that +night she slept under the half-roof of a little funeral-kiosk in the +scorched cypress-wood of Eyoub, and I a mile away, at the edge of the +forest where first I saw her. + +The next morning, having met, as agreed, at the site of the Prophet's +mosque, we traversed together the valley and cemetery of Kassim by the +quagmires up to Pera, all the landscape having to me a rather twisted +unfamiliar aspect. We had determined to spend the morning in searching +for supplies among the earthquake-ruins of Pera; and as I had decided to +collect sufficient in one day to save us further pains for some time, we +passed a good many hours in this task, I confining myself to the great +white house in the park overlooking Kassim, where I had once slept, +losing myself in the huge obliquities of its floors, roofs and +wall-fragments, she going to the old Mussulman quarter of Djianghir +near, on the heights of Taxim, where were many shops, and thence round +the brow of the hill to the great French Embassy-house, overlooking +Foundoucli and the sea, both of us having large Persian carpet-bags, and +all in the air of that wilderness of ruin that morning a sweet, strong, +permanent odour of maple-blossom. + +We met toward evening, she quivering under such a load, that I would not +let her carry it, but abandoned my day's labour, which was lighter, and +took hers, which was quite enough: we went back Westward, seeking all +the while some shelter from the saturating night-dews of this place: and +nothing could we find, till we came again, quite late, to her broken +funeral-kiosk at the entrance to the immense cemetery-avenue of Eyoub. +There without a word I left her among the shattered catafalques, for I +was weary; but having gone some distance, turned back, thinking that I +might take some more raisins from the bag; and after getting them, said +to her, shaking her little hand where she sat under the roof-shadow on a +stone: + +'Good-night, Clodagh.' + +She did not answer promptly: and her answer, to my surprise, was a +protest against her name: for a rather sulky, yet gentle, voice came +from the darkness, saying: + +'I am _not_ a Poisoner!' + +'Well,' said I, 'all right: tell me whatever you like that I should call +you, and henceforth I will call you that.' + +'Call me Eve,' says she. + +'Well, no,' said I, 'not Eve, anything but that: for _my_ name is Adam, +and if I called you Eve, that would be simply absurd, and we do not want +to be ridiculous in each other's eyes. But I will call you anything else +that you like.' + +'Call me Leda,' says she. + +'And why Leda?' said I. + +'Because Leda sounds something like Clodagh,' says she, 'and you are +al-leady in the habit of calling me Clodagh; and I saw the name Leda in +a book, and liked it: but Clodagh is most hollible, most bitterly +hollible!' + +'Well, then,' said I, 'Leda it shall be, and I shan't forget, for I like +it, too, and it suits you, and you ought to have a name beginning with +an "L." Good-night, my dear, sleep well, and dream, dream.' + +'And to you, too, my God give dleams of peace and pleasantness,' says +she; and I went. + +And it was only when I had lain myself upon leaves for my bed, my head +on my caftan, a rill for my lullaby, and two stars, which alone I could +see out of the heavenful, for my watch-lights; and only when my eyes +were already closed toward slumber, that a sudden strong thought pierced +and woke me: for I remembered that Leda was the name of a Greek woman +who had borne twins. In fact, I should not be surprised if this Greek +word Leda is the same word etymologically as the Hebrew Eve, for I have +heard of _v's_, and _b's_, and _d's_ interchanging about in this way, +and if _Di_, meaning God, or Light, and _Bi_, meaning Life, and Io_v_e, +and Iho_v_ah and Go_d_, meaning much the same, are all one, that would +be nothing astonishing to me, as wi_d_ow, and veu_v_e, are one: and +where it says, 'truly the Light is Good (_tob, b_on),' this is as if it +said, 'truly the Di is Di.' Such, at any rate, is the fatality that +attends me, even in the smallest things: for this Western Eve, or Greek +Leda, had twins. + + * * * * * + +Well, the next morning we crossed by the ruins of old Greek Phanar +across the triple Stamboul-wall, which still showed its deep-ivied +portal, and made our way, not without climbing, along the Golden Horn to +the foot of the Old Seraglio, where I soon found signs of the railway. +And that minute commenced our journey across Turkey, Bulgaria, Servia, +Bosnia, Croatia, to Trieste, occupying no day or two as in old times, +but four months, a long-drawn nightmare, though a nightmare of rich +happiness, if one may say so, leaving on the memory a vague vast +impression of monstrous ravines, ever-succeeding profundities, heights +and greatnesses, jungles strange as some moon-struck poet's fantasy, +everlasting glooms, and a sound of mighty unseen rivers, cataracts, and +slow cumbered rills whose bulrushes never see the sun, with largesse +everywhere, secrecies, profusions, the unimaginable, the unspeakable, a +savagery most lush and fierce and gaudy, and vales of Arcadie, and +remote mountain-peaks, and tarns shy as old-buried treasure, and +glaciers, and we two human folk pretty small and drowned and lost in +all that amplitude, yet moving always through it. + +We followed the lines that first day till we came to a steam train, and +I found the engine fairly good, and everything necessary to move it at +my hand: but the metals in such a condition of twisted, broken, vaulted, +and buried confusion, due to the earthquake, that, having run some +hundreds of yards to examine them, I saw that nothing could be done in +that way. At first this threw me into a condition like despair, for what +we were to do I did not know: but after persevering on foot for four +days along the deep-rusted track, which is of that large-gauge type +peculiar to Eastern Europe, I began to see that there were considerable +sound stretches, and took heart. + +I had with me land-charts and compass, but nothing for taking +altitude-observations: for the _Speranza_ instruments, except one +compass, had all been broken-up by her shock. However, on getting to the +town of Silivri, about thirty miles from our start, I saw in the ruins +of a half-standing bazaar-shop a number of brass objects, and there +found several good sextants, quadrants, and theodolites. Two mornings +later, we came upon an engine in mid-country, with coals in it, and a +stream near; I had a goat-skin of almond-oil in the bag, and found the +machinery serviceable after an hour's careful inspection, having +examined the boiler with a candle through the manhole, and removed the +autoclaves of the heaters. All was red with rust, and the shaft of the +connecting-rod in particular seemed so frail, that at one moment I was +very dubious: I decided, however, and, except for a slight leakage at +the tubulure which led the steam to the valve-chest, all went very well; +at a pressure never exceeding three-and-a-half atmospheres, we travelled +nearly a hundred and twenty miles before being stopped by a head-to-head +block on the line, when we had to abandon our engine; we then continued +another seven miles a-foot, I all the time mourning my motor, which I +had had to leave at Imbros, and hoping at every townlet to find a whole +one, but in vain. + + * * * * * + +It was wonderful to see the villages and towns going back to the earth, +already invaded by vegetation, and hardly any longer breaking the +continuity of pure Nature, the town now as much the country as the +country, and that which is not-Man becoming all in all with a certain +_furore_ of vigour. A whole day in the southern gorges of the Balkan +Mountains the slow train went tearing its way through many a mile of +bind-weed tendrils, a continuous curtain, flaming with large flowers, +but sombre as the falling shades of night, rather resembling jungles of +Ceylon and the Filipinas; and she, that day, lying in the single car +behind, where I had made her a little yatag-bed from Tatar Bazardjik, +continually played the kittur, barely touching the strings, and crooning +low, low, in her rich contralto, eternally the same air, over and over +again, crooning, crooning, some melancholy tune of her own dreaming, +just audible to me through the slow-travailing monotony of the engine; +till I was drunken with so sweet a woe, my God, a woe that was sweet as +life, and a dolour that lulled like nepenthe, and a grief that soothed +like kisses, so sweet, so sweet, that all that world of wood and gloom +lost locality and realness for me, and became nothing but a charmed and +pensive Heaven for her to moan and lullaby in; and from between my +fingers streamed plenteous tears that day, and all that I could keep on +mourning was 'O Leda, O Leda, O Leda,' till my heart was near to break. + +The feed-pump eccentric-shaft of this engine, which was very poor and +flaky, suddenly gave out about five in the afternoon, and I had to stop +in a hurry, and that sweet invisible mechanism which had crooned and +crooned about my ears in the air, and followed me whithersoever I went, +stopped too. Down she jumped, calling out: + +'Well, I had a plesentiment that something would happen, and I am so +glad, for I was tired!' + +Seeing that nothing could be done with the feed-water pump, I got down, +took the bag, and parting before us the continuous screen, we went +pioneering to the left between a rock-cleft, stepping over large stones +that looked black with moss-growths, no sky, but hundreds of feet of +impenetrable leafage overhead, and everywhere the dew-dabbled profusion +of dim ferneries, dishevelled maidenhairs mixed with a large-leaved +mimosa, wild vine, white briony, and a smell of cedar, and a soft +rushing of perpetual waters that charmed the gloaming. The way led +slightly upwards three hundred feet, and presently, after some windings, +and the climbing of five huge steps almost regular, yet obviously +natural, the gorge opened in a roundish space, fifty feet across, with +far overhanging edges seven hundred feet high; and there, behind a +curtain which fell from above, its tendrils defined and straight like a +Japanese bead-hanging, we spread the store of foods, I opening the +wines, fruits, vegetables and meats, she arranging them in order with +the gold plate, and lighting both the spirit-lamp and the lantern: for +here it was quite dark. Near us behind the curtain of tendrils was a +small green cave in the rock, and at its mouth a pool two yards wide, a +black and limpid water that leisurely wheeled, discharging a little +rivulet from the cave: and in it I saw three owl-eyed fish, a finger +long, loiter, and spur themselves, and gaze. Leda, who cannot be still +in tongue or limb, chattered in her glib baby manner as we ate, and +then, after smoking a cigarette, said that she would go and 'lun,' and +went, and left me darkling, for she is the sun and the moon and the host +of the stars, I occupying myself that night in making a calendar at the +end of this book in which I have written, for my almanack and many +things that I prized were lost with the palace--making a calendar, +counting the days in my head--but counting them across my thoughts of +her. + +She came again to tell me good-night, and then went down to the train to +sleep; and I put out the lantern, and stooped within the cave, and made +my simple couch beside the little rivulet, and slept. + +But a fitful sleep, and soon again I woke; and a long time I lay so, +gradually becoming conscious of a slow dripping at one spot in the +cave: for at a minute's interval it darkly splashed, regularly, very +deliberately; and it seemed to grow always louder and sadder, and the +splash at first was 'Leesha,' but it became 'Leda' to my ears, and it +sobbed her name, and I pitied myself, so sad was I. And when I could no +longer bear the anguished melancholy of its spasm and its sobbing, I +arose and went softly, softly, lest she should hear in that sounding +silence of the hushed and darksome night, going more slow, more soft, as +I went nearer, a sob in my throat, my feet leading me to her, till I +touched the carriage. And against it a long time I leant my clammy brow, +a sob aching in my poor throat, and she all mixed up in my head with the +suspended hushed night, and with the elfin things in the air that made +the silence so musically a-sound to the vacant ear-drum, and with the +dripping splash in the cave. And softly I turned the door-handle, and +heard her breathe in Asleep, her head near me; and I touched her hair +with my lips, and close to her ear I said--for I heard her breathe as if +in sleep--'Little Leda, I have come to you, for I could not help it, +Leda: and oh, my heart is full of the love of you, for you are mine, and +I am yours: and to live with you, till we die, and after we are dead to +be near you still, Leda, with my broken heart near your heart, little +Leda--' + +I must have sobbed, I think; for as I spoke close at her ears, with +passionately dying eyes of love, I was startled by an irregularity in +her breathing; and with cautious hurry I shut the door, and quite back +to the cave I stole in haste. + +And the next morning when we met I thought--but am not now sure--that +she smiled singularly: I thought so. She may, she _may_, have heard--But +I cannot tell. + + * * * * * + +Twice I was obliged to abandon engines on account of forest-tree +obstructions right across the line, which, do what I might, I could not +move, and these were the two bitterest incidents of the pilgrimage; and +at least thirty times I changed from engine to engine, when other trains +blocked. As for the extent of the earthquake, it is pretty certain that +it was universal over the Peninsula, and at many points exhibited +extreme violence, for up to the time that we entered upon Servian +territory, we occasionally came upon stretches of the lines so +dislocated, that it was impossible to proceed upon them, and during the +whole course I never saw one intact house or castle; four times, where +the way was of a nature to permit of it, I left the imbedded metals and +made the engine travel the ground till I came upon other metals, when I +always succeeded in driving it upon them. It was all very leisurely, for +not everywhere, nor every day, could I get a nautical observation, and +having at all times to go at low pressures for fear of tube and boiler +weakness, crawling through tunnels, and stopping when total darkness +came on, we did not go fast, nor much cared to. Once, moreover, for +three days, and once for four, we were overtaken by hurricanes of such +vast inclemency, that no thought of travelling entered our heads, our +only care being to hide our poor cowering bodies as deeply and darkly as +possible. Once I passed through a city (Adrianople) doubly devastated, +once by the hellish arson of my own hand, and once by the earthquake: +and I made haste to leave that place behind me. + +Finally, three months and twenty-seven days from the date of the +earthquake, having traversed only 900 odd English miles, I let go in the +Venice lagoon, in the early morning of the 10th September, the lateen +sail and stone anchor of a Maltese _speronare_, which I had found, and +partially cleaned, at Trieste; and thence I passed up the Canalazzo in a +gondola. For I said to Leda: 'In Venice will I pitch my Patriarch tent.' + +But to will and to do are not the same thing, and still further +Westward was I driven. For the stagnant upper canals of this place are +now mere miasmas of pestilence: and within two days I was rolling with +fever in the Old Procurazie Palace, she standing in pale wonderment at +my bed-side, sickness quite a novel thing to her: and, indeed, this was +my first serious illness since my twentieth year or thereabouts, when I +had over-worked my brain, and went a voyage to Constantinople. I could +not move from bed for some weeks, but happily did not lose my senses, +and she brought me the whole pharmacopoeia from the shops, from which to +choose my medicines. I guessed the cause of this illness, though not a +sign of it came near her, and as soon as my trembling knees could bear +me, I again set out--always Westward--enjoying now a certain luxury in +travelling compared with that Turkish difficulty, for here were no +twisted metals, more and better engines, in the cities as many good +petrol motors as I chose, and Nature markedly less savage. + +I do not know why I did not stop at Verona or Brescia, or some other +neighbourhood of the Italian lakes, since I was fond of water: but I +had, I think, the thought in my head to return to Vauclaire in France, +where I had lived, and there live: for I thought that she might like +those old monks. At all events, we did not remain long in any place till +we came to Turin, where we spent nine days, she in the house opposite +mine, and after that, at her own suggestion, went on still, passing by +train into the valley of the Isere, and then into that of the Western +Rhone, till we came to the old town of Geneva among some very great +mountains peaked with snow, the town seated at the head of a long lake +which the earth has made in the shape of the crescent moon, and like the +moon it is a thing of much beauty and many moods, suggesting a creature +under the spell of charms and magics. However, with this idea of +Vauclaire still in my head, we left Geneva in the motor which had +brought us at four in the afternoon of the 17th May, I intending to +reach the town called Bourg that night about eight, and there sleep, so +to go on to Lyons the next morning by train, and so, by the Bordeaux +route, make Vauclaire. But by some chance for which I cannot to this +hour account (unless the rain was the cause), I missed the chart-road, +which should have been fairly level, and found myself on mountain +tracks, unconscious of my whereabouts, while darkness fell, and a +windless downpour that had a certain sullen venom in its superabundance +drenched us. I stopped several times, looking about for chateau, +chalet, or village, but none did I see, though I twice came upon railway +lines; and not till midnight did we run down a rather steep pass upon +the shore of a lake, which, from its apparent vastness in the moonless +obscurity, I could only suppose to be the Lake of Geneva once again. +About two hundred yards to the left we saw through the rain a large +pile, apparently risen straight out of the lake, looking ghostly livid, +for it was of white stone, not high, but an old thing of complicated +white little turrets roofed with dark red candle extinguishers, and +oddities of Gothic nooks, window slits, and outline, very like a +fanciful picture. Round to this we went, drowned as rats, Leda sighing +and bedraggled, and found a narrow spit of low land projecting into the +lake, where we left the car, walked forward with the bag, crossed a +small wooden drawbridge, and came upon a rocky island with a number of +thick-foliaged trees about the castle. We quickly found a small open +portal, and went throughout the place, quite gay at the shelter, +everywhere lighting candles which we found in iron sconces in the rather +queer apartments: so that, as the castle is far seen from the shores of +the lake, it would have appeared to one looking thence a place suddenly +possessed and haunted. We found beds, and slept: and the next day it +turned out to be the antique Castle of Chillon, where we remained five +long and happy months, till again, again, Fate overtook us. + + * * * * * + +The morning after our coming, we had breakfast--our last meal +together--on the first floor in a pentagonal room approached from a +lower level by three little steps. In it is a ponderous oak table +pierced with a multitude of worm eaten tunnels, also three mighty high +backed chairs, an old oak desk covered still with papers, arras on the +walls, and three dark religious oil paintings, and a grandfathers clock: +it is at about the middle of the chateau, and contains two small, but +deep, three faced oriels, in each face four compartments with white +stone shafts between, these looking south upon shrubs and the rocky edge +of the island, then upon the deep blue lake, then upon another tiny +island containing four trees in a jungle of flowers, then upon the shore +of the lake interrupted by the mouths of a river which turned out to be +the Rhone, then upon a white town on the slopes which turned out to be +Villeneuve, then upon the great mountains back of Bouveret and St. +Gingolph, all having the surprised air of a resurrection just +completed, everything new washed in dyes of azure, ultramarine, indigo, +snow, emerald, that fresh morning: so that one had to call it the best +and holiest place in the world. These five old room walls, and oak +floor, and two oriels, became specially mine, though it was really +common ground to us both, and there I would do many little things. The +papers on the desk told that it had been the _bureau_ of one R.E. Gaud, +'_Grand Bailli_,' whose residence the place no doubt had been. + +She asked me while eating that morning to stay here, and I said that I +would see, though with misgiving: so together we went all about the +house, and finding it unexpectedly spacious, I consented to stop. At +both ends are suites, mostly small rooms, infinitely quaint and cosy, +furnished with heavy Henri Quatre furniture and bed draperies; and there +are separate, and as it were secret, spiral stairs for exit to each: so +we decided that she should have the suite overlooking the length of the +lake, the mouths of the Rhone, Bouveret and Villeneuve; and I should +have that overlooking the spit of land behind and the little drawbridge, +shore cliffs, and elmwood which comes down to the shore, giving at one +point a glimpse of the diminutive hamlet of Chillon; and, that decided, +I took her hand in mine, and I said: + +'Well, then, here we stay, both under the same roof--for the first time. +Leda, I will not explain why to you, but it is dangerous, so much so +that it _may_ mean the death of one or other of us: deadly, deadly +dangerous, my poor girl. You do not understand, but that is the fact, +believe me, for I know it very well, and I would not tell you false. +Well, then, you will easily comprehend, that this being so, you must +never on any account come near my part of the house, nor will I come +near yours. Lately we have been very much together, but then we have +been active, full of purpose and occupation: here we shall be nothing of +the kind, I can see. You do not understand at all--but things are so. We +must live perfectly separate lives, then. You are nothing to me, really, +nor I to you, only we live on the same earth, which is nothing at all--a +mere chance. Your own food, clothes, and everything that you want, you +will procure for yourself: it is perfectly easy: the shores are crowded +with mansions, castles, towns and villages; and I will do the same for +myself. The motor down there I set apart for your private use: if I want +another, I will get one; and to-day I will set about looking you up a +boat and fishing tackle, and cut a cross on the bow of yours, so that +you may know yours, and never use mine. All this is very necessary: you +cannot dream how much: but I know how much. Do not run any risks in +climbing, now, or with the motor, or in the boat ... little Leda ...' + +I saw her under-lip push, and I turned away in haste, for I did not care +whether she cried or not. In that long voyage, and in my illness at +Venice, she had become too near and dear to me, my tender love, my dear +darling soul; and I said in my heart: 'I will be a decent being: I will +turn out trumps.' + + * * * * * + +Under this castle is a sort of dungeon, not narrow, nor very dark, in +which are seven stout dark-grey pillars, and an eighth, half-built into +the wall; and one of them which has an iron ring, as well as the ground +around it, is all worn away by some prisoner or prisoners once chained +there; and in the pillar the word 'Byron' engraved. This made me +remember that a poet of that name had written something about this +place, and two days afterwards I actually came upon three volumes of the +poet in a room containing a great number of books, many of them English, +near the Grand Bailli's _bureau_: and in one I read the poem, which is +called 'The Prisoner of Chillon.' I found it very affecting, and the +description good, only I saw no seven rings, and where he speaks of the +'pale and livid light,' he should speak rather of the dun and brownish +gloom, for the word 'light' disconcerts the fancy, and of either pallor +or blue there is there no sign. However, I was so struck by the horror +of man's cruelty to man, as depicted in this poem, that I determined +that she should see it; went up straight to her rooms with the book, +and, she being away, ferreted among her things to see what she was +doing, finding all very neat, except in one room where were a number of +prints called _La Mode_, and _debris_ of snipped cloth, and medley. +When, after two hours, she came in, and I suddenly presented myself, +'Oh!' she let slip, and then fell to cooing her laugh; and I took her +down through a big room stacked with every kind of rifle, with +revolvers, cartridges, powder, swords, bayonets--evidently some official +or cantonal magazine--and then showed her the worn stone in the dungeon, +the ring, the narrow deep slits in the wall, and I told the tale of +cruelty, while the splashing of the lake upon the rock outside was heard +with a strange and tragic sound, and her mobile face was all one sorrow. + +'How cruel they must have been!' cries she with tremulous lip, her face +at the same time reddened with indignation. + +'They were mere beastly monsters,' said I: 'it is nothing surprising if +monsters were cruel.' + +And in the short time while I said that, she was looking up with a +new-born smile. + +'Some others came and set the plisoner flee!' cries she. + +'Yes,' said I, 'they did, but--' + +'That was good of them,' says she. + +'Yes,' said I, 'that was all right, so far as it went.' + +'And it was a time when men had al-leady become cluel,' says she: 'if +those who set him flee were so good when all the lest were cluel, what +would they have been at a time when all the lest were kind? They would +have been just like Angels....!' + + * * * * * + +At this place fishing, and long rambles, were the order of the day, both +for her and for me, especially fishing, though a week rarely passed +which did not find me at Bouveret, St. Gingolph, Yvoire, Messery, Nyon, +Ouchy, Vevay, Montreux, Geneva, or one of the two dozen villages, +townlets, or towns, that crowd the shores, all very pretty places, each +with its charm, and mostly I went on foot, though the railway runs right +round the forty odd miles of the lake's length. One noon-day I was +walking through the main-street of Vevay going on to the Cully-road when +I had a fearful shock, for in a shop just in front of me to the right I +heard a sound--an unmistakable indication of life--as of clattering +metals shaken together. My heart leapt into my mouth, I was conscious of +becoming bloodlessly pale, and on tip-toe of exquisite caution I stole +up to the open door--peeped in--and it was she standing on the counter +of a jeweller's shop, her back turned to me, with head bent low over a +tray of jewels in her hands, which she was rummaging for something. I +went _'Hoh!'_ for I could not help it, and all that day, till sunset, we +were very dear friends, for I could not part from her, we walking +together by vor-alpen, wood, and shore all the way to Ouchy, she just +like a creature crazy that day with the bliss of living, rolling in +grasses and perilous flowery declines, stamping her foot defiantly at +me, arrogant queen that she is, and then running like mad for me to +catch her, with laughter, _abandon_, carolling railleries, and the +levity of the wild ass's colt on the hills, entangling her loose-flung +hair with Bacchic tendril and blossom, and drinking, in the passage +through Cully, more wine, I thought, than was good: and the flaming +darts of lightning that shot and shocked me that day, and the inner +secret gleams and revelations of Beauty which I had, and the pangs of +white-hot honey that tortured my soul and body, and were too much for +me, and made me sick, oh Heaven, what tongue could express all that deep +world of things? And at Ouchy with a backward wave of my arm I silently +motioned her from me, for I was dumb, and weak, and I left her there: +and all that long night her power was upon me, for she is stronger than +gravitation, which may be evaded, and than all the forces of life +combined, and the sun and the moon and the earth are nothing compared +with her; and when she was gone from me I was like a fish in the air, or +like a bird in the deep, for she is my element of life, made for me to +breathe in, and I drown without her: so that for many hours I lay on +that grassy hill leading to the burial-ground outside Ouchy that night, +like a man sore wounded, biting the grass. + +What made things worse for me was her adoption of European clothes since +coming to this place: I believe that, in her adroit way, she herself +made some of her dresses, for one day I saw in her apartments a number +of coloured fashion-plates, with a confusion like dress-making; or she +may have been only modifying finished things from the shops, for her +Western dressing is not quite like what I remember of the modern female +style, but is really, I should say, quite her own, rather resembling the +Greek, or the eighteenth century. At any rate, the airs and graces are +as natural to her as feathers to parrots; and she has changes like the +moon; never twice the same, and always transcending her last phase and +revelation: for I could not have conceived of anyone in whom _taste_ was +a faculty so separate as in her, so positive and salient, like smelling +or sight--more like _smelling_: for it is the faculty, half Reason, half +Imagination, by which she fore-scents precisely what will suit +exquisitely with what; so that every time I saw her, I received the +impression of a perfectly novel, completely bewitching, work of Art: the +special quality of works of Art being to produce the momentary +conviction that anything else whatever could not possibly be so good. + +Occasionally, from my window I would see her in the wood beyond the +drawbridge, cool and white in green shade, with her Bible probably, +training her skirt like a court-lady, and looking much taller than +before. I believe that this new dressing produced a separation between +us more complete than it might have been; and especially after that day +between Vevay and Ouchy I was very careful not to meet her. The more I +saw that she bejewelled herself, powdered herself, embalmed herself like +sachets of sweet scents, chapleted her Greek-dressed head with gold +fillets, the more I shunned her. Myself, somehow, had now resumed +European dress, and, ah me, I was greatly changed, greatly changed, God +knows, from the portly inflated monarch-creature that strutted and +groaned four years previously in the palace at Imbros: so that my manner +of life and thought might once more now have been called modern and +Western. + +All the more was my sense of responsibility awful: and from day to day +it seemed to intensify. An arguing Voice never ceased to remonstrate +within me, nor left me peace, and the curse of unborn hosts appeared to +menace me. To strengthen my fixity I would often overwhelm myself, and +her, with muttered opprobriums, calling myself 'convict,' her +'lady-bird'; asking what manner of man was I that I should dare so great +a thing; and as for her, what was she to be the Mother of a world?--a +versatile butterfly with a woman's brow! And continually now in my +fiercer moods I was meditating either my death--or hers. + +Ah, but the butterfly did not let me forget her brow! To the south-west +of Villeneuve, between the forest and the river is a well-grown gentian +field, and returning from round St. Gingolph to the Chateau one day in +the third month after an absence of three days, I saw, as I turned a +corner in the descent of the mountain, some object floating in the air +above the field. Never was I more startled, and, above all, perplexed: +for, beside the object soaring there like a great butterfly, I could see +nothing to account for it. It was not long, however, before I came to +the conclusion that she has re-invented _the kite_--for she had almost +certainly never seen one--and I presently sighted her holding the string +in the midfield. Her invention resembles the kind called 'swallow-tail' +of old. + + * * * * * + +But mostly it was on the lake that I saw her, for there we chiefly +lived, and occasionally there were guilty approaches and _rencontres_, +she in her boat, I in mine, both being slight clinker-built Montreux +pleasure-boats, which I had spent some days in overhauling and +varnishing, mine with jib, fore-and-aft mainsail, and spanker, hers +rather smaller, one-masted, with an easy-running lug-sail. It was no +uncommon thing for me to sail quite to Geneva, and come back from a +seven-days' cruise with my soul filled and consoled with the lake and +all its many moods of bright and darksome, serene and pensive, dolorous +and despairing and tragic, at morning, at noon, at sunset, at midnight, +a panorama that never for an instant ceased to unroll its +transformations, I sometimes climbing the mountains as high as the +goat-herd region of hoch-alpen, once sleeping there. And once I was made +very ill by a two-weeks' horror which I had: for she disappeared in her +skiff, I being at the Chateau, and she did not come back; and while she +was away there was a tempest that turned the lake into an angry ocean, +and, ah my good God, she did not come. At last, half-crazy at the vacant +days of misery which went by and by, and she did not come, I set out +upon a wild-goose quest, of her--of all the hopeless things the most +hopeless, for the world is great--and I sought and did not find her; and +after three days I turned back, recognising that I was mad to search the +infinite, and coming near the Chateau, I saw her wave her handkerchief +from the island-edge, for she divined that I had gone to seek her, and +she was watching for me: and when I took her hand, what did she say to +me, the Biblical simpleton?--'Oh you of little Faith!' says she. And she +had adventures to lisp, with all the _r_'s liquefied into _l_'s, and I +was with her all that day again. + +Once a month perhaps she would knock at my outermost door, which I +mostly kept locked when at home, bringing me a sumptuously-dressed, +highly-spiced red trout or grayling, which I had not the heart to +refuse, and exquisitely she does them, all hot and spiced, applying +apparently to their preparation the taste which she applies to dress; +and her extraordinary luck in angling did not fail to supply her with +the finest specimens, though, for that matter, this lake, with its old +fish-hatcheries and fish-ladders, is not miserly in that way, swarming +now with the best lake trout, river trout, red trout, and with salmon, +of which last I have brought in one with the landing-net of, I should +say, thirty-five to forty pounds. As the bottom goes off very rapidly +from the two islands to a depth of eight to nine hundred feet, we did +not long confine ourselves to bottom-fishing, but gradually advanced to +every variety of manoeuvre, doing middle-water spinning with +three-triangle flights and sliding lip-hook for jack and trout, trailing +with the sail for salmon, live-baiting with the float for pike, daping +with blue-bottles, casting with artificial flies, and I could not say in +which she became the most carelessly adept, for all soon seemed as old +and natural to her as an occupation learned from birth. + + * * * * * + +On the 21st October I attained my forty-sixth birthday in excellent +health: a day destined to end for me in bloodshed and tragedy, alas. I +forget now what circumstance had caused me to mention the date long +beforehand in, I think, Venice, not dreaming that she would keep any +count of it, nor was I even sure that my calendar was not faulty by a +day. But at ten in the morning of what I called the 21st, descending by +my private spiral in flannels with some trout and par bait, and +tackle--I met her coming up, my God, though she had no earthly right to +be there. With her cooing murmur of a laugh, yet pale, pale, and with a +most guilty look, she presented me a large bouquet of wild flowers. + +I was at once thrown into a state of great agitation. She was dressed in +rather a frippery of _mousseline de soie_, all cream-laced, with +wide-hanging short sleeves, a large diamond at the low open neck, the +ivory-brown skin there contrasting with the powdered bluish-white of her +face, where, however, the freckles were not quite whited out; on her +feet little pink satin slippers, without any stockings--a divinely pale +pink; and well back on her hair a plain thin circlet of gold; and she +smelled like heaven, God knows. + +I could not speak. She broke an awkward silence, saying, very faint and +pallid: + +'It is the day!' + +'I--perhaps--' I said, or some incoherency like that. + +I saw the touch of enthusiasm which she had summoned up quenched by my +manner. + +'I have not done long again?' she asked, looking down, breaking another +silence. + +'No, no, oh no,' said I hurriedly: 'not done wrong again. Only, I could +not suppose that you would count up the days. You are ... considerate. +Perhaps--but--' + +'Tell Leda?' + +'Perhaps.... I was going to say ... you might come fishing with me....' + +'O luck!' she went softly. + +I was pierced by a sense of my base cowardice, my incredible weakness: +but I could not at all help it. + +I took the flowers, and we went down to the south side, where my boat +lay; I threw out some of the fish from the well; arranged the tackle, +and then the stern cushions for her; got up the sails; and out we went, +she steering, I in the bows, with every possible inch of space between +us, receiving delicious intermittent whiffs from her of ambergris, +frangipane, or some blending of perfumes, the morning being bright and +hot, with very little breeze on the water, which looked mottled, like +colourless water imperfectly mixed with indigo-wash, we making little +headway; so it was some time before I moved nearer her to get the par +for fixing on the three-triangle flight, for I was going to trail for +salmon or large lake-trout; and during all that time we spoke not a word +together. + +Afterwards I said: + +'Who told you that flowers are proper to birthdays? or that birthdays +are of any importance?' + +'I suppose that nothing can happen so important as birth,' says she: +'and perfumes must be ploper to birth, because the wise men blought +spices to the young Jesus.' + +This _naivete_ was the cause of my immediate recovery: for to laugh is +to be saved: and I laughed right out, saying: + +'But you read the Bible too much! all your notions are biblical. You +should read the quite modern books.' + +'I have tlied,' says she: 'but I cannot lead them long, nor often. The +whole world seems to have got so collupted. It makes me shudder.' + +'Ah, well now, you see, you quite come round to my point of view,' said +I. + +'Yes, and no,' says she: 'they had got so _spoiled_, that is all. +Everlybody seems to have become quite dull-witted--the plainest tluths +they could not see. I can imagine that those faculties which aided them +in their stlain to become lich themselves, and make the lest more poor, +must have been gleatly sharpened, while all the other faculties +withered: as I can imagine a person with one eye seeing double thlough +it, and quite blind on the other side.' + +'Ah,' said I, 'I do not think they even _wanted_ to see on the other +side. There were some few tolerably good and clear-sighted ones among +them, you know: and these all agreed in pointing out how, by changing +one or two of their old man-in-the-moon Bedlam arrangements, they could +greatly better themselves: but they heard with listless ears: I don't +know that they ever made any considerable effort. For they had become +more or less unconscious of their misery, so miserable were they: like +the man in Byron's "Prisoner of Chillon," who, when his deliverers came, +was quite indifferent, for he says: + + "It was at length the same to me + Fettered or fetterless to be: + I had learned to love Despair."' + +'Oh my God,' she went, covering her face a moment, 'how dleadful! And +it is tlue, it seems tlue:--they had learned to love Despair, to be even +ploud of Despair. Yet all the time, I feel _sure_ flom what I have lead, +flom what I scent, that the individual man was stluggling to see, to +live light, but without power, like one's leg when it is asleep: that is +so pletty of them all! that they meant well--everly one. But they were +too tloubled and sad, too awfully burdened: they had no chance at all. +Such a queer, unnatulal feeling it gives me to lead of all that world: I +can't desclibe it; all their motives seem so tainted, their life so +lopsided. Tluely, the whole head was sick, and the whole heart faint.' + +'Quite so,' said I: 'and observe that this was no new thing: in the very +beginning of the Book we read how God saw that the wickedness of man was +great on the earth, and every imagination of his heart evil....' + +'Yes,' she interrupted, 'that is tlue: but there must have been some +_cause!_ We can be quite _sure_ that it was not natulal, because you and +I are men, and our hearts are not evil.' + +This was her great argument which she always trotted out, because she +found that I had usually no answer to give to it. But this time I said: + +'Our hearts not evil? Say yours: but as to mine you know nothing, +Leda.' + +The semicircles under her eyes had that morning, as often, a certain +moist, heavy, pensive and weary something, as of one fresh from a revel, +very sweet and tender: and, looking softly at me with it, she answered: + +'I know my own heart, and it is not evil: not at all: not even in the +very least: and I know yours, too.' + +'You know _mine!_' cried I, with a half-laugh of surprise. + +'Quite well,' says she. + +I was so troubled by this cool assurance, that I said not a word, but +going to her, handed her the baited flight, swivel-trace, and line, +which she paid out; then I got back again almost into the bows. + +After a ten-minutes I spoke again: + +'So this is news to me: you know all about my heart. Well, come, tell me +what is in it!' + +Now she was silent, pretending to be busy with the trail, till she said, +speaking with low-bent face, and a voice that I could only just hear: + +'I will tell you what is in it: in it is a lebellion which you think +good, but is not good. If a stleam will just flow, neither tlying to +climb upward, nor over-flowing its banks, but lunning modestly in its +fated channel just wherever it is led, then it will finally leach the +sea--the mighty ocean--and lose itself in fulness.' + +'Ah,' said I, 'but that counsel is not new. It is what the philosophers +used to call "yielding to Destiny," and "following Nature." And Destiny +and Nature, I give you my word, often led mankind quite wrong--' + +'Or _seemed_ to,' says she--'for a time: as when a stleam flows north a +little, and the sea is to the south: but it is bound for the sea all the +time, and will turn again. Destiny never could, and cannot yet, be +judged, for it is not finished: and our lace should follow blindly +whither it points, sure that thlough many curves it leads the world to +our God.' + +'Our God indeed!' I cried, getting very excited: 'girl! you talk +speciously, but falsely! whence have you these thoughts in that head of +yours? Girl! you talk of "our race"! But there are only two of us left? +Are you talking _at_ me, Leda? Do not _I_ follow Destiny?' + +'You?' she sighed, with down-bent face: 'ah, poor me!' + +'What should I do if I followed it?' said I, with a crazy curiosity. + +Her face hung lower, paler, in trouble: and she said: + +'You would come now and sit near me here. You would not be there where +you are. You would be always and for ever near me....' + +My good God! I felt my face redden. + +'Oh, I could not _tell_ you...!' I cried: 'you talk the most disastrous...! +you lack all responsibility...! Never, never...!' + +Her face now was covered with her left hand, her right on the tiller: +and bitingly she said, with a touch of venom: + +'I could _make_ you come--_now_, if I chose: but I will not: I will wait +upon my God....' + +'_Make_ me!' I cried: 'Leda! How make me?' + +'I could cly before you, as I cly often and often ... in seclet ... for +my childlen....' + +'_You_ cry in secret? This is news--' + +'Yes, yes, I cly. Is not the burden of the world heavy upon me, too? and +the work I have to do _vely, vely_ gleat? And often and often I cly in +seclet, thinking of it: and I could cly now if I chose, for you love +your little girl so much, that you could not lesist me one minute....' + +Now I saw the push and tortion and trembling of her poor little +under-lip, boding tears: and at once a flame was in me which was +altogether beyond control; and crying out: 'why, my poor dear,' I found +myself in the act of rushing through the staggering boat to take her to +me. + +Mid-way, however, I was saved: a whisper, intense as lightning, arrested +me: 'Forward is no escape, nor backward, but _sideward_ there may be a +way!' And at a sudden impulse, before I knew what I was doing, I was in +the water swimming. + +The smaller of the islands was two hundred yards away, and thither I +swam, rested some minutes, and thence to the Castle. I did not once look +behind me. + + * * * * * + +Well, from 11 A.M. till five in the afternoon, I thought it all out, +lying in the damp flannels on my face on the sofa in the recess beside +my bed, where it was quite dark behind the tattered piece of arras: and +what things I suffered that day, and what deeps I sounded, and what +prayers I prayed, God knows. What infinitely complicated the awful +problem was this thought in my head: that to kill her would be far more +merciful to her than to leave her alone, having killed myself: and, +Heaven knows, it was for her alone that I thought, not at all caring for +myself. To kill her was better: but to kill her with my own hands--that +was too hard to expect of a poor devil like me, a poor common son of +Adam, after all, and never any sublime self-immolator, as two or three +of them were. And hours I lay there with brows convulsed in an agony, +groaning only those words: 'To kill her! to kill her!' thinking +sometimes that I should be merciful to myself too, and die, and let her +live, and not care, since, after my death, I would not see her suffer, +for the dead know not anything: and to expect me to kill her with my own +hand was a little too much. Yet that one or other of us must die was +perfectly certain, for I knew that I was just on the brink of failing in +my oath, and matters here had reached an obvious crisis: unless we could +make up our minds to part...? putting the width of the earth between +us? That conception occurred to me: and in the turmoil of my thoughts it +seemed a possibility. Finally, about 5 P.M., I resolved upon something: +and first I leapt up, went down and across the house into the arsenal, +chose a small revolver, fitted it with cartridge, took it up-stairs, +lubricated it with lamp-oil, went down and out across the drawbridge, +walked two miles beyond the village, shot the revolver at a tree, found +its action accurate, and started back. When I came to the Castle, I +walked along the island to the outer end, and looked up: there were her +pretty cream Valenciennes, put up by herself, waving inward before the +light lake-breeze at one open oriel; and I knew that she was in the +Castle, for I felt it: and always, always, when she was within, I knew, +for I felt her with me; and always when she was away, I knew, I felt, +for the air had a dreadful drought, and a barrenness, in it. And I +looked up for a time to see if she would come to the window, and then I +called, and she appeared. And I said to her: 'Come down here.' + + * * * * * + +Just here there is a little rock-path to the south, going down to the +water between rocks mixed with shrub-like little trees, three yards +long: a path, or a lane, one might call it, for at the lower end the +rocks and trees reach well over a tall man's head. There she had tied my +boat to a slender linden-trunk: and sadder now than Gethsemane that +familiar boat seemed to my eyes, for I knew very well that I should +never enter it more. I walked up and down the path, awaiting her: and +from the jacket-pocket in which lay the revolver I drew a box of Swedish +matches, from it took two matches, and broke off a bit from the plain +end of one; and the two I held between my left thumb and forefinger +joint, the phosphorus ends level and visible, the other ends invisible: +and I awaited her, pacing fast, and my brow was as stern as Azrael and +Rhadamanthus. + +She came, very pale, poor thing, and flurried, breathing fast. And +'Leda,' I said, meeting her in the middle of the lane, and going +straight to the point, 'we are to part, as you guess--for ever, as you +guess--for I see very well by your face that you guess. I, too, am very +sorry, my little child, and heavy is my heart. To leave you ... alone +... in the world ... is--death for me. But it must, ah it must, be +done.' + +Her face suddenly turned as sallow as the dead were, when the shroud was +already on, and the coffin had become a stale added piece of +room-furniture by the bed-side; but in recording that fact, I record +also this other: that, accompanying this mortal sallowness, which +painfully shewed up her poor freckles, was a steady smile, a little +turned-down: a smile of steady, of slightly disdainful--Confidence. + +She did not say anything: so I went on. + +'I have thought long,' said I, 'and I have made a plan--a plan which +cannot be effective without _your_ consent and co-operation: and the +plan is this: we go from this place together--this same night--to some +unknown spot, some town, say a hundred miles hence--by train. There I +get two motors, and I in one, and you in the other, we separate, going +different ways. We shall thus never be able, however much we may want +to, to rediscover each other in all this wide world. That is my plan.' + +She looked me in the face, smiling her smile: and the answer was not +long in coming. + +'I will go in the tlain with you,' says she with slow decisiveness: 'but +where you leave me, there I will stay, till I die; and I will patiently +wait till my God convert you, and send you back to me.' + +'That means that you refuse to do what I say?' + +'Yes,' said she, bowing the head with great dignity. + +'Well, you speak, not like a girl, Leda,' said I, 'but like a full woman +now. But still, reflect a minute.... O reflect! If you stayed where I +left you, I _should_ go back to you, and pretty soon, too: I know that I +should. Tell me, then--reflect well, and tell me--do you definitely +refuse to part with me?' + +The answer was pretty prompt, cool, and firm: + +'Yes; I lefuse.' + +I left her then, took a turn down the path, and came back. + +'Then,' said I, 'here are two matches in my grasp: be good enough to +draw one.' + +_Now_ she was hit to the heart: I saw her eyes widen to the width of +horror, with a glassy stare: she had read of the drawing of lots in the +Bible: she knew that it meant death for me, or for her. + +But she obeyed without a word, after one backward start and then a brief +hovering in decision of thumb and forefinger over my held-out hand. I +had fixed it in my mind that if she drew the shorter of the matches, +then she should die; if the longer, then I should die. + +She drew the shorter.... + + * * * * * + +This was only what I should have expected: for I knew that God loved +her, and hated me. + +But instantly upon the first shock of the enormity that I should be her +executioner, I made my resolve: to drop shot, too, at the moment after +she dropped shot, so disposing my body, that it would fall half upon +her, and half by her, so that we might be close always: and that would +not be so bad, after all. + +With a sudden movement I snatched the revolver from my pocket: she did +not move, except her white lips, which, I think, whispered: + +'_Not yet_....' + +I stood with hanging arm, forefinger on trigger, looking at her. I saw +her glance once at the weapon, and then she fixed her eyes upwards upon +my face: and now that same smile, which had disappeared, was on her lips +again, meaning confidence, meaning disdain. + +I waited for her to open her mouth to say something--to stop that +smile--that I might shoot her quick and sudden: and she would not, +knowing that I could not kill her while she was smiling; and suddenly, +all my pity and love for her changed into a strange resentment and rage +against her, for she was purposely making hard for me what I was doing +for her sake: and the bitter thought was in my mind: 'You are nothing to +me: if you want to die, you do your own killing; and I will do my own +killing.' And without one word to her, I strode away, and left her +there. + +I see now that this whole drawing of lots was nothing more than a farce: +I never could have killed her, smiling, or no smiling: for to each thing +and man is given a certain strength: and a thing cannot be stronger than +its strength, strive as it may: it is so strong, and no stronger, and +there is an end of the matter. + +I walked up to the Grand Bailli's _bureau_, a room about twenty-five +feet from the ground. By this time it was getting pretty dark, but I +could see, by peering, the face of a grandfather's-clock which I had +long since set going, and kept wound. It is on the north side of the +room, over the writing-desk opposite the oriels. It then pointed to +half-past six, and in order to fix some definite moment for the bitter +effort of the mortal act, I said: 'At Seven.' I then locked the door +which opens upon three little steps near the desk, and also the +stair-door; and I began to pace the chamber. There was not a breath of +air here, and I was hot; I seemed to be stifling, tore open my shirt at +the throat, and opened the lower half of the central mullion-space of +one oriel. Some minutes later, at twenty-five to seven, I lit two +candles on the desk, and sat to write to her, the pistol at my right +hand; but I had hardly begun, when I thought that I heard a sound at the +three-step door, which was only four feet to my left: a sound which +resembled a scraping of her slipper; I stole to the door, and crouched, +listening: but I could hear nothing further. I then returned to the +desk, and set to writing, giving her some last directions for her life, +telling her why I died, how I loved her, much better than my own soul, +begging her to love me always, and to live on to please me, but if she +_would_ die, then to be sure to die near me. Tears were pouring down my +face, when, turning, I saw her standing in a terrified pose hardly two +feet behind me. The absolute stealth which had brought and put her +there, unknown to me, was like miracle: for the ladder, whose top I saw +intruding into the open oriel, I knew well, having often seen it in a +room below, and its length was quite thirty feet, nor could its weight +be trifling: yet I had heard not one hint of its impact upon the window. +But there, at all events, she was, wan as a ghost. + +Immediately, as my consciousness realised her, my hand instinctively +went out to secure the weapon: but she darted upon it, and was an +instant before me. I flew after her to wrench it away, but she flew, +too: and before I caught her, had thrown it cleanly through two rungs of +the ladder and the window. I dashed to the window, and after a hurried +peer thought that I saw it below at the foot of a rock; away I flew to +the stair-door, wrung open the lock, and down the stairs, three at a +time, I ran to recover it. I remember being rather surprised that she +did not follow, forgetting all about the ladder. + +But with a horrid shock I was reminded of it the moment I reached the +bottom, before ever I had passed from the house: for I heard the report +of the weapon--that crack, my God! and crying out: 'Well, Lord, she has +died for me, then!' I tottered forward, and tumbled upon her, where she +lay under the incline of the ladder in her blood. + + * * * * * + +That night! what a night it was! of fingers shivering with haste, of +harum-scarum quests and searches, of groans, and piteous appeals to God. +For there were no surgical instruments, lint, anaesthetics, nor +antiseptics that I knew of in the Chateau; and though I knew of a house +in Montreux where I could find them, the distance was quite infinite, +and the time an eternity in which to leave her all alone, bleeding to +death; and, to my horror, I remembered that there was barely enough +petrol in the motor, and the store usually kept in the house exhausted. +However, I did it, leaving her there unconscious on her bed: but _how_ I +did it, and lived sane afterwards, that is another matter. + +If I had not been a medical man, she must, I think, have died: for the +bullet had broken the left fifth rib, had been deflected, and I found +it buried in the upper part of the abdominal wall. I did not go from her +bed-side: I did not sleep, though I nodded and staggered: for all things +were nothing to me, but her: and for a frightfully long time she +remained comatose. While she was still in this state I took her to a +chalet beyond Villeneuve, three miles away on the mountain-side, a +homely, but very salubrious place which I knew, imbedded in verdures, +for I was desperate at her long collapse, and had hope in the higher +air. And there after three more days, she opened her eyes, and smiled +with me. + +It was then that I said to myself: 'This is the noblest, sagest, and +also the most loveable, of the creatures whom God has made in heaven or +earth. She has won my life, and I will live.... But at least, to save +myself, I will put the broadest Ocean that there is between her and me: +for I wish to be a decent being, for the honour of my race, being the +last, and to turn out trumps ... though I do love my dear, God +knows....' + +And thus, after only fifty-five days at the chalet, were we forced still +further Westward. + + * * * * * + +I wished her to remain at Chillon, intending, myself, to start for the +Americas, whence any sudden impulse to return to her could not be +easily accomplished: but she refused, saying that she would come with me +to the coast of France: and I could not say her no. + +And at the coast, after thirteen days we arrived, three days before the +New Year, traversing France by steam, air, and petrol traction. + +We came to Havre--infirm, infirm of will that I was: for in my deep +heart was the secret, hidden away from my own upper self, that, she +being at Havre, and I at Portsmouth, we could still speak together. + +We came humming into the dark town of Havre in a four-seat motor-car +about ten in the evening of the 29th December: a raw bleak night, she, +it was clear, poor thing, bitterly cramped with cold. I had some +recollection of the place, for I had been there, and drove to the quays, +near which I stopped at the _Maire's_ large house, a palatial place +overlooking the sea, in which she slept, I occupying another near. + +The next morning I was early astir, searched in the _mairie_ for a map +of the town, where I also found a _Bottin_: I could thus locate the +Telephone Exchange. In the _Maire's_ house, which I had fixed upon to be +her home, the telephone was set up in an alcove adjoining a very stately +_salon_ Louis Quinze; and though I knew that these little dry batteries +would not be run down in twenty odd years, yet, fearing any weakness, I +broke open the box, and substituted a new one from the Company's stores +two streets away, at the same time noting the exchange-number of the +instrument. This done, I went down among the ships by the wharves, and +fixed upon the first old green air-boat that seemed fairly sound, broke +open a near shop, procured some buckets of oil, and by three o'clock had +tested and prepared my ship. It was a dull and mournful day, drizzling, +chilly. I returned then to the _mairie_, where for the first time I saw +her, and she was heavy of heart that day: but when I broke the news that +she would be able to speak to me, every day, all day, first she was all +incredulous astonishment, then, for a moment, her eyes turned white to +Heaven, then she was skipping like a kid. We were together three +precious hours, examining the place, and returning with stores of +whatever she might require, till I saw darkness coming on, and we went +down to the ship. + +And when those long-dead screws awoke and moved, bearing me toward the +Outer Basin, I saw her stand darkling, lonely, on the Quai through +heart-rending murk and drizzly inclemency: and oh my God, the gloomy +under-look of those red eyes, and the piteous out-push of that little +lip, and the hurried burying of that face! My heart broke, for I had not +given her even one little, last kiss, and she had been so good, quietly +acquiescing, like a good wife, not attempting to force her presence upon +me in the ship; and I left her there, all widowed, alone on the +Continent of Europe, watching after me: and I went out to the bleak and +dreary fields of the sea. + + * * * * * + +Arriving at Portsmouth the next morning, I made my residence in the +first house in which I found an instrument, a spacious dwelling facing +the Harbour Pier. I then hurried round to the Exchange, which is on the +Hard near the Docks, a large red building with facings of Cornish +moor-stone, a bank on the ground-floor, and the Exchange on the first. +Here I plugged her number on to mine, ran back, rang--and, to my great +thanksgiving, heard her speak. (This instrument, however, did not prove +satisfactory: I broke the box, and put in another battery, and still the +voice was muffled: finally, I furnished the middle room at the Exchange +with a truckle-bed, stores, and a few things, and here have taken up +residence.) + +I believe that she lives and sleeps under the instrument, as I here +live and sleep, sleep and live, under it. My instrument is quite near +one of the harbour-windows, so that, hearing her, I can gaze out toward +her over the expanse of waters, yet see her not; and she, too, looking +over the sea toward me, can hear a voice from the azure depths of +nowhere, yet see me not. + + * * * * * + +I this morning early to her: + +'Good morning! Are you there?' + +'Good morning! No: I am there,' says she. + +'Well, that was what I asked--"are you there"?' + +'But I not here, I am there,' says she. + +'I know very well that you are not "here,"' said I, 'for I do not see +you: but I asked if you were there, and you say "No," and then "Yes."' + +'It is the paladox of the heart,' says she. + +'The what?' + +'The paladox,' says she. + +'But still I do not understand: how can you be both there and not +there?' + +'If my ear is here, and I elsewhere?' says she. + +'An operation?' + +'Yes!' says she. + +'What doctor?' + +'A specialist!' says she. + +'An ear-specialist?' + +'A heart!' says she. + +'And you let a heart-specialist operate on your ear?' + +'On myself he operlated, and left the ear behind!' says she. + +'Well, and how are you after it?' + +'Fairly well. Are you?' says she. + +'Quite well. Did you sleep well?' + +'Except when you lang me up at midnight. I have had such a dleam ...' + +'What?' + +'I dleamed that I saw two little boys of the same age--only I could not +see their faces, I never can see anybody's face, only yours and mine, +mine and yours always--of the same age--playing in a wood....' + +'Ah, I hope that one of them was not called Cain, my poor girl.' + +'Not at all! neither of them! Suppose I tell a stoly, and say that one +was called Caius and the other Tibelius, or one John and the other +Jesus?' + +'Ah. Well, tell me the _dleam_....' + +'Now you do not deserve.' + +'Well, what will you do to-day?' + +'I? It is a lovely day ... have you nice weather in England?' + +'Very.' + +'Well, between eleven and twelve I will go out and gather Spling-flowers +in the park, and cover the salon deep, deep. Wouldn't you like to be +here?' + +'Not I.' + +'You would!' + +'Why should I? I prefer England.' + +'But Flance is nice too: and Flance wants to be fliends with England, +and is waiting, oh waiting, for England to come over, and be fliends. +Couldn't some _lapplochement_ be negotiated?' + +'Good-bye. This talking spoils my morning smoke....' + +So we speak together across the sea, my God. + + * * * * * + +On the morning of the 8th April, when I had been separated thirteen +weeks from her, I boarded several ships in the Inner Port, a lunacy in +my heart, and selected what looked like a very swift boat, one of the +smaller Atlantic air-steamers called the _Stettin_, which seemed to +require the least labour in oiling, &c., in order to fit her for the +sea: for the boat in which I had come to England was a mere tub, though +sound, and I pined for the wings of a dove, that I might fly away to +her, and be at rest. + +I toiled with fluttering hands that day, and I believe that I was of the +colour of ashes to my very lips. By half-past two o'clock I was +finished, and by three was coasting down Southampton Water by Netley +Hospital and the Hamble-mouth, having said not one word about anything +at the telephone, or even to my own guilty heart not a word. But in the +silent depths of my being I felt this fact: that this must be a 35-knot +boat, and that, if driven hard, hard, in spite of the heavy garment of +seaweed which she trailed, she would do 30; also that Havre was 120 +miles away, and at 7 P.M. I should be on its quay. + +And when I was away, and out on the bright and breezy sea, I called to +her, crying out: '_I am coming!_' And I knew that she heard me, and that +her heart leapt to meet me, for mine leapt, too, and felt her answering. + +The sun went down: it set. I was tired of the day's work, and of +standing at the high-set wheel; and I could not yet see the coast of +France. And a thought smote me, and after another ten minutes I turned +the ship's head back, my face screwed with pain, God knows, like a man +whose thumbs are ground between the screws, and his body drawn out and +out on the rack to tenuous length, and his flesh massacred with pincers: +and I fell upon the floor of the bridge contorted with anguish: for I +could not go to her. But after a time that paroxysm passed, and I rose +up sullen and resentful, and resumed my place at the wheel, steering +back for England: for a fixed resolve was in my breast, and I said: 'Oh +no, no more. If I could bear it, I would, I would ... but if it is +impossible, how can I? To-morrow night as the sun sets--without fail--so +help me God--I will kill myself.' + + * * * * * + +So it is finished, my good God. + +On the early morning of the next day, the 9th, I having come back to +Portsmouth about eleven the previous night, when I bid her 'Good +morning' through the telephone, she said 'Good morning,' and not another +word. I said: + +'I got my hookah-bowl broken last night, and shall be trying to mend it +to-day.' + +No answer. + +'Are you there?' said I. + +'Yes,' says she. + +'Then why don't you answer?' said I. + +'Where were you all yesterday?' says she. + +'I went for a little cruise in the basin,' said I. + +Silence for three minutes: then she says: + +'What is the matter?' + +'Matter?' said I, 'nothing!' + +'_Tell me!_' she says--with such an intensity and rage, as to make me +shudder. + +'There is nothing to tell, Leda!' + +'Oh, but how can you be so _cluel_ to me?' she cries, and ah, there was +anguish in that voice! 'There is something to tell--there _is!_ Don't I +know it vely well by your voice?' + +Ah, the thought took me then, how, on the morrow, she would ring, and +have no answer; and she would ring again, and have no answer; and she +would ring all day, and ring, and ring; and for ever she would ring, +with white-flowing hair and the staring eye-balls of frenzy, battering +reproaches at the doors of God, and the Universe would cry back to her +howls and ravings only one eternal answer of Silence, of Silence. And as +I thought of that--for very pity, for very pity, my God--I could not +help sobbing aloud: + +'May God pity you, woman!' + +I do not know if she heard it: she _must_, I think, have heard: but no +reply came; and there I, shivering like the sheeted dead, stood waiting +for her next word, waiting long, dreading, hoping for, her voice, +thinking that if she spoke and sobbed but once, I should drop dead, +dead, where I stood, or bite my tongue through, or shriek the high laugh +of distraction. But when at last, after quite thirty or forty minutes +she spoke, her voice was perfectly firm and calm. She said: + +'Are you there?' + +'Yes,' said I, 'yes, Leda.' + +'What was the color,' says she, 'of the poison-cloud which destroyed the +world?' + +'Purple, Leda,' said I. + +'And it had a smell like almonds or peach blossoms, did it not?' says +she. + +'Yes,' said I, 'yes.' + +'Then,' says she, 'there is _another_ eruption. Every now and again I +seem to scent strange whiffs like that ... and there is a purple vapour +in the East which glows and glows ... just see if you can see it....' + +I flew across the room to an east window, threw up the grimy sash, and +looked. But the view was barred by the plain brick back of a tall +warehouse. I rushed back, gasped to her to wait, rushed down the two +stairs, and out upon the Hard. For a minute I ran dodging wildly about, +seeking a purview to the East, and finally ran up the dockyard, behind +the storehouses to the Semaphore, and reached the top, panting for life. +I looked abroad. The morning sky, but for a bank of cloud to the +north-west, was cloudless, the sun blazing in a region of clear azure +pallor. And back again I flew. + +'I cannot see it...!' I cried. + +'Then it has not tlavelled far enough to the north-west yet,' she said +with decision. + +'My wife!' I cried: 'you are my wife now!' + +'Am I?' says she: 'at last? Are you glad?... But shall I not soon die?' + +'No! You can escape! My home! My heart! If only for an hour or two, then +death--just think, together--on the same couch, for ever, heart to +heart--how sweet!' + +'Yes! how sweet! But how escape?' + +'It travelled slowly before. Get quick--will you?--into one of the +smaller boats by the quay--there is one just under the crane that is an +air-boat--you have seen me turn on the air, haven't you?--that handle on +the right as you descend the steps under the dial-thing--get first a +bucket of oil from the shop next to the clock-tower in the quay-street, +and throw it over everything that you see rusted. Only, spend no +time--for me, my heaven! You can steer by the tiller and compass: well, +the wheel is quite the same, only just the opposite. First unmoor, then +to the handle, then to the wheel. The course is directly North-East by +North. I will meet you on the sea--go now--' + +I was wild with bliss. I thought that I should take her between my arms, +and have the little freckles against my face, and taste her short +firm-fleshed upper-lip, and moan upon her, and whimper upon her, and +mutter upon her, and say 'My wife.' And even when I knew that she was +gone from the telephone, I still stood there, hoarsely calling after +her: 'My wife! My wife!' + + * * * * * + +I flew down to where the steamer lay moored that had borne me the +previous day. Her joint speed with the speed of Leda's boat would be +forty knots: in three hours we must meet. I had not the least fear of +her dying before I saw her: for, apart from the deliberate movement of +the vapour that first time, I fore-tasted and trusted my love, that she +would surely come, and not fail: as dying saints fore-tasted and trusted +Eternal Life. + +I was no sooner on board the _Stettin_ than her engines were straining +under what was equivalent to forced draught. On the previous day it +would have little surprised me at any moment, while I drove her, to be +carried to the clouds in an explosion from her deep-rusted steel tanks: +but this day such a fear never crossed my mind: for I knew very well +that I was immortal till I saw her. + +The sea was not only perfectly smooth, but placid, as on the previous +day: only it seemed far placider, and the sun brighter, and there was a +levity in the breezes that frilled the sea in fugitive dark patches, +like _frissons_ of tickling; and I thought that the morning was a true +marriage-morning, and remembered that it was a Sabbath; and sweet odours +our wedding would not lack of peach and almond, though, looking +eastward, I could see no faintest sign of any purple cloud, but only +rags of chiffon under the sun; and it would be an eternal wedding, for +one day in our sight would be as a thousand years, and our thousand +years of bliss would be but one day, and in the evening of all that +eternity death would come and sweetly lay its finger upon our languid +lids, and we should die of weary bliss; and all manner of dancings and +singings--fandango and light galliard, corantoes and the solemn +gavotte--were a-tune in my heart that happy day; and running by the +chart-house to the wheel, I saw under the table a great roll of old +flags, and presently they were flying in a long curve of gala from the +main; and the sea rumpled in a long tract of tumbling milk behind me; +and I hasted homeward, to meet my heart. + + * * * * * + +No purple cloud could I see as, on and on, for two hours, I tore +southward: but at hot noon, on the weather beam I spied through the +glass across the water something else which moved, and it was you who +came to me, Oh Leda, my spirit's breath! + +I bore down upon her, waving: and soon I saw her stand like an ancient +mariner, but in white muslins that fluttered, at her wheel on the +bridge--it was one of those little old Havre-Antwerp craft very high in +the bows--and she waved a little white thing. And we came nearer, till I +could spy her face, her smile, and I shouted her to stop, and in a +minute stopped myself, and by happy steering came with slowing headway +to a slight crash by her side, and ran down the trellised steps to her, +and led her up; and on the deck, without saying a word, I fell to my +knees before her, and I bowed my brow to the floor, with obeisance, and +I worshipped her there as Heaven. + +And we were wedded: for she, too, bowed the knee with me under the +jovial blue sky; and under her eyes were the little moist semicircles of +dreamy pensive fatigue, so dear and wifish: and God was there, and saw +her kneel: for He loves the girl. + +And I got the two ships apart, and they rested there some yards divided +all the day, and we were in the main-deck cabin, where I had locked a +door, so that no one might come in to be with my love and me. + + * * * * * + +I said to her: + +'We will fly west to one of the Somersetshire coal-mines, or to one of +the Cornwall tin-mines, and we will barricade ourselves against the +cloud, and provision ourselves for six months--for it is perfectly +feasible, and we have plenty of time, and no crowds to break down our +barricades--and there in the deep earth we will live sweetly together, +till the danger is overpast.' + +And she smiled, and drew her hand across my face, and said: + +'No, no: don't you tlust in my God? do you think He would leally let me +die?' + +For she has appropriated the Almighty God to herself, naming Him '_my_ +God'--the impudence: though she generally knows what she is saying, too. +And she would not fly the cloud. + +And I am now writing three weeks later at a little place called +Chateau-les-Roses, and no poison-cloud, and no sign of any poison-cloud, +has come. And this I do not understand. + +It may be that she divined that I was about to destroy myself ... she +may be quite capable.... But no, I do not understand, and shall never +ask her. + +But _this_ I understand: that it is _the White_ who is Master here: that +though he wins but by a hair, yet he wins, he wins: and since he wins, +dance, dance, my heart. + +I look for a race that shall resemble its Mother: nimble-witted, +light-minded, pious--like her; all-human, ambidextrous, ambicephalous, +two-eyed--like her; and if, like her, they talk the English language +with all the r's turned into l's, I shall not care. + +They will be vegetable-eaters, I suppose, when all the meat now extant +is eaten up: but it is not certain that meat is good for men: and if it +is really good, then they will _invent_ a meat: for they will be _her_ +sons, and she, to the furthest cycle in which the female human mind is +permitted to orbit, is, I swear, all-wise. + +There was a preaching man--a Scotchman he was, named Macintosh, or +something like that--who said that the last end of Man shall be well, +and very well: and she says the same: and the agreement of these two +makes a Truth. And to that I now say: Amen, Amen. + +For I, Adam Jeffson, second Parent of the world, hereby lay down, +ordain, and decree for all time, clearly perceiving it now: That the one +Motto and Watch-word essentially proper to each human individual, and to +the whole Race of Man, as distinct from other races in heaven or in +earth, was always, and remains, even this: 'Though He slay me, yet will +I trust in Him.' + +THE END. + + + + + +End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of The Purple Cloud, by M.P. 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