CORNELL UNIVERSITY LIBRARY GOLDWIN SMITH LIBRARY PS2600.E99""'""''"'"""-"'"^^ V.1 Ijie works of Edgar Allan Poe, 3 1924 014 260 438 Cornell University Library The original of tliis book is in tine Cornell University Library. There are no known copyright restrictions in the United States on the use of the text. http://www.archive.org/details/cu31924014260438 POE'S WORKS StantiarlJ 3E^litto^ VOL. 1 TALES ^r The Works ^^^ Edgar Allan Poe ||HF' EDITED BY JQHN H. INGRAM Vol. A. & C. BLACK, LTD. 4, 5, & 6 SOHO SQUARE, LONDON, \jm^m^^>m P-ublished in Monthly Volumes 1874-75 and re-issued in 1880 Standard Edition Published in 1899, and reprinted frequently since TO MES SAEAH HELEN WHITMAN AUTHOR OF "EDGAR POB AND HIS OKITICS " THIS COLLECTION OF THE WORKS OF EDGAR ALLAN POE IS VERY AFFECTIONATELY INSCRIBED BY THE EDITOR "> TALES. The Gold-Bug . . * . The Adventure of one Hans Pfaall The Balloon Hoax Von Kempelbn and His Discovery Mesmebic Revelation The Facts in the Case of M. Valdemak MS. Found in a Bottle .... 'A Descent into the Maelstrom The Black Cat ..... The Fall of the House of Ushee 'The Pit and the Pendulum The Thousand-and-Seoond Tale of Scheherazade -The Premature Burial . . • • -The Masque of the Bed Death . m * The Cask of. Amontillado ,- The Imp of the Perverse . . . ■ The Island of the Fat .... PAGE 1 39 94 108 116 127 138 150 168 179 200 216 236 251 258 266 273 VI CONTENTS. PASB The Oval Portrait .... 279 -The Assignation 284 * The Tell-Talb Hbaut 297 The Domain oi' Arnheim 303- Landor's Cottage 320 William Wilson 333 1 Berenice 355 Elbonoea 364 f LiQBIA .... 371 ■■" MORELLA 388 Metzengerstein 394 The Mttkders in the Rub Morgub 404- The Mystery of Marie Rog^t 442 The Purloined Letter . 494 THE GOLD-BUG. What ho ! what ho ! this fellow is dancing mad ! He hath been bitten by the Tarantula. All in the Wrfyng. years ago I coBtracted an inti- macy with a Mr. William Le- grand. He was of an ancient Huguenot family, and liad once been wealthy ; but a series of misfortunes had reduced him to want. To avoid the ) mortification consequent upon his disasters, he left New Orleans, the city of his forefathers, and took up his residence at Sullivan's Island, near Charleston, South Carolina. This island is a very singular one. It consists of little else than the sea sand, and is about three miles long. Its breadth at no point exceeds a quarter of a mile. It is separated from the mainland by a scarcely perceptible creek, oozing its way through a wilderness of reeds and slime, a favourite resort of the marsh-hen. The vegetation, as might be supposed, is scant, or at least dwarfish. No trees of any magnitude are to be seen. Near the western extremity, where Fort Moultrie stands, and where are some miserable frame buildings, tenanted, during summer, by the fugitives from Charleston dust and fever, may be found, indeed, the bristly palmetto ; but the whole island, with the exception VOL. I. B 2 THE GOLD-BUG. of this western point, and a line of hard, white beach on the sea-coast, is covered with a dense undergrowth of the sweet myrtle, so much prized by the horticulturists of England. The shrub here often attains the height of fifteen or twenty feet, and forms an almost impenetrable coppice, burtliening the air with its fragrance. In the inmost recesses of this coppice, not far from the eastern or more remote end of the island, Legrand had built himself a small hut, which he occupied when I fiist, by mere accident, made his acquaintance. This soon ripened into friendship — for there was much in the recluse to excite interest and esteem. I found him well educated, with unusual powers of mind, but infected with misanthropy, and subject to perverse moods of alternate enthusiasm and melancholy. He had with him many books, but rarely employed them. His chief amusements were gunning and fishing, or sauntering along the beach and through the myrtles, in quest of shells or entomological specimens ; — his collection of the latter might have been envied by a Swammerdamm. In these excursions he was usually accom- panied by an old negro, called Jupiter, who had been manumitted before the reverses of the family, but who could be induced, neither by threats nor by promises, to abandon what he considered his right of attendance upon the footsteps of his young " Massa Will." It is not improb- able that the relatives of Legrand, conceiving him to be somewhat unsettled in intellect, had contrived to instil this obstinacy into Jupiter, with a view to the supervision and guardianship of the wanderer. The winters in the latitude of Sullivan's Island are seldom very severe, and in the fall of the year it is a rare event indeed when a fire is considered necessary. About the middle of October, 18 — , there occurred, however, a day of remarkable chilliness. Just before sunset I scrambled my way through the evergreens to the hut of my friend, whom I had not visited for several weeks — my residence being at that time in Charleston, a distance of nine miles from the island, while the facilities of passage and re-passa^e were very far behind those of the present day. Upon THE GOLD-BUG. S reaching the hut I rapped, as was my custom, and getting no reply, sought for the key where I knew it was secreted, unlocked the door and went in. A fine fire was blazing upon the hearth. It was a novelty, and by no means an ungrateful one. I threw off an overcoat, took an arm-chair by the crackling logs, and awaited patiently the arrival of my hosts. Soon after dark they arrived, and gave me a most cordial welcome. Jupiter, grinning from ear to ear, bustled about to prepare some marsh-hens for supper. Legrand was in one of his fits — how else shall I term them? — of enthusiasm. He had found an unknown bivalve, forming a new genus, and, more than this, he had hunted down and secured, with Jupiter's assistance, a scarabceus which he believed to be totally new, but in respect to which he wished to have my opinion on the morrow. " And why not to-night V I asked, rubbing my hands over the blaze, and wishing the whole tribe of scarahcd at the devil. " Ah, if I had only known you were here ! " said Legrand, " but it's so long since I saw you ; and how could I foresee that you would pay me a visit this very night of all others t As I was coming home I met Lieutenant G , from the fort, and, very foolishly, I lent him the bug ; so it will be impossible for you to see it until the morning. Stay here to-night, and I will send Jup down for it at sun- rise. It is the loveliest thing in creation ! " " What !— sunrise ? " " Nonsense ! no ! — the bug. It is of a brilliant gold colour — about the size of a large hickory-nut — with two jet black spots near one extremity of the back, and another, somewhat longer, at the other. The antennce are" " Dey aint no tin in him, Massa Will, I keep a tellin on you," here interrupted Jupiter ; " de bug is a goole bug, solid, ebery bit of him, inside and all, sep him wing — neber feel half so hebby a bug in my life." " Well, suppose it is, Jup," replied Legrand, somewhat more earnestly, it seemed to me, than the case demanded, " is that any reason for your letting the birds bum ? The 4 THE GOLD-BUG. colour" — here he turned to me — " is really almost euough to warrant Jupiter's idea. You never saw a more brilliant metallic lustre than the scales emit — but of this you cannot judge till to-morrow. In the meantime I can give you some idea of the shape.'' Saying this, he seated himself at a small table, on which were a pen and ink, but no paper He looked for some in a drawer, but found none. " Never mind," said he at length, " this will answer ; '■ and he drew from his waistcoat pocket a scrap of what I took to be very dirty foolscap, and made upon it a rough drawing with the pen. While he did this, I retained my seat by the fire, for I was still chilly. "When the design was complete, he handed it to me without rising. As I received it, a loud growl was heard, succeeded by a scratching at the door. Jupiter opened it, and a large Newfoundland, belonging to Legrand, rushed in, leaped upon my shoulders, and loaded me with caresses ; for I had shown him much attention during previous visits. When his gambols were over, I looked at the paper, and, to speak the truth, found myself not a little puzzled at what my friend had depicted. " Well ! " I said, after contemplating it for some minutes, " this is a strange scarabceus, I must confess : new to me : never saw anything like it before — ^unless it was a skull, or a death's-head — which it more nearly resembles than any- thing else that has come under my observation." " A death's-head ! " echoed Legrand — " Oh — yes — well, it has something of that appearance upon paper, no doubt. The two upper black spots look like eyes, eh 1 and the longer one at the bottom like a mouth — and then the shape of the whole is oval." " Perhaps so," said I ; " but, Legrand, I fear you are no artist. I must wait until I see the beetle itself, if I am to form any idea of its personal appearance." " Well, I don't know," said he, a little nettled, " I draw tolerably — should do it at least — have had good mastere, and flatter myself that I am not quite a blockhead." '■ But, my dear fellow, you are joking then," said I ; " this is a very passable skull — indeed, I may say that it is a very excellent pkuU, according to the vulgar notions about THE GOLD-BUG. 5 such specimens of physiology — and your scarahcem must be the queerest scaraboem in the world if it resembles it. Why, we may get up a very thrilling bit of superstition upon this hint. I presume you will call the bug scarabceus caput hominis, or something of that kind — there are many simi- lar titles in the Natural Histories. But where are the antennee you spoke of 1 " " The antennee I " said Legrand, who seemed to be get- ting unaccountably warm upon the subject ; " I am sure you must see the antennee. I made them as distinct as they are in the original insect, and I presume that is suffi- cient." " Well, well," I said, " perhaps you have — still I don't see them ; " and I handed him the paper without additional remark, not wishing to ruffle his temper ; but I was much surprised at the turn affairs had taken ; his ill-humour puzzled me — and, as for the drawing of the beetle, there were positively no antennee visible, and the whole did bear a very close resemblance to the ordinary cuts of a death's- head. He received the paper very peevishly, and was about to crumple it, apparently to throw it in the fire, when a casual glance at the design seemed suddenly to rivet his attention. In an instant his face grew violently red— in another as excessively pale. For some minutes he con- tinued to scrutinise the drawing minvTtely where he sat. At length he arose, took a candle from the table, and proceeded to seat himself upon a sea-chest in the farthest corner of the room. Here again he made an anxious examination of the paper ; turning it in all directions. He said nothing, however, and his conduct greatly astonished me ; yet I thought it prudent not to exacerbate the grow- ing moodiness of his temper by any comment. Presently he took from his coat pocket a wallet, placed the paper carefully in it, and deposited both in a writing-desk, which he locked. He now grew more composed in his demeanour; but his original air of enthusiasm had quite disappeared. Yet he seemed not so much sulky as abstracted. As the evening wore away he became more and more absorbed in 6 THE GOLD-BUG. reverie, from which no sallies of mine could arouse him It had been my intention to pass the night at the hut, as 1 had frequently done before, but, seeing my host in this mood, I deemed it proper to take leave. He did not press me to remain, but, as I departed, he shook my hand with even more than his usual cordiality. It was about a month after this (and during the interval I had seen nothing of Legrand) when I received a visit, at Charleston, from his man, Jupiter. I had never seen the good old negro look so dispirited, and I feared that some serious disaster had befallen my friend. " Well, Jup," said I, " what is the matter now t — how is your master 1 " " Why, to speak de troof, massa, him not so berry well as mought be." " Not well ! I am truly sorry to hear it. What does he complain of!" " Dar ! dat's it ! — him nebber plain of notin — but him berry sick for all dat." " Fery sick, Jupiter ! — why didn't you say so at once 1 Is he confined to bed 1 " " No dat he aint ! — he aint find nowhar — dat's just whar de shoe pinch — my mind is got to be berry hebby bout poor Massa WUl." " Jupiter, I should like to understand what it is you are talking about. You say your master is sick. Hasn't he told you what ails him ? " "Why, massa, taint worf while for to git mad about de matter — Massa Will say noffin at all aint de matter wid him — but den what make him go about looking dis here way, wid he head down and he soldiers up, and as white as a gose 1 And den he keep a syphon all de time" " Keeps a what, Jupiter 1 " " Keeps a syphon wid de figgurs on de slate— de queer- est figgurs I ebber did see. Ise gittin to be skeered, I tell you. Hab for to keep mighty tight eye pon hira noovers. Todder day he gib me slip fore de sun up, and was gone de whole ob de blessed day. I had a big stick ready cut foi to gib him deuced good beating when he did come — but Ise THE GOLD-BUG. 7 sich a fool dat I hadn't de heart arter all — he look so berry poorly." "Eh? — what? — ah yes! — upon the whole I think you had better not be too severe with the poor fellow — don't flog him, Jupiter — he can't very well stand it— but can you form no idea of what has occasioned this illness, or rather this change of conduct ? Has anything unpleasant happened since I saw you?" " No, massa, dey aint bin noffin onpleasant since den — 'twas fore den I'm feared — 'twas de berry day you was dare." " How? what do you mean?" "Why, Massa, I mean de bug — dare now." "The what?" "De bug — I'm berry sartain dat Massa Will bin bit somewhere bout de head by dat goole-bug." " And what cause have you, Jupiter, for such a supposi- tion ? " " Claws enuff, massa, and mouff too. I nebber did see sich a deuced bug — he kick and he bite ebery ting what cum near him. Massa Will cotch him fuss, but had for to let him go gin mighty quick, I tell you — den was de time he must ha got de bite. I didn't like de look ob de bug mouff, myself, no how, so I wouldn't take hold ob him wid my finger, but 1 cotch him wid a piece ob paper dat I found. I rap him up in de paper and stuff piece ob it in he mouflf — dat was de way." " And you think, then, that your master was really bitten by the beetle, and that the bite made him sick ? " " I don't tink noffin about it — I nose it. What make him dream bout de goole so much, if taint cause he bit by de goole-bug ? Ise heerd bout dem goole-bugs fore dis.'' " But how do you know he dreams about gold ? " " How I know 1 why, cause he talk about it in he sleep — dat's how I nose." " Well, Jup, perhaps you are right ; but to what fortunate circumstance am I to attribute the honour of a visit from you to day? " " What de matter, massa 1 " 8 THE CcOLD-BCJG. " Did you bring any message from Mr. Legrand 1 " " No, Massa, I bring dis here pissel ; " and here Jupiter handed me a note which ran thus : ' My Deak " Why have I not seen you for so long a time 1 I hope you have not been so fooHsh as to take offence at any little brusquerie of mine ; but no, that is improbable. "Since I saw you I have had great cause for anxiety. I have something to tell you, yet scarcely know how to tell it, or whether I should tell it at all. " I have not been quite well for some days past, and poor old Jup annoys me, almost beyond endurance, by his well- meant attentions. Would you believe if? — he had pre- pared a huge stick, the other day, with which to chastise me for giving him the sUp, and spending the day, solus, among the hills on the main land. I verily believe that my ill looks alone saved me a flogging. " I have made no addition to my cabinet since we met. " If you can, in any way, make it convenient, come over with Jupiter. Do come. I wish to see you to-nigM, upon business of importance. I assure you that it is of the highest importance. — Ever yours, "William Legrand." There was something in the tone of this note which gave me great uneasiness. Its whole style differed materi- ally from that of Legrand. What could he be dreaming of ] What new crotchet possessed his excitable brain ? What " business of the highest importance " could he possibly have to transact ? Jupiter's account of him boded no good. I dreaded lest the continued pressure of misfortune had, at length, fairly unsettled the reason of my friend. Without a moment's hesitation, therefore, I prepared to accompany the negro. Upon reaching the wharf, I noticed a sc)'the and three spades, all apparently new, lying in the bottom of the boat in which we were to embai-k. " What is the meaning of all this, Jup 1 " I inquired. THE GOLD-BUG. 9 " Him syfe, massa, and spade." " Very true ; but what are they doing here 1 " " Hun de syfe and de spade what Massa Will sis pon my buying for him in de town, and de debbil's own lot of money I had to gib for em." '' But what, in the name of all that is mysterious, is your ' Massa Will ' going to do with scythes and spades 1 " " Dat's more dan / know, and debbil take me if I don't blieve 'tis more dan he know too. But it's all cum ob de Finding that no satisfaction was to be obtained ot Jupiter, whose whole intellect seemed to be absorbed by " de bug," I now stepped into the boat and made sail. With a fair and strong breeze we soon ran into the little cove to the northward of Fort Moultrie, and a walk of some two miles brought us to the hut. It was about three in the afternoon when we arrived. Legrand had been awaiting us in eager expectation. He grasped my hand with a nervous empressement which alarmed me and strength- ened the suspicions already entertained. His countenance was pale even to ghastliness, and his deep-set eyes glared with unnatm-al lustre. After some inquiries respecting his health, I asked him, not knowing what better to say, if he had yet obtained the scarabceus from Lieutenant G . " Oh, yes," he replied, colouring violently, " I got it from him the next morning. Nothing should tempt me to part with that scarahceus. Do you know that Jupiter is quite right about it ! " " In what way 1 " I asked, with a sad foreboding at heart. " In supposing it to be a bug of real gold." He said this with an air of profound seriousness, and I felt inex- pressibly shocked. " This bug is to make my fortune," he continued, with a triumphant smile, " to reinstate me in my family posses- sions. Is it any wonder, then, that I prize if! Since Fortune has thought fit to bestow it upon me, I have only to use it properly and I shall arrive at the gold of which it is the index. Jupiter, bring me that scarabmis I '' 10 THE GOLD-BUG. " What ! (le bug, massa t I'd rudder not go fer tnibble dat bug — you mus git him for your own self." Hereupon Legrand arose, with a grave and stately air, and brought me the beetle from a glass case in which it was enclosed. It was a beautiful scarabceus, and, at that time, unknown to naturalists — of course a great prize in a scientific point of view. There were two round black spots near one ex- tremity of the back, and a long one near the other. The scales were exceedingly hard and glossy, with all the appearance of burnished gold. The weight of the insect was very remarkable, and, taking all things into considera- tion, I could hardly blame Jupiter for his opinion respecting it ; but what to make of Legrand's concordance with that opinion, I could not, for the life of me, tell. " I sent for you," said he, in a grandiloquent tone, when I had completed my examination of the beetle, " I sent for you, that I might have your counsel and assistance in fur- thering the views of Fate and of the bug " " My dear Legrand," I cried, interrupting him, " you are certainly unwell, and had better use some little precautions. You shall go to bed, and I will remain with you a few days, until you get over this. You are feverish and " " Feel my pulse," said he. I felt it, and, to say the truth, found not the slightest indication of fever. " But you may be ill and yet have no fever. AUow me this once to prescribe for you. In the first place, go to bed. In the next " " You are mistaken," he interposed ; " I am as well as I can expect to be under the excitement which I suffer. If you really wish me well, you will relieve this excitement." " And how is this to be done ? " " Very easily. Jupiter and myself are going upon an nxpedition into the hills, upon the main land, and, in this expedition, we shall need the aid of some person in whom we can confide. You are the only one we can trust. Whether we succeed or fail, the excitement which you now perceive in me will be equally allayed." " I am anxious to oblige you in any way," I replied ; THE GOLD-BUG. 1] " but do you mean to say that this infernal beetle has any connection with your expedition into the hills "i '' "It has." " Then, Legrand, I can become a party to no such ab- surd proceeding." " I am sorry — very sorry — for we shall have to ti-y it by ourselves." " Try it by yourselves ! The man is surely mad ! — but stay ! — how long do you propose to be absent 1 " " Probably all night. We shall start immediately, and be back, at all events, by sunrise." "And will you promise me upon your honour, that when this freak of yours is over, and the bug business (good God !) settled to your satisfaction, you will then return home and follow my advice implicitly, as that of your physician ? " " Yes ; I promise ; and now let us be ofif, for we have no time to lose." With a heavy heart I accompanied my friend. We started about four o'clock— Legrand, Jupiter, the dog, and myself. Jupiter had with him the scythe and spades — the whole of which he insisted upon carrying— more through fear, it seemed to me, of trusting either of the implements within reach of his master, than from any excess of indus- try or complaisance. His demeanour was dogged in the extreme, and " dat deuced bug " were the sole words which escaped his lips during the journey. For my own part, I had charge of a couple of dark lanterns, while Legrand con- tented himself with the scarahceus, which he carried attached to the end of a bit of whip-cord ; twirling it to and fro, with the air of a conjuror, as he went. When I observed this last plain evidence of my friend's aberration of mind I could scarcely refrain from tears. I thought it best, however, to humour his fancy, at least for the present, or until I could adopt some more energetic measures with a chance of success. In the meantime I endeavoured, but all in vain, to sound him in regard to the object of the expedition. Having succeeded in inducing me to accompany him, he seemed un- willing to hold conversation upon any topic of minor 12 THE GOLD-BUG. importance, and to all my questions vouchsafed no otter reply than " We shall see ! " We crossed the creek at the head of the island by means of a skiff, and, ascending the high grounds on the shore of the main land, proceeded in a north-westerly direction, through a tract of country excessively wild and desolate, where no trace of a human footstep was to be seen. Le- grand led the way with decision ; pausing only for an instant, here and' there, to consult what appeared to be certain landmarks of his own contrivance upon a former occasion. In this manner we journeyed for about two hours, and the sun was just setting when we entered a region infinitely more dreary than any yet seen. It was a species of table- land, near the summit of an almost inaccessible hill, densely wooded from base to pinnacle, and interspersed with huge crags that appeared to lie loosely upon the soil, and in many cases were prevented from precipitating themselves into the valleys below, merely by the support of the trees against which they reclined. Deep ravines, in various directions, gave an air of still sterner solemnity to the scene. The natural platform to which we had clambered was thickly overgrown with brambles, through which we soon discovered that it would have been impossible to force our way but for the scythe ; and -Jupiter, by direction of his master, proceeded to clear for us a path to the foot of an enormously tall tulip-tree, which stood, with some eight or ten oaks, upon the level, and far surpassed them all, and all other trees which I had then ever seen, in the beauty of its foliage and form, in the wide spread of its branches, and in the general majesty of its appearance. When we reached this tree, Legrand turned to Jupiter, and asked him if he thought he could climb it. The old man seemed a little staggered by the question, and for some moments made no reply. At length he approached the huge trunk, walked slowly around it, and examined it with minute attention. When he had completed his scrutiny, he merely said " Yes. massa, Jup climb any tree he ebber see in he life." " Then up with you as soon as possible, for it will soon be too dark to see what we are about." THE GOLD-BUa. 13 " How far mus go up, massa 1 " inquired Jupiter. " Get up the main trunk first, and then I will tell you which way to go — and here — stop ! take this beetle with you." " De bug, Massa Will ! — de goole bug ! " cried the negro drawing back in dismay — " what for mus tote de bug way up de tree ? — d — n if I do ! " " If you are afraid, Jup, a great big negro like you, to take hold of a harmless little dead beetle, why you can carry it up by this string — but if you do not take it up with you in some way, I shall be under the necessity of breaking your head with this shovel." " What de matter now, massa t " said Jup, evidently shamed into compliance ; " always want for to raise fuss wid old nigger. Was only funnin any how. Me feered de bug ! what I keer for de bug t " Here he took cautiously hold of the extreme end of the string, and, maintaining the insect as far from his person as circumstances would permit, prepared to ascend the tree. In youth, the tulip-tree, or Liriodendron tulipifervm, the most magnificent of American foresters, has a trunk peculi- arly smooth, and often rises to a great height without latera. branches ; but, in its riper age, the bark becomes gnarled and uneven, whUe many short limbs make their appearance on the stem. Thus the difficulty of ascension, in the pre- sent case, lay more in semblance than in reality. Embracing the huge cylinder, as closely as possible, with his arms and knees, seizing with his hands some projections, and resting his naked toes upon others, Jupiter, after one or two narrow escapes from falling, at length wriggled himself into the first great fork, and seemed to consider the whole business as virtually accomplished. The rish of the achievement was, in fact, now over, although the climber was some sixty or seventy feet from the ground. " Which way mus go now, Massa Will V he asked. "Keep up the largest branch — the one on this side," said Legrand. The negro obeyed him promptly, and appa- rently with but little trouble ; ascending higher and higher, antil no glimpse of his squat figure could be obtained 14 THE GOLD-BUG. through the dense foliage which enveloped it. Presentlj his voice was heard in a sort of halloo. " How much fudder is got for go 1" " How high up are you?" asked Legrand. "El)ber so fur," replied the negro ; "can see de sky fru de top ob de tree." " Never mind the sky, but attend to what I say. Look down the trunk and count the limbs below you on this side. How many limbs have you passed t" " One, two, tree, four, fibe — I done pass fibe big limb, massa, pon dis side." "Then go one limb higher." In a few minutes the voice was heard again, announcing that the seventh limb was attained. " Now, Jup," cried Legrand, evidently much excited, " I want you to work your way out upon that limb as far aa you can. If you see anything strange, let me know." By this time what little doubt I might have entertained of my poor friend's insanity was put finally at rest. I had no alternative but to conclude him stricken with lunacy, and I became seriously anxious about getting him home. While I was pondering upon what was best to be done, Jupiter's voice was again heard. " Mos feerd for to ventur pon dis limb berry far tis dead limb putty much all de way." " Did you say it was a dead limb, Jupiter ]" cried Legrand in a quavering voice. " Yes, massa, him dead as de door-nail — done up for sartain — done departed dis here life." "What in the name of heaven shall I dol" asked Legrand, seemingly in the greatest distress. " Do ! " said I, glad of an opportunity to interpose a word, " why come home and go to bed. Come now ! that's a fine fellow. It's getting late, and, besides, you re- member your promise. " " Jupiter," cried he, without heeding me in the least, "dr you hear me?" " Tes, Massa Will, hear you ebber so plain," THE tiOLD-BOG. 15 '• Try the wood well, then, with your knife, and see if you think it very rotten." ■' Him rotten, massa, siu-e nuff," replied the negro in a few moments, "but not so berry rotten as mought be. Mought Tentur out leetle way pon de limb by myself, dat's true." " By yourself ! — What do you mean V " Why, I mean de bug. 'Tis herry hebby bug. Spose I drop binn down fuss, and den de limb won't break wid just de weight ob one nigger." " You infernal scoundrel ! " cried Legrand, apparently much relieved, " what do you mean by telling me such non- sense as that? As sure as you drop that beetle I'll break your neck. Look here, Jupiter, do you hear me?" " Yes, Massa, needn't hollo at poor nigger dat style." " Well ! now listen ! — if you will \'enture out on the limb as far as you think safe, and not let go the beetle, I'll make you a present of a silver dollar as soon as j'ou get down." " I'm gwine, Massa WiU — deed I is," replied the negrc very promptly — " mos out to the eend now." "Out to the end!" here fairly screamed Legrand, "do you say you are out to the end of that limb ?" " Soon be to de eend, massa, — o-o-o-o-oh ! Lor-gol-a- marcy ! what is dis here pon de tree ?" " Well," cried Legrand, highly delighted, "what is it?" ''Why, taint noflBn but a skull — somebody bin lef him head up de tree, and de crows done gobble ebery bit ob de meat off." " A skull, you say ! — very well ! — how is it fastened to the limb? — what holds it on?" " Sure nuff, massa ; mus look. Why dis berry ourous sarcumstance, pon my word — dare's a great big nail in de skull, what fastens ob it on to de tree." " Well now, Jupiter, do exactly as I tell you — do you hear?" " Yes, massa." " Pay attention, then ! — find the left eye of the skulL" " Hum ! hoo ! dat's good ! why dare aint no eye lef at ail'' 16 THE GOLD-BUG. " Curse your stupidity ! do you know your right hand from, your left 1" " Yes, I nose dat — nose all bout dat — tis my lef hand what I chops de wood wid." " To be sure ! you are left-handed ; and your left eye is on the same side as your left hand. Nom', I suppose you can find the left eye of the skidl, or the place where the left eye has been. Have you found if!" Here was a long pause. At length the negro asked, " Is de lef eye of de skull pon de same side as de lef hand of de skull, too 1 — cause de skull aint got not a bit ob a hand at all — ^nebber mind ! I got de lef eye now — here de lef eye ! what mus do wid it 1" " Let the beetle drop through it, as far as the string will reach — but be careful and not let go your hold of the string." " All dat done, Massa Will ; mighty easy ting for to put de bug fru de hole — look out for him dare below ' " During this colloquy no portion of Jupiter's person could be seen ; but the beetle, which he had suffered to de- .-.ceud, was now visible at the end of the string, and glistened, like a globe of burnished gold, in the last rays of the setting sun, some of which still faintly illumined the eminence upon which we stood. The scarabceus hung quite clear of any branches, and, if allowed to fall, would have fallen at our feet. Legrand immediately took the scythe, and cleared with it a circular space, three or four yards in diameter, just beneath the insect, and, having accomplished this, ordered Jupiter to let go the string and come down from the tree. Driving a peg, with great nicety, into the ground, at the precise spot where the beetle fell, my friend now pro- duced from his pocket a tape-measure. Fastening one end of this at that point of the trunk of the tree which was nearest the peg, he unrolled it till it reached the peg, and thence farther unrolled it, in the direction already estab- lished by the two points of the tree and the peg, for the distance of fifty feet — Jupiter clearing away the brambles with the sc)rthe. At the spot thus attained a second peg THE GOI,D-BUG. 17 was driven, and about this, as a centre, a nide circJe, about four feet in diameter, deso-ibed. Taking now a spade him- self, and giving one to Jupiter and one to me, Legrand begged us to set about digging as quickly as possible. To speak the truth, I had no especial relish for such amusement at any time, and, at that particular moment, would most willingly have declined it ; for the night was coming on, and I felt much fatigued with the exercise already taken ; but I saw no mode of escape, and was feai ful of disturbing my poor friend's equanimity by a refusal. Could I have depended, indeed, upon Jupiter's aid, I would have had no hesitation in attempting to get the lunatic home by force ; but I was too well assured of the old negro's disposition, to hope that he would assist me, under any circumstances, in a personal contest with his master. I made no doubt that the latter had been infected with some of the innumerable Southern superstitions about money buried, and that his fantasy had received confirmation by the finding of the scarabceus, or, perhaps, by Jupiter's obsti- nacy in maintaining it to be " a bug of real gold." A mind disposed to lunacy would readily be led away by such suggestions — especially if chiming in with favourite precon- ceived ideas — and then I called to mind the poor fellow's speech about the beetle's being " the index of his fortune." Upon the whole, I was sadly vexed and puzzled, but, at length, I concluded to make a virtue of necessity — to dig with a good will, and thus the sooner to convince the visionary, by ocular demonstration, of the fallacy of the opinions he entertained. The lanterns having been lit, we all fell to work with a zeal worthy a more rational cause ; and, as the glare fell upon our persons and implements, I could not help thinking how picturesque a group we composed, and how strange and suspicious our labours must have appeared to any inter- loper who, by chance, might have stumbled upon our where- abouts. We dug very steadily for two hours. Little was said ; and our chief embarrassment lay in the yelpings of the dog. who took exceeding interest in our proceedings. He at VOL. I, 18 THE GOLD-BUG. length became so obstreperous, that we grew fearful of his giving the alarm to some stragglers iu the vicinity ; or, rather, this was the apprehension of Legrand ; — for myself, I should have rejoiced at any interruption which might have enabled me to get the wanderer home. The noise was, at length, very effectually silenced by Jupiter, who, getting out of the hole with a dogged air of deliberation, tied the brute's mouth up with one of his suspenders, and then re- turned, with a grave chuckle, to his task. When the time mentioned had expired, we had reached a depth of five feet, and yet no signs of any treasure became manifest. A general pause ensued, and I began to hope that the farce was at an end. Legrand, however, although evidently much disconcerted, wiped his brow thoughtfully and recommenced. We had excavated the entire circle of four feet diameter, and now we slightly enlarged the Imut, and went to the farther depth of two feet. Still nothing appeared. The gold-seeker, whom I sincerely pitied, at length clambered from the pit, with the bitterest disappoint- ment imprinted upon every feature, and proceeded, slowly and reluctantly, to put on his coat, which he had thrown off at the beginning of his labour. In the meantime I made no remark. Jupiter, at a signal from his master, began to gather up his tools. This done, and the dog having been nnmuzzled, we turned in profound silence towards home. We had taken, perhaps, a dozen steps in this direction, when, with a loud oath, Legrand strode up to Jupiter, and seized him by the collar. The astonished negro opened his eyes and mouth to the fullest extent, let fall the spades, and fell upon his knees. " You scoundrel," said Legrand. hissing out the syllables from between his clenched teeth — "you infernal black villain ! — speak, I tell you ! — answer me this instant, with out prevarication ! — which — which is your left eye t " " Ohj my golly, Massa Will ! aiiit dis here my lef eye for sartainV roared the terrified Jupiter, placing his hand upon his rif/Id organ of A-ision, and holding it there with a desperate pertinacity, as if in immediate dread of bis master's attempt at a gouge. THE GOLD-BUG. 19 " I thought so ! — I knew it ! hurrah ! " vociferated Legrand, letting the negro go, and executing a series of curvets and caracols, much to the astonishment of his valet, who, arising from his knees, looked, mutely, from his master to myself, and then from myself to his master. " Come ! we must go back," said the latter ; " the game's not up yet ;" and he again led the way to the tulip-tree. "Jupiter," said he, when he reached its foot, "come here ! was the skull nailed to the limb with the iface out- wards, or with the face to the limb ? " " De face was out, massa, so dat de crows could get at de eyes good, widout any trouble." " Well, then, was it this eye or that through which you dropped the beetle ? " — ^here Legrand touched each of Jupi- ter's eyes. " Twas dis eye, massa — de lef eye — ^jis as you tell me,'' and here it was his right eye that the negro indicated. " That will do — we must try it again." Here my friend, about whose madness I now saw, or fancied that I saw, certain indications of method, removed the peg which marked the spot where the beetle fell, to a spot about three inches to the westward of its former posi- tion. Taking, now, the tape-measure from the nearest point of the trunk to the peg, as before, and continuing the exten- sion in a straight line to the distance of fifty feet, a spot was indicated, removed by several yards from the point at which we had been digging. Around the new position a circle, somewhat larger than in the former instance, was now described, and we again set to work with the spades. I was dreadfully weary, but scarcely understanding what had occasioned the change in my thoughts, I felt no longer any great aversion from the labour imposed. I had become most unaccountably interested — nay, even excited. Perhaps there was something, amid all the extravagant demeanour of Legrand — some air of forethought, or of deliberation, which impressed me. I dug eagerly, and now and then caught myself actually looking,, with something that very much resembled expectation, for the fancied treasure, the vision of which had demented my 20 THE GOLD-BUG. unfortunate companion. At a period when such vagaries of thought most fully possessed me, and when we had been at work periiaps an hour and a half, we were again inter- rupted by the violent bowlings of the dog. His uneasiness, in the first instance, had been, evidently, but the result of playfulness or caprice, but he now assumed a bitter and serious tone. Upon Jupiter's again attempting to muzzle him. he made furious resistance, and, leaping into the hole, tore up the mould frantically with his claws. In a few seconds he had uncovered a mass of human bones, forming two complete skeletons, intermingled with several buttons of metal, and what appeared to be the dust of decayed woollen. One or two strokes of a spade upturned the blade of a large Spanish knife, and, as we dug farther, three or four loose pieces of gold and silver coin came to light. At the sight of these the joy of Jupiter could scarcely be restrained, but the countenance of his master wore an air of extreme disappointment. He urged us, however, to continue our exertions, and the words were hardly uttered when I stumbled and fell forward, having caught the toe of my boot in a large ring of iron that lay half-buried in the loose earth. We now worked in earnest, and never did I pass ten minutes of more intense excitement. During this interval we had fairly unearthed an oblong chest of wood, which from its perfect preservation and wonderful hardness, had plainly been subjected to some mineralising process — per- haps that of the bichloride of mercury. This box was three feet and a half long, three feet broad, aud two and a half feet deep. It was firmly secured by bands of wrought iron, rivetted, and forming a kind of open trellis-work over the whole. On each side of the chest, near the top, were three rings of iron — six in all — by means of which a firm hold could be obtained by six persons. Our utmost united endeavours served only to disturb the coffer very slightly in its bed. We at once saw the impossibility of removing so great a weight. Luckily, the sole fastenings of the lid consisted of two sliding bolts. These we drew back iremliling and panting with anxiety. In an instant, a THK GOLD-BUG. 21 treasure of incalculable value lay gleaming before us. As the rays of the lanterns fell within the pit, there flashed upwards a glow and a glare, from a confused heap of gold and of jewels, that absolutely dazzled our eyes. I shall not pretend to describe the feelings with which I gazed. Amazement was, of course, predominant. Le- grand appeared exhausted with excitement, and spoke very few words. Jupiter's countenance wore, for some minutes, as deadly a pallor as it is possible, in the nature of things, for any negro's visage to assume. He seemed stupefied — thunderstricken. Presently he fell upon his knees in the pit, and, burying his naked arms up to the elbows in gold, let them there remain, as if enjoying the luxury of a bath. At length, with a deep sigh, he exclaimed, as if in a soliloquy, " And dis all cum ob de goole-bug ! de putty goole-bug ! de poor little goole-bug, what I boosed in dat sabage kind ob style! Aint you shamed ob yourself, nigger? — answer me dat ! " It became necessary, at last, that I should arouse both master and valet to the expediency of removing the treasure. It was growing late, and it behoved us to make exertion, that we might get everything housed before daylight. It was difficult to say what should be done, and much time was spent in deliberation — so confused were the ideas of all. We, finally, lightened the box by removing two-thirds of its contents, when we were enabled, with some trouble, to raise it from the hole. The articles taken out were deposited among the brambles, and the dog left to guard them, with strict orders from Jupiter neither, upon any pretence, to stir from the spot, nor to open his mouth until our return. We then hurriedly made for home with the chest ; reaching the hut in safety, but after excessive toil, at one o'clock in the morning. Worn out as we were, it was not in human nature to do more immediately. We rested until two, and had supper ; starting for the hills immediately afterwards, armed with three stout sacks, which, by good luck, were upon the premises. A little before four we arrived at the pit, divided the remainder of the booty, as equally as might 22 THE GOLD-BUG. be, among us, and, leaving the holes unfilled, again set out for the hut, at which, for the second time, we deposited our golden burthens, just as the first faint streaks of the dawn gleamed from over the tree-tops in the East. We were now thoroughly broken down ; but the intense excitement of the time denied us repose. After an unquiet slumber of some three or four hours' duration, we arose, as if by preconcert, to make examination of our treasure. The chest had been full to the brim, and we spent the whole day, and the greater part of the next night, in a scrutiny of its contents. There had been nothing like order or arrangement. Everything had been heaped in promis- cuously. Having assorted all with care, we found ourselves possessed of even vaster wealth than we had at first sup- posed. In coin there was rather more than four hundred and fifty thousand dollars- — estimating the value of the pieces, as accurately as we could, by the tables of the period. There was not a particle of silver. All was gold of antique date and of great variety — French, Spanish, and German money, with a few English guineas, and some counters, of which we had never seen specimens before. There were several very large and heavj'' coins, so worn that we could make nothing of their inscriptions. There was no Ameri- can money. The value of the jewels we found more difficulty in estimating. There were diamonds — some of them exceedingly large and fine — a hundred and ten in all, and not one of them small ; eighteen rubies of remarkable brilliancy ; — three hundred and ten emeralds, all very beautiful ; and twenty-one sapphires, with an opal. These stones had all been broken from their settings and throvra loose in the chest. The settings themselves, which we picked out from among the other gold, appeared to have been beaten up with hammers, as if to prevent identifica- tion. Besides all this, there was a vast quantity of solid gold ornaments ; — nearly two hundred massive finger and ear rings ; — rich chains — thirty of these, if I remember ; — eighty-three very large and heavy crucifixes ;■ — five gold censers of great value ; — a urodigious golden punch-bowl, ornamented with nchly chased vine-leaves and Bacchanalian THE GOLD-BUG. 23 figures ; with, two sword-handles exquisitely embossed, and many other smaller articles which I cannot recollect. The weight of these valuables exceeded three hundred and fifty pounds avoirdupois ; and in this estimate I have not in- cluded one Imnrlred and ninety-seven superb gold watches : three of the number being worth each five hundred dollars, if one. Many of them were very old, and as time-keepers valueless ; the works having suffered, more or less, from corrosion — but all were richly jewelled and in cases of great worth. We estimated the entire contents of the chest, that night, at a million and a half of dollars ; and, upon the subsequent disposal of the trinkets and jewels (a few being retained for our own use), it was found that we had greatly undervalued the treasure. When, at length, we had concluded our examination, and the intense excitement of the time had in some measure subsided, Legrand, who saw that I was dying vnth impatience for a solution of this most extraordinary riddle, entered into a full detail of all the circumstances connected vrith it. " You remember," said he, " the night when I handed you the rough sketch I had made of the scarabceus. You recollect also, that I became quite vexed at you for insisting that my drawing resembled a death's-head. When you first made this assertion I thought you were jesting ; but after- wards I called to mind tke peculiar spots on the back of the insect, and admitted to myself that your remark had some little foundation in fact. Still, the sneer at my graphic powers irritated me — ^for I am considered a good artist — and, therefore, when you handed me the scrap of parchment, I was about to crumple it up and throw it angrily into the fire." " The scrap of paper, you mean," said I. " No ; it had much of the appearance of paper, and at first I supposed it to be such, but when I came to draw upon it, I discovered it, at once, to be a piece of very thin parchment. It was quite dirty, you remember. Well, as I was in the very act of crumpling it up, my glance fell upon the sketch at which you had been looking, and you 24 THE GOLD-BUG. aaay imagine my astonishment when 1 perceived, in fact, the figure of a death's-head just where, it seemed to me, 1 had made the drawing of the beetle. For a moment I was too much amazed to think with accuracy. I knew that my design was very different in detail from this — although there was a certain similarity in general outline. Presently 1 took a candle, and seating myself at the other end of the room, proceeded to scrutinise the parchment more closely. Upon turning it over, I saw my own sketch upon the re- verse, just as I had made it. My first idea, now, was mere surprise at the really remarkable similarity of outline — at the singular coincidence involved in the fact, that unknown to me, there should have been a skull upon the other side of the parchment, immediately beneath my figure of the scarabcBUS, and that this skull, not only in outline, but in size, should so closely resemble my drawing. I say the singularity of this coincidence absolutely stupified me for a time. This is the usual effect of such coincidences. The mind struggles to establish a connection — a sequence of cause and effect — and, being unable to do so, suffers a species of temporary paralysis. But when I recovered from this stupor, there dawned upon me gradually a conviction which startled me even far more than the coincidence. I began distinctly, positively, to remember that there had been no drawing upon the parchment when I made my sketch of the scarabceiis. I became perfectly certain of this ; for I recollected turning up first one side and then the other, in search of the cleanest spot. Had the skull been then there, of course I could not have failed to notice it. Here was indeed a mystery which I felt it impossible to explain ; but, even at that early moment, there seemed to glimmer, faintly, within the most remote and secret chambers of my intellect, a glowworm-like conception of that truth which last night's adventure brought to so magnificent a demonstration. I arose at once, and putting the parchment securely away, dismissed all farther reflection until I should be alone. " AYhcu you had none, and when Jupiter was fast asleep, I betook uiyst-lt lo a more methodical investigation of the affair. In the first place 1 considered the manner iv THE GOLD-BUG. 25 which the parchment had come into my possession. The spot where we discovered the scarabceus was on the coast oi the mainland, about a mile eastward of the island, and but a short distance above high-water mark. Upon my talcing hold of it, it gave me a sharp bite, which caused me to let it drop. Jupiter, with his accustomed caution, before seiz- ing the insect, which had flown towards him, looked about him for a leaf, or something of that nature, by which to take hold of it. It was at this moment that his eyes, and mine also, fell upon the scrap of parchment, which I then supposed to be paper. It was lying half buried in the sand, a corner sticking up. Near the spot where we found it, I observed the remnants of the hull of what appeared to have been a ship's long boat. The wreck seemed to have been there for a very great while ; for the resemblance to boat timbers could scarcely be traced. " Well, Jupiter picked up the parchment, wraj^ped the beetle in it, and gave it to me. Soon afterwards we turned to go home, and on the way met Lieutenant G . I showed him the insect, and he begged me to let him take it to the fort. Upon my consenting, he thrust it forthwith into his waistcoat pocket, without the parchment in which it had been wrapped, and which I had continued to hold in vaj hand during his inspection. Perhaps he dreaded my changing my mind, and thought it best to make sure of the prize at once — you know how enthusiastic he is on all subjects connected with Natural History. At the same time, with- out being conscious of it, I must have deposited the parch- ment in my own pocket. " You remember that when I went to the table, for the purpose of making a sketch of the beetle, I found ]io paper where it was usually kept. I looked in the drawer, and found none there. I searched my pockets, hoping to find an old letter, when my hand fell upon the parchment. I thus detail the precise mode in which it came into my possession ; for the circumstances impressed me with pecu- liar force. " No doubt you will think me fanciful — but I had iilready established n kind of connection, 1 had put together 26 THE GOLD-BUG. two links of a great chain. There was a boat lying upon a sea-coast, and not far from the boat was a parchment — not a paper — with a skull depicted upon it. You will, of course, ask " Where is the connection ?" I reply that the skull, or death's-head, is the well-known emblem of the pirate. The flag of the death's-head is hoisted in all engagements. " I have said that the scrap was parchment, and not paper. Parchment is durable — almost imperishable. Mat- ters of little moment are rarely consigned to parchment,; since, for the mere ordinary purposes of drawing or writing, it is not nearly so well adapted as paper. This reflection suggested some meaning — some relevancy — in the death's- head. I did not fail to observe, also, the form of the parchment. Although one of its comers had been, by some accident, destroyed, it could be seen that the original form was oblong. It was just such a slip, indeed, as might have been chosen for a memorandum — ^for a record of some- thing to be long remembered and carefully preserved." " But," I interposed, " you say that the skull was not upon the parchment when you made the drawing of the beetle. How then do you trace any connection between the boat and the skull — since this latter, according to your own admission, must have been designed (G-od only knows how or by whom) at some period subsequent to your sketching the scarabceus V " Ah, hereupon turns the whole mystery ; although the secret, at this point, I had comparatively little difiiculty in solving. My steps were sure, and could afi"ord but a single result. I reasoned, for example, thus : When I drew the scarabceus, there was no skull apparent upon the parchment. When I had completed the drawing I gave it to you, and observed you narrowly until you returned it. You, there- fore, did not design the skull, and no one else was present to do it. Then it was not done by human agency. And nevertheless it was done. "At this stage of my reflections I endeavoured to remember, and did remember, with entire distinctness, every incident which occurred about tlie period in questiop. THE GOLD-BUG. 27 The weather was chilly (oh rare and happy accident !), and a fire was blazing upon the hearth. I was heated with exercise and sat near the table. You, however, had drawn a chair close to the chimney. Just as I placed the parch- ment in your hand, and as you were in the act of inspect- ing it, Wolf, the Newfoundland, entered, and leaped upon your shoulders. With your left hand you caressed him and kept him off, while your right, holding the parchment, was permitted to fall listlessly between your knees, and in close proximity to the fire. At one moment I thought the blaze had caught it, and was about to caution you, but, before I could speak, you had withdrawn it, and were engaged in its examination. When I considered all these particulars, I doubted not for a moment that heat had been the agent in bringing to light, upon the parchment, the skull which I saw designed upon it. You are well aware that chemical preparations exist, and have existed time out of mind, by means of which it is possible to write upon either paper or vellum, so that the characters shall become visible only when subjected to the action of fire. Zafifre, digested in aqua regia, and diluted with four times its weight of water, is sometimes employed ; a green tint results. The regulus of cobalt, dissolved in spirit of nitre, gives a red. These colours disappear at longer or shorter intervals after the material written upon cools, but again become apparent upon the re-application of heat. '• I now scrutinised the death's-head with care. Its outer edges — ^the edges of the drawing nearest the edge of the vellum — were far more distinct than the others. It was clear that the action of the caloric had been imperfect or unequal. I immediately kindled a fire, and subjected every portion of the parchment to a glowing heat. At first, the only effect was the strengthening of the faint lines in the skull ; but, upon persevering in the experiment, there be- came visible, at the corner of the slip, diagonally opposite to the spot in which the death's-head was delineated, the figure of what I at first supposed to be a goat. A closer scrutiny, however, satisfied me that it was intended for a kid." 28 THE GOLIJ-BUG. " Ha ! ha ! " said I, " to be sure 1 have no right to laugh at you — a million and a half of money is too serious a matter for mirth — but you are not about to establish a third link in your chain — you will not find any especial connection between your pirates and a goat — pirates, you know, have nothing to do with goats ; they appertain to the farming interest." " But I have said that the figure was not that of a goat." " Well, a kid then — pretty much the same thing." " Pretty much, but not altogether," said Legrand. " You may have heard of one Oaptain Kidd. I at oijce looked upon the figure of the animal as a kind of punning or hiero- glyphioal signature. I say signature ; because its position upon the vellum suggested this idea. The death's-head at the corner diagonally opposite, had, in the same manner, the air of a stamp, or seal. But I was sorely put out by the absence of all else — of the body to my imagined instrument — of the text for my context." " I presume you expected to find a letter between the stamp and the signature." " Something of that kind. The fact is, I felt irresistibly impressed with a presentiment of some vast good fortune impending. I can scarcely say why. Perhaps, after all, it was rather a desire than an actual belief ; but do you know that Jupiter's silly words, about the bug being of solid gold, had a remarkable effect upon my fancy? And then the series of accidents and coincidences — these were so very extraordinary. Do you observe how mere an accident it was that these events should have occurred upon the sole day of all the year in which it has been, or may be, suffi- ciently cool for fire, and that without the fire, or without the intervention of the dog at the precise moment in which he appeared, I should never have become aware of the death's- head, and so never the possessor of the treasure t" " But proceed — I am all impatience," " Well ; you have heard, of course, the many stories current — the thousand vague rumours afloat about money buried, somewhere upon the Atlantic coast, by Kidd and his associates. These rumours must have had some found* THE GOLD-BUG. 29 tion in fact. And that the rumours have existed so long and so continuous, could have resulted, it appeared to me, only from the circumstance of the buried treasure still remaining entombed. Had Kidd concealed his plunder for a time, and afterwards reclaimed it, the rumours would scarcely have reached us in their present unvarying form. You will observe that the stories told are all about money- seekers, not about money-finders. Had the pirate recovered his money, there the affair would have dropped. It seemed to me that some accident — say the loss of a memorandum indicating its locality — had deprived him of the means of recovering it, and that this accident had become known to his followers, who otherwise might never have heard that treasure had been concealed at all, and who, busying them- selves in vain, because unguided attempts, to regain it, had given first birth, and then universal currency, to the reports which are now so common. Have you ever heard of any important treasure being unearthed along the coast?" " Never." " But that Kidd's accumulations were immense is well known. I took it for granted, therefore, that the earth still held them ; and you will scarcely be surprised when I tell you that I felt a hope, nearly amounting to certainty, that the parchment so strangely found, involved a lost record of the place of deposit." " But how did you proceed 1 " "I held the vellum again to the fire, after increasing the heat ; but nothing appeared. I now thought it possible that the coating of dirt might have something to do witli the failure ; so I carefully rinsed the parchment by pouring warm water over it, and, having done this, I placed it in a tin pan, with the skull downwards, and put the pan upon a furnace of lighted charcoal. In a few minutes, the pan having become thoroughly heated, I removed the slip, and, to my inexpressible joy, found it spotted, in several places, with what appeared to be figures arranged in lines. Again I placed it in the pan, and suffered it to remain another minute. Upon taking it off, the whole was just as you see it now." 30 *HE GOLD-BUG. Here Legrand, having re-heated the parchment, submitted it to my inspection. The following characters were rudely traced, in a red tint, between the death's-head and the goat : 53«t3oS))6»;4826)44:.)4J);8o6*;48t8Tr6o))85;it(;:J*8t83(88)5»t;46 (;88*96*?;8)*J{;485);5*t2:*t(;49S6*2{5*— 4)81]8*;4o69285);)6+8)44:t;i ff9;48o8i;8:8ti;48t85;4)485tS288o6*8i(J9;48;(88;4(t;34;48)4i;l6l;: i88;J?; " But," said I, returning him the slip, ''I am as much in the dark as ever. Were all the jewels of Golconda awaiting me upon my solution of this enigma, I am quite sure that I should be unable to earn them." "And yet," said Legrand, "the solution is by no means so difficult as you might be led to imagine from the first hasty inspection of the characters. These characters, as any one might readily guess, form a ciplier — that is to say, they convey a meaning : but then, from what is known of Kidd, I could not suppose him capable of constructing any of the more abstruse cryptographs. I made up my mind, at once, that this was of a simple species — such, however, as would appear, to the crude intellect of the sailor, absolutely in- soluble without the key." " And you really solved it 1 " " Readily ; I have solved others of an abstruseness ten thousand times greater. Circumstances, and a certain bias of mind, have led me to take interest in such riddles, and it may well be doubted whether human ingenuity can con- struct an enigma of the kind which human ingenuity may not, by proper application, resolve. In fact, having once established connected and legible characters, I scarcely gave a thought to the mere difficulty of developing their import. " In the present case — indeed in all cases of secret writing — the first question regards the language of the cipher ; for the principles of solution, so far, especially, as the more simple ciphers are concerned, depend upon, and are varied by, the genius of the particular idiom. In gene- ral, there is no alternative but experiment (directed by probabilities) of every tongue known to him who attempts- ihe solution, until the true one be attained. But, with thai THE GOLD-BUG. 31 cipher now before us, all difficulty was rein(3ved by the signature. The pun upon the word ' Kjdd ' is appreciable in no other language than the English. But for this consi- deration I should have begun my attempts with the Spanish and French, as the tongues in which a secret of this kind would most naturally have been vratten by a pirate of the Spanish main. As it was, I assumed the crjrptograph to be English. " You observe there are no divisions between the words. Had there been divisions, the task would have been com- paratively easy. In such case I should have commenced with a collation and analysis of the shorter words, and had a word of a single letter occurred, as is most likely (a or /, for example), I should have considered the solution as assured. But, there being no division, my first step was to ascertain the predominant letters, as well as the least fre- quent. Counting all, I constructed a table thus : Of the character 8 there are 33. J )> 26. 4 J» 19- t) „ 16. * »3 5 12. 6 ^, H. ti »» 8. o „ 6. 92 5) 5- = 3 ,, 4- 9 ii 3- "5 >» 2. . >» I. "Now, in English, the letter which most frequently occurs is e. Afterwards, the succession runs thus : a oi d hnrstuyc f g I m w b k p q x z. E predominates so remarkably that an individual sentence of any length is rarely seen, in which it is not the prevailing character. "Here, then, we have, in the very beginning, the groundwork for something more than a mere guess. The general use which may be made of the table is obvious — 32 THE GOLD-BUG. but in this particular cipher we shall only very partially require its aid. As our predominant character is 8, we will commence by assuming it as the e of the natural alphabet. To verify the supposition, let us observe if the 8 be seen often in couples — for e is doubled with great frequency in English — in such words, for example, as 'meet,' 'fleet,' ' speed,' ' seen,' ' been,' ' agi-ee,' etc. In the present instance we see it doubled no less than five times, although the cryptograph is brief. " Let us assume 8 then, as e. Now, of all words in the language, ' the' is most usual ; let us see, therefore, whether there are not repetitions of -any three characters, in the same order of collocation, the last of them being 8. If we dis- cover repetitions of such letters, so arranged, they will most probably represent the word ' the.' Upon inspection, we find no less than seven such arrangements, the characters being ;4:8. We may, therefore, assume that ; represents t, 4 represents h, and 8 represents e — the last being now well confirmed. Thus a great step has been taken. " But, having established a single word, we are enabled to establish a vastly important point ; that is to say, several commencements and terminations of other words. Let us refer, for example, to the last instance but one, in which the combination ;48 occurs — not far from the end of the cipher. We know that the ; immediately ensuing is the commencement of a word, and, of the six characters succeeding this ' the,' we are cognisant of no less than five. Let us set these characters down, thus, by the letters we know them to represent, leaving a space for the unknown — t eeth. " Here we are enabled, at once, to discard the ' th,' as forming no portion of the word commencing with the first t ; since, by experiment of the entire alphabet for a letter adapted to the vacancy, we perceive that no word can be formed of which this th can be a part. We are thus narrowed into t ee, and, going through the alphabet, if necessary, as before, we (irrive at the word ' tree,' as the sole possible reading. Wp THE GOLD-BUG. 33 thus gain another letter, r, represented by (, with the words ' the tree ' in juxtaposition. " Looking beyond these words, for a short distance, we again see the combination ;48, and employ it by way of termination to what immediately precedes. We have thus this arrangement : the tree ;4(|?34 the, or, substituting the natural letters, where known, it reads thus: the tree thrJJSh the. " Now, if, in place of the unknown characters, we leave blank spaces, or substitute dots, we read thus : the tree thr...h the, when the word ' through ' makes itself evident at once. But this discovery gives us three new letters, o, u and g, repre- sented by :|: 1 and 3. " Looking now, narrowly, through the cipher for com- binations of known characters, we find, not very far from the beginning, this arrangement, 83(88, or egree, which, plainly, is the conclusion of the word ' degree,' and gives us another letter, d, represented by f . " Four letters beyond the word ' degree,' we perceive the combination. ;48088. " Translating the known characters, and representing the unknown by dots, as before, we read thus : th rtee. an arrangement immediately suggestive of the word ' thir- teen,' and again furnishing us with two new characters i and n, represented by 6 and * " Eeferring, now, to the beginning of the cryptograph, we find the combination, " Translating, as before, we obtain • good, which assures us that the first letter is A, and that the first two words are ' A good.' " It is now time that we arrange our key, as far aa VOL. L D 34 THE GOLD-BUG. discovered, in a tabular form, to avoid confusion stand thus 5 represents a t d ^ e « 4 + + ) ( , J 1 S h 1 n r t It will " We have, therefore, no less than ten of the most important letters represented, and it will be unnecessary to proceed with the details of the solution. I have said enough to convince you that ciphers of this nature are readily soluble, and to give you some insight into the ratkmale of their development. But be assured that the specimen before us appertains to the very simplest species of cryptograph. It now only remains to give you the full translation of the characters upon the parchment, as un- riddled. Here it is : " ' A good glass in the Msfiop's hostel in tJie devil's seat forty- one degrees and thirteen minutes northeast and by north main branch seventh limb east side shoot from the left eye of th death's-head a bee lime from the tree through the shot fifty feet out: " " But," said I, " the enigma seems still in as bad a con- dition as ever. How is it possible to extort a meaning from all this jargon about ' devil's seats,' ' death's-heads,' and 'bishop's hotels?'" " I confess," replied Legrand, " that the matter stDl wears a serious aspect, when regarded with a casual glance. My first endeavour was to divide the sentence into the natural division intended by the cryptographist." " You mean to punctuate it ] " " Something of that kind." " But how was it possible to effect this 1 " " I reflected that it had been a point with the writer to THE GOXJJ-BUO. 35 run his words together without division, so as to inwease the difficulty of solution. Now, a not over-;r:;iite man, in pursuing such an object, would be nearly certain to overdo the matter. "When, in the course of his composition, he arrived at a break in his subject which would naturally require a pause, or a point, he would be exceedingly apt to run his characters, at this place, more than usually close together. If you will observe the MS. in the present instance you will easily detect five such cases of unusual crowding. Acting upon this hint, I made the division thus : " ' A good glass in the bishop's hostel in the devil's seat — forty-one degrees and thirteen minutes — northeast and by north — main branch seventh limb east side — shoot from the left eye of the death's-head — a bee line from the tree through the shot fifty feet out."' "Even this division," said I, "leaves me still in the dark." "It left me also in the dark," replied Legrand, "for a few days ; during which I made diligent inquiry, in the neighbourhood of Sullivan's Island, for any building which went by the name of the ' Bishop's Hotel ; ' for, of course, I dropped the obsolete word ' hostel.' Gaining no infor- mation on the subject, I was on the point of extending my sphere of search, and proceeding in a more systematic manner, when, one morning, it entered into my head, quite suddenly, that this 'Bishop's Hostel' might have some reference to an old family, of the name of Bessop, which, time out of mind, had held possession of an ancient manor- house, about four miles to the northward of the Island. I accordingly went over to the plantation, and re-instituted my inquiries among the older negroes of the place. At length one of the most aged of the women said that she bad heard of such a place as Bessop's Castle, and thought that she could guide me to it, but that it was not a castle, nor a tavern, but a high rock. " I offered to pay her well for her trouble, and, after some demur, she consented to accompany me to the spot. We found it without much difficulty, when, dismissing hev 36 THE GOLD-BUG. I proceeded to examine the place. The ' castle ' consisted of an iiTegi\lar assemblage of cliffs and rocks — one of the latter being quite remarkable for its height as well as for its insulated and artificial appearance. I clambered to its apex, and then felt much at a loss as to what should be next done. " While I was busied in reflection, my eyes fell upon a narrow ledge in the eastern face of the rock, perhaps a yard below the summit upon which I stood. This ledge projected about eighteen inches, and was not more than a foot wide, while a niche in the cliff just above it, gave it a rude re- semblance to one of the hollow-backed chairs used by our ancestors. I made no doubt that here was the ' devil's seat ' alluded to in the MS., and now I seemed to grasp the full secret of the riddle. " The ' good glass,' I knew, could have reference to no- thing but a telescope ; for the word ' glass ' is rarely em- ployed in any other sense by seamen. Now here, I at once saw, was a telescope to be used, and a definite point of view, admittinci no variation, from which to use it. Nor did I hesitate to believe that the phrases, ' forty-one degrees and thirteen minutes,' and ' northeast and by north,' were intended as directions for the levelling of the glass. Greatly excited by these discoveries, I hurried home, procured a telescope, and returned to the rock, " I let myself down to the ledge, and found that it was impossible to retain a seat upon it except in one particular position. This fact confirmed my preconceived idea. 1 proceeded to use the glass. Of course,.the ' forty-one degrees and thirteen minutes ' could allude to nothing but elevation above the visible horizon, since the horizontal direction was clearly indicated by the words, ' northeast and by north.' This latter direction I at once established by means of a pocket-compass ; then, pointing the glass as nearly at an angle of forty-one degrees of elevation as 1 could do it by guess, I moved it cautiously up or down, until my attention was arrested by a circular rift or opening in the foliage of a large tree that overtopped its fellows in the distance. In the centre of this rift I perceived a white spot, but could not, at first, distinguish what it was. Adjusting the focuF THE GOLD-BUG. 37 of the telescope, I again looked, and now made it out to be a human skuU. " Upon this discovery I was so sanguine as to consider the enigma solved ; for the phrase ' main branch, seventh limb, east side,' could refer only to the position of the skull upon the tree, while ' shoot from the left eye of the death's head,' admitted also of but one interpretation, in regard to a search for buried treasure. I perceived that the design was to drop a bullet from the left eye of the skull, and that a bee-line, or, in other words, a straight line, drawn from the nearest point of the trunk through ' the shot '(or the spot where the bullet fell), and thence extended to a distance of fifty feet, would iudicate a definite point — and beneath this point I thought it at least pomhle that a deposit of value lay concealed." " All this," I said, " is exceedingly clear, and, although ingenious, still simple and explicit. When you left the Bishop's Hotel, what then ]" " Why, having carefully taken the bearings of the tree, I turned homewards. The instant that I left the ' devil's seat,' however, the circular rift vanished ? nor could I get a glimpse of it afterwards, turn as I would. What seems to me the chief ingenuity in this whole business is the fact (for repeated experiment has convinced me it is a fact) that the circular opening in question is visible from no other attainable point of view than that afforded by the narrow ledge^ upon the face of the rock. " In this expedition to the ' Bishop's Hotel ' I had been attended by Jupiter, who had no doubt observed for some weeks past the abstraction of my demeanour, and took especial care not to leave me alone. But, on the next day, getting up very early, I contrived to give him the slip, and went into the hills in search of the tree. After much toil I found it. When I came home at night my valet proposed to give me a flogging. With the rest of the adventure I beheve you are as well acquainted as myself" " I suppose," said I, " you missed the spot, in the first attempt at digging, through Jupiter's stupidity in letting 38 THE GOLD-BUG. the bug fall through the right instead of through the left eye of the skull." " Precisely. This mistake made a diflference of about two inches and a half in the ' shot ' — that is to say, in the position of the peg nearest the tree ; and had the treasure been beneath the ' shot,' the error would have been of little moment ; but the ' shot,' together with the nearest point of the tree, were merely two points for the establishment of a line of direction ; of course the error, however trivial in the beginning, increased as we proceeded with the line, and by the time we had gone fifty feet, threw us quite off the scent. But for my deep-seated impressions that treasure was here somewhere actually buried, we might have had all our labour in vain," "But yoar grandiloquence, and your conduct in swing- ing the beetle — how excessively odd ! I was sure you were mad. And why did you insist upon letting fall the bug, instead of a bullet, from the skull 1 " " Why, to be frank, I felt somewhat annoyed by your evident suspicions touching my sanity, and so resolved to punish you quietly, in my own way, by a little bit of sober mystification. For this reason I swung the beetle, and for this reason I let it fall from the tree. An observation of yours about its great weight suggested the latter idea." " Yes, I perceive ; and now there is only one point which puzzles me. What are we to make of the skeletons found in the hole ?" " That is a question I am no more able to answer than yourself. There seems, however, only one plausible way of accounting for them — and yet it is dreadful to believe in such atrocity as my suggestion would imply. It is clear that Kidd — if Kidd mdeed secreted this treasure, which I doubt not — it is clear that he must have had assistance in the labour. But this labour concluded, he may have thought it expedient to remove all participants in his secret. Per- haps a couple of blows with a mattock were sufficient, while his coadjutors were busy in the pit ; perhaps it required a dozen — ^who shall tell 1 " THE UNPARALLELED ADVENTURE HANS PFAALL. With a heart of furious fancies, Whereof I am commander, With a burning spear and a horse of air. To the wilderness I wander. Tom 0' Bedlam's Song. By late accounts from Rotterdam, that city seems to be in a high state of philosophical excitement. Indeed pheno- mena have there occurred of a nature so completely unex- pected — so entirely novel — so utterly at variance with preconceived opinions — as to leave no doubt on my mind that long ere this all Europe is in an uproar, all physics in a ferment, all reason and astronomy together by the ears. It appears that on the day of (I am not positive about the date), a vast crowd of people, for purposes not specifically mentioned, were assembled in the great square of the Exchange in the well-conditioned city of Rotterdam. The day was warm — unusually so for the season — there was hardly a breath of air stirring ; and the multitude were in no bad humour at being now and then besprinkled with friendly showers of momentary duration, that fell from large white masses of cloud profusely dis- tributed about the blue vault of the firmament. Neverthe- less, about noon, a slight but remarkable agitation became apparent in the assembly ; the clattering of ten thousand tongues succeeded; and, in an instant afterwards, ten thousand faces were upturned towards the heavens, ten 40 ADVENTURE OF ONE HANS PFAALL. thousand pipes descended simultaneously from the corners of ten thousand mouths, and a shout, which could be com- pared to nothing but the roaring of Niagara, resounded long, loudly, and furiously, through all the city and through all the environs of Rotterdam. The origin of this hubbub soon became sufficiently evident. From behind the huge bulk of one of those sharply-defined masses of cloud already mentioned was seen slowly to emerge into an open area of blue space, a queer, heterogeneous, but apparently solid substance, so oddly shaped, so whimsically put together, as not to be in any manner comprehended, and never to be sufficiently admired, by the host of sturdy burghers who stood open- mouthed below. "What could it be 1 In the name of all the devils in Rotterdam, what could it possibly portend 1 No one knew ; no one could imagine ; no one — not even the burgomaster, Mynheer Superbus Von Underduk — had the slightest clue by which to unravel the mystery ; so, as nothing more reasonable could be done, every one to a man rpplaced his pipe carefully in the corner of his mouth, and maintaining an eye steadily upon the phenomenon, puffed, paused, waddled about, and grunted significantly — then waddled back, grunted, paused, and finally — puffed again. In the meantime, however, lower and stiU lower towards the goodly city, came the object of so much curiosity, and the cause of so much smoke. In a very few minutes it arrived near enough to be accurately discerned. It appeared to be — yes ! it was undoubtedly a species of balloon , but surely no such balloon had ever been seen in Rotterdam before. For who, let me ask, ever heard of a balloon manu- factured entirely of dirty newspapers ? No man in Holland certainly ; yet here, under the very noses of the people, or rather at some distance above their noses, was the identical thing in question, and composed, I have it on the best authority, of the precise material which no one had ever before known to be used for a similar purpose. — It was an egregious insult to the good sense of the burghers of Rot- terdam. As to the shape of the phenomenon, it was even still more reprehensible. Being little or nothing better ADVENTURE OF ONE HANS PFAALL. 41 than a huge fool's cap turned upside down. And this similitude was regarded as by no means lessened, when upon nearer inspection, the crowd saw a large tassel depend- ing from its apex, and, around the upper rim or base of the cone, a circle of little instruments, resembhng sheep- bells, which kept up a continual tinkling to the tune of Betty Martin. But still worse. Suspended by blue ribbons to the end of this fantastic machine, there hung, by way of car, an enormous drab beaver hat, with a brim superla- tively broad, and a hemispherical crown with a black band and a sUver buckle. It is, however, somewhat remarkable that many citizens of Rotterdam swore to having seen the same hat repeatedly before ; and indeed the whole assembly seemed to regard it with eyes of familiarity ; while the VToyv Grettel Pfaall, upon sight of it, uttered an exclama- tion of joyful surprise, and declared it to be the identical hat of her good man himself. Now this was a circumstance the more to be observed, as Pfaall, with three companions, had actually disappeared from Rotterdam about five years before, in a very sudden and unaccountable manner, and up to the date of this narrative all attempts at obtaining intelligence concerning them had failed. To be sure, some bones which were thought to be human, mixed up with a quantity of odd-looking rubbish, had been lately discovered in a retired situation to the east of the city ; and some people went so far as to imagine that in this spot a foul murder had been committed, and that the sufferers were in all probability Hans Pfaall and his associates. But to return. The balloon (for such no doubt it was) had now descended to within a hundred feet of the earth, allowing the crowd below a sufficiently distinct view of the person of its occu- pant. This was in truth a very singular somebody. He could not have been more than two feet in height ; but this altitude, little as it was, would have been sufficient to destroy his equilibrium, and tilt him over the edge of his tiny car, but for the intervention of a circular rim reaching as high as the breast, and rigged on to the cords of the balloon. The body of the little man was more than 42 ADVENTURE OF ONE HANS PFAALL. proportionally broad, giving to his entire figure a rotun- dity highly absurd. His feet, of course, could not be seen at all. His hands were enormously laxge. His hair was gray, and collected into a qmue behind. His nose was prodigiously long, crooked, and inflammatory ; his eyes full, brilliant, and acute ; his chiu and cheeks, although wrinkled with age, were broad, puffy, and double ; but of ears of any kind there was not a semblance to be discovered upon any portion of his head. This odd little gentleman was dressed in a loose surtout of sky-blue satin, with tight breeches to match, fastened with sUver buckles at the knees. His vest was of some bright yellow material ; a white taffety cap was set jauntily on one side of his head ; and, to complete his equipment, a blood-red silk handkerchief enveloped his throat, and fell down, in a dainty manner, upon his bosom, in a fantastic bow-knot of super-eminent dimensions. Having descended, as I said before, to about one hundred feet from the surface of the earth, the little old gentleman ■ was suddenly seized mth a fit of trepidation, and appeared disinclined to make any nearer approach to terra firma. Throwing out, therefore, a quantity of sand from a canvas bag, which he lifted with great difficulty, he became stationary in an instant. He then proceeded, in a hurried and agitated manner, to extract from a side-pocket in his surtout a large morocco pocket-book. This he poised suspiciously in his hand ; then eyed it with an air of extreme surprise, and was evidently astonished at its weight. He at length opened it, and, drawing therefrom a huge letter sealed with red sealing-wax and tied carefully with red tape, let it fall precisely at the feet of the burgomaster Superbus Von Underduk. His Excellency stooped to take it up. But the aeronaut, still greatly discomposed, and having appa- rently no further business to detain him in Rotterdam, Ijegan at this moment to make busy preparations for departure ; and it being necessary to discharge a portion of ballast to enable him to re-ascend, the half-dozen bags which he threw out one after another, without taking the trouble to empty their contents, tumbled, every one of them, most unfortunately, upon the back of the burgo- ADVENTURE OF ONE HANS PFAALL. 43 master, and rolled him over and over no less than half-a- dozen times, in the face of every individual in Eotterdam. It is not to be supposed, however, that the great Underduk suffered this impertinence on the part of the little old man to pass off with impunity. It is said, on the contrary, that during each of his half-dozen circumvolutions, he emitted no less than half-a-dozen distinct and furious whiffs from his pipe, to which he held fast the whole time with all his might, and to which he intends holding fast (God willing) until the day of his decease. In the meantime the balloon arose like a lark, and, soar- ing far away above the city, at length drifted quietly behind a cloud similar to that from which it had so oddly emerged, and was thus lost for ever to the wondering eyes of the good citizens of Rotterdam. AU attention was now directed to the letter, the descent of which, and the consequences attending thereupon, had proved so fatally subversive of both person and personal dignity to his Excellency Vou Underduk. That functionary, however, had not failed, during his circumgyratory movements, to bestow a thought upon the important object of securing the epistle, which was seen, upon inspection, to have fallen into the most proper hands, being actually addressed to himself and Professor Rubadub, in their official capacities of President and Vice-President of the Rotterdam College of Astronomy. It was accordingly opened by those dignitaries upon the spot, and found to contain the following extraordinary, and indeed very serious, communication : — To their Excellencies Von Underduk mid Rubadub, President and Vice-President of the States' College of Astronomers, in the city of Rotterdam. Your Excellencies may perhaps be able to remember an humble artizan, by name Hans Pfaall, and by occupation a mender of bellows, who, with three others, disappeared from Rotterdam about -five years ago, in a manner which must have been considered unaccountable. If, however, it so please your Excellencies, I, the writer of this communica- 44 ADVBNTTJRE OF ONI! HANS PFAALL. Dion, am the identical Hans Pfaall himself. It is well known to most of my fellow-citizens that for the period of forty years I continued to occupy the little square brick building at the head of the alley called Sauerkraut, in which I resided at the time of my disappearance. My ancestors have also resided therein time out of mind — they, as well as myself, steadily following the respectable and indeed lucrative profession of mending of bellows ; for, to speak the truth, until of late years, that the heads of all the people have been set agog with politics, no better business than my own could an honest citizen of Rotterdam either desire or deserve. Credit was good, employment was never wanting, and there was no lack of either money or good will. But, as I was sajring, we soon began to feel the effects of liberty, and long speeches, and radicalism, and all that sort of thing. People who were formerly the very best customers in the world, had now not a moment of time to think of us at all. They had as much as they could do to read about the revolutions, and keep up with the march of intellect and the spirit of the age. If a fire wanted fanning, it could readily be fanned with a news- paper ; and as the Government grew weaker, I have no doubt that leather and iron acquired durability in pro- portion — for, in a very short time, there was not a pair of bellows in all Rotterdam that ever stood in need of a stitch or required the assistance of a hammer. This was a state of things not to be endured. I soon grew as poor as a rat, and having a wife and children to provide for, my burdens at length became intolerable, and I spent hour after hour in reflecting upon the most convenient method of putting an end to my life. Duns, in the meantime, left me little leisure for contemplation. My house was literally besieged from morning till night. There were three fellows, in particular, who worried me beyond endurance, keeping watch continually about my door, and threatening me with the law. Upon these three I vowed the bitterest revenge, if ever I should be so happy as to get them within my clutches ; and I believe nothing in the world but the pleasure of this anticipation prevented me from putting ADTENTUKE OV ONE HANS PFAALL. 45 my plan of suicide into immediate execution, by blowing my brains out with a blunderbuss. I thought it best, however, to dissemble my wrath, and to treat them with promises and fair words, until, by some good turn of fate, an opportunity of vengeance should be afforded me. One day, having given them the slip, and feeling mort than usually dejected, I continued for a long time to wander about the most obscure streets without object, until at length I chanced to stumble against the corner of a bookseller's stall. Seeing a chair close at hand, for the use of customers, I threw myself doggedly into it, and hardly knowing why, opened the pages of the first volume which came within my reach. It proved to be a small pamphlet treatise on Speculative Astronomy, written either by Pro- fessor Encke of Berlin, or by a Frenchman of somewhat similar name. I had some little tincture of information on matters of this nature, and soon became more and more absorbed in the contents of the book — reading it actually through twice before I awoke to a recollection of what was passing around me. By this time it began to grow dark, and I directed my steps towards home. But the treatise (in conjunction with a discovery in pneumatics, lately com- municated to me as an important secret, by a cousin from Nantz) had made an indelible impression on my mind, and as I sauntered along the dusky streets I revolved carefully over in my memory the wild and sometimes unin- telligible reasonings of the writer. There are some par- ticular passages which affected my imagination in an extraordinary manner. The longer I meditated upon these the more intense grew the interest which had been excited within me. The limited nature of my education in general, and more especially my ignorance on subjects connected with natural philosophy, so far from rendering me difiident of my own ability to comprehend what I had read, or inducing me to mistrast the many vague notions which had arisen in consequence, merely served as a further stimulus to imagination ; and I was vain enough, or perhaps reason- able enough, to doubt whether those crude ideas which, arising in ill-regulated minds, have aU the appearance. 46 ADVENTURE OF ONE HANS PFAALL. may not often in effect possess all the force, the reality, and other inherent properties of instinct or intuition. It was late when I reached home, and I went immedi- ately to bed. My mind, however, was too much occupied to sleep, and I lay the whole night buried in meditation Arising early in the morning, I repaired eagerly to the book- seller's stall, and laid out what little ready money I possessed in the purchase of some volumes of Mechanics and Practical Astronomy. Having arrived at home safely with these, I devoted every spare moment to their perusal, and soon made such proficiency in studies of this nature as I thought sufficient for the execution of a certain design with which either the devil or my better genius had inspired me. In the intervals of this period I made every endeavour to conciliate the three creditors who had given me so much annoyance. In this I finally succeeded — partly by selling enough of my household furniture to satisfy a moiety of their claim, and partly by a promise of paying the balance upon completion of a little project which I told them I had in view, and for assistance in which I solicited their services. By these means (for they were ignorant men) I found little difficulty in gaining them over to my purpose. Matters being thus arranged, I contrived, by the aid of my wife, and with the greatest secrecy and caution, to dispose of what property I had remaining, and to borrow, in small sums, under various pretences, and without giving any attention (I am ashamed to say) to my future means of repayment, no inconsiderable quantity of ready money. With the means thus accruing I proceeded to procure at intervals, cambric muslin, very fine, in pieces of twelve yards each ; twine ; a lot of the varnish of caoutchouc ; a large and deep basket of wicker-work, made to order : and several other articles necessary in the construction and equipment of a balloon of extraordinary dimensions. This I directed my wife to make up as soon as possible, and gave her all requisite information as to the particular method of proceeding. In the meantime I worked up the twine into net-work of sufficient dimensions ; rigged it witli a hoop and the necessary cords ; and made purchase ADVENTURE OF ONE HANS PFAALL. 47 of numerous instruments and materials for experiment in the upper regions of the upper atmosphere. I then took oppor- tunities of conveying by night, to a retired situation east oi Eotterdam, five iron-bound casks, to contain about fifty gallons each, and one of a larger size ; six tin tubes, three inches in diameter, properly shaped, and ten feet in length ; a quantity of a particular metallic substance, or semi-metal, which I shall not name, and a dozen demijohns of a very common acid. The gas to be formed from these latter materials is a gas never yet generated by any other person than myself — or at least never applied to any similar pur- pose. I can only venture to say here that it is a con- stituent of azote, so long considered irreducible, and that its density is about 37.4 times less than that of hydrogen. It is tasteless, but not odourless ; burns, when pure, with a greenish flame, and is instantaneously fatal to animal life. Its full secret I would make no difficulty in disclosing, but that it of right belongs (as I have before hinted) to a citizen of Nantz, in France, by whom it was conditionally communicated to myself The same individual submitted to me, without being at all aware of my intentions, a method of constructing balloons from the membrane of a certain animal, through which substance any escape of gas was nearly an impossibility. I found it, however, altogether too expensive, and was not sure, upon the whole, whether cambric muslin with a coating of gum caoutchouc, was not equally as good. I mention this circumstance, because I think it probable that hereafter the individual in question may attempt a balloon ascension with the novel gas and material I have spoken of, and I do not wish to deprive him of the honour of a very singular invention. On the spot which I intended each of the smaller casks to occupy respectively during the inflation of the balloon, I privately dug a small hole ; the holes forming in this man- ner a circle twenty-five feet in diameter. In the centre of this circle, being the station designed for the large cask, I also dug a hole of greater depth. In each of the five smaller holes, I deposited a canister containing fifty pounds, and in the larger one a keg holding one hundred and fifty 4:8 ADVENTURE OF ONE HANS PFAALL. pounds of cannon powder. These — the keg and the canis- ters — I connected in a proper manner with covered trains , and having let into one of the canisters the end of ahout four feet of slow-match, I covered up the hole, and placed t,he cask over it, lea-vdng the other end of the match pro- truding ahout an inch, and barely visible beyond the cask I then filled up the remaining holes, and placed the barrels over them in their destined situation ! Besides the articles above enumerated, I conveyed to the de,i[i6t, and there secreted, one of M. Grimm's improve- ments upon the apparatus for condensation of the atmospheric air. I found this machine, however, to require considerable alteration before it could be adapted to the purposes to which I intended making it applicable. But, with severe labour and unremitting perseverance, I at length met with entire success in all my preparations. My balloon was soon completed. It would contain more than forty thousand cubic feet of gas ; would take me up easily, I calculated, with all my implements, and if I managed rightly, with one hundred and seventy five pounds of ballast into the bargain. It had received three coats of varnish, and 1 found the cambric muslin to answer all the purposes of silk itself, being quite as strong and a good deal less expensive. Everything being now iready, I exacted from my wife an oatli of secrecy in relation to all my actions from the day of my first visit to the bookseller's stall ; and promising, on my part, to return as soon as circumstances would per mit, I gave her what little money I had left, and bade hei farewell. Indeed I had no fear on her account. She was what people call a notable woman, and could manage mat- ters in the world without my assistance. I beheve, to tell the truth, she always looked upon me as an idle bod)' — a mere make-weight — good for nothing but building castles in the air — and was rather glad to get rid of me. It was a dark night when I bade her good-bye, and taking with ine, as aides-de-camp, the three creditors who had given me so much trouble, we carried the balloon, with the car and accoutrements, l\v a roundabout way, to tlit .Btation where the other articles were deposited. W« AtoVENTURE OE. OilE HANS PEAALL. 46 there found them all unmolested, and I proceeded immedi- ately to business. It was the first of April. The night, as I said before, was dark ; there was not a star to be seen ; and a drizzling rain falling at intervals rendered us very uncomfortable. But my chief anxiety was concemiug the balloon, which, in spite of the varnish with which it was defended, began to grow rather heavy with the moisture ; the powder also was liable to damage. I therefore kept my three duns working with great diligence, pounding down ice around the central cask, and stirring the acid in the others. They did not cease, however, importuning me with questions as to what I intended to do with all this apparatus, and expressed much dissatisfaction at the terrible labour I made them undergo. They could not perceive (so they said) what good was likely to result from their getting wet to the skin, merely to take a part in such horrible incantations. I began to get uneasy, and worked away with all my might ; for I verily believe the idiots supposed that I had entered into a compact with the devil, and that, in short, what I was now doing was nothing better than it should be. I was there- fore in great fear of their leaving me altogether. I con- trived, however, to pacify them by promises of payment of all scores in full as soon as I could bring the present business to a termination. To these speeches they gave of course their own interpretation ; fancying, no doubt, that at all events I should come into possession of vast quantities of ready money ; and provided I paid them all I owed, and a trifle more in consideration of their services, I dare say they cared very little what became of either my soul or my carcase. In about four hours and a half I found the balloon sufficiently inflated. I attached the car, therefore, and put all my implements in it— a telescope ; a barometer, with some important modifications ; a thermometer ; an electro- meter ; a compass ; a magnetic needle ; a seconds watch ; a bell ; a speaking trumpet, etc. etc. etc. — also a globe of glass, exhausted of air and carefully closed with a stopper — not forgetting the condensing apparatus, some unslacked VOL. I. E 50 ADVENTUKE OF OJTB HANS PFAALL. lime, a stick of sealing wax, a copious supply of water, and a large quantity of provisions, such as pemmican, in which much nutriment is contained in comparatively little bulk. I also secured in the car a pair of pigeons and a cat. It was now nearly daybreak, and I thought it high time to take my departure. Dropping a lighted cigar on the ground, as if by accident, I took the opportunity, in stoop- ing to pick it up, of igniting privately the piece of slow match, the end of which, as I said before, protruded a little beyond the lower rim of one of the smaller casks. This manoeuvre was totally unperceived on the part of the three duns ; and, jumping into the car, I immediately cut the single cord which held me to the earth, and was pleased to find that I shot upwards with inconceivable rapidity, carry- ing with all ease one hundred and seventy-five pounds of leaden ballast, and able to have carried up as many more. As I left the earth, the barometer stood at thirty inches, and the centigrade thermometer at 19°. Scarcely, however, had I attained the height of fifty yards, when, roaring and rumbling up after me in the most tumultuous and terrible manner, came so dense a hurricane of fire, and gravel, and burning wood, and blazing metal, and mangled limbs, that my very heart sunk within me, and I fell down in the bottom of the car, trembling with terror. Indeed, I now perceived that I had entirely over- done the business, and that the main consequences of the shock were yet to be experienced. Accordingly, in less than a second, I felt all the blood in my body rushing to my temples, and, immediately thereupon, a concussion, which I shall never forget, burst abruptly through the night, and seemed to rip the very firmament asunder. When 1 after- wards had time for reflection, I did not fail to attribute the ~ extreme violence of the explosion, as regarded myself, to its proper cause — my situation directly above it, and in the line of its greatest power. But at the time I thought only of preserving my life. The balloon at first collapsed, theu furiously expanded, then whirled round and round with sickejiing velocity, and finally, reeling and staggermg like a drunken man, hurled nie over the rim of the car. and ADVENTURE OF ONE HANS PFAAIi. 51 left me dangling, at a terrific height, with my head down- ward, and my face outward, by a piece of slender cord about three feet in length, which hung accidentally through a crevice near the bottom of the wicker-work, and in which, as I fell, my left foot became most providentially entangled. It is impossible — utterly impossible — to form any adequate idea of the horror of my situation. I gasped convulsively for breath — a shudder resembling a fit of the ague agitated every nerve and muscle in my frame — I felt my eyes start- ing from their sockets — a horrible nausea overwhelmed me — and at length I lost all consciousness in a swoon. How long I remained in this state it is impossible to say. It must, however, have been no inconsiderable time, for when I partially recovered the sense of existence, I found the day breaking, the balloon at a prodigious height over a wilderness of ocean, and not a trace of land to be discovered far and wide within the limits of the vast horizon. My sensations, however, upon thus recovering, were by no means so replete with agony as might have been anticipated. Indeed, there was much of madness in the calm survey which I began to take of my situation. I drew up to my eyes each of my hands, one after the other, and wondered what occurrence could have given rise to the swelling of the veins, and the horrible blackness of the finger nails. I afterwards carefully examined my head, shaking it repeatedly, and feeling it with minute attention, until I succeeded in satisfying myself that it was not, as I had more than half suspected, larger than my balloon. Then, in a knowing manner, I felt in both my breeches pockets, and missing therefrom a set of tablets and a tooth-pick case, en- deavoured to account for their disappearance, and, not being able to do so, felt inexpressibly chagrined. It now occurred to me that I suffered great uneasiness in the joint of my left ankle, and a dim consciousness of my situation began to glimmer through my mind. But, strange to .say, I was neither astonished nor horror-stricken ! If I felt any emotion at all, it was a kind of chuckling satisfaction at the cleverness I was about to display in extricating myself from this dilemma ; and never for a moment did I look upon my 62 ADVENTURE OF ONE HANS PFAALL. ultimate safety as a question susceptible of doubt. For a few minutes I remained wrapped in the profoundest medi- tation. I have a distinct recollection of frequently com- pressing my lips, putting my fore-finger to the side of my nose, and making use of other gesticulations and grimaces common to men who, at ease in their arm-chairs, meditate upon matters of intricacy or importance. Having, as I thought, sufficiently collected my ideas, I now, with great caution and deliberation, put my hands behind my back, and unfastened the large iron buckle which belonged to the waistband of my pantaloons. This buckle had three teeth, which, being somewhat rusty, turned with great difficulty on their axis. I brought them, however, after some trouble, at right angles to the body of the buckle, and was glad to find them remain fii-m in that position. Holding within my teeth the instrument thus obtained, I now proceeded to untie the knot of my cravat. I had to rest several times before I could accomplish this manoeuvre ; but it was at length accomplished. To one end of the cravat I then made fast the buckle, and the other end I tied, for greater security, tightly round my wrist. Drawing now my body upwards, with a prodigious exertion of muscular force, I succeeded at the very first trial, in throwing the buckle over the car, and entangling it, as I had anticipated, in the circular rim of the wicker-work. My body was now inclined towards the side of the car at an angle of about forty-five degrees ; but it must not be understood that I was therefore only forty-five degrees below the perpendicular. So far from it, I still lay nearly level with the plane of the horizon ; for the change of situation which I had acquired had forced the bottom of the car considerably outward from my position, which was accord ingly one of the most imminent peril. It should be remem- bered, however, that when I fell, in the first instance, from the car, if I had fallen with my face turned towards the balloon, instead of turned outwardly from it as it actually was — or if, in the second place, the cord by which I was suspended had chanced to hang over the upper edge, instead of through a crevice near the bottom of the car — I say it ADV£>fTUHE OF ONE HANS PFAALL. 53 may readily be conceived that in either of these supposed cases I should have been unable to accomplish even as much as I had now accomplished, and the disclosures now made would have been utterly lost to posterity. I had therefore every reason to be grateful ; although in point of fact I was still too stupid to be anything at all, and hung for perhaps a quarter of an hour in that extraordinary manner, without making the slightest further exertion, and in a singularly tranquil state of idiotic enjoyment. But this feeling did not fail to die rapidly away, and thereunto succeeded horror and dismay, and a sense of utter helpless- ness and ruin. In fact the blood so long accumulating in the vessels of my head and throat, and which had hitherto buoyed up my spirits with delirium, had now begun to re- tire within their proper channels, and the distinctness which was thus added to my perception of the danger merely served to deprive me of the self-possession, and courage to encounter it. But this weakness was, luckily for me, of no very long duration. In good time came to my rescue the spirit of despair, and, with frantic cries and struggles, I jerked my way bodily upwards, till, at length, clutching with a vice-like grip the long-desired rim, I writhed my person over it, and fell headlong and shuddering within the car. It was not until some time afterward that I recovered myself sufficiently to attend to the ordinary cares of the balloon. I then, however, examined it with attention, and found it, to my great relief, uninjured. My implements were all safe, and, fortunately, I had lost neither ballast nor provisions. Indeed, I had so well secured them in their places, that such an accident was entirely out of the ques- tion. Looking at my watch, I found it six o'clock. I was still rapidly ascending, and the barometer gave a present altitude of three and three-quarter mUes. Immediately beneath me in the ocean lay a small black object, slightly oblong in shape, seemingly about the size of a domino, and in every respect bearing a great resemblance to one of those toys. Bringing my telescope to bear upon it, I plainly dis- cerned it to be a British ninety-four gun ship, close-hauled, and pitching heavily in the sea, with her head to the W.S.W 54 ADVENTUKE OF ONE HANS PFAALL. Besides this ship, I saw nothing but the ocean, and the sky, and the sun, which had long arisen. It is now liigh time that I should explain to your Excellencies the object of my voyage. Your Excellencies will bear in mind that distressed circumstances in Kotterdam had at length driven me to the resolution of committing suicide. It was not, however, that to life itself I had any l>ositive disgust, but that I was harassed beyond endurance liy the adventitious miseries attending my situation. In this state of mind, wishing to live, yet wearied with life, the treatise at the stall of the bookseller, backed by the opportune discovery of my cousin of Nantz, opened a resource to my imagination. I then finally made up my mind. I iletcrniined to depart, yet live — to leave the world, yet con- tinue to exist — -in short, to drop enigmas, I resolved, let what would ensue, to force a passage, if I could, to the moon. Now lest I should be supposed more of a madman than I actually am, I will detail as well as I am able the consider- ations which led me to believe that an achievement of thi.'- nature, although without doubt difficult, and full of danger, was not absolutely to a bold spirit beyond the confines of the possible. The moon's actual distance from the earth was the first thing to be attended to. Now the mean or average inter- val between the centres of the two planets is 59'9643 of the earth's equatorial radii, or only about 237,000 miles. I say the mean or average interval ; — but it must be borne in mind that the form of the moon's orbit being an ellipse of eocenti'icity amounting to no less than 0'05484: of the major semi-axis of the ellipse itself, and the earth's centre being situated in its focus, if I could in any manner contrive to meet the moon in its perigee, the above-mentioned dis- tance would be materially diminished. But to say nothing at present of this possibility, it was veiy certain that, at all events, from the 237.000 miles I would" have to deduct the radius of the earth, say 4000, and the radius of the moon, say 1080, in all .5080, leavuig an actual interval to be traversed under average circumstances of 231,920 miles. Now this, I reflected, was no very extraordinary distance. I ADVENTURE OF ONE HANS PFAALL. 55 Travelling on the land has been repeatedly accomplished at the rate of sixty miles per hour ; and indeed a much greater speed may be anticipated. But even at this velocity it would take me no more than 161 days to reach the surface of the moon. There were, however, many particulars induc- ing me to believe that my average rate of travelling might possibly very much exceed that of sixty miles per hour, and, as these considerations did not fail to make a deep impres- sion upon my mind, I will mention them more fully hereafter. The next point to be regarded was one of far greater importance. From indications afforded by the barometer, we find that in ascensions from the surface of the earth we have at the height of 1000 feet left below us about one- thirtieth of the entire mass of atmospheric air ; that at 10,600, we have ascended through nearly one-third; and that at 18,000, which is not far from the elevation of Cotopaxi, we have surmounted one-half the material, or, at all events, one-half the ponderable body of air incumbent upon our globe. It is also calculated that at an altitude not exceeding the hundredth part of the earth's diameter — that is, not exceeding eighty miles — the rarefaction would be so excessive that animal life could in no manner be sustained, and, moreover, that the most delicate means we possess of ascertaining the presence of the atmosphere would be inadequate to assure us of its existence. But I did not fail to perceive that these latter calculations are founded altogether on our experimental knowledge of the properties of air and the mechanical laws regulating its dilation and compression in what may be called, compara- tively speaking, the immediate vicinity of the earth itself; and, at the same time, it is taken for granted that animal life is and must be essentially incapable of modification at any given unattainable distance from the surface. Now all such reasoning, and from such data, must of course be simply analogical. The greatest height ever reached by man was that of 25,000 feet, attained in the aeronautic expedition of Messieurs Gay-Lussac and Biot. This is a moderate altitude, even when compared with the eighty miles in question ; and I could not help thinking that the 56 ADVENTURE OF ONE HANS PFAAIL. subject admitted room for doubt, and great latitude for speculation. But in point of fact, an ascension being made to any given altitude, the ponderable quantity of air surmounted in any farther ascension is by no means in proportion to the additional height ascended (as may be plainly seen from what has been stated before), but in a ratio constantly decreasing. It is therefore evident that, ascend as high as we may, we cannot, literally speaking, arrive at a limit beyond which no atmosphere is to be found. It must exist, I argued ; although it may exist in a state of infinite rare- faction. On the other hand, I was aware that arguments have not been wanting to prove the existence of a real and definite limit to the atmosphere, beyond which there is absolutely no air whatsoever. But a circumstance which has been left out of view by those who contend for such a limit, seemed to me, although no positive refutation of their creed, still a point worthy very serious investigation. On comparing the intervals between the successive arrivals of Encke's comet at its perihelion, after giving credit in the most exact manner for all the disturbances due to the attractions of the planets, it appears that the periods are gradually diminishing ; that is to say, the major axis of the comet's ellipse is growing shorter, in a slow but perfectly regular decrease. Now this is precisely what ought to be the case, if we suppose a resistance experienced from the comet from an extremely rare etiiereal medium pervading the regions of its orbit. For it is evident that such a medium must, in retarding the comet's velocity, increase its centripetal by weakening its centrifugal force. In other words, the sun's attraction would be constantly attaining greater power, and the comet would be drawn nearer at every revolution. Indeed, there is no other way of account- ing for the variation in question. But again, the real diameter of the same comet's nebulosity is observed to contract rapidly as it approaches the sun, and dilate with equal rapidity in its departure toward its aphelion. Was I not justifiable in supposing, with M. Valz, that this appar ADVENTUKE OF ONE HANS PFAALL. 57 rent condensatioa of volume has its origin in the compres- sion of the same ethereal medium I have spoken of before, and which is dense in proportion to its vicinity to the sun 't The lenticular-shaped phenomenon, also called the zodiacal light, was a matter worthy of attention. This radiance, so apparent in the tropics, and which cannot be mistaken for any meteoric lustre, extends from the horizon obliquely upwards, and follows generally the direction of the sun's equator. It appeared to me evidently in the nature of a rare atmosphere extending from the sun outwards beyond the orbit of Venus at least, and I believed indefinitely farther.* Indeed, this medium I could not suppose con- fined to the path of the comet's ellipse, or to the immediate neighbourhood of the sun. It was easy, on the contrary, to imagine it pervading the entire regions of our planetary system, condensed into what we call atmosphere at the planets themselves, and perhaps at some of them modified by considerations purely geological ; that is to say, modified or varied in its proportions (or absolute nature) by matters volatilised from the respective orbs. Having adopted this view of the subject, I had little further hesitation. Granting that on my passage I should meet with atmosphere essentially the same as at the surface of the earth, I conceived that, by means of the very ingeni- ous apparatus of M. Grimm, I should readily be enabled to condense it in sufficient quantity for the purposes of respi- ration. This would remove the chief obstacle in a journey to the moon. I had indeed spent some money and great labour in adapting the apparatus to the object intended, and confidently looked forward to its successful application, if I could manage to complete the voyage within any reasonable period. — This brings me back to the rate at which it would be possible to travel. It is true that balloons in the first stage of their ascensions from the earth are known to rise with a velocity comparatively moderate. Now the power of elevation lies altogether in the superior gravity of the atmospheric aii '* The zodiacal light is probably what the ancients called Trabes Smicant Trabes quos docos vacant. — Pliny lib. 2, p. 26 58 ADVENTURE OF ONE HANS PFAALL. compared with the gas in the balloon ; and at first sight it does not appear probable that, as the balloon acquires altitude, and consequently arrives successively in atmo- spheric strata of densities rapidly diminishing — I say it does not appear at all reasonable that, in this its progress upward, the original velocity should be accelerated. On the other hand, I was not aware that in any recorded ascension a diminution had been proved to be apparent in the absolute rate of ascent ; although such should have been the case, if on account of nothing else, on account of the escape of gas through balloons ill-constructed, and varnished with no better material than the ordinary varnish. It seemed therefore that the effect of such escape was only sufficient to counterbalance the effect of the acceleration attained in the diminishing of the balloon's distance from the gravitating centre. I now considered that, provided in my passage I found the medium I had imagined, and pro- vided it should prove to be essentially what we denominate atmospheric air, it could make comparatively little difference at what extreme state of rarefaction I should discover it — that is to say, in regard to my power of ascending — ^for the gas in the balloon would not only be itself subject to similar rarefaction (in proportion to the occurrence of which, I could suffer an escape of so much as would be requisite to prevent explosion), but, being what it was, would, at all events, continue speciiically lighter than any compound whatever of mere nitrogen and oxygen. Thus there was a chance — in fact there was a strong probability — that, ai no epoch of my ascent, I should reach a point where the united weights of my immense balloon, the inconceivahly rare gas within it, the car, and its contents, should equal the weight of the mass of the surrounding atmosphere displaced ; and this will be readily understood as the sole condition upon which my upward flight would be arrested. But if this point were even attained, I could dispense -^vith ballast and other weight to the amount of nearly 300 pounds. In the mean- time, the force of gravitation would be constantly diminish- ing, in proportion to the squares of the distances, and so, with a velocity prodigiously accelerating, I should at length ADVENTURE OF ONE HANS PFAALL. 59 arrive in those distant regions where the force of the earth's attraction would be superseded by that of the moon. There was another difficulty, however, which occasioned me some little disquietude. It has been observed that, in balloon ascensions to any considerable height, besides the pain attending respiration, great uneasiness is experience^] about the head and body, often accompanied with bleeding at the nose, and other symptoms of an alarming kind, anrl growing more and more inconvenient in proportion to the altitude attained.* This was a reflection of a nature some- what startling. Was it not probable that these syiiiptnnis would increase until terminated by death itself? I finally thought not. Their origin was to be looked for in the pro- gressive removal of the customary atmospheric pressure upon the surface of the body, and consequent distension of the superficial blood-vessels — not in any positive disorganisation of the animal system, as in the case of difficult}' in breathing, where the atmospheric density is chmnically insufficient for the due renovation of blood in a ventricle of tlie heart. Unless for default of this renovation, I could see no reasoi', therefore, why life could not be sustained even in a vacuum , for the expansion and compression of chest, commonly called breathing, is action purely muscular, and the cause, not the effect, of respiration. In a word, I conceived that, as the body should become habituated to the want of atmosplieiic pressure, these sensations of pain would gradually diminish — and to endure them while they continued, I relied ^vith confidence upon the iron hardihood of my constitution. Thus, may it please your Excellencies, I have detailed some, though by no means all, the considerations vrhich led me to form the project of a lunar voyage. I shall now proceed to lay before you the result of an attemi)t so apparently audacious in conception, and, at all events, so utterly unparalleled in the annals of mankind. Having attained the altitude before mentioned — that is * Since the original publication of Hans Pfaall, 1 find that Mr. Oreen, of JSTassau-balloon notoriety, and other late ^ronauts, deny the assertions of Humboldt in this respect, and speak of a decrecmng inconvenience, — precisely in accordance with the theory here urged. 60 ADVENTUEE OF ONE HANS PFAALL. to say, three miles and three quarters — I threw out from the car a quantit}' of feathers, and found that I still ascendert with sufficient rapidity ; there was, therefore, no necessity for discharging any ballast. I was glad of this, for I wished to retain with me as much weight as I could carry, for the obvious reason that I could not be positive either about the gravitation or the atmospheric density of the moon. I as yet suffered no bodily inconvenience, breathing with great freedom, and feeling no pain whatever in the head. The cat was lying very demurely upon my coat, which I had taken o^ and eyeing the pigeons with an air of nonchalance. These latter, being tied by the leg to prevent their escape, were busily employed in picking up some grains of rice scattered for them in the bottom of the car. At twenty minutes past six o'clock the barometer showed an elevation of 26,400 feet, or five miles to a fraction. The prospect seemed unbounded. Indeed, it is very easily calculated by means of spherical geometry how great an extent of the earth's area I beheld. The convex surface of any segment of a sphere is, to the entire surface of the sphere itself, as the versed sine of the segment to the diameter of the sphere. Now in my case, the versed sine — that is to say, the thickness of the segment beneath me — was about equal to my elevation, or the elevation of the point of sight above the surface. " As five miles, then, to eight thousand," would express the proportion of the earth's area as seen by me. In other words, I beheld as much as a sixteen-hundredth part of the whole surface of the globe. The sea appeared unruffled as a mirror, although, by means of the telescope I could perceive it to be in a state of violent agitation. The ship was no longer visible, having drifted away apparently to the eastward. I now began to experi- ence at intervals severe pain in the head, especially about the ears — still, however, breathing with tolerable freedom. The cat and pigeons seemed to suffer no inconvenience whatsoever. At twenty minutes before seven the balloon entered a long scries of dense cloud, which jiut me to great trouble, by damaging my condensing apparatus, and wetting me to ADVENTURE OF ONE HANS PFAALL. 61 the skin. This was, to be sure, a, singular rencontre, for 1 had not believed it possible that a cloud of this nature could be sustained at so great an elevation. I thought it best. however, to throw out two five-pound pieces of ballast, reserving still a weight of one hundred and sixty-five pounds. Upon so doing, I soon rose above the difficulty, and perceived immediately that I had obtained a great increase in my rate of ascent. In a few seconds after my leaving the cloud a flash of vivid lightning shot from one end of it to the other, and caused it to kindle up throughout its vast extent, like a mass of ignited charcoal. This, it must be remembered, was in the broad light of day. No fancy may picture the subhmity which might have been exhibited by a similar phenomenon taking place amid the darkness of the night. Hell itself might then have found a fitting image. Even as it was my hair stood on end, while I gazed afar down within the yawning abysses, letting imagination descend, and stalk about in the strange vaulted halls, and ruddy gulfs, and red ghastly chasms of the hideous and unfathom- able fire. I had indeed made a narrow escape. Had the balloon remained a very short while longer within the cloud — that is to say, had not the inconvenience of getting wet, determined me to discharge the ballast — my destruction might, and probably would, have been the consequence. Such perils, although little considered, are perhaps the greatest which must be encountered in balloons. I had by this time, however, attained too great an elevation to be any longer uneasy on this head. I was now rising rapidly, and by seven o'clock the barometer indicated an altitude of no less than nine miles and a half I began to find great difficulty in drawing my breath. My head, too, was excessively painful ; and having felt for some time a moisture about my cheeks, I at length discovered it to be blood, which was oozing quite fast from the drums of my ears. My eyes, also, gave me great uneasiness. Upon passing the hand over them they seemed to have protruded from their sockets in no inconsiderable degree ; and all objects in the car, and even the balloon itself, appeared distorted to my vision. These symptoms 62 , ADViBNTURE OF ONE HANS PFAALL. were more than I had expected, and occasioned me some alarm. At this juncture, very imprudently, and without consideration, I threw out from the car three five-pound pieces of baljast. The accelerated rate of ascent thus obtained carried me too rapidly, and without sufficient gradation, intp a highly rarefied stratum of the atmosphere, and the result had nearly proved fatal to my expedition and to myself. I was suddenly seized with a spasm which lasted for more than five minutes, and even when this in a measure ceased, I could catch my breath only at long intervals and in a gasping manner, bleeding all the while copiously at the nose and ears, and even slightly at the eyes. The pigeons appeared distressed in the extreme, and struggled to escape ; whUe the cat mewed piteously, and, with her tongue hanging out of her mouth, staggered to and fro in the car as if under the influence of poison. I now too late discovered the great rashness of which I had been guUty in discharging the ballast, and my agitation was excessive. I anticipated nothing less than death, and death in a few minutes. The physical sufiering I underwent contributed also to render me nearly incapable of making any exertion for the preservation of my life. I had, indeed, little power of reflection left, and the violence of the pain in my head seemed to be greatly on the increase. Thus I found that my senses would shortly give way altogether, and I had already clutched one of the valve ropes with the view of attempting a descent, when the recollection of the trick I had played the three creditors, and the possible consequences to myself, should I return, operated to deter me for the moment. I lay down in the bottom of the cai- and endeavoured to collect my faculties. In this I so far succeeded as to determine upon the experiment of losing blood. Having no lancet, however. I was constrained to perform the operation in the best manner I was able, and finally succeeded in opening a vein in my left arm, with the blade of my penknife. The blood had hardly com- menced floiving when I experienced a sensible relief, and by the time I had lost almut hnlf a moderate basin-full, most of the worst symptoms had abandoned me entirely ADVENTDEE OF ONE HANS PFAALL. 63 I nevertheless did not think it expedient to attempt getting on my feet immediately ; but, having tied up my arm as well as I could, I lay still for about a quarter of an hour. At the end of this time I arose, and found myself freer from absolute j>ai7i of any kind than I had been during the last hour and a quarter of my ascension. The difficulty of breathing, however, was diminished in a very slight degree, and I found that it would soon be positively necessary to make use of my condenser. In the meantime, looking towards the cat, who was again snugly stowed away upon my coat, I discovered, to my infinite surprise, that she had taken the opportunity of my indisposition to bring into light a litter of three little kittens. This was au addition to the number of passengers on my part altogether unex- pected ; but I was pleased at the occurrence. It would afford me a chance of bringing to a kind of test the truth of a surmise, which, more than anything else, had influenced me in attempting this ascension. I had imagined that the habitual endurance of the atmospheric pressure at the surface of the earth was the cause, or nearly so, of the pain attend- ing animal existence at a distance above the surface. Should the kittens be found to suffer uneasiness in an equal degree with their mother, 1 must consider my theory in fault, but a failure to do so I should look upon as a strong confirmation of my idea. By eight o'clock I had actually attained an elevation of seventeen miles above the surface of the earth. Thus it seemed to me evident that my rate of ascent was not only on the increase, but that the progression would have been apparent in a slight degree even had I not discharged the ballast which I did. The pains in my head and ears returned, at intervals, with violence, and I still continued to bleed occasionally at the nose ; but upon the whole I sufi"ered much less than might have been expected. I breathed, however, at every moment with more and more difficulty, and each inhalation was attended with a trouble- some spasmodic action of the chest. I now unpacked tht condensing apparatus, and got it ready for immediate use. The view of the earth at this period of my ascension 64 ADVENTURE OF ONE HANS PFAALL. was beautiful indeed. To the westward, the northward, and the southward, as far as I could see, lay a boundless sheet of apparently unruffled ocean, which every moment gained a deeper and deeper tint of blue. At a vast distance to the eastward, although perfectly discernible, extended the islands of Great Britain, the entire Atlantic coasts of France and Spain, with a small portion of the northern part of the continent of Africa. Of individual edifices not a trace could be discovered, and the proudest cities of man- kind had utterly faded away from the face of the earth. What mainly astonished me in the appearance of things below, was the seeming concavity of the surface of the globe. I had thoughtlessly enough expected to see its real con- vexity become evident as I ascended ; but a very little reflection sufiiced to explain the discrepancy. A line dropped from my position pei'pendicularly to the earth would have formed the perpendicular of a right-angled triangle, of which the base would have extended from the right-angle to the horizon, and the hypothenuse from the horizon to my position. But my height was little or nothing in comparison with my prospect. In other words, the base and hypothenuse of the supposed triangle would in my case have been so long, when compared to the perpendicular, that the two former might have been regarded as nearly parallel. In this manner the horizon of the seronaut appears always to be upon a level with the car. But as the point immediately beneath him seems, and is, at a great distance below him, it seems of course also at a great distance below the horizon. Hence the impression of concavity ; and this impression must remain until the elevation shall bear so great a proportion to the prospect, that the apparent paral- lelism of the base and hypothenuse disappears. The pigeons about this time seeming to undergo much suffering, I determined upon giving them their liberty. I first untied one of them, a beautiful grey-mottled pigeon, and placed him upon the rim of the wicker-work. He ap- peared extremely uneasy, looking anxiously around him, fluttering his wings, and making a loud cooing noise, but could not be persuaded to trust himself from the car. I ADVENTUKE OF ONE HANS PFAALL. 65 took him up at last, and threw Mm to about half-a-dozen yards from the balloon. He made, however, no attempt to descend as I had expected, but struggled with great vehe- mence to get back, uttering at the same time very shrill and piercing cries. He at length succeeded in regaining his former station on the rim, but had hardly done so when his head dropped upon his breast, and he fell dead within the car. The other one did not prove so unfortunate. To prevent his following the example of his companion, and accomplishing a return, I threw him downwards with all my force, and was pleased to find him continue his descent with great velocity, making use of his wings with ease, and in a perfectly natural manner. In a very short time he was out of sight, and I have no doubt he reached home in safety. Puss, who seemed in a great measure recovered from her illness, now made a hearty meal of the dead bird, and then went to sleep with much apparent satisfaction. Her kittens were quite lively, and so far evinced not the slighest sign of any uneasiness. At a quarter-past eight, being able no longer to draw breath without the most intolerable pain, I proceeded forth- with to adjust around the car the apparatus belonging to the condenser. This apparatus will require some little explanation, and your Excellencies will please to bear in mind that my object, in the first place, was to surround myself and car entirely with a barricade against the highly rarefied atmosphere in which I was existing, with the intention of introducing within this barricade, by means of my condenser, a quantity of this same atmosphere sufficiently condensed for the purposes of respiration. With this object in view I had prepared a very strong, perfectly air-tight, but flexible gum-elastic bag. In this bag, which was of sufficient di- mensions, the entire car was in a manner placed. That is to say, it (the bag) was drawn over the whole bottom of the car, up its sides, and so on, along the outside of the ropes, to the upper rim or hoop where the net-work is attached. Having pulled the bag up in this way, and formed a com- plete enclosure on all sides, and at bottom, it was now necessary to fasten up its top or mouth, by passing its VOL. I. «• 66 ADVUNTUEE OF ONE HANS PFAALL. material over the hoop of the net-work, in other TCords, between the net-work and the hoop. But if the net-work were separated from the hoop to admit this passage, what was to sustain the car in the meantime ? Now the net-work was not permanently fastened to the hoop, but attached by a series of running loops or nooses. I therefore undid only a few of these loops at one time, leaving the car suspended by the remainder. Having thus inserted a portion of the cloth forming the upper part of the bag, I refastened the loops — not to the hoop, for that would have been impossible, since the cloth now intervened, — but to a series of large buttons, affixed to the cloth itself, about three feet below the mouth of the bag ; the intervals between the buttons having been made to correspond to the intervals between the loops. This done, a few more of the loops were un- fastened from the rim, a further portion of the cloth intro- duced, and the disengaged loops then connected with their pj-oper buttons. In this way it was possible to insert the whole upper part of the bag between the net-work and the hoop. It is evident that the hoop would now drop down within the car, while the whole weight of the car it- self, with all its contents, would be held up merely by the strength of the buttons. This, at first sight, would seem an inadequate dependence ; but it was by no means so, for the buttons were not only very strong in themselves, but so close together, that a very slight portion of the whole weight was supported by any one of them. Indeed, had the car and contents been three times heavier than they were, I should not have been at all uneasy. I now raised up the hoop again within the covering of gum-elastic, and propped it at nearly its former height by means of three light poles prepared for the occasion. This was done, of course, to keep the bag distended at the top, and to preserve the lower part of the net-work in its proper situation. AH that now remained was to fasten up the mouth of the en- closure ; and this was readily accomplished by gathering the folds of the material together, and twisting them up very tightly on the inside by means of a kind of stati9nary ADVENTURE OF ONE HANS PFAALL. 67 In the sides of the covering thus adjusted round the car had been inserted three circular panes of thick but clear glass, through which I could see without difficulty around me in every horizontal direction. In that portion of the cloth forming the bottom was likewise a fourth window, of the same kind, and corresponding with a small aperture in the floor of the car itself This enabled me to see perpendicularly down, but having found it impos- sible to place any similar contrivance overhead, on account of the peculiar manner of closing up the opening there, and the consequent wrinkles in the cloth, I could expect to see no objects situated directly in my zenith. This, of course, was a matter of little consequence ; for, had I even been able to place a window at top, the balloon itself would have prevented my making any use of it. ^ About a foot below one of the side windows was a circular opening, three inches in diameter, and fitted with a brass rim adapted in its inner edge to the windings of a screw. In this rim was screwed the large tube of the con- denser, the body of the machine being, of course, within the chamber of gum-elastic. Through this tube a quantity of the rare atmosphere circumjacent being drawn by means of a vacuum created in the body of the machine, was thence discharged, in a state of condensation, to mingle with the thin air already in the chamber. This operation being re- peated several times, at length filled the chamber with atmosphere proper for all the purposes of respiration. But in so confined a space it would in a short time necessarily become foul and unfit for use from frequent contact with the lungs. It was then ejected by a small valve at the bottom of the car, the dense air readily sinking into the thinner atmosphere below. To avoid the inconvenience of making a total vacuum at any moment within the chamber, this purification was never accomplished all at once, but in a gradual manner, the valve being opened only for a few seconds, then closed again, until one or two strokes from the pump of the condenser had supplied the place of the atmosphere ejected. For the sake of experiment I had put the cat and kittens in a small basket, and suspended it out- 68 ADVENTURE OF ONE HANS PFAALL. side the car to a button at the bottom, close by the vaJve, through which I could feed them at any moment when necessary. I did this at some little risk, and before closing the mouth of the chamber, by reaching under the car with one of the poles before mentioned, to which a hook had been attached. As soon as dense air was admitted in the chamber, the hoop and poles became unnecessary; the expansion of the enclosed atmosphere powerfully distending the gum-elastic. By the time I had fully completed these arrangements and filled the chamber as explained, it wanted only ten minutes of nine o'clock. During the whole period of my being thus employed I endured the most terrible distress from difficulty of respiration ; and bitterly did I repent the negligence, or rather fool-hardiness, of which I had been guilty, of putting off to the last moment a matter of so much importance. But having at length accomplished it, I soon began to reap the benefit of my invention. Once again I breathed with perfect freedom and ease — and indeed why should I not 1 I was also agreeably surprised to find myself in a great measure relieved from the violent pains which had hitherto tormented me. A slight headache, accompanied with a sensation of fulness or distension about the wrists, the ankles, and the throat, was nearly all of which I had now to complain. Thus it seemed evident that a greater part of the uneasiness attending the removal of atmospheric pressure had actually worn off, as I had ex- pected, and that much of the pain endured for the last two hours should have been attributed altogether to the effects of a deficient respiration. At twenty minutes before nine o'clock — ^that is to say, a short time prior to my closing up the mouth of the chamber — the mercury attained its limit, or ran down, in the baro- meter, which, as I mentioned before, was one of an extended construction. It then indicated an altitude on my part of 132,000 feet, or five and twenty miles, and I consequently surveyed at that time an extent of the earth's area amount- ing to no less than the three hundred and twentieth part of its entire superficies. At nine o'clock I had again lost sight A-DVENTUEE OF ONE HANS PFAALL. 69 of land to the eastward, but not before I became aware that the balloon was drifting rapidly to the N.N.W. The ocean beneath me still retained its apparent concavity, although my view was often interrupted by the masses of cloud which floated to and fro. At half-past nine I tried the experiment of throwing out a handful of feathers through the valve. They did not float as I had expected ; but dropped down perpendicularly like a bullet, en masse, and with the greatest velocity, being out of sight in a very few seconds. I did not at first know what to make of this extraordinary phenomenon ; not being able to beUeve that my rate of ascent had, of a sudden, met with so prodigious an acceleration. But it soon occurred to me that the atmosphere was now far too rare to sustain even the feathers ; that they actually fell, as they appeared to do, with great rapidity ; and that I had been surprised by the united velocities of their descent and my own elevation. By ten o'clock I found that I had very little to occupy my immediate attention. Affairs went on swimmingly, and I believed the balloon to be going upwards with a speed increasing momently, although I had no longer any means of ascertaining the progression of the increase. I suffered no pain or uneasiness of any kind, and enjoyed better spirits than I had at any period since my departure from Rotterdam ; busying myself now in examining the state of my various apparatus, and now in regenerating the atmo- sphere within the chamber. This latter point I determined to attend to at regular intervals of forty minutes, more on account of the preservation of my health, than from so frequent a renovation being absolutely necessary. In the meanwhile I could not help making anticipations. Fancy revelled in the wild and dreamy regions of the moon. Imagination, feeling herself for once unshackled, roamed ai will among the ever-changing wonders of a shadowy and unstable land. Now there were hoary and time-honoured forests, and craggy precipices, and waterfalls tumbling with a loud noise into abysses without a bottom. Then I came suddenly into stiU noonday solitudes, where no wind of 70 ADVENTUEB OF ONE HANS PFAALL. heaven ever intruded, and where vast meadows of poppies, and slender, lily-looking flowers spread themselves out a wear}' distance, all silent and motionless for ever. Then, again, I journeyed far down away into another country, where it was all one dim and vague lake, with a boundary- line of clouds. But fancies such as these were not the sole possessors of my brain. Horrors of a nature most stem and most appalling would too frequently obtrude them- selves upon my mind, and shake the innermost depths of my soul with the bare supposition of their possibility. Yet I would not suffer my thoughts for any length of time to dwell upon these latter speculations, rightly judging the real and palpable dangers of the voyage sufficient for my undivided attention. At five o'clock. P.M., being engaged in regenerating the atmosphere within the chamber, I took that opportunity of observing the cat and kittens through the valve. The cat herself appeared to suffer again very much, and I had no hesitation in attributing her uneasiness chiefly to a difficulty in breathing; but my experiment with the kittens had resulted very strangely. I had expected, of course, to see them betray a sense of pain, although in a less degree than their mother ; and this would have been sufficient to con- firm my opinion concerning the habitual endurance of atmospheric pressure. But I was not prepared to find them, upon close examination, evidently enjoying a high degree of health, breathing with the greatest ease and perfect regularity, and evincing not the slightest sign of any uneasiness. I could only account for all this by extending my theory, and supposing that the highly rarefied atmo- sphere around might perhaps not be, as I had taken for granted, chemically insufficient for the purposes of life, and that a person born in such a medium might, possibly, be unaware of any inconvenience attending its inhalation, while, upon removal to the denser strata near the earth, he might endure tortures of a similar nature to those I had so lately experienced. It has since been to me a matter of deep regret that an awkward accident, at this time, occa- sioned me the loss of my little family of cats, and deprived ADVENTURE OF ONE HANS PFAALL. 7l me of the insight into this matter which a continued experiment might have afforded. In passing my hand through the valve, with a cup of water for the old puss, the sleeve of my shirt became entangled in the loop which sustained the basket, and thus, in a moment, loosened it from the button. Had the whole actually vanished into air, it could not have shot from my sight in a more abrupt and instantaneous manner. Positively there could not have intervened the tenth part of a second between the dis- engagement of the basket and its absolute disappearance with all that it contained. My good wishes followed it to the earth, but, of course, I had no hope that either cat or kittens would ever live to tell the tale of their misfortune. At sis o'clock I perceived a great portion of the earth's visible area to the eastward involved in thick shadow, which continued to advance with great rapidity, until, at five minutes before seven, the whole surface in view was en- veloped in the darkness of night. It was not, however, until long after this time that the rays of the setting sun ceased to illumine the balloon ; and this circumstance, although of course fully anticipated, did not fail to give me an infinite deal of pleasure. It was evident that in the morning I should behold the rising luminary many hours at least before the citizens of Rotterdam, in spite of their situation so much farther to the eastward, and thus, day after day, in proportion to the height ascended, would I enjoy the light of the sun for a longer and a longer period. I now determined to keep a journal of my passage, reckon- ing the days from one to twenty-four hours continuously, without taking into consideration the intervals of dark- ness. At ten o'clock, feeling sleepy, I determined to lie down for the rest of the night ; but here a difficulty presented itself, which, obvious as it may appear, had escaped my attention up to the very moment of which I am now speaking. If I went to sleep as I proposed, how could the atmosphere in the chamber be regenerated in the interim ? To breathe it for more than an hour at the farthest would be a matter of impossibility ; or, if even this term could be extended tc 72 ADVENTURE Ot ONE HiNS PI'AAL^ an hour and a quarter, the most ruinous consequences might ensue. The consideration of this dilemma gave me no little disquietude ; and it will hardly be believed that, after the dangers I had undergone, I should look upon this business in so serious a light, as to give up all hope of accomplishing my ultimate design, and finally make up my mind to the necessity of a descent. But this hesitation was only momentary. I reflected that man is the veriest slave of custom, and that many points in the routine of his existence are deemed essentially important, which are only so at all by his having rendered them habitual. It was very certain that I could not do without sleep ; but I might easily bring myself to feel no inconvenience from being awakened at intervals of an hour during the whole period of my repose. It would require but five minutes at most to regenerate the atmosphere in the fullest manner, and the only real difficulty was, to contrive a method of arousing myself at the proper moment for so doing. But this was a question which, I am willing to confess, occasioned me no little trouble in its solution. To be sure, I had heard of the student who, to prevent his falling asleep over his books, held in one hand a baU of copper, the din of whose descent into a basin of the same metal on the floor beside his chair served effectually to startle him up, if, at any moment, he should be overcome with drowsiness. My own case, how- ever, was very dififerent indeed, and left me no room for any similar idea ; for I did not wish to keep awake, but to be aroused from slumber at regular intervals of time. I at length hit upon the following expedient, which, simple as it may seem, was hailed by me, at the moment of discovery, as an invention fuUy equal to that of the telescope, the steam-engine, or the art of printing itself. It is necessary to premise that the balloon, at the eleva- tion now attained, continued its course upwards with an even and undeviating ascent, and the car consequently followed with a steadiness so perfect that it would have been impossible to detect in it the slightest vacillation. This circumstance favoured me greatly in the project I now determined to adopt. My supply of water had been put od ADVENT0KE OF ONE HANS PFAllL. V3 board in kegs containing five gallons each, and ranged very securely around the interior of the car. I unfastened one of these, and taking two ropes, tied them tightly across the rim of the wicker-work from one side to the other, placing them about a foot apart and parallel, so as to form a kind of shelf, upon which I placed the keg, and steadied it in a horizontal position. About eight inches immediately below these ropes, and four feet from the bottom of the car, I fastened another shelf — but made of thin plank, being the only similar piece of wood I had. Upon this latter shelf, and exactly beneath one of the rims of the keg, a small earthen pitcher was deposited. I now bored a hole in the end of the keg over the pitcher, and fitted in a plug of soft wood, cut in a tapering or conical shape. This plug I pushed in or pulled out, as it might happen, until, after a few experiments, it arrived at that exact degree of tight- ness, at which the water, oozing from the hole, and falling into the pitcher below, would fill the latter to the brim in the period of sixty minutes. This, of course, was a matter briefly and easily ascertained, by noticing the proportion of the pitcher filled in any given time. Having arranged all this, the rest of the plan is obvious. My bed was so con- trived upon the floor of the car, as to bring my head, in lying down, immediately below the mouth of the pitcher. It was evident, that, at the expiration of an hour, the pitcher, getting full, would be forced to run over, and run over at the mouth, which was somewhat lower than the rim. It was also evident, that the water, thus falling from a height of more than four feet, could not do otherwise than fall upon my face, and that the sure consequence would be, to waken me up instantaneously, even from the soundest slumber in the world. It was fuUy eleven by the time I had completed these arrangements, and I immediately betook myself to bed, with fiiU confidence in the efficiency of my invention. Nor in this matter was I disappointed. Punctually every sixty minutes was I aroused by my trusty chronometer, when, having emptied the pitcher into the bung-hole of the keg, and performed the duties of the condenser, I retired again 74 ADVENTUBE OF ONE HANS PFAALL. to bed. These regular interraptions to my slumber caused me even less discomfort than I had anticipated ; and when I finally arose for the day, it was seven o'clock, and the sun had attained many degrees above the line of my horizon. April 3d. I found the balloon at an immense height indeed, and the earth's convexity had now become strikingly manifest. Below me in the ocean lay a cluster of black specks, which undoubtedly were islands. Overhead the sky was of a jetty black, and the stars were brilliantly visible ; indeed they had been so constantly since the first day of ascent. Far away to the northward I perceived a thin, white, and exceedingly brilliant line, or streak, on the edge of the horizon, and I had no hesitation in supposing it to be the southern disc of the ices of the Polar Sea. My curiosity was greatly excited, for I had hopes of passing on much farther to the north, and might possibly at some period find myself placed directly above the Pole itself. I now lamented that my great elevation would, in this case, prevent my taking as accurate a survey as I could wisL Much, however, might be ascertained. Nothing else of aa extraordinary nature occurred during the day. My apparatus all continued in good order, and the balloon stUl ascended without any perceptible vacillation. The cold was intense, and obliged me to wrap up closely in an overcoat. When darkness came over the earth, I betook myself to bed, although it was for many hours afterwards broad daylight all around my immediate situation. The water-clock was punctual in its duty, and I slept until next morning soundly, with the exception of the periodical interruption. April ah. Arose in good health and spirits, and was astonished at the singular change which had taken place b the appearance of the sea. It had lost, in a great measure, the deep tint of blue it had hitherto worn, being now of a greyish-white, and of a lustre dazzling to the eye. The convexity of the ocean had become so evident, that the entire mass of the distant water seemed to be tumbling headlong over the abyss of the horizon, and I found myself ADVENTUEE OF ONE HANS PFAALL. 75 listening on tiptoe for the echoes of the mighty cataract The islands were no longer visible ; whether they had passed down the horizon to the south-east, or whether my increasing elevation had left them out of sight, it is impossible to say. I was inclined, however, to the latter opinion. The rim of ice to the northward was growing more and more appa^ rent. Cold by no means so intense. Nothing of importance occurred, and I passed the day in reading, having taken care to supply myself with books. April 5th. Beheld the singular phenomenon of the sun rising, while nearly the whole visible surface of the earth continued to be involved in darkness. In time, however, the light spread itself over all, and I again saw the line of ice to the northward. It was now very distinct, and ap- peared of a much darker hue than the waters of the ocean. I was evidently approaching it, and with great rapidity. Fancied I could again distinguish a strip of land to the eastward, and one also to the westward, but could not be certain. Weather moderate. Nothing of any consequence happened during the day. Went early to bed. April 6th. Was surprised at finding the rim of ice at a very moderate distance, and an immense field of the same material stretching away off to the horizon in the north. It was evident that if the balloon held its present course, it would soon arrive above the Frozen Ocean, and I had now little doubt of ultimately seeing the Pole. During the whole of the day I continued to near the ice. Towards night the limits of my horizon very suddenly and materially increased, owing undoubtedly to the earth's form being that of an oblate spheroid, and my arriving above the flattened regions in the vicinity of the Arctic circle. When dark- ness at length overtook me, I went to bed in great anxiety, fearing to pass over the object of so much curiosity when I should have no opportunity of observing it. Apil 1th. Arose early, and, to my great joy, at length beheld what there could be no hesitation in supposing the northern Pole itself. It was there beyond a doubt, and immediately beneath my feet; but, alas! I had no-n ascended to so vast a distance, that nothing could with 76 ADVENTURE OF ONE HANS PFAALL. accuracy be discerned. Indeed, to judge from the pro- gression of the numbers indicating my various altitudes respectively at different periods between six a.m. on the second of April and twenty minutes before nine A.M. of the same day (at which time the barometer ran down), it might be fairly inferred that the balloon had now, at four o'clock in the morning of April the seventh, reached a height of not less, certainly, than 7254 miles above the sur- face of the sea. This elevation may appear immense, but the estimate upon which it is calculated gave a result in all probabOity far inferior to the truth. At all events I un- doubtedly beheld the .whole of the earth's major diameter ; the entire northern hemisphere lay beneath me like a chart orthographically projected ; and the great circle of the equator itself formed the boundary line of my horizon. Your Excellencies may, however, readUy imagine that the confined regions hitherto unexplored within the limits of the Arctic circle, although situated directly beneath me, and therefore seen without any appearance of being foreshortened, were still in themselves comparatively too diminutive, and at too great a distance from the point of sight, to admit of any very accurate examination. Nevertheless, what could be seen was of a nature singular and exciting. Northwardly from that huge rim before mentioned, and which, with sUght qualification, may be called the limit of human dis- covery in these regions, one unbroken, or nearly unbroken, sheet of ice continues to extend. In the first few degrees of this its progress, its surface is very sensibly flattened, farther on depressed into a plain, and finally, becoming not a little concave, it terminates, at the Pole itself, iu a circular centre, sharply defined, whose apparent diameter subtended at the balloon an angle of about sLrty-five seconds, and whose dusky hue, varying in intensity, was at aU times darker than any other spot upon the visible hemisphere, and occasionally deepened into the most ab- solute blackness. Farther than this, little could be ascer- tained. By twelve o'clock the circular centre had materially decreased in circumference, and by seven p.m. I lost sight of it entu-ely ; the balloon passing over the western limb of ADVENTUEE 05 ONE HANS PFAALL. 77 the ice, and floating away rapidly in the direction of the equator. jipril 8th. Found a sensible diminution in the earth's apparent diameter, besides a material alteration iq its general colour and appearance. The whole visible area partook in different degrees of a tint of pale yellow, and in some portions had acquired a brilliancy even painful to the eye. My view downwards was also considerably impeded by the dense atmosphere in the vicinity of the surface being loaded with clouds, between whose masses I could only now and then obtain a gUmpse of the earth itself. This diffi- culty of direct vision had troubled me more or less for the last forty-eight hours ; but my present enormous elevation brought closer together, as it were, the floating bodies of vapour, and the inconvenience became, of course, more and more palpable in proportion to my ascent. Nevertheless, I could easily perceive that the balloon now hovered above the range of great lakes in the continent of North America, and was holding a course due south, which would soon bring me to the tropics. This circumstance did not fail to give me the most heartfelt satisfaction, and I hailed it as a happy omen of ultimate success. Indeed, the direction I had hitherto taken had fiUed me with uneasiness ; for it was evident that, had I continued it much longer, there would have been no possibility of my arriving at the moon at all, whose orbit is inclined to the ecliptic at only the small angle of 5° 8' 48". Strange as it may seem, it was only at this late period that I began to understand the great error I had committed in not taking my departure from earth at some point in the plane of the lunar ellipse. April 9ih. To-day the earth's diameter was greatly diminished, and the colour of the surface assumed hourly a deeper tint of yellow. The balloon kept steadily on her course to the southward, and arrived at nine P.M. over the northern edge of the Mexican Gulf. Apil 10th. I was suddenly aroused from slumber about five o'clock this morning by a loud, crackling, and terrific sound, for which I could in no manner account. It was of very brief duration, but, while it lasted, resembled 78 ADVENTUEE OF ONE HANS PFAAIL. nothing in the world of which I had any previous experience. It is needless to say that I became excessively alarmed, having, in the first instance, attributed the noise to the bursting of the balloon. I examined all my apparatus, however, with great attention, and could discover nothing out of order. Spent a great part of the day in meditating upon an occurrence so extraordinary, but could find no means whatever of accounting for it. Went to bed dis- satisfied, and in a state of great anxiety and agitation jipril 1 1 th. Found a startling diminution in the appa- rent diameter of the earth, and a considerable increase, now observable for the first time, in that of the moon itself, which wanted only a few days of being full. It now required long and excessive labour to condense within the chamber sufficient atmospheric air for the sustenance of life. April \1th. A singular alteration took place in regard to the direction of the balloon, and although fully antici- pated, afforded me the most unequivocal delight. Having reached, in its former course, about the twentieth parallel of southern latitude, it turned off suddenly, at an acute angle, to the eastward, and thus proceeded throughout the day, keeping nearly, if not altogether, in the exact plane of the lunar ellipse. What was worthy of remark, a very perceptible vacillation in the car was a consequence of this change of route, — a vacillation which prevailed, in a more or less degree, for a period of many hours. April \Mh. Was again very much alarmed by a repetition of the loud crackling noise which terrified me on the tenth. Thought long upon the subject, but was unable to form any satisfactory conclusion. Great decrease in the earth's apparent diameter, which now subtended from the balloon an angle of very little more than twenty-five de- grees. The moon could not be seen at all, being nearly in my zenith. I still continued in the plane of the ellipse, but made little progress to the eastward. April 1 ith. Extremely rapid decrease in the diameter of the earth. To-day I became strongly impressed with the idea that the balloon was now actually running up the line of apsides to the point of perigee, — in other words, holding ADVENTURE OF ONE HANS PFAAIL. 79 the direct course which would bring it immediately to the moon in that part of its orbit the nearest to the earth. The moon itself was directly overhead, and consequently hidden from my view. Great and long-continued labour necessary for the condensation of the atmosphere. Apil I5th. Not even the outlines of continents and seas could now be traced upon the earth with distinctness. About twelve o'clock I became aware, for the third time, of that appalling sound which had so astonished me before. It now, however, continued for some moments, and gathered iutensity as it continued. At length, while, stupefied and terror-stricken, I stood in expectation of I knew not what hideous destruction, the car vibrated with excessive violence, and a gigantic and flaming mass of some material which I could not distinguish came with a voice of a thousand thunders, roaring and booming by the balloon. When my fears and astonishment had in some degree subsided, I had little difficulty in supposing it to be some mighty volcanic fragment ejected from that world to which I was so rapidly approaching, and, in all probability, one of that singular class of substances occasionally picked up on the earth, and termed meteoric stones for want of a better appellation. April 16th. To-day, looking upwards as well as I could, through each of the side windows alternately, I beheld, to my great delight, a very small portion of the moon's disk protruding, as it were, on all sides beyond the huge circumference of the balloon. My agitation was extreme ; for I had now little doubt of soon reaching the end of my perilous voyage. Indeed, the labour now required by the condenser had increased to a most oppres- sive degree, and allowed me scarcely any respite from exertion. Sleep was a matter nearly out of the question. I became quite ill, and my frame trembled with exhaustion. It was impossible that human nature could endure this state of intense suffering much longer. During the now brief interval of darkness a meteoric stone again passed in my vicinity, and the frequency of these phenomena began to occasion me much apprehension. April 17 th. This morning proved an epoch in my 80 ADTENTUEE OF ONE HANS PFAALL. voyage. It will be remembered, that, on the thirteenth, the earth subtended an angular breadth of twenty -five degrees. On the fourteenth this had greatly diminished ; on the fifteenth a still more rapid decrease was observable ; and, on retiring for the night of the sixteenth, I had noticed an angle of no more than about seven degrees and fifteen minutes. What, therefore, must have been my amazement, on awakening from a brief and disturbed slumber, on the morning of this day, the seventeenth, at finding the surface beneath me so suddenly and wonder- fully augmented in volume, as to subtend no less than thirty- nine degrees in apparent angular diameter ! I was thunderstruck ! No words can give any adequate idea of the extreme, the absolute horror and astonishment, with which I was seized, possessed, and altogether overwhelmed. My knees tottered beneath me — my teeth chattered — my hair started up on end. "The balloon, then, had actually burst ! " These were the first tumultuous ideas which hurried through my mind : " The balloon had positively burst ! — I was falling — falling with the most impetuous, the most unparalleled velocity ! To judge from the im- mense distance already so quickly passed over, it could not be more than ten minutes, at the farthest, before I should meet the surface of the earth, and be hurled into annihilation ! " But at length reflection came to my relief I paused ; I considered ; and I began to doubt. The matter was impossible. I could not in any reason have so rapidly come down. Besides, although I was evidently approaching the surface below me, it was with a speed by no means commensurate with the velocity I had at first conceived. This consideration served to calm the perturba- tion of my mind, and I finally succeeded in regarding the phenomenon in its proper point of view. In fact, amaze- ment must have fairly deprived me of my senses, when 1 could not see the vast difierence, in appearance, between the surface below me and the surface of my mother earth. The latter was indeed over my head, and completely hidden by the balloon, while the moon — the moon itself in all its glory — lay beneath me, and at my feet. ADVENTURE OF ONE HANS PFAALL. 81 The stupor and surprise produced in my mind by this extraordinary change in the posture of aflfairs^ was perhaps, after all, that part of the adventure least susceptible of explanation. For the bouleversemmt in itself was not only natural and inevitable, but had been long actually antici- pated, as a circumstance to be expected whenever I should arrive at that exact point of my voyage where the attrac- tion of the planet should be superseded by the attraction of the satellite — or, more precisely, where the gravitation of the balloon towards the earth should be less powerful than its gravitation towards the moon. To be sure I arose from a sound slumber, with all my senses in confusion, to the contemplation of a very startling phenomenon, and one which, although expected, was not expected at the moment. The revolution itself must, of course, have taken place in an easy and gradual manner, and it is by no means clear that, had I even been awake at the time of the occurrence, I should have been made aware of it by any internal evidence of an inversion — that is to say, by any incon- venience or disarrangement, either about my person or about my apparatus. It is almost needless to say, that, upon coming to a due sense of my situation, and emerging from the terror which had absorbed every faculty of my soul, my attention was, in the first place, wholly directed to the contemplation of the general physical appearance of the moon. It lay beneath me like a chart — and although I judged it to be still at no inconsiderable distance, the indentures of its surface were defined to my vision with a most striking and altogether unaccountable distinctness. The entire absence of ocean or sea, and indeed of any lake or river, or body of water whatsoever, struck me at the first glance, as the most extraordinary feature in its geological condition. Yet, strange to say, I beheld vast level regions of a character decidedly alluvial, although by far the greater portion of the hemisphere in sight was covered with innumerable volcanic mountains, conical in shape, and having more the appearance of artificial than of natural protuberances. The highest among them does not eiceed three and three- VOL. I. O 82 ADVENTUBE OF ONE HANS PFAALL. quarter miles in perpendicular elevation ; but a map of the volcanic districts of the Campi Phlegrsei would afford to your Excellencies a better idea of their general surface than any unworthy description I might think proper to attempt. The greater part of them were in a state of evident eruption, and gave me fearfully to understand their fury and their power, by the repeated thunders of the miscalled meteoric stones, which now rushed upwards by the balloon with a frequency more and more appalling. April 1 8th. To-day I found an enormous increase in the moon's apparent bulk — and the evidently accelerated velocity of my descent, began to fiU me with alarm. It will be rememlDered, that, in the earliest stage of my specula- tions upon the possibility of a passage to the moon, the existence, in its vicinity, of an atmosphere dense in pro- portion to the bulk of the planet, had entered largely into my calculations ; this too in spite of many theories to the contrary, and, it may be added, in spite of a general disbelief in the existence of any lunar atmosphere at all. But, in addition to what I have already urged in regard to Encke's comet and the zodiacal light, I had been strengthened in my opinion by certain observations of Mr. Schroeter, of Lilienthal. He observed the moon, when two days and a half old, in the evening soon after sunset, before the dark part was visible, and continued to watch it until it became visible. The two cusps appeared tapering in a very sharp faint prolongation, each exhibiting its farthest extremity faintly illuminated by the solar rays, before any part of the dark hemisphere was visible. Soon afterwards the whole dark Umb became illuminated. This prolongation of the cusps beyond the semicircle, I thought, must have arisen from the refraction of the sun's rays by the moon's atmo- sphere. I computed, also, the height of the atmosphere (which could refract light enough into its dark hemisphere, to produce a twilight more luminous than the light reflected from the earth when the moon is about 32° from the new), to be 1356 Paris feet ; in this view, I supposed the greatest height capable of refracting the solar ray to be 5376 feet. My ideas upon this topic had also received confirmation by ADVENTUBE OF ONE HANS PFAALL. 83 a passage in the eighty-second volume of the Philosophical Transactions, in which it is stated, that, at an occultation of Jupiter's satellites, the third disappeared after having been about 1" or 2" of time indistinct, and the fourth became indiscernible near the limb.* Upon the resistance, or more properly, upon the sup- port of an atmosphere, existing in the state of density imagined, I had, of course, entirely depended for the safety of my ultimate descent. Should I then, after all, prove to have been mistaken, I had in consequence nothing better to expect, as a finale to my adventure, than being dashed into atoms against the rugged surface of the satellite. And, indeed, I had now every reason to be terrified. My distance from the moon was comparatively trifling, whUe the labour required by the condenser was diminished not at all, and I could discover no indication whatever of a decreasing rarity in the air. April 19 MESMERIC EEVELATION. 123 P. You say that divested of the body man will be God? V. [After much hesitation.] I could not have said this ; it is an absurdity. P. [Bef erring to my notes.] You did say that " divested of corporate investiture man were God." V. And this is true. Man thus divested would he God — would be unindividualised". "But he can never be thus divested — at least never will he — else we must imagine an action of God returning upon itself — a purposeless and futile action. Man is a creature. Creatures are thoughts of God. It is the nature of thought to be irrevocable. P. I do not comprehend. You say that man will never put off the body ? V. I say that he will never be bodiless. P. Explain. V. There are two bodies — the rudimental and the complete ; corresponding with the two conditions of the worm and the butterfly.^' What we call " death " is but the painful metamorphosis. Our present incarnation is progres- sive, preparatory, temporary. Our future is perfected, ulti- mate, immortal. -The ultimate life is the full design. P. But of the worm's metamorphosis we are palpably cognisant. V. We, certainly — but not the worm. The matter of which our rudimental body is composed is within the ken of the organs of that body ; or, more distinctly, our rudi- mental organs are adapted to the matter of which is formed the rudimental body, but not to that of which the ultimate is composed. The ultimate body thus escapes our rudimental senses, and we perceive only the shell which falls in decaying from the inner form, not that inner form itself f; but this inner form, as well as the shell, is appreciable by those who have already acquired the ultimate life. P. You have often said that the mesmeric state very nearly resembles death. How is this ? V. When I say that it resembles death, I mean that it resembles the ultimate life ; for when I am entranced the senses of my rudimental life are in abeyance, and I perceive 124 MESMERIC KEVELATION. external things directly, without orgaijs, through a medium which I shall employ in the ultimate^ unorganisecptife. P. Unorganised? V. Yes ; organs are contrivances by wnich the indi- vidual is brought into sensible relation with particular classes and forms of matter to the exclusion of other classes and forms. The organs of man are adapted to his rudi- mental condition, and to that only ; his ultimate condition, being unorganised, is of unlimited comprehension in all points but one — the nature of the volition of God — that is to say, the motion of the unparticled matter. You will have a distinct idea of the ultimate body by conceiving it to be entire brain. This it is not ; but a conception of this nature will bring you near a comprehension of what it is. A luminous body imparts vibration to tb? luminiferous ether. The vibrations generate similar ones within the retina ; these again communicate similar ones to the optic jierve. The nerve conveys similar ones to the brain ; the brain, also, similar ones to the unparticled matter which permeates it. ' The motion of this latter is thought, of which perception is the first undulation. This is the mode by which the mind of the rudimental life communicates with the external world ; and this external world is, to the rudimental life limited through the idiosyncrasy of its organs. But in the ultimate unorganised life the external world reaches the whole body (which is of a substance having affinity to brain, as I have said), with no other intervention than that of an infinitely rarer ether than even the luminiferous ; and to this ether — in unison with it — the whole body vibrates, setting in njotion the unparticled matter which permeates it. It is ta the absence of idiosyn- : cratic organs, therefore, that we must attribute the nearly unlimited perception of the ultimate life. To rudimental beings, organs are the cages necessary to confine them until fledged. P. You speak of rudimental " beings." Are there other rudimental thinking beings than man ? v. The multitudinous conglomeration of rare matter into nebulse, planets, suns, and other bodies which are MESMEKIC EEVELATION. 125 neither nebulse, suns, nor planets, is for the sole purpose oi supplying pabulum for the idiosyncrasy of the organs of an infinity of rudimental beings. But for the necessity of the rudimental, prior to the ultimate life, there would have been no bodies such as these. Each of these is tenanted by a distinct variety of organic, rudimental thinking creatures. In all, the organs vary with the features of the place tenanted. At death, or metamorphosis, these creatures, enjoying the ultimate life — immortality — and cognisant of all secrets but the one, act all things and pass everywhere by mere volition ; — indwelling, not the stars, which to us seem the sole palpabilities, and for the accommodation of which we blindly deem space created — but that space itself — that infinity of which the truly substantive vastness swallows up the star-shadows — blotting them out as non- entities from the perception of the angels. P. You say that " but for the necessity of the rudimental life " there would have been no stars. But why this neces- sity? V. In the inorganic life, as well as in the inorganic matter generally, there is nothing to impede the action of one simple wnique law — the /Divine volition," With the view of producing impediment, the organic life and matter (complex, substantial, and law-encumbered), were contrived. P. But again — ^why need this impediment have been produced % F^/The result of law inviolate is perfection — right — negative happiness. The result of law violate is imper- fection, wrong, positive pain. Through the impediments afforded by the number, complexity, and substantiality of the laws of organic life and matter, the violation of law is rendered to a certain extent practicable. Thus pain, which in the inorganic life is impossible, is possible in the organic^^ P. But to what good end is pain thus rendered possible I. Fi^All things are either good or bad by comparison. A sufficient analysis will show that pleasure, in aU cases, is i but the contrast of pain. Positive pleasure is a mere idea, i To be happy at any one point we must have suffered at the 126 MESMERIC REVELATION. same. Never to suffer would have been never to have been blessed. But it has been shovra that in the inorganic life pain cannot be, thus the necessity for the organic. The pain of the primitive life of Earth is the sole basis of the bHss of the ultimate life in Heaven. P. Still there is one of your expressions which I find it impossible to comprehend — " the truly substomtive vastness of infinity." V. This, probably, is because you have no sufficiently generic conception of the term " substance " itself. We must not regard it as a quality but as a sentiment ; it is the perception, in thinking beings, of the adaptation of matter to their organisation. There are many things on the Earth, which would be nihility to the inhabitants of Venus — many things visible and tangible in Venus which we could not be brought to appreciate as existing at all. But to the inorganic beings — to the angels— the whole of the unparticled matter is substance ; that is to say, the whole of what we term " space " is to them the truest substantiality ; — ^the stars, meantime, through what we consider their materiality, escaping the angelic sense, just in proportion as the un- particled matter through what we consider its immateri- ality eludes the organic. As the sleep-waker pronounced these latter words in a feeble tone, I observed on his countenance a singular ex- pression, which somewhat alarmed me, and induced me to awake him at once. No sooner had I done this, than, with a bright smile irradiating all his features, he fell back upon his pillow and expired. I noticed that in less than a minute afterward his corpse had all the stern rigidity of stone. His brow was of the coldness of ice. Thus, ordinarily, should it have appeared only after long pressure from Azrael's hand. Had the sleep-waker, indeed, during the latter portion of his discourse been addressing me from out the region of the shadows 1 THE FACTS IN THE CASE M. VALDEMAR Of course I shall not pretend to consider it any matter for wonder that the extraordinary case of M. Valdemar has excited discussion. It would have been a miracle had it not — especially under the circumstances. Through the desire of all parties concerned to keep the affair from the public, at least for the present, or until we had further opportuni- ties for investigation — through our endeavours to efiect this — a garbled or exaggerated account made its way into society and became the source of many unpleasant misre- presentations ; and, very naturally, of a great deal of dis- belief. It is now rendered necessary that I give the facts — as far as I comprehend them myself. They are, succinctly, these : My attention for the last three years had been repeat- edly drawn to the subject of Mesmerism ; and about nine months ago it occurred to me, quite suddenly, that in the series of experiments made hitherto there had been a very remarkable and most unaccountable omission : — no person had as yet been mesmerised in articulo mortis. It remained to be seen, first, whether, in such condition, there existed in the patient any susceptibility to the magnetic influence : secondly, whether, if any existed, it was impaired or in- creased by the condition; thirdly, to what extent, or for how long a period, the encroachments of Death might be arrested by the process. There were other points to be ascertained, but these most excited my curiosity — the last 128 THE FACTS IN THE CASE OF M. VALDEMAR. in especial, from the immensely important character of its consequences. In looking around me for some subject by whose means I might test these particulars, I was brought to think of my friend, M. Ernest Valdemar, the well-known compiler of the " Bibliotheca Forensica," and author (under the nom deplume of " Issachar Marx ") of the Polish versions of " Wallenstein " and " Gargantua." M. Valdemar, who has resided princi- pally at Harlem, N.Y., since the year 1839, is (or was) particularly noticeable for the extreme spareness of his person — hie lower limbs much resembling those of John Randolph ; and also for the whiteness of his whiskers, in violent contrast to the blackness of his hair — the latter, in consequence, being very generally mistaken for a wig. His temperament was markedly nervous, and rendered him a good subject for mesmeric experiment. On two or three occasions I had put him to sleep with little difficulty, but was disappointed in other results which his peculiar consti- tution had naturally led me to anticipate. His will was at no period positively or thoroughly under my control, and in regard to clairvoyance, I could accomplish with him nothing to be relied upon. I always attributed my failure at these points to the disordered state of his health. For some months previous to my becoming acquainted with him his physicians had declared him in a confinned phthisis. It was his custom, indeed, to speak calmly of his approaching dissolution as of a matter neither to be avoided nor re- gretted. When the ideas to which I have alluded first occurred to me, it was of course very natural that I should think of M. Valdemar. I knew the steady philosophy of the man too well to apprehend any scruples from him; and he had no relatives in America who would be likely to interfere. I spoke to him frankly upon the subject, and to my sur- prise his interest seemed vividly excited. I say to my surprise ; for, although he had always yielded his person freely to my experiments, he had never before given me any tokens of sympathy with what I did. His disease was of that character which would admit of exact calculation in THE jTAOTS in THE CASE OF M. VALDEMAE. 129 respect to tlie epoch of its termination in death j and it was finally arranged between us that he would send for me about twenty -four hours before the period announced by his physicians as that of his decease. It is now rather more than seven months since I re- ceived, from M. Valdemar himself, the subjoined note : "My dear P , "You may as well come now. D and F are agreed that I caimot hold out beyond to-morrow midnight ; and I think they have hit the time very nearly. " Valdemar." I received this note within half-an-hour after it was written, and in fifteen minutes more I was in the dying man's chamber. I had not seen him for ten days, and was appalled by the fearful alteration which the brief interval had wrought in him. His face wore a leaden hue ; the eyes were utterly lustreless ; and the emaciation was so extreme that the skin had been broken through by the cheek-bones. His expectoration was excessive. The pulse was barely perceptible. He retained, nevertheless, in a very remark- able manner, both his mental power and a certain degree of physical strength. He spoke with distinctness — took some palliative medicines without aid — and, when I entered the room, was occupied in pencilling memoranda in a pocket- book. He was propped up in the bed by pillows. Doctors D and F were in attendance. After pressing Valdemar's hand, I took these gentlemen aside, and obtained from them a minute account of the patient's condition. The left lung had been for eighteen months in a semiosseous or cartilaginous state, and was of course entirely useless for all purposes of vitality. The right, in its upper portion, was also partially if not thoroughly ossified, while the lower region was merely a mass of purulent tubercles running one into another. Several extensive perforations existed, and at one point permanent adhesion to the ribs had taken place. These appearances in the right lobe were of comparatively recent date. The ossification had proceeded with very unusual VOL. L K 130 THE FACTS IN THE CASE OF M. VALDBMAE. rapidity ; no sign of it had been discovered a month before, and the adhesion had only been observed during the three previous days. Independently of the phthisis, the patient was suspected of aneurism of the aorta ; but on this point the osseous symptoms rendered an exact diagnosis impossible. It was the opinion of both physicians that M. Valdemar would die about midnight on the morrow (Sunday). It was then seven o'clock on Saturday evening. On quitting the invalid's bed-side to hold conversation with myself, Doctors D and F had bidden him a final farewell. It had not been their intention to return ; but, at my request, they agreed to look in upon the patient about ten the next night. When they had gone, I spoke freely with M. Valdemar on the subject of his approaching dissolution, as well as, more particularly, of the experiment proposed. He still professed himself quite willing and even anxious to have it made, and urged me to commence it at once. A male and a female nurse were in attendance ; but I did not feel my- self altogether at liberty to engage in a task of this charac- ter with no more reliable witnesses than these people, in case of sudden accident, might prove. I therefore postponed operations until about eight the next night, when the arrival of a medical student, with whom I had some acquaintance, (Mr. Theodore L 1), relieved me from farther embarrass- ment. It had been my design, originally, to wait for the physicians; but I was induced to proceed, first, by the urgent entreaties of M. Valdemar, and secondly, by my con- viction that I had not a moment to lose, as he was evi- dently sinkiug fast. Mr. L 1 was so kind as to accede to my desire that he would take notes of all that occurred : and it is from his memoranda that what I now have to relate is, for the most part, either condensed or copied verbatim. It wanted about five minutes of eight when, taking the patient's hand, I begged him to state, as distinctly as he could, to Mr. L 1, whether he (M. Valdemar) was en- tirely willing that I should make the experiment of mesmer king him in his then condition. THE FAOTB IN THE CASE OF M. VALDEMAE. 131 He replied feebly, yet quite audibly, " Yes, I wish to be mesmerised " — adding immediately afterwards, " I fear you have deferred it too long." While he spoke thus, I commenced the passes which I had already found most effectual in subduing him. He was evidently influenced with the first lateral stroke of my hand across his forehead ; but although I exerted all my powers, no farther perceptible effect was induced until some minutes after ten o'clock, when Doctors D and F called, according to appointment. I explained to them in a few words what I designed, and as they opposed no objection, saying that the patient was already in the death agony, I proceeded without hesitation — exchanging, however, the lateral passes for downward ones, and directing my gaze entirely into the right eye of the sufferer. By this time his pulse was imperceptible and his breath- ing was stertorous, and at intervals of half-a-minute. This condition was nearly unaltered for a quarter of an hour. At the expiration of this period, however, a natural although a very deep sigh escaped the bosom of the dying man, and the stertorous breathing ceased — that is to say, its stertorousness was no longer apparent ; the inter- vals were undiminished. The patient's extremities were of an icy coldness. At five minutes before eleven I perceived unequivocal signs of the mesmeric influence. The glassy roll of the eye was changed for that expression of uneasy inward exami- nation which is never seen except in cases of sleep-waking, and which it is quite impossible to mistake. With a few rapid lateral passes I made the lids quiver, as in incipient sleep, and with a few more I closed them altogether. I was not satisfied, however, with this, but continued the mani- pulations vigorously, and with the fullest exertion of the will until I had completely stiffened the limbs of the slumberer, after placing them in a seemingly easy position. The legs were at full length ; the arms were nearly so, and reposed on the bed at a moderate distance from the loins. The head was very slightly elevated. When I had accomplished this it was fully midnight 132 THE FACTS m THE CASE OF M. VALDEMAR. and I requested the gentlemen present to examine M. Valdemar's condition. After a few experiments, they admitted him to be in an unusually perfect state of mesmeric trance. The curiosity of both the physicians was greatly excited. Dr. D resolved at once to remain with the patient all night, while Dr. F took leave with a promise to return at daybreak. Mr. L 1 and the nurses re- maiued. We left M. Valdemar entirely undisturbed until about three o'clock ia the morning, when I approached him and found him in precisely the same condition as when Dr. F went away — that is to say, he lay in the same posi- tion ; the pulse was imperceptible ; the breathing was gentle (scarcely noticeable, unless through the application of a mirror to the lips) ; the eyes were closed naturally ; and the limbs were as rigid and as cold as marble. StiU, the general appearance was certainly not that of death. As I approached M. Valdemar I made a kind of half effort to influence his right arm into pursuit of my own, as I passed the latter gently to and fro above his person. In such experiments with this patient, I had never perfectly succeeded before, and assuredly I had little thought of succeeding now ; but, to my astonishment, his arm very readily, although feebly, followed every direction I assigned it with mine. I determined to hazard a few words of conversation. " M. Valdemar," I said, " are you asleep V He made no answer, but I perceived a tremor about the Ups, and was thus induced to repeat the question, again and again. At this third repetition, his whole frame was agitated by a very slight shivering : the eyelids unclosed themselves so far as to display a white Une of a ball ; the Hps moved sluggishly, and from between them, in a barely audible whisper, issued the words : " Yes ; — asleep now. Do not wake me ! — let me die so!" I here felt the limbs, and found them as rigid as ever. The right arm, as before, obeyed the direction of my hand- I questioned the sleep-waker again ; THE FACTS IN THE CASE OF M. VaLDEMAR. 133 "Do you still feel pain in the breast, M. Valdemar 1" The answer now was immediate, but even less audible than before : "No pain — I am dying." I did not think it advisable to disturb him farther just then, and nothing more was said or done until the arrival of Dr. F , who came a little before sunrise, and expressed unbounded astonishment at finding the patient still aUve. After feeling the pulse and applying a mirror to the lips he requested me to speak to the sleep-waker again. I did so, saying : " M. Valdemar, do you still sleep 1" As before, some minutes elapsed ere a reply was made ; and during the interval the dying man seemed to be col- lecting his energies to speak. At my fourth repetition of the question, he said very faintly, almost inaudibly: " Yes stni asleep — dying." It was now the opinion, or rather the wish, of the physicians, that M. Valdemar should be suffered to remain undisturbed in his present apparently tranqiul condition until death should supervene ; and this, it was generally agreed, must now take place within a few minutes. I concluded, however, to speak to him once more, and merely repeated my previous question. While I spoke, there came a marked change over the countenance of the sleep-waker. The eyes roUed them- selves slowly open, the pupils disappearing upwardly ; the skin generally assumed a cadaverous hue, resembling not so much parchment as white paper: and the circular hectic spots, which hitherto had been strongly defined in the centre of each cheek, went out at once. I use this expres- sion, because the suddenness of their departure put me in mind of nothing so much as the extinguishment of a candle by a puff of the breath. The upper lip, at the same time, writhed itself away from the teeth, which it had previously covered completely; while the lower jaw fell with an audible jerk, leaving the mouth widely extended, and dis- closing in fuU view the swollen and blackened tongue. I presume that no member of the party then present had 134 THE FACTS IN THE CASE OF M. VALDEMAE. been unaccustomed to death-bed horrors ; but so hideous beyond conception was the appearance of M. Valdemar at this moment, that there was a general shrinking back from the region of the bed. I now feel that I have reached a point of this narrative at which every reader will be startled into positive disbelief It is my business, however, simply to proceed. There was no longer the faintest sign of vitality in M. Valdemar; and, concluding him to be dead, we were con- signing him to the charge of the nurses, when a strong vibratory motion was observable in the tongue. This continued for perhaps a minute. At the expiration of this period, there issued from the distended and motionless jaws a voice — such as it would be madness in me to attempt describing. There are, indeed, two or three epithets which might be considered as applicable to it in part ; I might say, for example, that the sound was harsh, and broken and hollow ; but the hideous whole is indescribable, for the simple reason that no similar sounds have ever jarred upon the ear of humanity. There were two particulars, neverthe- less, which I thought then, and still think, might fairly be stated as characteristic of the intonation — as well adapted to convey some idea of its unearthly peculiarity. In the first place, the voice seemed to reach our ears — at least mine — from a vast distance, or from some deep cavern within the earth. In the second place, it impressed me (I fear, indeed, that it will be impossible to make myself com- prehended) as gelatinous or glutinous matters impress the sense of touch. I have spoken both of "sound" and of "voice." I mean to say that the sound was one of distinct — of even wonderfully thrillingly distinct syllabification. M. Valde- mar spoke — obviously in reply to the question I had pro- pounded to him a few minutes before. I had asked him it will be remembered, if he stiU slept. He now said : " Yes ; — no ; — I have been sleeping — and now — now — I am dead." No person present even affected to deny, or attempted to repress, the unutterable, shuddering horror which these few THE FACTS IN THE CASE OF M. VALDEMAE. 135 words, thus uttered, were so well calculated to convey. Mr. L 1 (the student) swooned. The nurses immedi- ately left the chamber, and could not be induced to return. My own impressions I would not pretend to render intel- ligible to the reader. For nearly an hour we busied ourselves, silently — without the utterance of a word — in endeavours to revive Mr. L 1. Wben he came to him- seK we addressed ourselves again to an investigation of M. Valdemar's condition. It remained in all respects as I have last described it, with the exception that the mirror no longer afforded evidence of respiration. An attempt to draw blood from the arm failed. I should mention, too, that this Umb was no farther subject to my will. I endeavoured in vain to make it follow the direction of my hand. The only real indication, indeed, of the mesmeric influence was now found in the vibratory movement of the tongue, whenever I addressed M. Valdemar a question. He seemed to be making an effort to reply, but had no longer sufficient volition. To queries put to him by any other person than myself he seemed utterly insensible — although I endea- voured to place each member of the company in mesmeric rapport with him. I believe that I have now related all that is necessary to an understanding of the sleep-waker's state at this epoch. Other nurses were procured ; and at ten o'clock I left the house in company with the two physicians and Mr. L 1. In the afternoon we all called again to see the patient. His condition remained precisely the same. We had now some discussion as to the propriety and feasibility of awakening him; but we had little difficulty in agreeing that no good purpose would be served by so doing. It was evident that, so far, death (or what is usually termed death) had been arrested by the mesmeric process. It seemed clear to us all that to awaken M. Valdemar would be merely to insure his instant, or at least his speedy dis- solution. From this period imtil the close of last week — an interval of nearly seven months — we continued to make daily 136 THE FACTS IN THE CASE OF M. VALDEMAft. calls at M. Valdemar's house, accompanied now and then by medical and other friends. All this time the sleep-waker remained exactly as I have last described him. The nurses' attentions were continual. It was on Friday last that we finally resolved to make the experiment of awakening, or attempting to awaken him ; and it is the (perhaps) unfortunate result of this latter experiment which has given rise to so much discussion in private circles — to so much of what I cannot help thinking unwarranted popular feeling. For the purpose of relieving M. Valdemar from the mesmeric trance, I made use of the customary passes. These, for a time, were unsuccessful. The first indication of revival was afforded by a partial descent of the iris. It was observed, as especially remarkable, that this lowering of the pupU was accompanied by the profuse out-flowing of a yellowish ichor (from beneath the Uds) of a pungent and highly offensive odour. It was now suggested that I should attempt to influence the patient's arm, as . heretofore. I made the attempt ana failed. Dr. F then intimated a desire to have me put a question. I did so, as follows : "M. Valdemar, can you explain to us what are your feelings or wishes now % " There was an instant return of the hectic circles on the cheeks : the tongue quivered, or rather rolled violently in the mouth (although the jaws and lips remained rigid as before) ; and at length the same hideous voice which I have already described, broke forth : "For God's sake ! — quick! — quick!— put me to sleep — or, quick ! ^ waken me ! — quick ! — I say to you thai I am dead/" I was thoroughly unnerved, and for an instant remained undecided what to do. At first I made an endeavour to re- compose the patient; but, failing in this through total abeyance of the will, I retraced my steps and as earnestly struggled to awaken him. In this attempt I soon saw that [ should be successful — or at least I soon fancied that my THE FACTS IN THE CASE OF M. VALDEMAR. 187 success ■would be complete ; and I am sure that all in the room were prepared to see the patient awaken. For what really occurred, however, it is quite impossible that any human being could have been prepared. As I rapidly made the mesmeric passes, amid ejacula- tions of " dead ! dead ! " absolutely bursting from the tongue and not from the Ups of the sufferer, his whole frame at once — within the space of a single minute, or even less shrunk — crumbled — absolutely rotted away beneath my hands. Upon the bed, before that whole company, there lay a nearly liquid mass of loathsome — of detestable putrescence. MS. FOUND IN A BOTTLE. Qui n'a plus qu'im moment a vivre N'a plus rien a dissimuler. Qumault — Atys. Of my country and of my family I have little to say. lU- usage and length of years have driven me from the one, and estranged me from the other. Hereditary wealth afforded me an education of no common order, and a com- templative turn of mind enabled me to methodise the stores which early study very diligently garnered up. Beyond all things, the works of the German moralists gave me great delight j not from any ill-advised admiration of their eloquent madness, but from the ease with which my habits of rigid thought enabled me to detect their falsities. I have often been reproached with the aridity of my genius; a deficiency of imagination has been imputed to me as a crime; and the Pyrrhonism of my opinions has at all times ren- dered me notorious. Indeed, a strong relish for physical philosophy has, I feax, tinctured my mind with a very- common error of this age — I mean the habit of referring occurrences, even the least susceptible of such reference, to the principles of that science. Upon the whole, no person could be less liable than myself to be led away from the severe precincts of truth by the ignes faiui of superstition. I have thought proper to premise thus much, lest the incre dible tale I have to tell should be considered rather the raving of a crude imagination than the positive experience of a mind to Ti-hich the reveries of fancy have been a dead letter and a nuUity. After many yeaxs spent in foreign travel, I sailed in the yoaf 18 — , from the port of Batavia, in the rich and MS. FOUND IN A BOTTLE. 139 populous island of Java, on a voyage to the Arctipelago of the Sunda Islands. I went as passenger — having no other Laducement than a kind of nervous restlessness which haunted me as a fiend. Our vessel was a beautiful ship of about four hundred tons, copper-fastened, and built at Bombay of Malabar teak. She was freighted with cotton-wool and oU, from the Lachadive islands. We had also on board coir, jaggeree, ghee, cocoa-nuts, and a few cases of opium. The stowage was clumsily done, and the vessel consequently crank. We got under way with a mere breath of wind, and for many days stood along the eastern coast of Java, without any other incident to beguile the monotony of our course than the occasional meeting with some of the small grabs of the Archipelago to which we were bound. One evening, leaning over the taflfrail, I observed a very singular isolated cloud to the N.W. It was remarkable, as well for its colour as from its being the first we had seen since our departure from Batavia. I watched it attentively until sunset, when it spread all at once to the eastward and westward, girting in the horizon with a narrow strip of vapour, and looking like a long line of low beach. My notice was soon afterwards attracted by the dusky-red appearance of the moon, and the peculiar character of the sea. The latter was undergoing a rapid change, and the water seemed more than usually transparent. Although I could distinctly see the bottom, yet, heaving the lead, I found the ship in fifteen fathoms. The air now became intolerably hot, and was loaded with spiral exhalations similar to those arising from heated iron. As night came on, every breath of wind died away, and a more entire calm it is impossible to con- ceive. The flame of a candle burned upon the poop without the least perceptible motion, and a long hair, held between the finger and thumb, hung without the possibility of detecting a vibration. However, as the captain said he could perceive no indication of danger, and as we were drifting in bodily to shore, he ordered the sails to be furled, and the anchor let go. No watch was set, and the crew, consisting principally of Malays, stretched themselves 140 MS. FOUND IN A BOTTLE. deliberately upon deck. I went below — not without a full presentiment of evil. Indeed, every appearance warranted me in apprehending a simoom. I told the captain my fears ; but he paid no attention to what I said, and left me without deigning to give a reply. My uneasiness, however, prevented me from sleeping, and about midnight I went upon deck. As I placed my foot upon the upper step of the companion-ladder, I was startled by a loud, humming noise, like that occasioned by the rapid revolution of a miU- wheel, and before I could ascertain its meaning, I found the ship quivering to its centre. In the next instant, a wilder- ness of foam hurled us upon our beam-ends, and, rushing over us fore and aft, swept the entire decks from stem to stem. The extreme fury of the blast proved, in a great measure, the salvation of the ship. Although completely water-logged, yet, as her masts had gone by the board, she rose, after a minute, heavily from the sea, and, staggering awhile beneath the immense pressure of the tempest, finally righted. By what miracle I escaped destruction it is impossible to say. Stunned by the shock of the water, I found myself, upon recovery, jammed in between the stem-post and rudder. With great difficulty I gained my feet, and, looking dizzily around, was at first struck with the idea of our being among breakers ; so terrific, beyond the wildest imagination, was the whirlpool of mountainous and foaming ocean within which we were engulfed. After a whUe, I heard the voice of an old Swede, who had shipped with us at the moment of our leaving port. I hallooed to him with all my strength, and presently he came reeling aft. We soon discovered that we were the sole survivors of the accident. AH on deck, with the exception of ourselves, had been swept overboard; the captain and mates must have perished as they slept, for the cabins were deluged with water. Without assistance, we could expect to do little for the security of the ship, and our exertions were at first paralysed by the momentary expectation of going down. Our cable had, of course, parted like pack-thread, MS. FOUND IN A BOTTLE. 141 at the first breath of the hurricane, or we should have heen instantaneously overwhelmed. We scudded with frightful velocity before the sea, and the water made clear breaches over us. The framework of our stem was shattered excessively, and in almost every respect we had received considerable injury ; but to our extreme joy we found the pumps unchoked, and that we had made no great shifting of our ballast. The main fury of the blast had already blown over, and we apprehended little danger from the violence of the wind ; but we looked forward to its total cessation with dismay ; well believing, that in our shattered condition, we should inevitably perish in the tremendous swell which would ensue. But this very just apprehension seemed by no means likely to be soon verified. For five entire days and nights — during which our only subsistence was a small quantity of jaggeree, procured with great difficulty from the forecastle — the hulk flew at a rate defy- ing computation, before rapidly succeeding flaws of wind, jchich, without equalling the first violence of the simoom, were stiU more terrific than any tempest I had before encountered. Our course for the first four days was, with trvfling variations, S.E. and by S. ; and we must have run down the coast of New Holland. On the fifth day the cold became extreme, although the wind had hauled round a poiat more to the northward. The sun arose with a sickly yellow lustre, and clambered a very few degrees above the horizon — emitting no decisive light. There were no clouds apparent, yet the wind was upon the increase, and blew with a fitful and unsteady fury. About noon, as nearly as we could guess, our attention was again arrested by the appearance of the sun. It gave out no hght, properly so called, but a duU and sullen glow without reflection, as if aU its rays were polarised. Just before sinking within the turgid sea, its central fires suddenly went out, as if hurriedly extinguished by some unaccountable power. It was a dim, silver-like rim, alone, as it rushed down the unfathomable ocean. We waited in vain for the arrival of the sixth day — that day to me has not arrived — to the Swede never did 142 MS. FOUND IN A BOTTLE. arrive. Thenceforward we were enshrouded in pitchy dark- ness, so that we could not have seen an object at twenty paces from the ship. Eternal night continued to envelope us, all unrelieved by the phosphoric sea-brilliancy to which we had been accustomed in the tropics. We observed too, that, although the tempest continued to rage with unabated violence, there was no longer to be discovered the usual appearance of surf, or foam, which had hitherto attended us. All around were horror, and thick gloom, and a black swel- tering desert of ebony. Superstitious terror crept by degrees iato the spirit of the old Swede, and my own soul was wrapped up in silent wonder. We neglected all care of the ship as worse than useless, and securing ourselves, as well as possible, to the stump of the mizen-mast, looked out bitterly into the world of ocean. We had no means of calculating time, nor could we form any guess of our situa- tion. We were, however, well aware of having made farther to the southward than any previous navigators, and felt great amazement at not meeting with the usual impedi: ments of ice. In the meantime every moment threatened to be our last — every mountaiaous billow hurried to over- wheLm us. The swell surpassed anything 1 had imagined possible, and that we were not instantly buried is a miracle. My companion spoke of the lightness of our cargo, and reminded me of the excellent quaKties of our ship ; but I could not help feeling the utter hopelessness of hope itself, and prepared myself gloomily for that death which 1 thought nothing could defer beyond an hour, as, with every knot of way the ship made, the swelling of the black stupendous seas became more dismally appalling. At times we gasped for breath at an elevation beyond the albatross — at times became dizzy with the velocity of our descent into some watery hell, where the air grew stagnant, and no sound dis- turbed the slumbers of the kraken. We were at the bottom of one of the abysses, when a quick scream from my companion broke fearfully upon the night. " See ! see ! " cried he, shrieking in my ears, " Almighty God ! see ' spo ! " As he spoke, I became »ware of a dull, sullen glare of red light which streamed MS. FOUND IN A BOTTLE. 143 aown the sides of the vast chasm where we lay, and threw a fitful brilliancy upon our deck. Casting my eyes .upwards, I beheld a spectacle which froze the current of my blood. At a terrific height directly above us, and upon the very verge of the precipitous descent, hovered a gigantic ship, of perhaps four thousand tons. Although upreared upon the Bummit of a wave more than a hundred times her own alti- tude, her apparent size still exceeded that of any ship of the line or East Indiaman in existence. Her huge hull was of a deep dingy black, unrelieved by any of the customary carvings of a ship. A single row of brass cannon protruded from her open ports, and dashed from their polished sur- faces the fires of innumerable battle-lanterns, which swung to and fro about her rigging. But what mainly inspired us with horror and astonishment was, that she bore up under a press of sail in the very teeth of that supernatural sea, and of that ungovernable hurricane. When we first discovered her, her bows were alone to be seen, as she rose slowly from the dim. and horrible gulf beyond her. For a moment of intense terror she paused upon the giddy pinnacle, as if in contemplation of her own sublimity, then trembled and tottered, and — came down. At this instant, I know not what sudden self-possession came over my spirit. Staggering as far aft as I could, I awaited fearlessly the ruin that was to overwhelm. Our own vessel was at length ceasing from her struggles, and sinking with her head to the sea. The shock of the de- scending mass struck her, consequently, in that portion of her frame which was already under water, and the inevitable result was to hurl me, with irresistible violence, upon the rigging of the stranger. As I fell, the ship hove in stays, and went about ; and to the confusion ensuing I attributed my escape from the notice of the crew. "With little difficulty I made my way, unperceived, to the main hatchway, which was partiall}- open, and soon found an opportunity of secreting myself in the hold. Why 1 did so I can hardly tell. An indefinite sense of awe, which at first sight of the navigators of the ship had taken hold of my mind, was perhaps the principle 144 MS. FOUND IN A BOTTLE. of my concealment. I was unwilling to trust myself witl a race of people who had offered, to the cursory glance 1 Had taken, so many points of vague novelty, doubt, and apprehension. I therefore thought proper to contrive a hiding place in the hold. This I did by removing a small portion of the shifting-boards, in such a maimer as to afford me a convenient retreat between the huge timbers of the ship. I had scarcely completed my work, when a footstep in the hold forced me to make use of it. A man passed by my place of concealment with a feeble and unsteady gait. I could not see his face, but had an opportunity of observing his general appearance. There was about it an evidence of great age and infirmity. His knees tottered beneath a load of years, and his entire frame quivered under the burden. He muttered to himself, in a low broken tone, some words of a language which I could not understand, and groped in a comer among a pUe of singular-looking instruments, and decayed charts of navigation. His manner was a wild mixture of the peevishness of second childhood and the solemn dignity of a God. He at length went on deck, and I saw him no more. * * * * A feeling, for which I have no name, has taken posses- sion of my soul — a sensation which will admit of no analysis, to which the lessons of bygone time are inadequate, and for which I fear futurity itself will offer me no key. To a mind constituted like my own, the latter consideration is an evil. I shall never — I know that I shall never — be satisfied with regard to the nature of my conceptions. Yet it is not wonderful that these conceptions are indefinite, since they have their origin in sources so utterly novel. A new sense — a new entity is added to my soul. » * * » It is long since I first trod the deck of this terrible ship, and the rays of my destiny are, I think, gathering-to a focus. Incomprehensible men ! "Wrapped up in meditations of a kind which I cannot divine, they pass me by unnoticed. C!oncealment is utter folly on my part, for the people teill MS. FOUND IN A BOTl'LE. 145 not see. It was but just now that I passed directly before tbe eyes of the mate ; it was no long while ago that I ven tured into the Captain's own private cabin, and took thence the materials with which I write, and have written. I shall from time to time continue this journal. It is true that I aiay not find an opportunity of transmitting it to the world, but I will not fail to make the endeavour. At the last. moment I will enclose the MS. in a bottle and cast it within the sea. * * « # An incident has occurred which has given me new room for meditation. Are such things the operation of un- govemed chance 1 I had ventured upon deck and thrown myseK down, without attracting any notice, among a pile of ratline-stuff and old sails, in the bottom of the yawl. While musing upon the singularity of my fate, I unwittingly daubed with a tar-brush the edges of a neatly-folded stud- ding-sail which lay near me on a barrel. The studding sail is now bent upon the ship, and the thoughtless touches of the brush are spread out into the word Discovery. I have made many observations lately upon the structure of the vessel. Although weU armed, she is not, I think, a ship of war. Her rigging, build, and general equipment, all negative a supposition of this kind. What she is not, I can easily perceive ; what she is, 1 fear it is impossible to say. I know not how it is, but in scrutinising her strange model and singular cast of spars, her huge size and over- grown suits of canvas, her severely simple bow and anti- quated stem, there mil occasionally flash across my mind a sensation of familiar things, and there is always mixed up with such indistinct shadows of recollection an unaccount- able memory of old foreign chronicles and ages long ago. « * * * I have been looking at the timbers of the ship. She is built of a material to which I am a stranger. There is a peculiar character about the wood which strikes me as rendering it unfit for the purpose to which it has been applied. I mean its extreme porousness, considered inde- pendently of the worm-eaten condition which is a conse- A'OL. I. '^ 146 MS. FOUND IN A BOTTLE. quence of navigation in these seas, and apart from the rotten- ness attendant upon age. It will appear perhaps an observation somewhat over-curious, but this wood would have every characteristic of Spanish oak, if Spanish oak were distended by any unnatural means. In reading the above sentence, a curious apothegm of an old weather-beaten Dutch navigator comes full upon my recollection. " It is as sure," he was wont to say, when any doubt was entertained of his veracity, " as sure as there is a sea where the ship itself wiU grow in bulk like the living body of the seaman." « * * * About an hour ago, I made bold to thrust myself among a group of the crew. They paid me no manner of attention, and, although I stood in the very midst of them all, seemed utterly unconscious of my presence. Like the one I had first seen in the hold, they aU bore about them the marks of a hoary old age. Their knees trembled with infirmity ; their shoulders were bent double with decrepitude ; their shrivelled skins rattled in the wind ; their voices were low, tremulous, and broken ; their eyes glistened with the rheum of years ; and their grey hairs streamed terribly in the tem- pest. Around them, on every part of the deck, lay scattered mathematical instruments of the most quaint and obsolete construction. * * * ♦ I mentioned some time ago the bending of a studding- sail. From that period, the ship, being thrown dead ofi the wind, has continued her terrific course due south, with every rag of canvas packed upon her, from her trucks to her lower studding-sail booms, and rolling every moment her top-gaUant yard-arms into the most appalling hell of water which it can enter into the mind of man to imagine. I have just left the deck, where I find it impossible to main- tain a footing, although the crew seem to experience little inconvenience. It appears to me a miracle of miracles that our enormous bulk is not swallowed up at once and for ever. We are surely doomed to hover continually upon the brink of eternity, without taking a final plunge into the abyss. From billows a thousand times more stupendous than any I have ever seen, we glide away with the facility of the MS. FOTJND IN A BOTTLE. 147 arrowy seargull ; and the colossal waters rear their heads above us like demons of the deep, but like demons confined to simple threats, and forbidden to destroy. I am led to attribute these frequent escapes to the only natural cause which can account for such effect. I must suppose the ship to be within the influence of some strong current, or im- petuous under-tow. * * * * I have seen the captain face to face, and in his own cabin — but, as I expected, he paid me no attention. Al- though in his appearance there is, to a casual observer, nothing which might bespeak him more or less than man, still, a feeling of irrepressible reverence and awe mingled with the sensation of wonder with which I regarded him. In stature, he is nearly my own height ; that is, about five feet eight inches. He is of a well-knit and compact frame of body, neither robust nor remarkable otherwise. But it is the singularity of the expression which reigns upon the face — it is the intense, the wonderful, the thrilling evidence of old age, so utter, so extreme, which excites within my spirit a sense — a sentiment ineffable. His forehead although little wrinkled, seems to bear upon it the stamp of a myriad of years. His grey hairs are records of the past, and his greyer eyes are sybils of the future. The cabin floor was thickly strewn with strange, iron-clasped folios, and moulder- ing instruments of science, and obsolete long-forgotten charts. His head was bowed down upon his hands, and he pored with a fiery unquiet eye over a paper which I took to be a commission, and which, at all events, bore the signature of a monarch. He muttered to himself — as did the first sea- man whom I saw in the hold — some low peevish syllables of a foreign tongue ; and although the speaker was close at my elbow, his voice seemed to reach my ears from the dis- tance of a mile. # « # * The ship and all in it are imbued with the spirit of Eld. The crew glide to and fro like the ghosts of buried cen- turies ; their eyes have an eager and uneasy meaning ; and when their figures fall athwart my path in the wild glare of the battle-lanterns, I feel as I have never felt before, although I have been all my Hfe a dealer in antiquities, and have im- 148 MS. FOUND IN A BOTTLE. bibed the shadows of fallen columns at Balbec, and Tadmor, and Peisepolis, until my very soul has become a ruin. * * When I look around me I feel ashamed of my former apprehensions. If I trembled at the blast which has hitherto attended us, shall I not stand aghast at a warring of wind and ocean, to convey any idea of which the words tornado and simoom are trivial and ineffective 1 All in the immediate vicinity of the ship is the blackness of eternal night, and a chaos of foamless water ; but, about a league on either side of us, may be seen, indistinctly and at intervals, stupendous ramparts of ice towering away into the desolate sky, and looking like the walls of the universe. * * As I imagined, the ship proves to be in a current — if that appellation can properly be given to a tide which, howling and shrieking by the white ice, thunders on to the southward with a velocity like the headlong dashing of a cataract. « * # * To conceive the horror of my sensations is, I presume, utterly impossible ; yet a curiosity to penetrate the mysteries of these awful regions predominates even over my despair, and wUl reconcile me to the most hideous aspect of death. It is evident that we are hurrying onwards to some exciting knowledge — some never-to-be-imparted secret, whose attain- ment is, destruction. Perhaps this current leads us to the southern pole itself It must be confessed that a supposition apparently so wild has every probability in its favour. * * * * The crew pace the deck with unquiet and tremulous step ; but there is upon their countenances an expression more of the eagerness of hope than of the apathy of despair. In the meantime the wind is stUl in our poop, and as we carry a crowd of canvas the ship is at times lifted bodily from out the sea ! Oh, horror upon horror ! — the ice opens suddenly to the right, and to the left, and we are whirling dizzily, in immense concentric circles, round and round the borlers of a gigantic amphitheatre, the summit of whose walls is lost in the darlmess and the distance. But little time will be left me to ponder upon my destiny I MS. FOUND IN A BOTTIiE. 149 The circles rapidly grow small — ^we are plunging madly within the grasp of the whirlpool — and amid a roaring, and bellowing, and thundering of ocean and of tempest, the ship is quivering — Oh God ! and going down ! Note. — The " MS. Found in a Bottle " was originally published in 1831, and it was not until many years afterwards that I became ac- quainted with the maps of Mercator, in which the ocean is represented as rushing, by four mouths, into the (northern) Polar Gulf, to be ab- sorbed into the bowels of the earth ; the Pole itsslf being represented by a black rock towering to a prodigious height. A DESCENT INTO THE MAELSTEOM. The ways of Grod in Nature, as in Providence, are not as owr ways ; nor are the models that we frame any way commensurate to the vastness, profundity, and unsearchableness of His works, v^hich have a depth in them greater than the well of Devwcriius. Joseph Glanville. We had now reached the summit of the loftiest crag. For some minutes the old man seemed too much exhausted to speak. " Not long ago," said he at length, " and I could have guided you on this route as well as the youngest of my sons ; but, about three years past, there happened to me an event such as never happened before to mortal man — or at least such as no man ever survived to teU of — and the six hours of deadly terror which I then endured have broken me up body and soul. You suppose me a very old man — ^but I am not. It took less than a single day to change these hairs from a jetty black to white, to weaken my limbs, and to unstring my nerves, so that I tremble at the least exertion, and am frightened at a shadow. Do you know I can scarcely look over this Kttle cliff without getting giddy?" The "little cliff," upon whose edge he had so carelessly thrown himself down to rest that the weightier portion of his body hung over it, while he was only kept from falling by the tenure of his elbow on its extreme and slippery edge — ^this " httle cliff " arose, a sheer unobstructed precipice of black shining rock, some fifteen or sixteen hundred feet from the world of crags beneath us. Nothing would have tempted me to within half-a-dozen yards of its brink. In truth so deeply was I excited by the perilous position of my companion, that I fell at full length upon the ground, clang to the shrubs around me. and dared not even glance A DESCENT INTO THE MAELSTROM. 151 upward at the sky — while I struggled in vain to divest myself of the idea that the very foundations of the moun- tain were in danger from the fury of the winds. It was long before I could reason myself into sufficient courage to sit up and look out into the distance. " You must get over these fancies," said the guide, " for I have brought you here that you might have the best pos- sible view of the scene of that event I mentioned — and to tell you the whole story with the spot just under your eye." " We are now," he continued in that particularising manner which distinguished him — " we are now close upon the Norwegian coast — in the sixty-eighth degree of latitude — in the great province of Nordland — and in the dreary district of Lofoden. The mountain upon whose top we sit is Helseggen, the Cloudy. Now raise yourself up a little higher — hold on to the grass if you feel giddy — so — and look out, beyond the belt of vapour beneath us, into the sea." I looked dizzily, and beheld a wide expanse of ocean, whose waters wore so inky a hue as to bring at once to my mind the Nubian geographer's account of the Mare Tenebra- rum. A panorama more deplorably desolate no human imagination can conceive. To the right and left, as far as the eye could reach, there lay outstretched, like ramparts of the world, lines of horridly black and beetling cliff, whose character of gloom was but the more forcibly illustrated by the surf which reared high up against it its white and ghastly crest, howling and shrieking for ever. Just opposite the promontory upon whose apex we were placed, and at a distance of some five or six miles out at sea, there was visible a small, bleak-looking island ; or, more properly, its position was discernible through the wilderness of surge in which it was enveloped. About two miles nearer the land arose another of smaller size, hideously craggy and barren and encompassed at various intervals by a cluster of dark rocks. The appearance of the ocean, in the space between the more distant island and the shore, had something very un- usual about it. Although at the time so strong a gale was blowing landward that a brig in the remote offing laj 152 A DESCENT INTO THE MAELSTROM. to under a double-reefed trysail, and constantly plunged her whole hull out of sight, still there was here nothing lilce a regular swell, but only a short, quick, angry cross dashing of water in every direction — as well in the teeth of the wind as otherwise. Of foam there was little except in the immediate vicinity of the rocks. " The island in the distance," resumed the old man, " is called by the Norwegians Vurrgh. The one midway is Moskoe. That a mile to the northward is Ambaaren. Yonder are Islesen, Hotholm, Keildhelm, Suarven, and Buckholm. Farther ofF — between Moskoe and Vurrgh — are Otterholm, Flimen, Sandflesen, and Stockholm. These are the true names of the places — but why it has been thought necessary to name them at all, is more than either you or I can understand. Do you hear anything f Do you see any change in the water?" We had now been about ten minutes upon the top of Helseggen, to which we had ascended from the interior of Lofoden, so that we had caught no glimpse of the sea until it had burst upon us from the summit. As the old man spoke, I became aware of a loud and gradually increasing sound, like the moaning of a vast herd of buflFaloes upon an American prairie ; and at the same moment I perceived that what seamen term the chopping character of the ocean beneath us, was rapidly changing into a current which set to the eastward. Even while I gazed this current acquired a monstrous velocity. Each moment added to its speed — to its headlong impetuosity. In five minutes the whole sea as far as Vurrgh was lashed into ungovernable fury ; but it was between Moskoe and the coast that the main uproar held its sway. Here the vast bed of the waters, seamed and scarred into a thousand conflicting channels, burst suddenly into frenzied convulsion — heaving, boiling, hissing, — gyrating in gigantic and innumerable vortices, and all whirling and plunging on to the eastward with a rapidity which water never elsewhere assumes except in precipitous descents. In a few minutes more, there came over the scene another radical alteration. The general surface grew some- A DESCENT INTO THE MABLSTBOM. 153 what more smooth, and the whirlpools one by one disap- peared, while prodigious streaks of foam became apparent where none had been seen before. These streaks, at length, spreading out to a great distance, and entering into com- bination, took unto themselves the gyratory motion of the subsided vortices, and seemed to form the germ of another more vast. Suddenly — very suddenly — this assumed a distinct and definite existence in a circle of more than a mile in diameter. The edge of the whirl was represented by a broad belt of gleaming spray ; but no particle of this slipped into the mouth of the terrific funnel, whose interior, as far as the eye could fathom it, was a smooth, shining, and jet-black wall of water, inclined to the horizon at an angle of some forty-five degrees, speeding dizzily round and round with a swaying and sweltering motion, and sending forth to the wind an appalling voice, half-shriek, half-roar, such as not even the mighty cataract of Niagara ever lifts up in its agony to Heaven. The mountain trembled to its very base, and the rock rocked. I threw myself upon my face, and clung to the scant herbage in an excess of nervous agitation. " This," said I at length, to the old man — " this can be nothing else than the great whirlpool of the Maelstrom." " So it is sometimes termed," said he. " We Nor- wegians call it the Moskoe-strbm, from the island of Moskoe in the midway." The ordinary accounts of this vortex had by no means prepared me for what I saw. That of Jonas Ramus, which is perhaps the most circumstantial of any, cannot impart the faintest conception either of the magnificence, or of the horror of the scene — or of the wild bewildering sense of the novel which confounds the beholder. I am not sure from what point of view the writer in question surveyed it, nor at what time ; but it could neither have been from the summit of Helseggen, nor during a storm. There are some passages of his description, nevertheless, which may be quoted for their details, although their eff"ect is exceedingly feeble in conveying an impression of the spectacle. " Between Lofoden and Moskoe," he says, " the depth 154 A DESCENT INTO THE MAELSTROM. of the water is between thirty-five and forty fathoms ; bat on the other side, toward Ver (Vurrgh) this depth decreases so as not to afford a convenient passage for a vessel, with- out the risk of splitting on the rocks, which happens even in the calmest weather. When it is flood, the stream runs up the country between Lofoden and Moskoe with a bois- terous rapidity, but the roar of its impetuous ebb to the sea is scarce equalled by the loudest and most dreadful cataracts — the noise being heard several leagues off, and the vortices or pits are of such an extent and depth, that if a ship comes within its attraction it is inevitably absorbed and carried down to the bottom and there beat to pieces against the rocks, and when the water relaxes the frag- ments thereof are thrown up again. But these intervals of tranquillity are only at the turn of the ebb and flood, and in calm weather, and last but a quarter of an hour, its violence gradually returning. When the stream is most boisterous, and its fury heightened by a storm, it is dangerous to come within a Norway mile of it. Boats, yachts, and ships have been carried away by not guarding against it before they were within its reach. It likewise happens frequently that whales come too near the stream, and are overpowered by its violence, and then it is impossible to describe their bowlings and bellowings in their fruitless struggles to dis- engage themselves. A bear once, attempting to swim from Lofoden to Moskoe, was caught by the stream and borne down, while he roared terribly, so as to be heard on shore. Large stocks of firs and pine trees, after being absorbed by the current, rise again broken and torn to such a degree as if bristles grew upon them. This plainly shows the bottom to consist of craggy rocks, among which they are whirled to and fro. This stream is regulated by the flux and reflux of the sea — it being constantly high and low water every six hours. In the year 1645, early in the morning of Sexagesima Sunday, it raged with such noise and impetu- osity that the very stones of the houses on the coast fell to the ground." In regard to the depth of the water, I could not see how thia could have been ascertained at all in the immediate A DESCENT INTO THE MAELSTEOM. 156 vicinity of the vortex. The "forty fathoms" must have reference only to portions of the channel close upon the shore either of Moskoe or Lofoden. The depth in the centre of the Moskoe-strom must be immeasurably greater , and no better proof of this fact is necessary than can be obtained from even the sidelong glance iato the abyss of the whirl which may be had from the highest crag of Helseggen. Looking down from this pinnacle upon the howling Phlegethon below, I could not help smiling at the simplicity with which the honest Jonas Ramus records, as a matter difficult of belief, the anecdotes of the whales and the bears ; for it appeared to me, in fact, a self-evident thing that the largest ship of the line in existence coming within the influence of that deadly attraction could resist it as little as a feather the hurricane, and must disappear bodily and at once. The attempts to account for the phenomenon — some of which I remember seemed to me sufficiently plausible in persual — now wore a very different and unsatisfactory aspect. The idea generally received is that this, as well as three smaller vortices among the Ferroe Islands, " have no other cause than the collision of waves rising and falling at flux and reflux against a ridge of rocks and shelves, wliich con- fines the water so that it precipitates itself like a cataract ; and thus the higher the flood rises the deeper must the fall be, and the natural result of all is a whirlpool or vortex, the prodigious suction of which is sufiiciently known by lesser experiments."' — These are the words of the Encyclo- paedia Britaunica. Kircher and others imagine that in the centre of the channel of the Maelstrom is an abyss pene- trating the globe, and issuing in some very remote part — ■ the Gulf of Bothnia being somewhat decidedly named in one instance. This opinion, idle in itself, was the one to which, as I gazed, my imagination most readily assented ; and, mentioning it to the guide, I was rather surprised to hear him say that, although it was the view almost univer- sally entertained of the subject by the Norwegians, it never- theless was not his own. As to the. former notion he con- fessed bis inability to comprehend it ; and here I agreed 156 A DESCENT INTO THE MAELSTEOM. with him — for, however conclusive on paper, it becomes altogether unintelligible, and even absurd, amid the thunder of the abyss. " You have had a good look at the whirl now," said the old man, " and if you will creep round this crag so as to get in its lee, and deaden the roar of the water, I will tell you a story that will convince you I ought to know some- thing of the Moskoe-strom." I placed myself as desired, and he proceeded. " Myself and my two brothers once owned a schooner- rigged smack of about seventy tons burthen, with which we were in the habit of fishing among the islands beyond Moskoe, nearly to Vurrgh. In all violent eddies at sea there is good fishing at proper opportunities if one has only the courage to attempt it, but among the whole of the Lofoden coastmen, we three were the only ones who made a regular business of going out to the islands, as I tell you. The usual grounds are a great way lower down to the south- ward. There fish can be got at all hours, without much risk, and therefore these places are preferred. The choice spots over here among the rocks, however, not only yield the finest variety, but in far greater abundance, so that we often got in a single day what the more timid of the craft «ould not scrape together in a week. In fact, we made it a matter of desperate speculation — the risk of life standing instead of labour, and courage answering for capital. " We kept the smack in a cove about five miles higher up the coast than this ; and it was our practice, in fine weather, to take advantage of the fifteen minutes' slack to push across the main channel of the Moskoe-strom, far above the pool, and then drop down upon anchorage some- where near Otterholm, or Sandflesen, where the eddies are not so violent as elsewhere. Here we used to remain until nearly time for slack-water again, when we weighed and made for home. We never set out upon this expedition without a steady side wind for going and coming — one that we felt sure would not fail us before our return — and we seldom made a mis-calculation upon this point. Twice during six years we were forced to stay all night at anchor A DESCENT INTO THE MAELSTROM. 157 on account of a dead calm, which is a rare thing indeed just about here ; and once we had to remain on the grounds nearly a week, starving to death, owing to a gale which blew up shortly after our arrival, and made the channel too boisterous to be thought of. Upon this occasion we should have been driven out to sea in spite of everything (for the whirlpools threw us round and round so violently that at length we fouled our anchor and dragged it) if it had not been that we drifted into one of the innumerable cross currents — here to-day and gone to-morrow — which drove us under the lee of Flimen, where, by good luck, we brought up. " I could not tell you the twentieth part of the difiSculties we encountered ' on the grounds '■ — it is a bad spot to be in, even in good weather — but we made shift always to run the gauntlet of the Moskoe-strcim itself without accident ; although at times my heart has been in my mouth when we nappened to be a minute or so behind or before the slack. The wind sometimes was not as strong as we thought it at starting, and then we made rather less way then we could wish, while the current rendered the smack unmanageable My eldest brother had a son eighteen years old, and I had two stout boys of my own. These would have been of great assistance at such times in using the sweeps, as well as afterward in fishing, but somehow, although we ran the risk ourselves, we had not the heart to let the young ones get into the danger — for, after all is said and done, it was a horrible danger, and that is the truth. " It is now within a few days of three years since what I am going to tell you occurred. It was on the tenth day of July 18 — , a day which the people of this part of the world will never forget — for it was one in which blew the most terrible hurricane that ever came out of the heavens ; and yet all tlie morning, and indeed until late in the afternoon, there was a gentle and steady breeze from the south-west, while the sun shone brightly, so that the oldest seaman among us could not have foreseen what was to foUow. " The three of us — my two brothers and myself — had crossed over to the islands about 2 o'clock P.M., and had 158 A DESCENT INTO THE MAELSTKOM. soon nearly loaded the smack with fine fish, which, we all remarked, were more plentiful that day than we had ever known them. It was just seven by my watch when we weighed and started for home, so as to make the worst of the Strom at slack water, which we knew would be at eight. " We set out with a fresh wind on our starboard quarter, and for some time spanked along at a great rate, never dreaming of danger, for indeed we saw not the slightest reason to apprehend it. All at once we were taken aback by a breeze from over Helseggen. This was most unusual — something that had never happened to us before — and I began to feel a little uneasy without exactly knowing why. We put the boat on the wind, but could make no headway at all for the eddies, and I was put upon the point of pro- posing to return to the anchorage, when, looking astern, we saw the whole horizon covered with a singular copper- coloured cloud that rose with the most amazing velocity. " In the meantime the breeze that had headed us off fell away, and we were dead becalmed, drifting about in every direction. This state of things, however, did not last long enough to give us time to think about it. In less than a minute the storm was upon us — in less than two the sky was entirely overcast — and what with this and the driving spray it became suddenly so dark that we could not see each other in the smack. " Such a hurricane as then blew it is folly to attempt describing. The oldest seaman in Norway never experi- enced anything like it. We had let our sails go by the run before it cleverly took us ; but, at the first puff, both our masts went by the board as if they had been sawed off — the mainmast taking with it my youngest brother, who had lashed himself to it for safety. " Our boat was the lightest feather of a thing that ever sat upon water. It had a complete flush deck, with only a small hatch near the bow, and this hatch it had always been our custom to batten down when about to cross the Strom by way of precaution against the chopping seas. But for this circumstance we should have foundered at once — ^for we lay entirely buried for some moments. How my eldei A DESCENT INTO THE MAELSTEOM. 159 brother escaped destruction I cannot say, for I never had an opportunity of ascertaining. For my part, as soon as I had let the foresail run, I threw myself flat on deck, with my feet against the narrow gunwale of the bow, and with my hands grasping a ring-bolt near the foot of the fore-mast. It was mere instinct that prompted me to do this — which was undoubtedly the very best thing I could have done — for I was too much flurried to think. " For some moments we were completely deluged, as I say, and all this time I held my breath, and clung to the bolt. When I could stand it no longer I raised myself up- on my knees, still keeping hold with my hands, and thus got my head clear. Presently our little boat gave herself a shake, just as a dog does in coming out of the water, and thus rid herself in some measure of the seas. I was now trying to get the better of the stupor that had come over me, and to collect my senses so as to see what was to be done, when I felt somebody grasp my arm. It was my elder brother, and my heart leaped for joy, for I had made sure that he was overboard — but the next moment all this joy was turned into horror — ^for he put his mouth close to my ear, and screamed out the word ' Moskoe-strom I ' " No one ever will know what my feelings were at that moment. I shook from head to foot, as if I had had the most violent fit of the ague. I knew what he meant by that one word well enough — I knew what he wished to make me imder stand. With the wind that now drove us on we were bound for the whirl of the Strom, and nothing could save us ! " You perceive that in crossing the Strom channel, we always went a long way up above the whirl, even in the calmest weather, and then had to wait and watch carefully for the slack — but now we were driving right upon the pool itself, and in such a hurricane as this ! ' To be sure,' I thought, ' we shall get there just about the slack — there is some little hope in that ' — but in the next moment I cursed myseK for being so great a fool as to dream of hope at all. I knew very well that we were doomed had we been ten times a ninety-gun ship. 160 A DESCENT INTO THE MAELSTR&M. " By this time the first fury of the tempest had spent itself, or perhaps we did not feel it so much as we scudded before it, but at all events the seas, which at first had been kept down by the wind and lay flat and frothing now got up into absolute mountains. A singular change, too, had come over the heavens. Around in every direction it was stUl as black as pitch, but nearly overhead there burst out, all at once a circular rift of clear sky — as clear as I ever saw, and of a deep bright blue— and through it there blazed forth the full moon with a lustre that I never before knew her to wear. She lit up everything about us with the greatest distinctness — but, God, what a scene it was to light up ! "I now made one or two attempts to speak to my brother — but, in some manner which I could not understand, the din had so increased that I could not make him hear a single word, although I screamed at the top of my voice in his ear. Presently he shook his head, looking as pale as death, and held up one of his fingers as if to say ' listen 1 ' " At first I could not make out what he meant — but soon a hideous thought flashed upon me. I dragged my watch from its fob. It was not going. I glanced at its face by the moonlight, and then burst into tears as I flung it far away into the ocean. It had run down at seven o'clock ! We were behind the time of the slack, and the whirl of the Strim was in full fury ! " When a boat is well buUt, properly trimmed, and not deep laden, the waves in a strong gale, when she is going large, seem always to slip from beneath her — ^which appears very strange to a landsman — and tliis is what is called riding, in sea-phrase. Well, so far we had ridden the swells very cleverly, but presently a gigantic sea happened to take us right under the counter, and bore us ^vith it as it rose — up — up — as if into the sky. I would not have believed that any wave could rise so high. And then down we came with a sweep, a slide, and a plunge, that made me feel sick and dizzy, as if I was falling from some lofty mountain-top in a dream. But while we were up I had thrown a quick glance around — niic] that one glance was all A DESCENT INTO THE MAELSTROM. 161 sufficient. I saw our exact position in an instant. The Moskoe-strom whirlpool was about a quarter of a rrule dead ahead— but no more like the every-day Moskoe-strom, than the whirl as you now see it is likt a mill-race. If I had not known where we were, and what we had to expect, I should not have recognised the place at all. As it was, I involuntarily closed my eyes in horror. The lids clenched themselves together as if in a spasm. " It could not have been more than two minutes after- ward until we suddenly felt the waves subside, and were enveloped in foam. The boat made a sharp half turn to larboard, and then shot off in its new direction like a thunderbolt. At the same moment the roaring noise of the water was completely drowned in a kind of shrill shriek — such a sound as you might imagine given out by the waste- pipes of many thousand steam-vessels letting off their steam all together. We were now in the belt of surf that always surrounds the whirl ; and I thought of course that another moment would plunge us into the abyss— down which we could only see indistinctly on account of the amazing velo- city with which we were borne along. The boat did not seem to siak into the water at all, but to skim like an air- bubble upon the surface of the surge. Her starboard side was next the whirl, and on the larboard arose the world of ocean we had left. It stood like a huge writhing wall between us and the horizon. " It may appear strange, but now, when we were in the very jaws of the gulf, I felt more composed than when we were only approaching it. Having made up my mind to hope no more, I got rid of a great deal of that terror which unmanned me at first. I suppose it was despair that strung my nei'ves. "It may look like boasting — but what I tell you is truth — I began to reflect how magnificent a thing it was to die in such a manner, and how foolish it was in me to think of so paltry a consideration as my own individual life in view of so wonderful a manifestation of God's power. I do believe that I blushed with shame when this idea crofserl my mind. After a little while 1 became possessed with the VOL. I. " 162 A DESCENT INTO THE MAELSTROM. keenest curiosity about the whirl itself. I positively felt a msh to explore its depths, even at the sacrifice I was going to make ; and my principal grief was that I should never be able to tell my old companions on shore about the mysteries I should see. These, no doubt, were singular fancies to occupy a man's mind in such extremity, and I have often thought since that the revolutions of the boat around the pool might have rendered me a little light- headed. " There was another circumstance which tended to restore my self-possession, and this was the cessation of the wind, which could not reach us in our present situation — for, as you saw yourself, the belt of surf is considerably lower than the general bed of the ocean, and. this latter now towered above us, a high, black, mountainous ridge. K you have never been at sea in a heavy gale you can form no idea of the confusion of mind occasioned by the wind and spray together. They blind, deafen, and strangle you, and take away aU power of action or reflection. But we were now, in a great measure, rid of these annoyances — just as death-condemned felons' in prison are allowed petty indul- gences, forbidden them while their doom is yet uncertain. " How often we made the circuit of the belt it is impos sible to say. We careered round and round for perhaps an hour, flying rather than floating, getting gradually more and more into the middle of the surge, and then nearer and nearer to its horrible inner edge. All this time I had never let go of the ring-bolt. My brother was at the stem, holding on to a small empty water-cask which had been securely lashed under the coop of the counter, and was the only thing on deck that had not been swept overboard when the gale first took us. As we approached the brink of the pit he let go his hold upon this, and made for the ring, from which, in the agony of his terror, he endeavoured to force my hands, as it was not large enough to afford us both a secure grasp. I never felt deeper giief than when I saw him attempt this act — although I knew he was a madman when he did it — a raving maniac through sheer fright. I did not care, however to contest the point witn him. I A DESCENT INTO THE MAELSTEOM. 163 knew it could make no difference whether either of us held on at all, so I let him have the bolt, and went astern to the cask. This there was no great difficulty in doing, for the smack flew round steadily enough, and upon an even keel, only swaying to and fro with the immense sweeps and swelters of the whirl. Scarcely had I secured myself in my new position when we gave a wild lurch to starboard, and rushed headlong into the abyss. I muttered a hurried prayer to God, and thought all was over. " As I felt the sickening sweep of the descent I had instinctively tightened my hold upon the barrel, and closed my eyes. For some seconds I dared not open them, while I expected instant destruction, and wondered that I was not already in my death-struggles with the water. But moment after moment elapsed. I still lived. The sense of falling had ceased ; and the motion of the vessel seemed much as it had been before while in the belt of foam, with the exception that she now lay more along. I took courage, and looked once again upon the scene. " Never shall I forget the sensations of awe, horror, and admiration with which I gazed about me. The boat ap- peared to be hanging, as if by magic, midway down, upon the interior surface of a funnel vast in circumference, pro- digious in depth, and whose perfectly smooth sides might have been mistaken for ebony but for the bewildering rapidity with which they spun around, and for the gleaming and ghastly radiance they shot forth, as the rays of the full moon, from that circular rift amid the clouds which I have already described, streamed in a flood of golden glory along the black walls, and far away down into the inmost recesses of the abyss. " At first I was too much confused to observe anything accurately. The general burst of terrific grandeur was all that I beheld. When I recovered myself a little, however, my gaze fell instinctively downward. In this direction I was able to obtain an unobstructed view from the manner in which the smack hung on the inclined surface of the pool. She was quite upon an even keel — that is to say, her deck lay in a plane parallel with that of the water — 164 A DEBCENT INTO THE MAELSTROM. but this latter sloped at an angle of more than forty-five degrees, so that we seemed to be lying upon our beam-ends, I could not help observing, nevertheless, that I had scarcely more difficulty in maintaining my hold and footing in this situation than if we had been upon a dead level, and this, I suppose, was owing to the speed at which we revolved. " The rays of the moon seemed to search the verj bottom of the profound gulf; but stUl I could make out nothing distinctly, on account of a thick mist in which everything there was enveloped, and over which there hung a magnificent rainbow, hke that narrow and tottering bridge which Mussulmen say is the only pathway between Time and Eternity. This mist or spray was no doubt occasioned bj the clashing of the great walls of the funnel as they al] met together at the bottom, but the yell that went up tc the Heavens from out of that mist I dare not attempt tc describe. " Our first sHde into the abyss itself, from the belt oi foam above, had carried us a great distance down the slope but our farther descent was by no means proportionate Round and round we swept — not with any uniform move- ment — but in dizzying swings and jerks, that sent us sometimes only a few hundred yards — sometimes nearly th« complete circuit of the whirl. Our progress downward al each revolution was slow but very perceptible. I " Looking about me upon the wide waste of liquid ebonj on which we were thus borne, I perceived that our boal was not the only object in the embrace of the whirl. Both above and below us were visible fragments of vessels, large masses of building timber and trunks of trees, with manj smaller articles, such as pieces of house furniture, broker boxes, barrels, and staves. I have already described the unnatural curiosity which had taken the place of my origina terrors. It appeared to grow upon me as I drew nearer and nearer to my dreadful doom. I now began to watch, with a strange interest, the numerous things that floated in oui company. I must have been delirious, for I even sought amusement in speculating upon the relative ^ elocities of theii several descents toward the foam below. ' This fir-tree,' A DESCENT INTO THE MAELSTESM. 165 1 found myself at one time saying, ' will certainly be the next thing that takes the awful plunge and disappears,' — and then I was disappointed to find that the wreck of a Dutch merchant ship overtook it and went down before. At length, after making several guesses of this nature, and being deceived m all, this fact — the fact of my invariable miscalculation — set me upon a train of reflection that made my limbs again tremble, and my heart beat heavily once more. " It was not a new terror that thus affected me, but the dawn of a more exciting fwpe. This hope arose partly from memory, and partly from present observation. I called to mind the great variety of buoyant matter that strewed the coast of Lofoden, having been absorbed and then thrown forth by the Moskoe-strom. By far the greater number of the articles were shatterred in the most extraordinary way — so chafed and roughened as to have the appearance of being stuck full of splinters — but then I distinctly recol- lected that there were some of them which were not disfigured at all. Now I could not account for this differ- ence except by supposing that the roughened fragments were the only ones which had been completely absm-bed — that the others had entered the whirl at so late a period of the tide, or, for some reason, had descended so slowly after entering, that they did not reach the bottom before the turn of the flood came, or of the ebb, as the case might be. I conceived it possible, in either instance, that they might thus be whirled up again to the level of the ocean, without undergoing the fate of those which had been drawn in more early, or absorbed more rapidly. I made also three important observations. The first was that, as a general rule, the larger the bodies were the more rapid their descent ; the second, that, between two masses of equal extent, the one spherical and the other of any other shape, the superiority in speed of descent was with the sphere ; the third, that, between two masses of equal size, the one cylindrical and the other of any other shape, the cylinder was absorbed the more slowly. Since my escape I have had several conversations on this subject with an old school 166 A DESCENT INTO THE MAELSTROM. master of the district, and it was from him that I learned the use of the words ' cylinder ' and ' sphere.' He explained to me — although I have forgotten the explanation — how what I observed was in fact the natural consequence of the forms of the floating fragments, and showed me how it happened that a cylinder swimming in a vortex offered more resistance to its suction, and was drawn in with greater difficulty than an equally bulky body of any form whatever.* " There was one startling circumstance which went a great way in enforcing these observations and rendering me anxious to turn them to account, and this was that at every revolution we passed something like a barrel, or else the yard or the mast of a vessel, while many of these things which had been on our level when I first opened my eyes upon the wonders of the whirlpool were now high up above us, and seemed to have moved but little from their original station. " I no longer hesitated what to do. I resolved to lash myself securely to the water-cask upon which I now held, to cut it loose from the counter, and to throw myself with it into the water. I attracted my brother's attention by signs, pointed to the floating barrels that came near us, and did everything in my power to make him understand what I was about to do. I thought at length that he compre- hended my design, but, whether this was the case or not, he shook his head despairingly, and refused to move from his station by the ring-bolt. It was impossible to reach him, the emergency admitted of no delay, and so, with a bitter struggle, I resigned him to his fate, fastened myself to the cask by means of the lashings which secured it to the counter, and precipitated myself with it into the sea without another moment's hesitation. " The result was precisely what I had hoped it might be. As it is myself who now tell you this tale — as you see that I did escape — and as you are already in possession of the mode in which this escape was effected, and must therefore anticipate all that I have further to say, I will * See Archimedes " De Incidmtibus in Fluido."—Wb. 2. A DESOINT INTO THE MAELSTROM. 167 bring my story quickly to conclusion. It might have been an hour or thereabout after my quitting the smack, when, having descfended to a vast distance beneath me, it made three or four wild gyrations in rapid succession, and, bear- ing my loved brother with it, plunged headlong at once and for ever into the chaos of foam below. The barrel to which I was attached sunk very little farther than half the distance between the bottom of the gulf and the spot at which I leaped overboard, before a great change took place in the character of the whirlpool. The slope of the sides of the vast funnel became momently less and less steep. The gyrations of the whirl grew gradually less and less violent. By degrees the froth and the rainbow disappeared, and the bottom of the gulf seemed slowly to uprise. The sky was clear, the winds had gone down, and the fuU moon was setting radiantly in the west, when I found myself on the surface of the ocean, in full view of the shores of Lofoden, and above the spot where the pool of the Moskoe- strom had been. It was the hour of the slack — but the sea still heaved in mountainous waves from the eflfects of the hurricane. I was borne violently into the channel of the Strom, and in a few minutes was hurried down the coast into the ' grounds ' of the fishermen. A boat picked me up, exhausted from fatigue and (now that the danger was removed) speechless from the memory of its horror. Those who drew me on board were my old mates and daily com- panions, but they knew me no more than they would have known a traveller from the spirit-land. My hair which had been raven-black the day before, was as white as you see it now. They say too that the whole expression of my countenance had changed. I told them my story — they did not believe it. I now tell it to you, and I can scarcely expect you to put more faith in it than did the merry fishermen of Lofoden." THE BLACK CAT5. For the most wild, yet most homely narrative which I am about to pen, I neither expect nor solicit belief. Mad in- deed would I be to expect it in a case where my very senses reject their own evidence. Yet mad am I not — and very surely do I not dream. But to-morrow I die, and to- day I would unburthen my soul. My immediate purpose is to place before the world plainly, succinctly, and without comment, a series of mere household events. In their con- sequences these events have terrified — have tortured— have destroyed me. Yet I will not attempt to expound them. To me they have presented little but Horror — to many they will seem less terrible than baroques. Hereafter, per- haps, some intellect may be found which will reduce my phantasm to the commonplace — some intellect more calm, more logical, and far less excitable than my own, which will perceive, in the circumstances I detail with awe, nothing more than an ordinary succession of very natural causes and effects. From my infancy I was noted for the docility and humanity of my disposition. My tenderness of heart was even so conspicuous as to make me the jest of my com- panions. I was especially fond of animals, and was indulged by my parents with a great variety of pets. With these I spent most of my time, and never was so happy as when feeding and caressing them. This peculiarity of character grew with my growth, and in my manhood I derived from it one of my principal sources of pleasure. To those who have cherished an affection for a faithful and sagacious dog, I need hardly be at the trouble of explaining the nature or ihe intensity of the gratification thus derivable. There if THE BLACK CAT. 169 aometliing in the unselfish and self-sacrificing love of a brute which goes directly to the heart of him who has had fre- quent occasion to test the paltry friendship and gossamer fidelity of mere Man. I married early, and was happy to find in my wife a disposition not uncongenial with my own. Observing my partiality for domestic pets, she lost no opportunity of pro- curing those of the most agreeable kind. We had birds, gold-fish, a fine dog, rabbits, a small monkey, and a cat. This latter was a remarkably large and beautiful animal, entirely black, and sagacious to an astonishing degree. In speaking of his intelligence, my wife, who at heart was not a little tinctured with superstition, made frequent allusion to the ancient popular notion which regarded all black cats as witches in disguise. Not that she was ever serious upon this point, and I mention the matter at all for no better reason than that it happens just now to be remembered. Pluto — this was the cat's name — was my favourite pet and playmate. I alone fed him, and he attended me wherever I went about the house. It was even with diffi- culty that I could prevent him from following me through the streets. Our friendship lasted in this manner for several years, during which my general temperament and character — through the instrumentality of the Fiend Intemperance — had (I blush to confess it) experienced a radical alteration for the worse. I grew, day by day, more moody, more irritable, more regardless of the feelings of others. I sufi'ered myself to use intemperate language to my wife. At length, I even offered her personal violence. My pets of course were made to feel the change in my disposition. I not only neglected, but ill-used them. For Pluto, however, I still retained sufiBcient regard to restrain me from maltreat- ing him, as I made no scruple of maltreating the rabbits, the monkey, or even the dog, when by accident, or through affec- tion, they came in my way. But my disease grew upon me — for what disease is like Alcohol! — and at length even Pluto, who was now becoming old, and consequently somewhat peevish — even Pluto began to experience the effects of my ill-temper 170 THE BLA.OK CAT. One night returning home much intoxicated from one of my haunts about town, I fancied that the cat avoided my presence. I seized him, when, in his fright at my violence, he inflicted a slight wound upon my hand with his teeth. The fury of a demon instantly possessed me. I knew myself no longer. My original soul seemed at once to take its flight from my body, and a more than fiendish malevolence, gin-nurtured, thrilled every fibre of my frame. I took from my waistcoat-pocket a pen-knife, opened it, grasped the poor beast by the throat, and deliberately cut one of its eyes from the socket ! I blush, I bum, I shudder, while I pen the damnable atrocity. When reason returned with the morning — when I had slept ofi' the fumes of the night's debauch — I experienced a sentiment half of horror, half of remorse, for the crime of which I had been guilty, but it was at best a feeble and equivocal feeling, and the soul remained untouched. I agidn plunged into excess, and soon drowned in wine all memory of the deed. In the meantime the cat slowly recovered. The socket of the lost eye presented, it is true, a frightful appearance, but he no longer appeared to suffer any pain. He went about the house as usual, but, as might be expected, fled in extreme terror at my approach. I had so much of my old heart left as to be at first grieved by this evident dislike on the part of a creature which had once so loved me. But this feeling soon gave place to irritation. And then came, as if to my final and irrevocable- overthrow, the spirit of Perverseness. Of this spirit philosophy takes no account. Yet I am not more sure that my soul lives than I am that perverseness is one of the primitive impulses of the human heart — one of the indivisible primary faculties or sentiments which give direction to the character of Man. Who has not, a hundred times, found himself committing a vile or a silly action for no other reason than because he knows he should not 1 Have we not a perpetual inclination, in the teeth of our best judgment, to violate that which is Law, merely because we understand it to be such 1 This spirit of perverseness, I say, came to my final overthrow THS BLACK CAT. 171 It was this unfathomable longing of the soul to vex itself — to offer violence to its own nature — to do wrong for the wrong's sake only — that urged me to continue and finally to consummate the injury I had inflicted upon the unoffend- ing brute. One morning, ia cool blood, I slipped a noose about its neck and hung it to the limb of a tree ; — hung it with the tears streaming from my eyes, and with the bitterest remorse at my heart ; hung it because I knew that it had loved me, and lecause I felt it had given me no reason of offence ; hung it became I knew that in so doing I was committiag a sin — a deadly sin that would so jeopardise my immortal soul as to place it, if such a thing were possible, even beyond the reach of the infinite mercy of the Most Merciful and Most Terrible God. On the night of the day on which this cruel deed was done, I was aroused from sleep by the cry of fire. The curtains of my bed were in flames. The whole house was blazing. It was with great difficulty that my wife, a servant, and myself, made our escape from the conflagration. The destruction was complete. My entire worldly wealth was swallowed up, and I resigned myself thenceforward to despair. I am above the weakness of seeking to establish a sequence of cause and effect between the disaster and the atrocity. But I am detailing a chain of facts, and wish not to leave even a possible link imperfect. On the day succeeding the fire, I visited the ruins. The walls with one exception had fallen in. This exception was found in a compartment wall, not very thick, which stood about the middle of the house, and against which had rested the head of my bed. The plastering had here in great measure resisted the action of the fire, a fact which I attributed to its having been recently spread. About this wall a dense crowd were collected, and many persons seemed to be ex- amining a particular portion of it with very minute and eager attention. The words " strange ! " " singular ! " and other similar expressions, excited my curiosity. I approached and saw, as if graven in bos relief upon the white surface^ the figure of a gigantic cat. The impression was given with 172 THE BLACK CAT. an accuracy truly marvellous. There was a rope about the animal's neck. When I first beheld this apparition — for I could scarcely regard it as less — my wonder and my terror were extreme. But at length reflection came to my aid. The cat, 1 remembered, had been hung in a garden adjacent to the house. Upon the alarm of fire this garden had been im- mediately filled by the crowd, by some one of whom the animal must have been cut from the tree and thrown through an open window into my chamber. This had pro- bably been done with the view of arousing me from sleep. The falling of other walls had compressed the victim of my cruelty into the substance of the freshly-spread plaster; the lime of which, with the fl.ames and the ammonia from the carcase, had then accomplished the portraiture as I saw it. Although I thus readily accounted to my reason, if not altogether to my conscience, for the startling fact just detailed, it did not the less fail to make a deep impression upon my fancy. For months I could not rid myself of the phantasm of the cat, and during this period there came back into my spirit a half-sentiment that seemed, but was not, remorse. I went so far as to regret the loss of the animal, and to look about me among the vile haunts which I now habitually frequented for another pet of the same species, and of somewhat similar appearance, with which to supply its place. One night as I sat half-stupified in a den of more than infamy, my attention was suddenly drawn to some black object, reposing upon the head of one of the immense hogs- heads of gin or of rum, which constituted the chief furni- ture of the apartment. I had been looking steadily at the top of this hogshead for some minutes, and what now caused me surprise was the fact that I had not sooner per- ceived the object thereupon. I approached it, and touched it with my hand. It was a black cat — a very large one — fully as large as Pluto, and closely resembling him in every respect but one. Pluto had not a white hair upon any portion of his body ; but this c^t had a large, although in THE BLACK CAT. 173 definite splotch of white, covering nearly the whole region of the breast. Upon my touching him he immediately arose, purred loudly, rubbed against my hand, and appeared delighted with my notice. This, then, was the very creature of which I was in search. I at once offered to purchase it of the landlord ; but this person made no claim to it — knew nothing of it — had never seen it before. I continued my caresses, and when I prepared to go home the animal evinced a disposition to accompany me. I permitted it to do so, occasionally stooping and patting it as I proceeded. When it reached the house it domesti- cated itself at once, and became immediately a great favour- ite with my wife. For my own part, I soon found a dislike to it arising within me. This was just the reverse of what I had antici- pated but — I know not how or why it was — its evident fondness for myself rather disgusted and annoyed. By slow degrees these feelings of disgust and annoyance rose into the bitterness of hatred. I avoided the creature ; a certain sense of shame, and the remembrance of my former deed of cruelty, preventing me from physically abusing it. I did not, for some weeks, strike or otherwise violently ill- use it but gradually — very gradually — I came to look upon it with unutterable loathing, and to flee silently from its odious presence as from the breath of a pestilence. What added, no doubt, to my hatred of the beast was the discovery, on the morning after I brought it home, that, like Pluto, it also had been deprived of one of its eyes. This circumstance, however, only endeared it to my wife, who, as I have already said, possessed in a high degree that humanity of feeling which had once been my distinguishing trait, and the source of many of my simplest and purest pleasures. With my aversion to this cat, however, its partiality for myself seemed to increase. It followed my footsteps with a pertinacity which it would be difficult to make the reader comprehend. Whenever I sat, it would crouch be- neath my chair or spring upon my knees, covering me with 174 THE BLACK CAT. its loathsome caresses. If I arose to walk it would get between my feet and thus nearly throw me down, or fastening its long and sharp claws in my dress, clamber in this manner to my breast. At such times, although I long- ed to destroy it with a blow, I was yet withheld from so doing, partly by a memory of my former crime, but chiefly — let me confess it at once — by absolute dread of the beast. This dread was not exactly a dread of physical evil — and yet I should be at a loss how otherwise to define it. I am almost ashamed to own — yes, even in this felon's cell, I am almost ashamed to own — that the terror and horror with which the animal inspired me, had been heightened by one of the merest chimeras it would be possible to con- ceive. My wife had called my attention more than once to the character of the mark of white hair, of which I have spoken, and which constituted the sole visible difference between the strange beast and the one I had destroyed. The reader will remember that this mark, although large, had been originally very indefinite, but by slow degrees — degrees nearly imperceptible, and which for a long time my reason struggled to reject as fanciful — it had at length assumed a rigorous distinctness of outline. It was now the representation of an object that I shudder to name — and for this above all I loathed and dreaded, and would have rid myself of the monster had I dared — it was now, I say, the image of a hideous — of a ghastly thing — of the Gallows !^0, mournful and terrible engine of horror and of crime— of agony and of death! And now was I indeed wretched beyond the wretched- ness of mere humanity. And a brute beast — whose fellow I had contemptuously destroyed — a brute beast to work out for me — for me a man, fashioned in the image of the High God — so much of insufi"erable woe ! AJas ! neither by day nor by night knew I the blessing of rest any more ! Dur- ing the former the creature left me no moment alone ; and in the latter I started hourly from dreams of unutterable fear, to find the hot breath of the thing upon my face, and its vast weight — an incarnate night-mare that I had no power to shake off — ^incumbent eternally upon my heart ! THE BLACK CAT. 175 Beneath the pressure of torments such as these, the feeble remnant of the good within me succumbed. Evil thoughts became my sole intimates — the darkest and most evil of thoughts. The moodiness of my usual temper in- creased to hatred of all things and of all mankind ; while from the sudden frequent and ungovernable outbursts of a fury to which I now blindly abandoned myself, my un- complaining wife, alas ! was the most usual and the most patient of sufferers. One day she accompanied me upon some household errand into the cellar of the old building which our poverty compelled us to inhabit. The cat followed me down the steep stairs, and nearly throwing me headlong, exasperated me to madness. Uplifting an axe, and forgetting in my wrath the childish dread which had hitherto stayed my hand, I aimed a blow at the animal, which of course would have proved instantly fatal had 'it descended as I wished. But this blow was arrested by the hand of my wife. Goaded by the interference into a rage more than demoniacal, I with- drew my arm from her grasp and buried the axe in hei brain. She fell dead upon the spot without a groan. This hideous murder accomplished, I set myself forth- with and with entire deliberation to the task of concealing the body. I knew that I could not remove it from the house, either by day or by night, without the risk of being observed by the neighbours. Many projects entered my mind. At one period I thought of cutting the corpse into minute fragments and destroying them by fire. At another I resolved to dig a grave for it in the floor of the cellar. Again, I deliberated about casting it in the well in the yard — about packing it in a box, as if merchandise, with the usual arrangements, and so getting a porter to take it from the house. Finally I hit upon what I considered a far better expedient than either of these. I determined to wall it up in the cellar — as the monks of the middle ages are recorded to have walled up their victims. For a purpose such as this the cellar was well adapted. Its walls were loosely constructed and had lately been plastered throughout with a rough plaster, which the damp 176 THE BLACK CAT. ness of the atmosphere had prevented from hardening. More- over, in one of the walls was a projection caused by a false chimney or fireplace, that had been filled up and made to re- semble the rest of the cellar. I made no doubt that I could readily displace the bricks at this point, insert the corpse, and wall the whole up as before, so that no eye could detect anything suspicious. And in this calculation I was not deceived. By means of a crow-bar I easUy dislodged the bricks, and having carefully deposited the body against the inner wall, I propped it in that position, whUe with little trouble I re-laid the whole structure as it originally stood. Having procured mortar, sand, and hair with every possible precaution, I prepared a plaster which could not be distinguished from the old, and with this I very carefully went over the new brick-work. When I had finished I felt satisfied that all was right. The wall did not present the slightest appear- ance of having been disturbed. The rubbish on the floor was picked up with the minutest care. I looked around triumphantly, and said to myself — " Here at last, then, my labour has not been in vain." My next step was to look for the beast which had been the cause of so much wretchedness, for I had at length firmly resolved to put it to death. Had I been able to meet with it at the moment there could have been no doubt of its fate, but it appeared that the crafty animal had been alarmed at the violence of my previous anger, and forbore to present itself in my present mood. It is impossible to describe or to imagine the deep, the blissful sense of relief which the absence of the detested creature occasioned in my bosom. It did not make its appearance during the night — and thus for one night at least since its introduction into the house I soundly and tranquilly slept ; ay, slept even with the burden of murder upon my soul ! The second and the third day passed, and still my tor- mentor came not. Once again I breathed as a freeman. The monster, in terror, had fled the premises for ever ! I should behold it no more ! My happiness was supreme ! The guilt of my dark deed disturbed me but httle. Some THE BLACK CAT. 177 few inquiries had been made, but these had been readily- answered. Even a search had been instituted — but of course nothing was to be discovered. I looked upon my future felicity as secured. Upon the fourth day of the assassination, a party of the police came very unexpectedly into the house, and proceeded again to make rigorous investigation of the premises. Secure, however, in the inscrutability of my place of con- cealment, I felt no embarrassment whatever. The ofBcers bade me accompany them in their search. They left no nook or corner unexplored. At length, for the third or fourth time, they descended into the cellar. I quivered not in a muscle. My heart beat calmly as that of one who slumbers in innocence. I walked the cellar from end to end. I folded my arms upon my bosom, and roamed easily to and fro. The police were thoroughly satisfied, and prepared to depart. The glee at my heart was too strong to be re- strained. I burned to say if but one word by way of triumph, and to render doubly sure their assurance of my guiltlessness. " Gentlemen," I said at last, as the party ascended the steps, " I delight to have allayed your suspicions. I wish you all health, and a little more courtesy. By-the-by, gentlemen, this — this is a very well constructed house." [In the rabid desire to say something easily, I scarcely knew what I uttered at all.] — " I may say an excellently well-con- structed house. These walls — are you going, gentlemen ? — these walls are solidly put together ;" and here, through the mere frenzy of bravado, I rapped heavily with a cane which I held in my hand upon that very portion of the brick-work behind which stood the corpse of the wife of my bosom. But may God shield and deliver me from the fangs of the arch-fiend ! No sooner had the reverberation of my blows sunk into silence than I was answered by a voice from within the tomb! — by a cry, at first muffled and broken, like the sobbing of a child, and then quickly swelling into one long, loud, and continuous scream, utterly anomalous and inhuman — a howl — a wailing shriek, half of VOL. I. N 178 THE BLACK OAT.q horror and half of triumph, such as might have arisen odIj out of hell, conjointly from the throats of the damned in their agony and of the demons that exult in the damna- tion. Of my own thoughts it is folly to speak. Swooning, I staggered to the opposite wall. For one instant the party upon the stairs remained motionless, through extremity of terror and of awe. In the next a dozen stout arms were toiling at the wall. It fell bodily. The corpse, already greatly decayed and clotted with gore, stood erect before the eyes of the spectators. Upon its head, with red ex- tended mouth and solitary eye of fire, sat the hideous beast whose craft had seduced me into murder, and whose inform ing voice had consigned me to the hangman. I had walled the monster up within the tomb ! THE FALL THE HOUSE OF USHER. Son ccEur est nn luth suspendu ; Sit5t qu'on le tonche il rJaonne. De Birangof. Dtjeing the whole of a dull, dark, and soundless day in the \ autumn of the year, when the clouds hung oppressively low in the heavens, I had been passing alone, on horseback, through a singularly dreary tract of country, and at length found myself, as the shades of evening drew on, within view of the melancholy House of Usher. I know not how it was — ^but, with the first glimpse of the building, a sense of insufferable gloom pervaded my spirit. I say insufferable ; for the feeling was unrelieved by any of that half-pleasure- able, because poetic, sentiment, with which the mind usually receives even the sternest natural images of the desolate or terrible. I looked upon the scene before me — upon the mere house, and the simple landscape features of the domain — upon the bleak walls — upon the vacant eye-like windows — ^upon a few rank sedges — and upon a few white trunks of decayed trees — with an utter depression of soul which I can compare to no earthly sensation more properly than to the after-dream of the reveller upon opium — the bitter lapse into every-day life— the hideous dropping of the veil. There was an iciness, a sinking, a sickening of the heart — an unredeemed dreariness of thought which no goading of the imagination could torture into aught of the sublime. What was it — I paused to think — what was it that so , 180 THE FALL OF THE HOUSE OF USHER. unnerved me in the contemplation of the House of Usher ! It was a mystery all insoluble ; nor could I grapple with the shadowy fancies that crowded upon me as I pondered. I was forced to fall back upon the unsatisfactory conclusion, that whUe, beyond doubt, there ar« combinations of very simple natural objects which have the power of thus affecting us, still the analysis of this power lies among considerations beyond our depth. It was possible, I reflected, that a mere different arrangement of the particulars of the scene, of the details of the picture, would be sufficient to modify, or perhaps to annihilate its capacity for sorrowful impression ; and, acting upon this idea, I reined my horse to the precipi- tous brink of a black and lurid tarn that lay in unruffled lustre by the dwelling, and gazed down — ^but with a shudder more thrilling than before — upon the remodelled and inverted images of the grey sedge, and the ghastly tree-stems, and the vacant and eye-like windows. Nevertheless, in this mansion of gloom I now proposed to myself a sojourn of some weeks. Its proprietor, Eoderick Usher, had been one of my boon companions in boyheod but many years had elapsed since our last meeting. A letter, however, had lately reached me in a distant part of the country — a letter from him — which, in its wildly importunate nature, had admitted of no other than a personal reply. The MS. gave evidence of nervous agitation. The writer spoke of acute bodily illness — of a mental dis- order which oppressed him — and of an earnest desire to see me, as bis best, and indeed his only personal friend, with a view of attempting, by the cheerfulness of my society, some alleviation of his malady. It was the manner in which all this, and much more, was said — it was the apparent heart that went with his request — which allowed me no room for hesitation, and I accordingly obeyed forthwith what I still considered a very singular summons. Although, as boys, we had been even intimate associates, yet I really knew little of my friend. His reserve had been always excessive and habitual. I was aware, however, that his very ancient family bad been noted, time out of mind, for a peculiar sensibility of temperament, displaying THE FALL OF THE HOUSE OF USHEK. 181 itself through long ages in many works of exalted art, and manifested of late in repeated deeds of munificent yet unobtrusive charity, as well as in a passionate devotion to the intricacies, perhaps even more than to the orthodox and easily-recognisable beauties of musical science. I had learned, too, the very remarkable fact that the stem of the Usher race, all time-honoured as it was, had put forth at no period any enduring branch ; in other words, that the entire family lay in the direct line of descent, and had always, with very trifling and very temporary variation, so lain. It was this deficiency, I considered, while running over in thought the perfect keeping of the character of the premises with the accredited character of the people, and while speculating upon the possible influence which the one, in the long lapse of centuries, might have exercised upon the other — it was this deficiency perhaps of collateral issue, and the consequent undeviating transmission from sire to son of the patrimony with the name, which had at length so identified the two as to merge the original title of the estate in the quaint and equivocal appellation of the " House of Usher " — an appellation which seemed to include, in the minds of the peasantry who used it, both the family and the family mansion. I have said that the sole effect of my somewhat childish experiment — that of looking down within the tarn— had been to deepen the first singular impression. There can be no doubt that the consciousness of the rapid increase of my superstition — for why should I not so term it? — served mainly to accelerate the increase itself Such, I have long known, is the paradoxical law of all sentiments having terror as a basis ; and it might have been for this reason only that, when I again uplifted my eyes to the house itself from its image in the pool, there grew in my mind a strange fancy — a fancy so ridiculous indeed that I but mention it to show the vivid force of the sensations which oppressed me. I had so worked upon my imagination as really to beheve that about the whole mansion and domain there hung an atmo- sphere peculiar to themselves and their immediate vicinity — an atmosphere which had no affinity with the air of heaven 182 THE FALL OF THE HOUSE OF USHER. but which had reeked up from the decayed trees, and the grey wall, and the silent tarn — a pestilent and mystic vapour, dull, sluggish, faintly discernible, and leaden-hued. Shaking off from my spirit what must have been a dream, I scanned more narrowly the real aspect of the building. Its principal feature seemed to be that of an ex- cessive antiquity. The discoloration of ages had been great. Minute fungi overspread the whole exterior, hanging in a fine tangled web-work from the eaves. Yet all this was apart from any extraordinary dilapidation. No portion of the masonry had fallen, and there appeared to be a wild inconsistency between its still perfect adaptation of parts and the cnimbling condition of the individual stones. In this there was much that reminded me of the spacious totality of old woodwork which has rotted for long years in some neglected vault with no disturbance from the breath of the external air. Beyond this indication of extensive decay, however, the fabric gave little token of instability. Perhaps the eye of a scrutinising observer might have discovered a barely perceptible fissure, which, extending from the roof of the building in front, made its way down the wall in a iigzag direction, until it became lost in the sullen waters of the tarn. Noticing these things, I rode over a short causeway to the house. A servant in waiting took my horse, and I entered the Gothic archway of the hall. A valet, of stealthy step, thence conducted me in silence through many dark and intricate passages in my progress to the stvdio of his master. Much that I encountered on the way contri- buted, I know not how, to heighten the vague sentiments of which I have already spoken. While the objects around me — while the carvings of the ceilings, the sombre tapestries of the walls, the ebon blackness of the floors, and the phantasmagoric armorial trophies which rattled as I strode, were but matters to which, or to such as which, I had been accustomed from my infancy — while I hesitated not to acknowledge how familiar was all this — I stiU wondered to find how unfamiliar were the fancies wliich ordinary images were stirring up. On one of the staircases I met the THE FALL OF THE HOUSE OF USHER. 183 physician of the family. His countenance, I thought, wore a mingled expression of low cunning and perplexity. He accosted me with trepidation and passed on. The valet now threw open a door and ushered me into the presence of his master. —y The room in which I found myself was very large and' lofty. The windows were long, narrow, and pointed, and at so vast a distance from the black oaken floor as to be altogether inaccessible from within. Feeble gleams of encrimsoned light made their way through the trellissed panes, and served to render sufficiently distinct the more prominent objects around ; the eye, however, struggled in vain to reach the remoter angles of the chamber, or the recesses of the vaulted and fretted ceiling. Dark draperies hung upon the walls. The general furniture was profuse, comfortless, antique, and tattered. Many books and musical instruments lay scattered about, but failed to give any vitality to the scene. I felt that I breathed an atmo- sphere of sorrow. An air of stem, deep, and irredeemable) gloom hung over and pervaded all. Upon my entrance. Usher arose from a sofa on which he had been lying at full length, and greeted me with a vivacious warmth which had much in it, I at first thought, of an overdone cordiality — of the constrained effort of the ennuyd man of the world. A glance, however, at his counte- nance convinced me of his perfect sincerity. We sat down ; and for some moments, while he spoke not, I gazed upon him with a feeling half of pity, half of awe. Surely, man had never before so terribly altered, in so brief a period, as had Roderick Usher ! It was with difficulty that I could bring myself to admit the identity of the wan being before me with the companion of my early boyhood. Yet the character of his face had been at all times remarkable. A cadaverousness of complexion; an eye large, liquid, and luminous beyond comparison ; lips somewhat thin and very pallid, but of a surpassingly beautiful curve ; a nose of a delicate Hebrew model, but with a breadth of nostril un- usual in similar formations ; a finely moulded chin, speak- ing, in its want of prominence, of a want of moral energy ; 184 THE FALL OF THE HOUSE OF USHER. hair of a more than web-like softness and tenuity ; these features, with an inordinate expansion above the regions of the temple, made up altogether a countenance not easily to be forgotten. And now in the mere exaggeration of the prevailing character of these features, and of the expression they were wont to convey, lay so much of change that I doubted to whom I spoke. The now ghastly pallor of the skin, and the now miraculous lustre of the eye, above all things startled and even awed me. The silken hair, too, had been suffered to grow all unheeded, and as, in its wild gossamer texture, it floated rather than fell about the face, I could not, even with effort, connect its Arabesque expres- sion with any idea of simple humanity. In the manner of my friend I was at once struck with an incoherence — an inconsistency ; and I soon found this to arise from a series of feeble and futile struggles to over- come an habitual trepidancy — an excessive nervous agitation. For something of this nature I had indeed been prepared, no less by his letter than by reminiscences of certain boyish traits, and by conclusions deduced from his peculiar physical conformation and temperament. His action was alter- nately vivacious and sullen. His voice varied rapidly from a tremulous indecision (when the animal spirits seemed utterly in abeyance) to that species of energetic concision — that abrupt, weighty, unhurried, and hoUow-sounding enunciation — that leaden, self-balanced and perfectly modu- lated guttural utterance which may be observed in the lost drunkard, or the irreclaimable eater of opium, during the periods of his most intense excitement. It was thus that he spoke of the object of my visit, of his earnest desire to see me, and of the solace he expected me to afford him. He entered at some length into what he conceived to be the nature of his malady. It was, he said, a constitutional and a family evil, and one for which he despaired to find a remedy^ — a mere nervous affection, he immediately added, which would undoubtedly soon pass off. It displayed itself in a host of unnatural sensations. Some of these as he detailed them, interested and bewildered me; although perhaps the terms and the general manner of the THE FALL OF THE HOUSE OF USHER. 185 narration had their weight. He suffered much from a mor- bid acuteness of the senses ; the most insipid food was alone endurable ; he could wear only garments of certain texture; the odours of all flowers were oppressive ; his eyes were tortured by even a faint light ; and there were but peculiar sounds, and these from stringed instruments, which did not inspire him with horror. To an anomalous species of terror I found him a bounden slave. "I shall perish," said he, "I must perish in this deplorable folly. Thus, thus, and not otherwise, shall I be lost. I dread the events of the future, not in themselves, but in their results. I shudder at the thought of any, even the most trivial incident, which may operate upon this in- tolerable agitation of soul. I have indeed no abhorrence of danger, except in its absolute effect — in terror. In this unnerved — in this pitiable condition — I feel that the period will sooner or later arrive when I must abandon life and reason together in some struggle with the grim phantasm. Fear." I learned, moreover, at intervals, and through broken and equivocal hints, another singular feature of his mental condition. He was enchained by certain superstitious im- pressions in regard to the dwelling which he tenanted, and whence, for many years, he had never ventured forth — in re- gard to an influence whose supposititious force was conveyed in terms too shadowy here to be re-stated — an influence which some peculiarities in the mere form and substance of his family mansion, had, by dint of long sufferance, he said, obtained over his spirit — an effect which the physique of the grey walls and turrets, and of the dim tarn into which they all looked down, had at length brought about upon the morale of his existence. He admitted, however, although with hesitation, that much of the pecuUar gloom which thus afiHicted him could be traced to a more natural and far more palpable origin — to the severe and long-continued illness — indeed to the evidently approaching dissolution— of a tenderly beloved sister — his sole companion for long years — ^his last and only relative on earth. " Her decease," he said, with a bitterness i86 THE FALL OF THE HOUSE Oi' USHER. which I can never forget, " -would leave him (him the hope- less and the frail) the last of the ancient race of the Ushers." While he spoke, the lady Madeline (for so was she called) passed slowlj^ through a remote portion of the apartment, and, without having noticed my presence, disappeared. I regarded her with an utter astonishment not unmingled with dread — and yet I found it impossible to account for such feelings. A sensation of stupor oppressed me as my eyes followed her retreating steps. When a door at length closed upon her, my glance sought instinctively and eagerly the countenance of the brother — but he had buried his face in his hands, and I could only perceive that a far more than ordinary wanness had overspread the emaciated fingers through which trickled many passionate tears. The disease of the lady Madeline had long baffled the ■skill of her physicians. A settled apathy, a gradual wast- ing away of the person, and frequent although transient afTections of a partially cataleptical character, were the unusual diagnosis. Hitherto she had steadily borne up against the pressure of her malady, and hid not betaken herself finally to bed ; but, on the closing in of the evening of my arrival at the house, she succumbed (as her brother told me at night with inexpressible agitation) to the pro- strating power of the destroyer ; and I learned that the glimpse I had obtained of her person would thus probably be the last I should obtain — that the lady, at least while living, would be seen by me no more. For several days ensuing her name was unmentioned by either Usher or myself; and during this period I was busied in earnest endeavours to alleviate the melancholy of my friend. We painted and read together, or I listened, as if in a dream, to the wild improvisations of his. speaking guitar. And thus, as a closer and still closer intimacy admitted me more unreservedly into the recesses of his spirit, the more bitterly did I perceive the futility of all attempts at cheering a luind from which darkness, as if an inherent positive quality, poured forth upon all objects of the moral and physical universe in one unceasing radiation of gloom. THE FALL OF THE HOUSE OF USHER. 187 I shall ever bear about me a memory of tbe many solemn hours I thus spent alone with the master of the House of Usher. Yet I should fail in any attempt to con- vey an idea of the exact character of the studies, or of the occupations in which he involved me or led me the way. An excited and highly distempered ideality threw a sulphur- eous lustre over all. His long improvised dirges will ring forever in my ears. Among other things, I hold painfully in mind a certain singular perversion and amphfication of the wild air of the last waltz of Von Weber. From the paintings over which his elaborate fancy brooded, and which grew, touch by touch, into vaguenesses at which I shuddered the more thrillingly, because I shuddered knowing not why ; — from these paintings (vivid as their images now are be- fore me) I would in vain endeavour to educe more than a small portion which should lie within the compass of merely written words. By the utter simplicity, by the nakedness of his designs, he arrested and overawed attention. It ever mortal painted an idea that mortal was Eoderick Usher. For me at least — in the circumstances then sur- rounding me — there arose out of the pure abstractions which the hypochondriac contrived to throw upon his canvas an intensity of intolerable awe, no shadow of which felt I ever yet in the contemplation of the certainly glowing yet too concrete reveries of Fuseli. One of the phantasmagoric conceptions of my friend partaking not so rigidly of the spirit of abstraction, may be shadowed forth, although feebly, in words. A small picture presented the interior of an immensely long and rectangu- lar vault or tunnel, with low walls, smooth, white, and without interruption or device. Certain accessory points of the design served well to convey the idea that this ex- cavation lay at an exceeding depth below the surface of the earth. No outlet was observed in any portion of its vast extent, and no torch, or other artificial source of light was discernible, yet a flood of intense rays rolled through- out, and bathed the whole in a ghastly and inappropriate splendour. I have just spoken of that morbid condition of the 188 THE FALL OF THE HOUSE OF USHER. auditory nerve which rendered all music intolerable to the sufferer, with the exception of certain effects of stringed instruments. It was perhaps the narrow limits to which he thus confined himself upon the guitar which gave birth, in great measure, to the fantastic character of his perform- ances. But the fervid facility of his impromptus could not be so accounted for. They must have been and were, in the notes, as well as in the words of his wild fantasias (for he not unfrequently accompanied himself with rhymed- verbal improvisations), the result of that intense mental coUectedness and concentration to which I have previously alluded as observable only in particular moments of the highest artificial excitement. The words of one of these rhapsodies I have easily remembered. I was perhaps the more forcibly impressed with it as he gave it, because, in the under or mystic current of its meaning, I fancied that I perceived, and for the first time, a full consciousness on the part of Usher, of the tottering of his lofty reason upon her throne. The verses which were entitled " The Haunted Palace," ran very nearly, if not accurately, thus : I. In the greenest of our valleys, By good angels tenanted, Once a fair and stately palace — Radiant palace — reared its head. In the monarch Thought's dominion — It stood there ! Never seraph spread a pinion Over fabric half so fair. II. Banners yellow, glorious, golden, On its roof did float and flow ; (This — aU this — was in the olden Time long ago) And every gentle aii- that dallied. In that sweet day, Along the ramparts plumed and pallid, A winged odour went away. THE FALL OP THE HOUSE OF 0SHEE. 189 111. Wanderers in that happy valley Through two luminous windows saw Spirits moving musically lo a hite'a weU-tunM law, Round about a throne, where sitting (Porphyrogene I) In state his glory well befitting. The ruler of the realm was seen. IV. And all with pearl and ruby glowing Was the fair palace door. Through which came flowing, flowing, flowing. And sparkling evei-more, A troop of Echoes whose sweet duty Was but to sing, In voices of sui'passing beauty, The wit and wisdom of their king. V. But evil things, in robes of sorrow. Assailed the monarch's high estate ; (Ah, let us mourn, for never morrow Shall dawn upon him, desolate I) And, round about his home, the glojy That blushed and bloomed Is but a dim-remembered story Of the old time entombed. VI. And travellers now within that valley. Through the red-Htten windows, see Vast forms that move fantastically To a discordant melody ; While, like a rapid ghastly river. Through the pale door, A hideous throng rush out for ever, And laugh — but smile no more. I -well remember that suggestions arising from this ballad led us into a train of thought wherein there became manifest an opinion of Usher's, which I mention not so 190 THE FALL OF THE HOUSE OF USHER. much cm account of its novelty (for other men* have thought thus), as on account of the pertinacity with which he maintained it. This opinion, in its general form, was that of the sentience of all vegetable things. But, in his disordered fancy, the idea had assumed a more daring character, and trespassed, under certain conditions, upon the kingdom of inorganisation. I lack words to express the full extent, or the earnest abandon of his persuasion. The belief, however, was connected (as I have previously hinted) with the grey stones of the home of his forefathers. The conditions of the sentience had been here, he imagined, fulfilled in the method of collocation of these stones — in the order of their arrangement, as well as in that of the many fungi which overspread them, and of the decayed trees which stood around — above all, in the long undisturbed endurance of this arrangement, and in its reduplication in the still waters of the tarn. Its evidence — the evidence of the sentience — was to be seen, he said (and I here started as he spoke), in the gradual yet certain condensation of an atmosphere of their own about the waters and the walls. The result was discoverable, he added, in that silent yet importunate and terrible influence which for centuries had moulded the destinies of his family, and which made him what I now saw him — what he was. Such opinions need no comment, and I will make none. Our books — the books which for years had formed no small portion of the mental existence of the invalid — were, as might be supposed, in strict keeping with this character of phantasm. We pored together over such works as the Ververt et Chartreuse of Gresset ; the Belphegor of Machi- avelli ; the Heaven and Hell of Swedenborg ; the Subter- ranean Voyage of Nicholas Klimm by Holberg ; the Chiromancy of Eobert Flud, of Jean D'Indagin6, and of De la Chambre ; the Journey into the Blue Distance of Tieck ; and the City of the Sun of Campanella. One favourite volume was a small octavo edition of the Diredorium Itpquisi- torum, by the Dominican Eymeric de Gironne ; and there * Watson, Dr. Percival, Spallanzani, and especially the Bishop 0/ Dandatf. — See "Chemical Essays," vol. v. Tire JALL OF THE HOUSE OF USRKK. 191 were passages in Pomponius Mela, about the old African Satyrs and CEgipans, over which Usher would sit dreaming for hours. His chief delight, however, was found in the perusal of an exceedingly rare and curious book lq, quarto Gothic — the manual of a forgotten church — the Figiliae Mortuonim secundum Chorum Ecdesiae Maguntinae. I eould not help thinking of the wild ritual of this work, and of its probable influence upon the hypochondriac, when, one evening, having informed me abruptly that the lady Madeline was no more, he stated his iatention of preserving her corpse for a fortnight (previously to its final interment), in one of the numerous vaults within the main walls of the building. The worldly reason, however, assigned for this singular proceeding was one which I did not feel at liberty to dispute. The brother had been led to his resolution (so he told me) by consideration of the unusual character of the malady of the deceased, of certain obtrusive and eager inquiries on the part of her medical man, and of the remote and exposed situation of the burial-ground of the family. I will not deny that when I called to mind the sinister countenance of the person whom I met upon the staircase on the day of my arrival at the house, I had no desire to oppose what I regarded as at best but a harmless and by no means an unnatural precaution. At the request of Usher, I personally aided him in the arrangements for the temporary entombment. The body having been encoffined, we two alone bore it to its rest. The vault in which we placed it (and which had been so long unopened that our torches, half smothered in its oppressive atmosphere, gave us little opportunity for investi- gation) was small, damp, and entirely without means of admission for light, lying at great depth immediately beneath that portion of the building in which was my own sleeping apartment. It had been used apparently in remote feudal times for the worst purposes of a donjon- keep, and in later days as a place of deposit for powder or some other highly combustible substance, as a portion of its floor, and the whole interior of a long archway through which we reached it, were carefully sheathed with copper 192 THE FALL OF THE HOUSE OF USHEE. The door, of massive iron, had been also similarly protected. Its immense weight caused an unusually sharp grating sound as it moved upon its hinges. Having deposited our mournful burden upon tresseh within this region of horror, we partially turned aside the yet unscrewed Hd of the coflBn and looked upon the face of the tenant. A striking similitude between the brother and sister now first arrested my attention, and Usher, divining perhaps my thoughts, murmured out some few words from which I learned that the deceased and himself had been twins, and that sympathies of a scarcely intelligible nature had always existed between them. Our glances, however, rested not long upon the dead — ^for we could not regard her unawed. The disease which had thus entombed the lady in the maturity of youth had left, as usual in all maladies of a strictly cataleptical character, the mockery of a faint blush upon the bosom and the face, and that sus- piciously lingering smile upon the lip which is so terrible in death. We replaced and screwed down the Ud, and having secured the door of iron, made our way with tofl. into the scarcely less gloomy apartments of the upper portion of the house. And now, some days of bitter grief having elapsed, an observable change came over the features of the mental disorder of my friend. His ordinary manner had vanished. His ordinary occupations were neglected or forgotten. He roamed from chamber to chamber with hurried, unequal, and objectless step. The pallor of his countenance had assumed if possible a more ghastly hue — but the luminous- ness of his eye had utterly gone out. The once occasional huskiness of his tone was heard no more, and a tremulous quaver, as if of extreme terror, habitually characterised his utterance. There were times indeed when I thought his unceasingly agitated mind was labouring with some oppres- sive secret, to divulge which he struggled for the necessary courage. At times again I was obliged to resolve all into the mere inexplicable vagaries of madness, for 1 beheld him gazing upon viicancy for long hours in an attitude of the profoundest attention, as if listening to some imaginary THE FALL OF THE HOUSE 07 DSHEK. 193 sound. It was no wonder that his condition terrified — that it infected me. I felt creeping upon me, by slow yet certain degrees, the wild influences of his own fantastic yet impressive superstitions. It was especially upon retiring to bed late in the night of the seventh or eighth day after the placing of the lady Madeline within the donjon that I experienced the fuU power of such feelings. Sleep came not near my couch — wMle the hours waned and waned away. I struggled to reason oflf the nervousness which had dominion over me. I endeavoured to believe that much if not all of what I felt was due to the bewildering influence of the gloomy furniture of the room — of the dark and tattered draperies which, tortured into motion by the breath of a rising tempest, swayed fitfully to and iro upon the walls, and rustled uneasily about the decorations of the bed. But my efi'orts were fruitless. An irrepressible tremor gradually pervaded my frame, and at length there sat upon my very heart an incubus of utterly causeless alarm. Shaking this off with a gasp and a struggle I uplifted myself upon the pillows, and peering earnestly within the intense darkness of the chamber, hearkened — I know not why, except that an in- stinctive spirit prompted me — to certain low and indefinite sounds which came, through the pauses of the storm, at long intervals, I knew not whence. Overpowered by an intense sentiment of horror, unaccountable yet unendurable, I threw on my clothes with haste (for I felt that I should sleep no more during the night), and endeavoured to arouse myself from the pitiable condition into which I had fallen, by pacing rapidly to and fro through the apartment. I had taken but few turns in this manner, when a light step on an adjoining staircase arrested my attention. I presently recognised it as that of Usher. In an instant afterward he rapped with a gentle touch at my door, and entered, bearing a lamp. His countenance was as usual cadaverously wan — but, moreover, there was a species of mad hilarity in his eyes — an evidently restrained hysteria in his whole demeanour. His air appalled me — out any- VOL. I. 194 THE FALL OF THE HOUSE OF USHEK. thing was preferable to the solitude which I had so long endured, and I even welcomed his presence as a reUef. "And you have not seen it?" he said abruptly, after having stared about him for some moments in silence — " you have not then seen it t — but, stay ! you shall." Thus speaking, and having carefully shaded his lamp, he hurried to one of the casements, and threw it freely open to the storm. The impetuous fury of the entering gust nearly lifted us from our feet. It was indeed a tempestuous yet sternly beautiful night, and one wildly singular in its terror and its beauty. A whirlwind had apparently collected its force in our vicinity, for there were frequent and violent alterations in the direction of the wind, and the exceeding density of the clouds (which hung so low as to press upon the turrets of the house) did not prevent our perceiving the life-like velocity with which they flew careering from aU points against each other without passing away into the distance. I say that even their exceeding density did not prevent our perceiving this- — yet we had no glimpse of the moon or stars — nor was there any flashing forth of the lightning. But the under surfaces of the huge masses of agitated vapour, as well as all terrestrial objects immediately around us, were glowing in the unnatural light of a faintly luminous and distinctly visible gaseous exhalation which hung about and enshrouded the mansion. "You must not — you shall not behold this!" said I, shudderingly, to Usher, as I led him with a gentle violence from the window to a seat. " These appearances which bewilder you are merely electrical phenomena not uncom- mon, or it may be that they have their ghastly origin in the rank miasma of the tarn. Let us close this casement ; the air is chilling and dangerous to your frame. Here is one of your favourite romances. I will read, and you shall listen ; and so we wUl pass away this terrible night together." The antique volume which I had taken up was the " Mad Trist " of Sir Launcelot Canning, but I had called it a favourite of Usher's more in sad jest than in earnest ; for THE FALL OF THE HOUSE OF USHER. 195 in truth, there is little in its uncouth and unimaginative prolixity which could have had interest for the lofty and spiritual ideality of my friend. It was, however, the only book immediately at hand, and I indulged a vague hope that the excitement which now agitated the hypochondriac might find relief (for the history of mental disorder is full of similar anomalies) even in the extremeness of the folly which I should read. Could I have judged, indeed, by the wild overstrained air of vivacity with which he hearkened, or apparently hearkened, to the words of the tale, I might well have congratulated myself upon the success of my design. I had arrived at that well-known portion of the story where Ethelred, the hero of the Trist, having sought in vain for peaceable admission into the dwelling of the hermit, proceeds to make good an entrance by force. Here, it will be remembered, the words of the narrative run thus : " And Ethelred, who was by nature of a doughty heart, and who was now mighty withal, on account of the power- fulness of the wine which he had drunken, waited no longer to hold parley with the hermit, who in sooth was of an obstinate and maliceful turn, but feeling the rain upon his shoulders, and fearing the rising of the tempest, uplifted his mace outright, and with blows made quickly room in the plankings of the door for his gauntleted hand; and now pulling therewith sturdily, he so cracked and ripped, and tore all asunder, that the noise of the dry and hollow-sound- ing wood alarummed and reverberated throughout the forest." At the termination of this sentence I started, and for a moment paused, for it appeared to me (although I at once concluded that my excited fancy had deceived me) that from some very remote portion of the mansion there came indistinctly to my ears what might have been, in its exact similarity of character, the echo (but a stifled and dull one certainly) of the very cracking and ripping sound which Sir Launcelot had so particularly described. It was beyond doubt the coincidence alone which had arrested my attention ; for amid the rattling of the sashes of the casements, and the ordinary commingled 196 THE FALL OF THE HOUSE OF USHER. noises of the stDl increasing storm, the sound in itself had nothirg surely which should have interested or disturbed me. I continued the story : " But the good champion Ethelred, now entering within the door, was soon enraged and amazed to perceive no signal of the maliceful hermit ; but in the stead thereof, a dragon of a scaly and prodigious demeanour, and of a fiery tongue, which sate in guard before a palace of gold, with a floor of silver; and upon the wall there himg a shield of shining brass with this legend enwritten — ' ' Who entereth herein, a conqueror hath bin ; "Who slayeth the dragon, the shield he shall win. And Ethebed uplifted his mace, and struck upon the head of the dragon, which fell before him, and gave up his pesty breath, with a shriek so horrid and harsh, and withal so piercing, that Ethelred had fain to close his ears with his hands against the dreadful noise of it, the like whereof was never before heard." Here again I paused abruptly, and now with a feeling ol wild amazement— for there could be no doubt whatever that in this instance I did actually hear (although from what direction it proceeded I found it impossible to say) a low and apparently distant, but harsh, protracted, and most unusual screaming or grating sound — the exact counterpart of what my fancy had already conjured up for the dragon's unnatural shriek as described by the romancer. Oppressed, as I certainly was upon the occurrence of this second and most extraordinary coincidence, by a thou- sand conflicting sensations, in which wonder and extreme terror were predominate, I still retained sufiicient presence of mind to avoid exciting by any observation the sensitive nervousness of my companion. I was by no means certain that he had noticed the sounds in question, although, assuredly, a strange alteration had during the last few minutes taken place in his demeanour. From a position fronting my own, he had gradually brought round his chair, so as to sit with hi.s face to the door of the chamber ; and thus I could but partially perceive his features, although I THB FALL OF THK HOUSB OF USHER. 197 saw that his lips trembled as if he were murmuring inaudibly. His head had dropped upon his breast, yet I knew that he was not asleep, from the wide and rigid opening of the eye as I caught a glance of it in profile. The motion of his body too was at variance with this idea, — for he rocked from side to side with a gentle yet constant and uniform sway. Having rapidly taken notice of all this, I resumed the narrative of Sir Launcelot, which thus proceeded : " And now, the champion having escaped from the terrible fury of the dragon, bethinking himself of the brazen shield, and of the breaking up of the enchantment which was upon it, removed the carcase from out of the way before him, and approached valorously over the silver pavement of the castle to where the shield was upon the wall ; which in sooth tarried not for his full coming, but fell down at his feet upon the silver floor with a mighty great and terrible ringing sound." No sooner had these syllables passed my lips, than — as if a shield of brass had indeed at the moment fallen heavily upon a floor of silver — I became aware of a distinct, hollow^ metallic, and clangorous, yet apparently muffled, reverbera- tion. Completely unnerved, I leaped to my feet, but the measured rocking movement of Usher was undisturbed. I rushed to the chair in which he sat. His eyes were bent fixedly before him, and throughout his whole countenance their reigned a stony rigidity. But, as I placed my hand upon his shoulder, there came a strong shudder over his whole person ; a sickly smile quivered about his lips, and I saw that he spoke in a low, hurried, and gibbering murmur, as if unconscious of my presence. Bending closely over him, I at length drank in the hideous import of his words. " Not hear it ? — yes, I hear it, and have heard it. Long — long — long — many minutes, many hours, many days, have I heard it — yet I dared not — oh, pity me, miserable wretch that I am ! — I dared not — I dared not speak ! We have put her living in the tomb I Said I not that my senses were acute ? I now tell you that I heard her first feeble movements in the hollow coffin. I heard them — many, many days ago — yet I dared not. — / dared not speak I And 198 THK FALL OF THE HOUSE OF USHEK. now — to-night — Ethelred — ha! ha! — the breaking of the hermit's door, and the death-cry of the dragon, and the clangour of the shield ! — say, rather, the rending of her coffin, and the grating of the iron hinges of her prison, and her struggles within the coppered archway of the vault. whither shall I fly 1 Will she not be here anon ? Is she not hurrying to upbraid me for my haste t Hare I not heard her footstep on the stair 1 Do I not distinguish that heavy and horrible beating of her heart 1 Madman ! " Here he sprang furiously to his feet, and shrieked out his syllables, as if in the effort he were giving up his soul — "Madman/ I tell you that she now stands without the door!" As if in the superhuman energy of his utterance there had been found the potency of a spell — the huge antique panels to which the speaker pointed, threw slowly back, upon the instant, their ponderous and ebony jaws. It was the work of the rushing gust — but then without those doors there did stand the lofty and enshrouded figure of the lady Madeline of Usher. There was blood upon her white robes, and the evidence of some bitter struggle upon every portion of her emaciated frame. For a moment she remained trembling and reeling to and fro upon the thresh- hold — then, with a low moaning cry, fell heavily inward upon the person of her brother, and in her violent and now final death-agonies, bore him to the floor a corpse, and a victim to the terrors he had anticipated. From that chamber and from that mansion I fled aghast The storm was stiU abroad in aU its wrath as I found myself crossing the old causeway. Suddenly there shot along the path a wild light, and I turned to see whence a gleam so unusual could have issued, for the vast house and its shadows were alone behind me. The radiance was that of the full, setting, and blood-red moon, which now shone vividly through that once barely-discernible fissure, of which I have before spoken as extending from the roof of the building in a zigzag direction to the base. While 1 gazed, this fissure rapidly widened ; there came a fierc* THE FALL OF THE HOUSE OF USHEK. 19S breath of the whirlwind ; the entire orb of the satelKte burst at once upon my sight ; my brain reeled as I saw the mighty walls rushing asunder ; there was a long tumultuous shouting sound Uke the voice of a thousand waters, and the deep and dark tarn at my feet closed sullenly and silently over the fragments of the " Souse of Usher." 'S^^£] THE PIT AND THE PENDULUM. Impia tortorum longaa hie turba furores Sanguinis innocui, non satiata, alult. Sospite nunc patria, fracto nunc funeris antro, Mors ubl dira fuit vita salusque patent. [Quatrain composed for the gates of a market to be erected upon the site oj the Jacobin Club House at Paris. ] I WAS sick, sick unto death, with that long agony, and when they at ^ength unbound me, and I was permitted to Bit, I felt that my senses were leaving me. The sentence, the dread sentence of death, was the last of distinct ac- centuation which reached my ears. After that, the sound of the inquisitorial voices seemed merged in one dreamy indeterminate hum. It conveyed to my soul the idea of revolution, perhaps from its association in fancy with the burr of a mill-wheel. This only for a brief period, for presently I heard no more. Yet, for a whUe, I saw, but with how terrible an exaggeration ! I saw the lips of the black-robed judges. They appean.-d to me white — whiter than the sheet upon which I trace these words — and thin even to grotesque- ness ; thin with the intensity of their expression of firmness, of immovable resolution, of stem contempt of human torture. I saw that the decrees of what to me was fate were still issuing from those lips. I saw them writhe with a deadly locution. I saw them fashion the syllables of my name, and I shuddered, because no sound succeeded. I saw, too, for a few moments of delirious horror, the soft and nearly imperceptible waving of the sable draperies which enwrapped the walls of the apartment ; and then my vision fell upon the seven tall candles upon the table. At first they wore the aspect of charity, and seemed white slender THE PIT AND THE PENDULUM. 201 angels who would save me ; but then all at once there came a most deadly nausea over my spirit, and 1 felt every fibre in my frame thrill, as if I had touched the wire of a galvanic battery, while the angel forms became meaningless spectres, with heads of flame, and I saw that from them there would be no help. And then there stole into my fancy, lite a rich musical note, the thought of what sweet rest there must be in the grave. The thought came gently and stealthily, and it seemed long before it attained full appreciation ; but just as my spirit came at length properly to feel and entertain it, the figures of the judges vanished, as if magically, from before me ; the tall candles sank into nothingness ; their flames went out utterly ; the blackness of darkness supervened ; all sensations appeared swallowed up in a mad rushing descent as of the soul into Hades. Then silence, and stillness, and night were the universe. I had swooned ; but stUl will not say that all of con- sciousness was lost. What of it there remained I wQl not attempt to define, or even to describe j yet all was not lost. In the deepest slumber — no ! In delirium — no ! In a swoon — no ! In death — no ! Even in the grave all is Tiot lost. Else there is no immortality for man. Arousing from the most profound of slumbers, we break the gossamer web of some dream. Yet in a second afterwards (so frail may that web have been) we remember not that we have dreamed. In the return to life from the swoon there are two stages ; first, that of the sense of mental or spiritual ; secondly, that of the sense of physical existence. It seems probable that if, upon reaching the second stage, we could recall the im- pressions of the first, we should find these impressions eloquent in memories of the gulf beyond. And that gulf is — what 1 How at least shall we distinguish its shadows from those of the tomb ? But if the impressions of what I have termed the first stage are not at will recalled, yet, after long interval, do they not come unbidden, while we marvel whence they come 1 He who has never swooned is not he who finds strange palaces and wildly familiar faces in coals that glow ; is not he who beholds floating in mid-air the sad visions that the many may not view ; is not he who 202 THE ?IT AND THE PENDULUM. ponders over the perfume of some novel flower ; is not he whose brain grows bewildered with the meaning of some musical cadence which has never before arrested his atten- tion. Amid frequent and thoughtful endeavours to remember, amid earnest struggles to regather some token of the state of seeming nothingness into which my soul had lapsed, there have been moments when I have dreamed of success ; there have been brief, very brief periods when I have con- jured up remembrances which the lucid reason of a later epoch assures me could have had reference only to that condition of seeming unconsciousness. These shadows of memory teU indistinctly of tall figures that lifted and bore me in sUence down — down — still down — tiU a hideous dizziness oppressed me at the mere idea of the interminable- ness of the descent. They tell also of a vague horror at my heart on account of that heart's unnatural stiUness. Then comes a sense of sudden motionlessness throughout all things; as if those who bore me (a ghastly train!) had outrun, in their descent, the limits of the limitless, and paused from the wearisomeness of their toil. After this I call to mind flatness and dampness ; and then aU is mad- ness — the madness of a memory which busies itself among forbidden things. Very suddenly there came back to my soul motion and sound — the tumultuous motion of the heart, and in my ears the sound of its beating. Then a pause in which aU is blank. Then again sound, and motion, and touch, a tingling sensation pervading my frame. Then the mere consciousness of existence, without thought — a condition which lasted long. Then, very suddenly, thought, and shuddering terror, and earnest endeavour to comprehend tny true state. Then a strong desire to lapse into insensi- bility. Then a rushing revival of soul and a successful efi'ort to move. And now a full memory of the trial, of the judges, of the sable draperies, of the sentence, of the sickness, of the swoon. Then entire forgetfulness of all that followed ; of all that a later day and much eamestnesa of endeavour have enabled me vaguely to recall. THE PIT AND THE PENDULUM. 203 So far I had not opened my eyes. I felt that I lay upon my back unbound. I reached out my hand, and it fell heavily upon something damp and hard. There I suffered it to remain for many minutes, while I strove to imagine where and what I could be. I longed, yet dared not, to employ my vision. I dreaded the first glance at objects around me. It was not that I feared to look upon things horrible, but that I grew aghast lest there should be nothing to see. At length, with a wild desperation at heart, I quickly unclosed my eyes. My worst thoughts, then, were confirmed. The blackness of eternal night encompassed me. I struggled for breath. The intensity of the darkness seemed to oppress and stifle me. The atmosphere was intolerably close. I still lay quietly, and made effort to exercise my reason. I brought to mind the inquisitorial proceedings, and attempted from that point to deduce my real condition. The sentence had passed, and it appeared to me that a very long interval of time had since elapsed. Yet not for a moment did I suppose myself actually dead. Such a supposition, notwithstanding what we read in fiction, is altogether inconsistent with real existence ; — but where and in what state was I '! The condemned to death, I knew, perished usually at the auto-dorfes, and one of these had been held on the very night of the day of my trial. Had I been remanded to my dungeon, to await the next sacrifice, which would not take place for many months 1 This I at once saw could not be. Victims had been in immediate demand. Moreover my dungeon, as well as all the condemned cells at Toledo, had stone floors, and light was not altogether excluded. A fearful idea now suddenly drove the blood in torrents upon my heart, and for a brief period I once more relapsed into insensibility. Upon recovering, I at once started to my feet, trembling convulsively in every fibre. I thrust my arms wildly above and around me in all directions. I felt nothing ; yet dreaded to move a step, lest I should be im- peded by the walls of a tomb. Perspiration burst from every pore, and stood in cold big beads upon my forehead. The agony of suspense grew at length intolerable, and I 204 THE PIT AND fHB PENDULITM. cautiously moved forward, with my arms extended, and my eyes straining from their sockets, in the hope of catching some faint ray of light. I proceeded for many paces, hut still all was blackness and vacancy. I breathed more freely. It seemed evident that mine was not, at least, the most hideous of fates. And now, as I stUl continued to step cautiously onward, there came thronging upon my recollection a thousand vague rumours of the horrors of Toledo. Of the dungeons there had been strange things narrated — fables I had always deemed them — but yet strange, and too ghastly to repeat, save in a whisper. Was I left to perish of starvation in this subterranean world of darkness ; or what fate perhaps even more fearful awaited me 1 That the result would be death, and a death of more than customary bitterness, I knew too well the character of my judges to doubt. The mode and the hour were all that occupied or distracted me. My outstretched hands at length encountered some solid obstruction. It was a wall, seemingly of stone masonry — very smooth, slimy, and cold. I followed it up ; stepping with all the careful distrust with which certain antique narratives had inspired me. This process, however, afforded me no means of ascertaining the dimensions of my dungeon ; as I might make its circuit, and return to the point whence I set out, without being aware of the fact, so perfectly uniform seemed the wall. I therefore sought the knife which had been in my pocket when led into the inquisi- torial chamber, but it was gone ; my clothes had been exchanged for a wrapper of coarse serge. I had thought of forcing the blade in some minute crevice of the masonry, so as to identify my point of departure. The difficulty, nevertheless, was but trivial, although, in the disorder of my fancy, it seemed at first insuperable. I tore a part of the hem from the robe, and placed the fragment at full length, and at right angles to the wall. In groping my way around the prison, I could not fail to encounter this rag upon completing the cii'cuit. So, at least, I thought, but I had not counted upon the extent of the dungeon or upon my own weaknesi. The ground was moist and slip- THE PIT AND THE PENDULUM. 206 pery. I staggered onward for some time, when I stumbled and fell. My excessive fatigue induced me to remain prostrate, and sleep soon overtook me as I lay. Upon awaking, and stretching forth an arm, I found beside me a loaf and a pitcher with water. I was too much exhausted to reflect upon this circumstance, but ate and drank with avidity. Shortly afterwards I resumed my tour around the prison, and with much toil came at last upon the fragment of the serge. Up to the period when I fell I had counted fifty-two paces, and upon resuming my walk I had counted forty-eight more, when I arrived at the rag. There were in all, then, a hundred paces ; and, admitting two paces to the yard, I presumed the dimgeon to be fifty yards in circuit. I had met, however, with many angles in the wall, and thus I could form no guess at the shape of the vault, for vault I could not help supposing it to be. I had little object — certainly no hope — in these re- searches, but a vague curiosity prompted me to continue them. Quitting the wall, I resolved to cross the area of the enclosure. At first I proceeded with extreme caution, for the floor although seemingly of solid material was treacherous with slime. At length, however, I took courage and did not hesitate to step firmly — endeavouring to cross in as direct a line as possible. I had advanced some ten or twelve paces in this manner, when the remnant of the torn hem of my robe became entangled between my legs. I stepped on it, and fell violently on my face. In the confusion attending my fall, I did not immedi- ately apprehend a somewhat startling circumstance, which yet, in a few seconds afterward, and while I still lay pro- strate, arrested my attention. It was this : my chin rested upon the floor of the prison, but my lips, and the upper portion of my head, although seemingly at a less elevation than the chin, touched nothing. At the same time, my forehead seemed bathed in a clammy vapour, and the peculiar smell of decayed fungus arose to my nostrils. I put forward my arm, and shuddered to find that I had fallen at the very brink of a circular pit, whose extent of course I had no 206 THE PIT AND THE PENDULUM. means of ascertaining at the moment. Groping about the masonry just below the margin, I suceeeded in dislodging a small fragment, and let it fall into the abyss. For many seconds I hearkened to its reverberations as it dashed against the sides of the chasm in its descent ; at length there was a sullen plunge into water, succeeded by loud echoes. At the same moment there came a sound resem- bling the quick opening, and as rapid closing of a door over- head, while a faint gleam of light flashed suddenly through the gloom, and as suddenly faded away. I saw clearly the doom which had been prepared for me, and congratulated myself upon the timely accident by which I had escaped. Another step before my fall, and the world had seen me no more ; and the death just avoided was of that very character which I had regarded as fabulous and frivolous in the tales respecting the Inquisition. To the victims of its tyranny, there was the choice of death with its direst physical agonies, or death with its most hideous moral horrors. I had been reserved for the latter. By long suffering my nerves had been unstrung, untU I trembled at the sound of my own voice, and had become in every respect a fitting subject for the species of torture which awaited me. Shaking in every limb, I groped my way back to the wall — resolving there to perish rather than risk the terrors of the wells, of which my imagination now pictured many in various positions about the dungeon. In other conditions of mind I might have had courage to end my misery at once by a plunge into one of these abysses ; but now I was the veriest of cowards. Neither could I forget what I had read of these pits — that the sudden extinction of life formed no part of their most horrible plan. Agitation of spirit kept me awake for many long hours ; but at length I again slumbered. Upon arousing, I found by my side, as before, a loaf and a pitcher of water. A burning thirst consumed me, and I emptied the vessel at a draught. It must have been drugged, for scarcely had I drunk before I became irresistibly drowsy. A deep sleep fell upon me — a sleep like that of death. How long it THE PIT AND THE PENDULUM. 207 lasted of course I know not ; but when once again I un- closed my eyes the objects around me were visible. By a wild sulphurous lustre, the origin of which I could not at first determine, I was enabled to see the extent and aspect of the prison. In its size I had been greatly mistaken. The whole circuit of its walls did not exceed twenty-five yards. For some minutes this fact occasioned me a world of vain trouble ; vaiu indeed — ^for what could be of less importance, under the terrible circumstances which environed me, than the mere dimensions of my dungeon 1 But my soul took a wild interest in trifles, and I busied myself in endeavours to account for the error I had committed in my measure- ment. The truth at length flashed upon me. In my first attempt at exploration I had counted fifty-two paces up to the period when I fell ; I must then have been within a pace or two of the fragment of serge ; in fact I had nearly performed the circuit of the vault. I then slept, and upon awaking, I must have returned upon my steps, thus suppos- ing the circuit nearly double what it actually was. My confusion of mind prevented me from observing that I began my tour with the wall to the left, and ended it with the wall to the right. I had been deceived too in respect to the shape of the enclosure. In feeling my way I had found many angles, and thus deduced an idea of great irregularity, so potent is the effect of total darkness upon one arousing from lethargy or sleep ! The angles were simply those of a few slight depressions or niches at odd intervals. The general shape of the prison was square. What I had taken for masonry seemed now to be iron, or some other metal, in huge plates, whose sutures or joints occasioned the depres- sion. The entire surface of this metallic enclosure was rudely daubed in all the hideous and repulsive devices to which the chamel superstition of the monks has given rise. The figures of fiends in aspects of menace, with skeleton forms and other more really fearful images, overspread and disfigured the walls. I observed that the outlines of these monstrosities were sufficiently distinct, but that the colours 208 THE PIT AND THE PENDULUM. seemed faded and blurred, as if from the effects of a damp atmosphere. I now noticed the floor, too, which was of stone. In the centre yawned the circular pit from whose jaws I had escaped ; but it was the only one in the dungeon. All this I saw indistinctly and by much effort, for my personal Qondition had been greatly changed during slumber. I now lay upon my back, and at full length, on a species of low framework of wood. To this I was securely bound by a long strap resembling a surcingle. It passed in many convolutions about my limbs and body, leaving at liberty only my head, and my left arm to such extent that I could by dint of much exertion supply myself with food from an earthen dish which lay by my side on the floor. I saw to my horror that the pitcher had been removed. I say to my horror, for I was consumed with intolerable thirst. This thirst it appeared to be the design of my persecutors to stimulate, for the food in the dish was meat pungently seasoned. Looking upward, I surveyed the ceiling of my prison. It was some thirty or forty feet overhead, and constructed much as the side walls. In one of its panels a very singular figure riveted my whole attention. It was the painted figure of Time as he is commonly represented, save that in lieu of a scythe he held what at a casual glance I supposed to be the pictured image of a huge pendulum, such as we see on antique clocks. There was something, however, in the appearance of this machine which caused me to regard it more attentively. While I gazed directly upward at it (for its position was immediately over my own), I fancied that I saw it in motion. In an instant afterward the fancy was confirmed. Its sweep was brief, and of course slow. I watched it for some minutes, somewhat in fear but more in wonder. Wearied at length with observing its dull movement, I turned my eyes upon the other objects in the cell. A slight noise attracted my notice, and looking to the floor, I saw several enormous rats traversing it. They had issued from the well which lay just within view to my right Even then while I gazed, they came up in troops, hurriedly, THE PIT AND THE PENDULUM. 209 with ravenous eyes, allured by tlie scent of the meat. From this it required much effort and attention to scare them away. It might have been half-an-hour, perhaps even an hour, (for I could take but imperfect note of time) before I again cast my eyes upward. What I then saw confounded and amazed me. The sweep of the pendulum had increased in extent by nearly a yard. As a natural consequence, its velocity was also much greater. But what mainly disturbed me was the idea that it had perceptibly descended. I now observed, with what horror it is needless to say, that its nether extremity was formed of a crescent of glittering steel, about a foot in length from horn to horn ; the horns upward, and the under edge evidently as keen as that of a razor. Like a razor also it seemed massy and heavy, tapering from the edge into a solid and broad structure above. It was appended to a weighty rod of brass, and the whole hissed as it swung through the air. f I could no longer doubt the doom prepared for me by monkish ingenuity in torture. My cognisance of the pit had become known to the inquisitorial agents — the pit, whose horrors had been destined for so bold a recusant as myself, the pit, tjrpical of hell, and regarded by rumour as the Ultima Thule of all their punishments. The plunge into this pit I had avoided by the merest of accidents, and I knew that surprise or entrapment into torment formed an important portion of aU the grotesquerie of these dungeon deaths. Having failed to fall, it was ,no part of the demon plan to hurl me into the abyss, and thus (there being no alternative) a different and a milder destruction awaited me. MUder ! I half smiled in my agony as I thought of such application of such a term. -' What boots it to teU of the long, long hours of horror more than mortal, during which I counted the rushing oscillations of the steel ! Inch by inch — line by line — with a descent only appreciable at intervals that seemed ages — down and still down it came ! Days passed — it might have been that many days passed — ere it swept so closely over me as to fan me with its acrid breath. The odour of the VOL. I. ? 210 THE PIT AND THE PENDULTTM. sharp steel forced itself into my nostrils. I prayed — I wearied heaven with my prayer for its more speedy descent. 1 grew frantically mad, and struggled to force myself upward against the sweep of the fearful scimitar. And then I fell suddenly calm and lay smiling at the glittering death as a child at some rare bauble. There was another interval of utter insensibility ; it was brief, for upon again lapsing into life there had been no perceptible descent in the pendulum. But it might have been long — ^for I knew there were demons who took note of my swoon, and who could have arrested the vibration at pleasure. Upon my recovery, too, I felt very — oh ! inex- pressibly — sick and weak, as if through long inanition. Even amid the agonies of that period the human nature craved food. With painful effort I outstretched my left arm as far as my bonds permitted, and took possession of the small remnant which had been spared me by the rats. As I put a portion of it within my lips there rushed to my mind a half-formed thought of joy — of hope. Yet what business had I with hope % It was, as I say, a half-formed thought — man has many such, which are never completed. I felt that it was of joy — of hope ; but I felt also that it had perished in its formation. In vain I struggled to perfect — to regain it. Long suffering had nearly annihilated all my ordinary powers of mind. I was an imbecile — an idiot. The vibration of the pendulum was at right angles to my length. I saw that the crescent was designed to cross the region of the heart. It would fray the serge of my robe ; it would return and repeat its operations — again — and again. Notwithstanding its terrifically wide sweep (some thirty feet or more) and the hissing vigour of its de- scent, sufficient to sunder these very walls of iron, still the fraying of my robe would be all that, for several minutes, it would accomplish ; and at this thought I paused. I dared not go fiirther than this reflection. I dwelt upon it with a pertinacity of attention — as if, in so dwelling, I could arrest here the descent of the steel. I forced myself to ponder upon the sound of the crescent as it should pass iicroBB the garment — upon the peculiar thrilling sensation THE PIT AND THE PENDTOUM. 211 which the friction of cloth produces on the nerves. I pon- dered upon all this frivolity until my teeth were on edge. Down — steadily down it crept. I took a frenzied ?leasure in contrasting its downward with its lateral velocity. 'o the right — to the left — far and wide — with the shriek of a damned spirit ! to my heart with the stealthy pace of the tiger ! I alternately laughed and howled, as the one or the other idea grew predominant. Down — certainly, relentlessly down ! It vibrated with- in three inches of my bosom ! I struggled violently — furi- ously — to free my left arm. This was free only from the elbow to the hand. I could reach the latter, from the platter beside me to my mouth with great effort, but no farther. Could I have broken the fastenings above the elbow, I would have seized and attempted to arrest the pendulum. I might as well have attempted to arrest an avalanche I Down — stm unceasingly — still inevitably down ! I gasped and struggled at each vibration. I shrunk convul- sively at its every sweep. My eyes followed its outward or upward whirls with the eagerness of the most unmeaning despair ; they closed themselves spasmodically at the de- scent, although death would have been a relief, 0, how unspeakable ! Still I quivered la every nerve to think how sUght a sinking of the machinery would precipitate that keen glistening axe upon my bosom. It was hope that prompted the nerve to quiver — the frame to shrink. It was hope — the hope that triumphs on the rack — that whispers to the death-condemned even in the dungeons of the Inquisition. I saw that some ten or twelve vibrations would bring the steel in actual contact with my robe, and with this observation there suddenly came over my spirit all the keen, collected calmness of despair. For the first time during many hours, or perhaps days, I thought. It now occurred to me that the bandage or surcingle which enveloped me was unique. I was tied by no separate cord. The first stroke of the razor-like crescent athwart any j>ortion of the band would so detach it that it might be unwound from my 212 THE PIT AND THE PENDULUM. person by means of my left hand. But how fearful, in that case, the proximity of the steel ! The result of the slightest struggle, how deadly ! Was it likely, moreover, that the minions of the torturer had not foreseen and provided for this possibility ? Was it probable that the bandage crossed my bosom in the track of the pendulum ? Dreading to find my faint, and, as it seemed, my last hope frustrated, I so far elevated my head as to obtain a distinct view of my breast. The surcingle enveloped my limbs and body close in all directions save in the path of the destroying crescent. Scarcely had I dropped my head back into its original position when there flashed upon my mind what I cannot better describe than as the unformed half of that idea of deliverance to which I have previously alluded, and of which a moiety only floated indeterminately through my brain when I raised food to my burning lips. The whole thought was now present — feeble, scarcely sane, scarcely definite, but still entire. I proceeded at once, with the nervous energy of despair, to attempt its execution. For many hours the immediate vicinity of the low framework upon which I lay had /been literally swarming with rats. They were wild, bold, ravenous, their red eyes glaring upon me as if they waited but for motionlessness on my part to make me their prey. " To what food," I thought, " have they been accustomed in the well 1 " They had devoured, in spite of all my efibrts to prevent them, all but a small remnant of the contents of the dish. I had fallen into an habitual see-saw or wave of the hand about the platter ; and at length the unconscious uniformity of the movement deprived it of effect. In their voracity the vermin frequently fastened their sharp fangs in my fingers. With the particles of the oily and spicj' viand which now remained, I thoroughly rubbed the bandage wherever I could reach it ; then, raising my hand from the floor, I lay breathlessly still. At first the ravenous animals were startled and terrified at the change — at the cessation of movement. They shrank alarniedly back ; many sought the well. But this was only foi a moment. I had not counted in vain upon their vor» THE PIT AND THE PENDULUM. 213 city. Observing that I remained without motion, one or two of the boldest leaped upon the frame-work and smelt at the surcingle. This seemed the signal for a general rush. Forth from the well they hurried in fresh troops. They clung to the wood, they overran it, and leaped in hundreds upon my person. The measured movement of the pendulum disturbed them not at all. Avoiding its strokes, they busied themselves with the anointed bandage. They pressed, they swarmed upon me in ever accumulatmg heaps. They writhed upon my throat ; their cold lips sought my own ; I was half stifled by their thronging pressure ; disgust, for which the world has no name, swelled my bosom, and chilled with heavy clamminess my heart. Yet one minute and I felt that the struggle would be over. Plainly I perceived the loosening of the bandage. I knew that in more than one place it must be already severed. "With a more than human resolution I lay still. Nor had I erred in my calculations, nor had I endured in vain. I at length felt that I was free. The surcingle hung in ribands from my body. But the stroke of i the pendulum already pressed upon my bosom. It had divided the serge of the robe. It had cut through the linen beneath. Twice again it swung, and a sharp sense of pain shot through every nerve. But the moment of escape had arrived. At a wave of my hand my deliverers hurried tumultuously away. With a steady movement, cautious, sidelong, shrink- ing, and slow, I slid from the embrace of the bandage and beyond the reach of the scimitar. For the moment, at least, / was free. Free ! — and in the grasp of the Inquisition ! I had scarcely stepped from my wooden bed of horror upon the stone floor of the prison, when the motion of the hellish machine ceased, and I beheld it drawn up by some invisible force through the ceiling. This was a lesson which I took desperately to heart. My every motion was undoubtedly watched. Free ! — I had but escaped death in one fo.rm oi agony to be delivered unto worse than death in some other. With that thought I rolled my eyes nervously around on the barriers of iron that hemmed me in. Something 214 THE PIT AND THE PEHDOLUM. unusual — some change which at first I could not appreci- ate distinctly — it was obvious had taken place in the apart- ment. For many minutes of a dreamy and trembling abstraction I busied myself in vain, unconnected conjecture. During this period I became aware, for the first time, of the origin of the sulphurous light which Ulumined the cell It proceeded from a fissure about half-an-inch in width extending entirely around the prison at the base of the walls which thus appeared, and were completely separated from the floor. I endeavoured, but of course in vain, to look through the aperture. As I arose from the attempt the mystery of the altera- tion in the chamber broke at once upon my understanding. I have observed that although the outlines of the figures upon the walls were sufficiently distinct, yet the colours seemed blurred and indefinite. These colours had now assumed, and were momentarily assuming, a startling and most intense brilliancy, that gave to the spectral and fiend- ish portraitures an aspect that might have thrilled even firmer nerves than my own. Demon eyes, of a wild and ghastly vivacity, glared upon me in a thousand directions where none had been visible before, and gleamed with the lurid lustre of a fire that I could not force my imagination to regard as unreal. Unreal! — Even while I breathed there came to my nostrils the breath of the vapour of heated iron ! A suf- focating odour pervaded the prison ! A deeper glow settled each moment in the eyes that glared at my agonies! A richer tint of crimson difiused itself over the pictured horrors of blood. I panted ! I gasped for breath ! There could be no doubt of the design of my tormentors — oh, most unrelenting! oh, most demoniac of men I I shrank from the glowing metal to the centre of the cell. Amid the thought of the fiery destruction that impended, the idea of the coolness of the well came over my soul like balm. I rushed to its deadly brink. I threw my straining vision below. The glare from the enkindled roof illumined it8 inmost recesses. Yet, for a wild moment, did my spirit refuse Lu comprehend the meaning of what I saw. At leiii^h it forced it wrestled its way into my soul — it THE PIT AKD THE PENDUIUM. 215 burned itself in upon my shuddering reason. for a voice to speak! — oh, horror! — oh, any horror but this! With a shriek I rushed from the margin and buried my face in my hands — weeping bitterly. The heat rapidly increased, and once again I looked up, shuddering as with a fit of the ague. There had been a second change in the cell — and now the change was obvi- ously in the form. As before, it was in vain that I at first endeavoured to appreciate or understand what was taking place. But not long was I left in doubt. The Inquisitorial vengeance had been hurried by my two-fold escape, and there was to be no more dallying with the King of Terrors. The room had been square. I saw that two of its iron angles were now acute— two, consequently, obtuse. The fearful difference quickly increased with a low rumbling or moaning sound. In an instant the apartment had shifted its form into that of a lozenge. But the alteration stopped not here— I neither hoped nor desired it to stop. I could have clasped the red walls to my bosom as a garment of eternal peace. " Death," I said, " any death but that of the pit ! " Fool ! might I not have known that into the pit it was the object of the burning iron to urge me ? Could I resist its glow ] or if even that, could I withstand its pres- sure 1 And now, flatter and flatter grew the lozenge, with a rapidity that left me no time for contemplation. Its centre, and of course, its greatest width, came just over the yawning guK. I shrank back — but the closing walls pressed me resistlessly onward. At length for my seared and writhing body there was no longer an inch of foothold on the firm floor of the prison. I struggled no more, but the agony of my soul found vent in one loud, long, and final scream of despair. I felt that I tottered upon the brink — I averted my eyes — There was a discordant hum of human voices ! There was a loud blast as of many trumpets ! There was a harsh grating as of a thousand thunders ! The fiery walls rushed back ! An outstretched arm caught my own as I fell faint- ing into the abyss. It was that of General Lasalle. The French army had entered Toledo. The In(juisition was in the hands of its enemies. THE THOUSAND-AND-SECOND TALE or SCHEHERAZADE. Truth is stranger than fiction. — Old Saying, Having had occasion, lately, in the course of some Oriental investigations, to consult the Tellmenow Isitsoornot, a work which (like the Zohar of Simeon Jochaides) is scarcely known at all, even in Europe, and which has never been quoted to my knowledge by any American — if we except, perhaps, the author of the " Curiosities of American Litera- ture" — having had occasion, I say, to turn over some pages of the first-mentioned very remarkable work, I was not a little astonished to discover that the literary world has hitherto been strangely in error respecting the fate of the vizier's daughter, Scheherazade, as that fate is depicted in the "Arabian Nights;" and that the denmtement there given, if not altogether inaccurate as far as it goes, is at least to blame in not having gone very much farther. For full information on this interesting topic I must refer the inquisitive reader to the "Isitsoornot" itself; but in the meantime I shall be pardoned for giving a summary of what I there discovered. It will be remembered that in the usual version of the tales, a certain monarch having good cause to be jealous of his queen, not only puts her to death, but makes a vow by his beard and the prophet to espouse each night the most beautiful maiden in his dominions, and the next morning to deUver her up to the executioner. THE THOUSAND-AND-SECOND TALK. 217 Having fulfilled this vow for many years to the letter, and with a religious punctuality and method that conferred great credit upon him as a man of devout feelings and excellent sense, he was interrupted one afternoon (no doubt at his prayers) by a visit from his grand vizier, to whose daughter it appears there had occurred an idea. Her name was Scheherazade, and her idea was that she would either redeem the land from the depopulating tax upon its beauty, or perish, after the approved fashion of all heroines, in the attempt. Accordingly, and although we do not find it to be leap- year (which makes the sacrifice more meritorious), she deputes her father, the grand vizier, to make an offer to the king of her hand. This hand the king eagerly accepts — (he had intended to take it at all events, and had put off the matter from day to day only through fear of the vizier) — but in accepting it now he gives all parties very distiuetly to understand that, grand vizier or no grand vizier, he has not the slightest design of giving up one iota of his vow or of his privileges. When, therefore, the fair Schehera- zade insisted upon marrying the king, and did actually marry him despite her father's excellent advice not to do anything of the kind — when she would and did marry him, I say, will I nUl I, it was with her beautiful black eyes as thoroughly open as the nature of the case would allow. It seems, however, that this politic damsel (who had been reading Machiavelli beyond doubt) had a very in- genious little plot in her mind. On the night of the wedding she contrived, upon I forget what specious pre- tence, to have her sister occupy a couch sufiiciently near that of the royal pair to admit of easy conversation from bed to bed ; and a little before cock-crowing she took care to awaken the good monarch, her husband (who bore her none the worse wiU because he intended to wring her neck on the morrow) — she managed to awaken him, I say (although, on account of a capital conscience and an easy digestion, be slept well), by the profound interest of a story (about a rat and a black cat, I think,) which she was 218 THE THOUSAND-AND-SECOND TALE. narrating (all in an under tone of course) to her sister. When the day broke, it so happened that this history was not altogether finished, and that Scheherazade, in the nature of things, could not finish it just then, since it was high time for her to get up and be bowstrung — a thing very little more pleasant than hanging, only a trifle more genteel ! The king's curiosity, however, prevaOing, I am sorry to say, even over his sound religious principles, induced him for this once to postpone the fulfilment of his vow until next morning, for the purpose and with the hope of hearing that, night how it fared in the end with the black cat (a black cat, I think it was) and the rat. The night having arrived, however, the lady Scheherazade not only put the finishing stroke to the black cat and the rat (the rat was blue), but before she well knew what she was about, found herself deep in the intricacies of a narration, having reference (if I am not altogether mistaken) to a pink horse (with green wings) that went in a violent manner by clockwork, and was wound up with an indigo key. With this history the king was even more profoundly interested than with the other ; and as the day broke before its conclusion (notwithstanding all the queen's endeavours to get through with it in time for the bowstring), there was again no recourse but to postpone that ceremony as be- fore for twenty-four hours. The next night there happened a similar accident with a similar result ; and then the next — and then again the next ; so that, in the end, the good monarch having been unavoidably deprived of all oppor- tunity to keep his vow during a period of no less than one thousand and one nights, either forgets it altogether by the expiration of this time, or gets himself absolved of it in the regular way, or (what is more probable) breaks it out- right, as well as the head of his father confessor. At all fevents Scheherazade, who, being lineally descended from Eve, fell heir perhaps to the whole seven baskets of talk, which the latter lady, we all know, picked up from undei the trees in the garden of Eden ; Scheherazade, I say, finally triumphed, and the tariff upon beauty was repealed. THE THOUSAND-AND-SECOND TALE. 219 Now this conclusion (which is that of the story as we have it upon record) is, no doubt, excessively proper and pleasant — ^but, alas ! like a great many pleasant things, is more pleasant than true ; and I am indebted altogether to the " Isitsoornot " for the means of correcting the error. " Le mieux," says a French proverb, " est I'ennemi du bien," and in mentioning that Scheherazade had inherited the seven baskets of talk, I should have added that she put them out at compound interest untU they amounted to seventy-seven. " My dear sister," said she, on the thousand-and-second night (I quote the language of the "IsitsoSrnot" at this point verbatim), "my dear sister," said she, "now that all this little difficulty about the bowstring has blown over, and that this odious tax is so happily repealed, I feel that I have been guilty of great indiscretion in withholding from you and the king (who, I am sorry to say, snores — a thing no gentleman would do), the full conclusion of the history of Sinbad the sailor. This person went through numerous other and more interesting adventures than those which I related ; but the truth is I felt sleepy on the particular night of their narration, and so was seduced into cutting them short — a grievous piece of misconduct for which I only trust that Allah will forgive me. But even yet it is not too late to remedy my great neglect, and as soon as I have given the king a pinch or two in order to wake him up so far that he may stop making that horrible noise, I wUl forthwith entertain you (and him if he pleases) with the sequel of this very remarkable story." Hereupon the sister of Scheherazade, as I have it from the " Isitsoornot," expressed no very particular intensity of gratification ; but the king having been sufiiciently pinched, at length ceased snoring, and finally said " Hum ! " and then " Hoo ! " when the queen understanding these words (which are no doubt Arabic) to signify that he was aU attention, and would do his best not to snore any more — the queen, I say, having arranged these matters to her satisfaction, re-entered thus, at once into the history of Sinbad the sailor ; 220 THE TH0U3AND-AND-SEC0ND TALE. " ' At length, in my old age ' (these are the words of Sinbad himself, as retailed by Scheherazade), — ■' at length, in my old age, and after enjoying many years of tran- quillity at home, I became once more possessed with a desire of visiting foreign countries ; and one day, without acquaint- ing any of my family with my design, I packed up some bundles of such merchandise as was most precious and least bulky, and engaging a porter to carry them, went with him down to the sea-shore, to await the arrival of any chance vessel that might convey me out of the kingdom into some region which I had not as yet explored. " ' Having deposited the packages upon the sands, we sat down beneath some trees, and looked out into the ocean in the hope of perceiving a ship, but during several hours we saw none whatever. At length I fancied that I could hear a singular buzzing or humming sound, and the porter, after listening awhile, declared that he also could distinguish it. Presently it grew louder, and then still louder, so that we could have no doubt that the object which caused it was approaching us. At length, on the edge of the horizon we discovered a black speck, which rapidly increased in size until we made it out to be a vast monster, swimming with a great part of its body above the surface of the sea. It came towards us with inconceivable swiftness, throwing up huge waves of foam around its breast, and Uluminating all that part of the sea through which it passed with a long line of fire that extended far off into the distance. " ' As the thing drew near we saw it very distinctly. Its length was equal to that of three of the loftiest trees that grow, and it was as wide as the great hall of audience in your palace, most sublime and munificent of the caliphs ! Its body, which was unlike that of ordinary fishes, was as solid as a rock, and of a jetty blackness throughput all that portion of it which floated above the water, with tlie exception of a narrow blood-red streak that completely begirdled it. The belly, which floated beneath the surface, and of which we could get only a glimpse now and then as the monster rose and fell with the billows, was entirely THE THOUSAND-AND-SECOND TALE. 221 covered with metallic scales, of a colour like that of the moon in misty weather. The back was flat and nearly white, and from it there extended upwards of six spines, about half the length of the whole body. " ' This horrible creature had no mouth that we could perceive ; but, as if to make up for this deficiency, it was provided with at least fourscore of eyes, that protruded from their sockets like those of the green dragon-fly, and were arranged all around the body in two rows, one above the other, and parallel to the blood-red streak, which seemed to answer the purpose of an eyebrow. Two or three of these dreadful eyes were much larger than the others, and had the appearance of solid gold. " ' Although this beast approached us, as I have before said, with the greatest rapidity, it must have been moved altogether by necromancy — for it had neither fins like a fish, nor web-feet like a duck, nor wiugs like the sea-shell, which is blown along in the manner of a vessel ; nor yet did it writhe itself forward as do the eels. Its head and its tail were shaped precisely alike, only, not far from the latter were two small holes that served for nostrils, and through which the monster pufi"ed out its thick breath with prodigious violence, and with a shrieking disagreeable noise. " ' Our terror at beholding this hideous thing was very great ; but it was even surpassed by our astonishment, when, upon getting a nearer look, we perceived upon the creature's back a vast number of animals about the size and shape of men, and altogether much resembling them, except that they wore no garments (as men do), being supplied (by nature, no doubt), with an ugly uncomfortable covering a good deal like cloth, but fitting so tight to the skin as to render the poor wretches laughably awkward, and put them apparently to severe pain. On the very tips of their heads were certain square-looking boxes, which, at first sight, I thought might have been intended to answer as tur- bans, but I soon discovered that they were excessively heavy and solid, and I therefore concluded they were contrivances designed, by their great weight, to keep the heads of the 222 THE THO0SAJ!JD-AND-SECOND TALK. animals steady and safe upon their shoulders. Around the necks of the creatures were fastened black collars (badges of servitude no doubt), such as we keep on our dogs, only much wider and infinitely stiffer — so that it was quite im- possible for these poor victims to move their heads in any direction without moving the body at the same time ; and thus they were doomed to perpetual contemplation of their noses — a view puggish and snubby in a wonderful if not positively in an awful degree. " ' When the monster had nearly reached the shore where we stood, it suddenly pushed out one of its eyes to a great extent, and emitted from it a terrible flash of fire, accompanied by a dense cloud of smoke, and a noise that I can compare to nothing but thunder. As the smoke cleared away, we saw one of the odd man-animals standing near the head of the large beast with a trumpet in his hand, through which (putting it to his mouth) he presently ad- dressed us in loud, harsh, and disagreeable accents, that perhaps we should have mistaken for language had they not come altogether through the nose. " ' Being thus evidently spoken to, I was at a loss how to reply, as I could in no manner understand what was said; and in this difficulty I turned to the porter, who was near swooning through aflfright, and demanded of him his opinion as to what species of monster it was, what it wanted, and what kind of creatures those were that so swarmed upon its back. To this the porter replied, as well as he could for trepidation, that he had once before heard of this sea-beast ; that it was a cruel demon, with bowels of sulphur and blood of fire, created by evil genii as the means of inflicting misery upon mankind ; that the things upon its back were vermin, such as sometimes infest cats and dogs, only a little larger and more savage ; and that these vermin had their uses, however evil — for, through the torture they caused the beast by their nibblings and stingings, it was goaded into that degree of wrath which was requisite to make it roar and commit ill, and so fulfil the vengeful and malicious designs of the wicked genii. ' This account determined me to take to my heels, « i r THE THOTTSAND-AND-SECOND TALE. 223 and without once even looking behind me I ran at full speed up into the hills, while the porter ran equally fast, al- though nearly in an opposite direction, so that by these means he finally made his escape with my bundles, of which, I have no doubt, he took excellent care, although this is a point I cannot determine, as I do not remember that I ever beheld him again. " ' For myself, I was so hotly pursued by a swarm of the men-vermin (who had come to the shore in boats) that I was very soon overtaken, bound hand and foot, and con- veyed to the beast, which immediately swam out again into the middle of the sea. " ' I now bitterly repented my folly in quitting a com- fortable home to peril my life in such adventures as this ; but regret being useless, I made the best of my condition, and exerted myself to secure the goodwill of the man- animal that owned the trumpet, and who appeared to exercise authority over its fellows. I succeeded so well in this endeavour that in a few days the creature bestowed upon me various tokens of its favour, and in the end even went to the trouble of teaching me the rudiments of what it was vain enough to denominate its language ; so that at length I was enabled to converse with it readily, and came to make it comprehend the ardent desire I had of seeing the world. " ' Washish sguashish squeak, Sinbad, hey-diddle diddle, grunt unt grumble, hiss, fiss, whiss,' said he to me one day after dinner—but I beg a thousand pardons, I had forgot- ten that your majesty is not conversant with the dialect of the Cock-neighs (so the man-animals were called ; I pre- sume because their language formed the connecting link between that of the horse and that of the rooster). With your permission I will translate. ' Washish sguashish,' and so forth : — that is to say, ' I am happy to find, my dear Sinbad, that you are really a very excellent fellow ; we are now about doing a thing which is called circumnavigating the globe ; and since you are so desirous of seeing the world, I will strain a point and give you a free passage upon the back of the beast,' " 224 THE THOUSAND-AND-SECOND TALE. When the Lady Scheherazade had proceeded thus far, relates the " Isitsoornot," the king turned over from hia left side to his right, and said — " It is in fact very surprising, my dear queen, that you omitted hitherto these latter adventures of Sinbad. Do you know I think them exceedingly entertaining and strange ? " The king having thus expressed himself, we are told, the fair Scheherazade resumed her history in the following words : — " Sinbad went on in this manner with his narrative — ' I thanked the man-animal for its kindness, and soon found myself very much at home on the beast, which swam at a prodigious rate through the ocean, although the surface of the latter is, in that part of the world, by no means flat, but round like a pomegranate, so that we went, so to say, either up hill or down hill all the time.' "' " That, I think, was very singular," interrupted the king. " Nevertheless, it is quite true," replied Scheherazade. " I have my doubts," rejoined the king ; " but, pray, be so good as go on with the story." "I will," said the queen. "'The beast,' continued Sin- oad, ' swam, as I have related, up hUl and down hUl, until at length we arrived at an island many hundreds of miles in circumference, but which, nevertheless, had been built in the middle of the sea by a colony of little things like cater- pillars.' " * " Hum !" said the king. '"Leaving this island,' said Sinbad — (for Scheherazade, it must be understood, took no notice of her husband's ill- mannered ejaculation) — ' leaving this island, we came to another where the forests were of solid stone, and so hard that they shivered to pieces the finest-tempered axes with which we endeavoured to cut them down.' " f * The coralites. t "One of the most remarkable natural curiosities in Texas is a petrified forest, near the head of Pasigno river. It consists of severkl hundred trees, in an erect position, all turned to stone. Some tre«s, now growing, are partly petrified. This is a startling fact for nstnial THE THOUSAND-AND-SEOOND TALE. 225 " Hum ! " said the king again ; but Scheherazade, pay ing him no attention, continued in the language of Sinbad. " ' Passing beyond this last island, we reached a country where there was a cave that ran to the distance of thirty or forty miles within the bowels of the earth, and that con- tained a greater number of far more spacious and more magnificent palaces than are to be found in all Damascus and Bagdad. From the roofs of these palaces there hung myriads of gems, like diamonds, but larger than men ; and in among the streets of towers and pyramids and temples, philosophers, and must cause them to modify the existing theory of petrifaction. " — Kennedy. This account, at first discredited, has since been corroborated by the disooTery of a completely petrified forest near the head waters of the Chayenne, or Chienne river, which has it source in the Black Hills of the rocky chain. There is scarcely, perhaps, a spectacle on the surface of the globe more remarkable, either in a geological or picturesque point of view, than that presented by the petrified forest near Cairo. The traveller, having passed the tombs of the caliphs, just beyond the gates of the city, proceeds to the southward, nearly at right angles to the road across the desert to Suez, and, after having travelled some ten miles up a low barren vaUey, coveredsmth sand, gravel, and sea-shells, fresh as if the tide had retired but yesterday, crosses a low range of sandhOls, which has for some distance run parallel to his path. The scene now pre- sented to him is beyond conception singular and desolate. A mass ol fragments of trees, all converted into stone, and when struck by his horse's hoof ringing like cast-iron, is seen to extend itself for mUes and miles around him in the form of a decayed and prostrate forest. The wood is of a dark brown hue, but retains its form in perfection, the pieces being from one to fifteen feet in length, and from half-a-foot to three feet in thickness, strewed so closely together, as far as the eye can reach, that an Egyptian donkey can scarcely thread its way through amongst them, and so natural that, were it in Scotland or Ireland, it might pass without remark for some enormous drained bog on which the exhumed trees lay rotting in the sun. The roots and rudiments of the branches are in many cases nearly perfect, and in some the worm- holes eaten under the bark are readily recognisable. The most delicate of the sap vessels, and all the finer portions of the centre of the wood, are perfectly entire, and beai to be examined with the strongest magni- aers. The whole are so thoroughly silicified as to scratch glass and be capable of receiving the highest polish.— ^ma