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A Strange Discovery

by Charles Romyn Dake · English · Gutenberg #8665 · 384,518 chars · public domain (US)

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Title: A Strange Discovery

Author: Charles Romyn Dake


        
Release date: August 1, 2005 [eBook #8665]
                Most recently updated: January 2, 2021

Language: English

Other information and formats: www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/8665

Credits: E-text prepared by Suzanne Shell, Colin Cameron, Mary Meehan, Charles Franks, and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team


*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK A STRANGE DISCOVERY ***




E-text prepared by Suzanne Shell, Colin Cameron, Mary Meehan, Charles
Franks, and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team



A Strange DISCOVERY

By

Charles Romyn Dake

(1889)







HOW WE FOUND DIRK PETERS




The FIRST Chapter


It was once my good fortune to assist in a discovery of some importance
to lovers of literature, and to searchers after the new and wonderful.
As nearly a quarter of a century has since elapsed, and as two others
shared in the discovery, it may seem to the reader strange that the
general public has been kept in ignorance of an event apparently so full
of interest. Yet this silence is quite explicable; for of the three
participants none has heretofore written for publication; and of my two
associates, one is a quiet, retiring man, the other is erratic and
forgetful.

It is also possible that the discovery did not at the time impress
either my companions or myself as having that importance and widespread
interest which I have at last come to believe it really possesses. In
any view of the case, there are reasons, personal to myself, why it was
less my duty than that of either of the others to place on record the
facts of the discovery. Had either of them, in all these years, in ever
so brief a manner, done so, I should have remained forever silent.

The narrative which it is my purpose now to put in written form, I have
at various times briefly or in part related to one and another of my
intimate friends; but they all mistook my facts for fancies, and
good-naturedly complimented me on my story-telling powers--which was
certainty not flattering to my qualifications as an historian.

With this explanation, and this extenuation of what some persons may
think an inexcusable and almost criminal delay, I shall proceed.

In the year 1877 I was compelled by circumstances to visit the States.
At that time, as at the present, my home was near Newcastle-upon-Tyne.
My father, then recently deceased, had left, in course of settlement in
America, business interests involving a considerable pecuniary
investment, of which I hoped a large part might be recovered. My lawyer,
for reasons which seemed to me sufficient, advised that the act of
settlement should not be delegated; and I decided to leave at once for
the United States. Ten days later I reached New York, where I remained
for a day or two and then proceeded westward. In St. Louis I met some of
the persons interested in my business. There the whole transaction took
such form that a final settlement depended wholly upon the agreement
between a certain man and myself; but, fortunately for the fate of this
narrative, the man was not in St. Louis. He was one of those wealthy
so-called "kings" which abound in America--in this case a "coal king." I
was told that he possessed a really palatial residence in St.
Louis--where he _did not_ dwell; and a less pretentious dwelling
directly in the coal-fields, where, for the most of his time, he _did_
reside. I crossed the Mississippi River into Southern Illinois, and very
soon found him. He was a plain, honest business man; we did not split
hairs, and within a week I had in my pocket London exchange for
something like £20,000, he had in his pocket a transfer of my interest
in certain coal-fields and a certain railroad, and we were both
satisfied.

And now, having explained how I came to be in surroundings to me so
strange, any further mention of business, or of money interests, shall
not, in the course of this narrative, again appear.

I had arrived at the town of Bellevue, in Southern Illinois, on a bright
June morning, and housed myself in an old-fashioned, four-story brick
hotel, the Loomis House, in which the proprietor, a portly, ruddy-faced,
trumpet-voiced man, assigned to me an apartment--a spacious corner
room, with three windows looking upon the main thoroughfare and two upon
a side street, and a smaller room adjoining.

[Illustration: _The_ LOOMIS HOUSE.]

Here, even before the time came when I might have returned to England
had I so desired, I acquired quite a home-like feeling. The first two
days of my stay, as I had travelled rapidly and was somewhat wearied, I
allotted to rest, and left my room for little else than the customary
tri-daily visits to the _table d'hôte_.

During these first two days I made many observations from my windows,
and asked numberless questions of the bell-boy. I learned that a certain
old, rambling, two-story building directly across the side street was
the hotel mentioned by Dickens in his "American Notes," and in the lower
passage-way of which he met the Scotch phrenologist, "Doctor Crocus."
The bell-boy whom I have mentioned was the factotum of the Loomis House,
being, in an emergency, hack-driver, porter, runner--all by turns, and
nothing long at a time. He was a quaint genius, named Arthur; and his
position, on the whole, was somewhat more elevated than that of our
English "Boots." During these two days I became quite an expert in the
invention of immediate personal wants; for, as I continued my studies of
local life from the windows of my apartment, I frequently desired
information, and would then ring my bell, hoping that Arthur would be
the person to respond, as he usually was. He was an extremely profane
youth, but profane in a quiet, drawling, matter-of-fact manner. He was
frequently semi-intoxicated by noon, and sometimes quite inarticulate by
9 P.M.; but I never saw him with his bodily equilibrium seriously
impaired--in plainer words, I never saw him stagger. He openly confessed
to a weakness for an occasional glass, but would have repelled with
scorn, perhaps with blows, an insinuation attributing to him excess in
that direction. True, he referred to times in his life when he had been
"caught"--meaning that the circumstances were on those occasions such as
to preclude any successful denial of intoxication; but these occasions,
it was implied, dated back to the period of his giddy youth.

With little to occupy my mind (I had the St. Louis dailies, one of which
was the best newspaper--excepting, of course, our _Times_--that I have
ever read; but my trunks did not arrive until a day or two later, and I
was without my favorite books), I became really interested in studying
the persons whom I saw passing and repassing the hotel, or stopping to
converse on the opposite street-corners; and after forming surmises
concerning those of them who most interested me, I would ask Arthur who
they were, and then compare with my own opinions the truth as furnished
by him.

There was a quiet, well-dressed young man, who three or four times each
day passed along the side street. Regarding him, I had formed and
altered my opinion several times; but I finally determined that he was a
clergyman in recent orders and just come to town. When I asked Arthur
whether I was correct in my surmise, he answered:

"Wrong again--that is, on the fellow's business"--I had not before made
an erroneous surmise; but on the contrary, had shown great penetration
in determining, at a single glance for each of them, two lawyers and a
banker--"Yes, sir, wrong again; and right again, too. His name's Doctor
Bainbridge, and he's fool enough to come here with the town just alive
with other sawbones. He's some kind of a 'pathy doctor, come here to
learn us how to get well on sugar and wind--or pretty near that bad. He
don't give no medicine worth mentionin', he keeps his hoss so fat he
can't trot, and he ain't got no wife to mend his clothes. They say he's
gettin' along, though; and old farmer Vagary's boy that had 'em, told me
he was good on fits--but I don't believe _that_, for the boy had the
worst fit in his life after he told me. The doctor said--so they
tell--as that was jest what he expected, and that he was glad the fit
came so hard, for it show'd the medicine was workin'."

My attention was particularly attracted to a man who daily, in fact
almost hourly, stood at an opposite corner, and who frequently arrived,
or drove away, in a buggy drawn by two rather small, black, spirited
horses. He was a tall, lithe, dark-complexioned man, with black eyes,
rather long black hair, and a full beard; extremely restless, and
constantly moving back and forth. He addressed many passers-by, a fair
proportion of whom stopped to exchange a word with him. In the latter
instance, however, the exchange was scarcely equitable, as he did the
talking, and his remarks, judging by his gestures of head and hand, were
generally emphatic.

One of the apparently favorite positions which he assumed was to throw
an arm around the corner gas-post, and swing his body back and forth,
occasionally, when alone, taking a swing entirely around the post.
Another favorite position was to stand with his fists each boring into
the hollow of his back over the corresponding hip, with his chest and
shoulders thrown well back, and his head erect, looking steadily off
into the distance. With regard to this man's station in life, I took
little credit to myself for a correct guess; for, in addition to other
aids to correct guessing, the store-room on that corner was occupied by
an apothecary. When I asked Arthur whether the man was not a physician,
"Yes, sir," he replied; "physician, surgeon, and obstetrician; George F.
Castleton, A.M., M.D. _He_ ought to get a dry-goods box and a
torch-light, and sell 'Hindoo Bitters' in the Public-square. If you
jest want to die quick, you know where to go to get it. That fellow
salivated me till my teeth can't keep quiet. Oh, he knows it all!
Medicine ain't enough to fill his intellecty. _He_ runs the Government
and declares war to suit himself. 'Moves around a great deal,' you say?
Well, I believe you; but when you see his idees move around you'll quit
sighing about his body. Why, sir, that man in a campaign changes his
politics every day; nobody ever yet caught up with his religion; and
besides, he's a prophet. You jest get back home without touchin' _him_,
if you love me, now, please do."

All of this was said in a quiet, instructive tone, without much show of
feeling even when the teeth were mentioned, and only such emphasis as
has been indicated by my italics. Arthur's advice for me to get home
without "touching" the doctor, I had no intention of following. My
curiosity regarding the man was aroused, and I had determined, if
possible, to know him. So far as one could be influenced from a
third-story window, I was favorably impressed with him. I judged him to
be superlatively erratic, but without an atom of real evil in his being.
I had observed from my window an incident that gave me a glance into the
man's heart. A poor, dilapidated, distressed negro, evidently seeking
help, had come running up to him as he stood near his buggy, at the
corner; and the manner in which he pushed the negro into the buggy,
himself followed, and then started off at a break-neck speed, left no
doubt in my mind that the doctor had a heart as large as the whole
world. Once or twice during the long, warm afternoons, his words came to
me through the open windows. I was aware that his almost preternaturally
bright, quick eyes flashed a glance or two at me as I once or twice
stepped rather close to an open window looking out over the lower
roof-tops beyond; and I felt that he had given me a niche in his mind,
as I had him in mine. I wondered if he had formed mental estimates of my
status, and if so whether he had attempted to corroborate them as did I
mine, through Arthur. Once I heard him say to a small, craven-looking
man, apparently feeble in mind and in body, with red, contracted,
watering eyes, "Yes, sir, if I had been Sam Tilden, the blood in these
streets would have touched your stirrups"--the little man had no
stirrups--"This country is trembling over an abyss deeper'n the infernal
regions. Ha, ha! What a ghastly burlesque on human freedom! Now, hark
you, Pickles"--the small man was not only listening, but, I could
imagine, trembling. He would now and then look furtively around, as if
fearing that somebody else might hear the doctor, and that war would
begin--"listen to me: 'Hell has no fury like a nation scorned.'" Here
Doctor Castleton shot a glance at the little man, to see whether or not
so fine a stroke was appreciated, and whether his quotation was or was
not passing as original. "I repeat, 'Hell has no fury like a nation
scorned'--_Nation_, you hear, Pickles--_nation_, not woman. There is
just one thing to save this crumbling Republic; give us more paper
money--greenbacks on greenbacks, mountain high. Let the Government rent
by the month or lease by the year every printing-press in the
country--let the machinery sweetly hum as the sheets of treasury-notes
fall in cascades to the floor, to be cut apart, packed in bundles, and
sent to any citizen who wants them on his own unendorsed
note--_un_endorsed, Pickles, and at two per cent.! Ever study logic,
Pickles? No! Well, no matter; my brain's full enough of the stuff for
both of us. If the American citizen is honest--which I opine that he
is--the scheme will work like a charm; if he is _dis_honest--which God
forbid, and let no man assert--then let the country sink--and the sooner
the better. I pity the imbecile that can't see this point. The
people--and _is_ this country for the _people_, or is it not?--follow
me, Pickles: the people obtain plenty of money, the stores get it, the
factories and importers get it, and commerce hums." Here the doctor was
for a moment diverted by some objective impression; and without a word
of excuse to the little man, he swung himself into his buggy, which
stood waiting, and drove rapidly away; whilst the diminutive man, after
a moment of weak indecision, shuffled off down the street. I later
learned that these talks of Doctor Castleton's were, as regards the
element of verity, thrown off as writers of fiction throw off fancies.
Sometimes he defended opinions that were in fierce conflict with the
ideas of his auditors; but he generally talked to please them,
frequently assuming as his own, and in exaggerated form, the hobbies,
notions, or desires of his auditors. In the incident just recorded, the
doctor probably had not, as a matter of fact, been stating his real
opinions, though for the moment he may have imagined that he was an
uncompromising "Paper-money man" or "Greenbacker," as a member of one of
the minor political parties of the day was termed: the little man was
poor, and Doctor Castleton had simply been drawing for him a picture of
delights--at least, so I conjectured. This propensity of the doctor
sometimes led to startling surprises and results, and, once at least, to
a discovery of weighty consequence--as we shall soon perceive.

It was novelty for me, and under the circumstances often quite
refreshing, to witness the manner in which Americans treated the mighty
subjects of life, and spoke of the great and powerful persons of the
earth. It was an abundant source of entertainment for me to ask almost
anybody with whom I happened to be conversing, for his opinion on some
great subject or of some noted personage; for the reply was always to me
unique, sometimes very amusing, and not infrequently instructive. On the
way for the second time from our evening meal to my room, I stopped for
a moment in the "Gentlemen's sitting-room," where I in part overheard a
conversation between an elderly and a middle-aged man. I afterward
learned that the younger man was a lawyer, by name Lill; that he was
well known throughout the State, a man of cultivation, very conventional
in his private life, but an unequivocal dissenter on almost every great
social question; a man of high honor, and unquestionable personal
habits, for whom exalted public office had often waited if only he could
have modified his expressed opinions to less inharmony with those of men
who held the reins of power. It seemed that these two men had not met
for a year or more; and as I entered the room they were comparing
experiences, in a leisurely, confidential, sympathetic way. As I came
within hearing, the lawyer had just started in afresh, after a laugh and
a pause. Settling-down his features, and assuming a more-news-to-
be-told manner, with a pinch of fine-cut tobacco between finger and
thumb ready to go into his mouth, and leaning slightly forward to keep
the tobacco-dust from his shirt-front, he said, "Well, David, I read the
Bible through again last winter, and I must continue to think it a very
immoral book. Its teaching is really bad. Why, sir, what would you think
of such d---d outrageous teaching if anybody were at this time to
promulgate it with an implication of any practical relation to present
events?" And so he continued, somewhat, though not greatly, to the
horror of his companion, who seemed to be a Christian--at least by
descent. On another day, after the mid-day meal, as I again entered this
room, I observed a new-comer in conversation with what I took to be a
small delegation of Bellevue business men. I was afterward presented to
this new arrival, when I learned that his name was Rowell--General
Rowell; a name which I thought I had seen in the newspapers at home. He
was a large man of prepossessing appearance, and gave me the impression
of considerable mental force and activity. I heard him say to his
visitors--the words apparently closing a conference: "Yes, gentlemen, if
I come to Bellevue, and we build a nail mill in your city, I ask only
five years time in which to make our mill the largest nail-works in the
world." For a moment, as I heard this remark, it passed through my mind
that I was in the presence of an excellent example of an amusing type of
American life; but the momentary thought was erroneous. This man was one
of a type of American--well, of American promoters, I will say--the
business plans of whom, though mammoth and audacious, rarely fail--the
genuine article of which the Colonel Sellerses are but pitiful
imitators. In this instance, the promise was fulfilled, with a year or
two to spare. The right to express personal opinion was looked upon as
one of the fruits of '76, and the value of such opinion seemed to be
measured almost wholly on its merits--even to a laughable extent. For
instance, this lawyer, or Doctor Castleton, or any other American whom I
met, whatever he might privately have thought on the subject, would not
for a moment have claimed that his opinion was innately superior to that
of, for instance, the factotum, Arthur. A man seemed to have, also, an
inalienable right to be a snob; but I saw in America only one man who
utilized that privilege. I heard an Ex-Governor of the State express
himself on this subject by the concise remark, "We have no law _here_
against a man making a d----d fool of himself." It's "Abe" for the
President of the Republic, "Dick" for the Governor of the State, and so
on, all the way through. But no one should imagine that admiration as
well as respect for the truly great of the land is less than it is where
a man with four names and two inherited titles receives greater homage
than does one with only three names and one title. Customs differ in
different lands--a trite remark; but it is about all that can be said on
the subject: after all, human feeling is not extremely different in
different lands, when we once get back of mere form.

I might illustrate a part of my statement by relating an incident which
occurred on my third day in the hotel, and just prior to my emergence
from seclusion into the midst of the busy little city. I was in my
sitting-room, and Arthur had brought in a pitcher of ice-water, placing
it on a table. Then he paused and looked toward me, as if expecting the
usual question on some subject connected with my surroundings. But at
the time I had nothing to ask. After a moment of quiet, Arthur spoke:

"Did you see the Prince lately?" he inquired. I had by this time grown
so accustomed to Arthur's mode of thought and lingual expression, that
even this question did not greatly surprise me. I supposed that the
query was made on the first suggestion of an alert mind desirous of
starting a little agreeable conversation, and wishing to be sociable
with a "two-room" guest. He immediately continued:

"I hope he's well. I met him, you know, when he was over here, sev'ral
years ago, gettin' idees for his kingdom."

I began to feel amused. Arthur was not a liar, and anything but a bore:
he struck me as being truthful on all subjects except that of his
bibulous weakness--a subject on which he was, perhaps naturally, not
able to form accurate notions.

"Where did you meet His Highness, Arthur?" I asked.

"Oh, in Pittsburg, Pennsylvania. I was only eight then. They wouldn't
let boys in the hotel to see him, and there was so many big-wigs around
the young man, I couldn't get to see him at first. But after a while
they all got out in front of the hotel, to get into their carriages.
They had to wait a few minutes, but I couldn't get in front to see him.
The hotel hall was empty by that time, and everybody was looking at the
Prince; so I hurried through the barber-shop into the side hall; slipped
along into the main hall, to the main entrance. I was not more than ten
or twelve feet from the Prince, but I was at the back of the crowd; so I
jest got down on all-fours, and crawled in between their legs. I got
clear up to the Prince, but a big man stood on each side of him, right
close up. For a minute I thought I was worse off than ever. Then I
noticed that the Prince had his legs a little separate--his knees were
maybe six inches apart, with one leg standin' ahead of the other. I was
a little fellow, even for eight; and I saw my chance. I ran my head in
between his knees and twisted my body and neck so as to look right up
into his face, as he looked down to see what rubbed against him. He
looked kind of funny when he saw my face down there, but not a bit mad;
and he could easy have hurt me, but he didn't. I drew back my head so
quick that nobody else saw me. I often wonder if the Prince remembers
me; and I wish you'd ask him when you go home. Since I grew up, I've
often felt ashamed to think I did it. If you think of it, and it ain't
too much trouble, please tell him that we know better in the United
States than to do such things, but that I was little then, and I must
have been ignorant of ettiket, my father bein' dead, and I havin' to
stay out of school to help make money. If you will, say I hope there's
no feelin'; and when you think of it, drop me a line, please."




The SECOND Chapter


A week had elapsed since my arrival in Bellevue. I had been introduced
to Doctor Castleton, and had exchanged a few words with him. I had also
listened to several of his street-corner talks, and my interest in him
from day to day had increased. This interest must have been reciprocal,
for he seemed to look for my coming; but then, in whom was he not
interested? I liked him for his real goodness, was entertained by his
erratic ways, and admired his intellectual brightness. Never before had
I come in contact with a mind at once so spontaneous and so versatile.
It was perhaps his most striking peculiarity, that he seemed always to
be looking for something startling to occur; and in a dearth of the new
and sensational from without, he produced excitement for the community
from within. The weather, for instance, was growing warmer, and the
summer was apparently to be a sultry one: hence, before the season was
ended we were to look for the most sweeping epidemics of disease; a
comet had been sighted by one of our comet-hunters, and we were all to
say later whether or not it would have been better if we'd never been
born, and so on, and so on. His mind teemed with a prescience of the
plans and plots of statesmen, of bureaucrats, and of "plutocrats":
Germany was going to overshadow Europe, and "grind all beneath it like a
glacier"; "France was about to strike back at Prussia, and the blow
would be felt in the trembling of the earth from Pole to Pole." Yet
this, I thought, was to the man himself all fiction--the froth on the
limpid and sparkling depths beneath--the overflow of a bright,
undisciplined mind amid the stagnation of a country town. This strange
man would not intentionally have brought actual injury upon even an
enemy--if he ever had a real enemy; he was at heart, and generally in
practice, as kind as a gentle woman. But he seemed unable to exist
without mental super-activity; and the sympathy of his fellows in his
mental gyrations was to him a constant necessity. Few of the persons
whom he habitually met and who had leisure were able to discuss with him
the books he read, and not many of them cared even to hear him talk of
his fresh literary accessions. He had, long ago, and many times,
described for the benefit of the habitués of the corners, the career of
Alexander and of Napoleon, explaining what they had done, and how they
had done it, and _why_; with instances in which the execution of their
plans had met with failure, the reasons for that failure, and the
methods by which, if _he_ had been them, success might easily have been
attained. An ancient-looking apothecary, with an old "Rebel bushwhacker"
and a painter out of work who "loafed" of evenings in, or in front of,
the corner apothecary shop, had stood gap-mouthed at these recitations
until the mine of wonders had been to the last grain exhausted. Still,
excitement must be procured for them. The doctor could better have
dispensed for a day with food for the body, than to have foregone
excitement for the mind; and if a majority of his auditors were also to
be gratified, the subject-matter must be strong and novel, must be
boldly produced, and, by preference, should be of local interest. As the
doctor himself delighted in surprises of a terrifying or horrifying
nature, it was unlikely that his inventions in that direction would be
characterized by tameness. He would not, when hard pressed on a dull
day, allow a fastidious care of even his own reputation to impede the
development of one of his surprises. If the town of Bellevue was to
stagnate mentally, it would not be the fault of George F. Castleton,
A.M., M.D.

It was on the eighth day of my stay in Bellevue, that, on starting forth
from the hotel one morning, I saw Doctor Castleton standing before the
Loomis House, in one of his favorite attitudes--that is, with his head
and shoulders thrown back and his hands upon his hips--looking intently
at a young man who stood speaking with an aged farmer across the way,
near the street curbing--a harmless-looking youth, with dark blue eyes,
and straight, very dark hair--in fact, the clerical-looking young man
whom I had seen from my windows. Something in the man's make-up--perhaps
something in his attire--suggested the stranger in town. Doctor
Castleton's large black eyes flashed irefully, and he was evidently
gratified at my approach. A complete stranger in my place might have
thought his arrival opportune, and have looked upon himself as a
diverting instrument in higher hands employed to prevent bloodshed. As I
stopped by the doctor's side, he said, with ill-suppressed agitation,

"That d----d villain over there has got to leave town. He calls himself
a doctor, but I have set in motion the wheels of the law of this great
State of Illinois, and I'll expose the infernal rascal." Then, with a
dark, knowing look at me, he hissed (though none of his preceding words
had been audible across the street), "An 'Irregular,' sir--cursed
sugar-and-water quack--a figure 9 with the tail rubbed off. Why, sir"
(in a more conversational but still emphatic tone), "_I_ have given
sixty grains of calomel at a dose, and I have given a tenth of a grain
of calomel at a dose; I would give a man a hundred grains of quinine,
and I have done it; I have" (and here he took from his pocket a small
round lozenge or button of bone) "--I have bored into the brains of
man--into the Corinthian Capital of Mortality, so to speak. When that
man" (pointing with his right forefinger to the circle of bone in his
left palm) "was kicked in the head by his mule, three of my colleagues
were on the scene before me--standing around like old women, doing
nothing. _I_ have elaborate instruments, sir--I don't read any more
books--the world's literature is here" (tapping his forehead). "I've
thought too much to care for other men's ideas. Like old women, I was
saying, sir. 'Give me a poker,' I yelled--' give me anything.' I sent
for my trephine. Great God, how the blood flew, and the bone creaked! I
raised the depressed bone. The man lives. I've done everything, in my
life. And now a cursed quack comes to town--. Where's his wife? I
say--where's his suffering children?--Don't tell me, anybody, that the
man's not married, and run away from his suffering wife. Take his trail;
glide like the wily savage back over his course, and mark me, sir,
you'll trace the pathway of a besom of destruction: weeping mothers,
broken-hearted fathers, daughters bowed in the dust. What's he here for?
Why didn't he stay where he was? But I'll drive him out of town--you
will see--bag and baggage: the wires are set--the avalanche
approaches--he is doomed."

Two days later, at the same spot, I came upon Doctor Castleton in
conversation with the harmless-looking young man, to whom the doctor
formally presented me. The name of the young man, as stated by
Castleton, and as I already knew, was "Doctor Bainbridge." We exchanged
a few words, he extended to me an invitation to call upon him, and he
accepted an urgent request from me to visit me at the hotel. As my stay
in America would probably last but a few days longer, I proposed that
the evening of that same day be selected as the time for his visit, and
to this proposal he readily assented. Then, with a quiet smile, he bowed
and left us. As he walked away Doctor Castleton remarked,

"That young man is a genius, sir. Belongs to the Corinthian Capital of
Mortality. Trust me, sir, he's the coming man in this town. He will be a
power here, in the years to come. I read a man, sir, as you would read a
book."

I then invited Doctor Castleton to come to my rooms that evening, even
if he could spare no more than a few moments; and he promised to come,
"Though," he said, "I may not be able more than to run in, and run out
again." Bainbridge, the new Bellevue candidate for medical practice,
could devote his hours as he should elect; but Castleton, "for twenty
years the guardian of the lives of thousands," must abstract, as best he
might, a few minutes from the onerous duties entailed by the exacting
wishes of his many invalid patrons.

Later in the day, I made arrangements for a little luncheon to be served
that evening in my rooms. There was something about this Bainbridge that
impelled me to know him better. I had already made up my mind that I
should like him: his were those clear blue eyes that calmly seemed to
understand the world around--truth-loving eyes. He had to my mind the
appearance of a person with large capacity for physical pleasure, yet
that of one who possessed complete control over every like and dislike
of his being. I at first took him to be extremely reticent; but later I
learned, that, when the proper chord of sympathy was touched, he
responded in perfect torrents of spoken confidence. So I that evening
sat in the larger of my rooms--my "sitting-room"--in momentary
expectation of the arrival of one or both of my invited guests.




The THIRD Chapter


The hour was about eight. I had written a letter or two after our six
o'clock supper, and was now idle. By my side, in the centre of the room,
stood a table on which lay several periodicals--monthly and weekly,
English and American--a newspaper or two, and a few books. A rap came at
my door, and on opening it I found Doctor Bainbridge standing in the
hallway. He wore a black "Prince Albert" coat, a high silk hat, and, the
evening having blown-up chilly, a summer overcoat. I received him
perhaps a little more warmly than was in the best of taste, considering
that we had not before exchanged more than a dozen words. But I had, as
I have said, frequently seen him from my window; he was almost as much
of a stranger in the town as was I, and I received him cordially because
my feelings were really cordial. I assisted him to remove his coat, and
in other ways did all in my power to make him comfortable. He was of
slightly more than medium height, of rather delicate build, with a fair,
almost colorless complexion. His movements, his language, his attire,
indicated the gentleman--this I should have conceded him in my club at
home, or in my own drawing-room, quite as readily as here, alone, in an
obscure hotel in the State of Illinois. As we sat conversing, I was much
surprised to find in him a considerable degree of culture. He seemed to
possess that particular air which we are accustomed to think, and
generally with reason, is not to be found apart from a familiarity with
metropolitan life on its highest plane. I did not on that evening, nor
did I later, think him thoroughly schooled, except in his profession. He
was, however, fairly well educated, and his opinions seemed to me from
my own stand-point to be sound. I had observed, in a history of the
county just from the press, which lay on a table in the office of the
hotel, that in 1869 he had been graduated from an educational
institution somewhere in Pennsylvania; and, in 1873, from the Medical
Department of Columbia University. Later, I learned from himself, that,
from the age of seven to the age of eleven, he had been instructed at
home by a sister who was some nine or ten years his senior.

I seated him with the large centre-table between us, and immediately
opened the conversation on some topic of local interest. It is probable
that of the many persons whom I know and continue to like, that I liked
nine out of ten of them from our first meeting. Doctor Bainbridge had
not been long in my presence before I knew that my first impressions of
him were not deceptive; and I felt that his impression of myself was
certainly not unfavorable.

It appeared to me as we talked through the evening, that he had read
about all that I had read, and much besides. He talked of English and
French history with minute familiarity. Not only had he read English,
French, and German literature, with such Spanish, Russian, and Italian
works as had been translated into English; but he shamed me with the
thoroughness of his knowledge of Scott, Dickens, Bulwer, Thackeray, and
others of our best writers of fiction. Goethe he particularly admired.
Of Cervantes he thought with the rest of us: He had read "Don Quixote,"
for the first time, when he was eighteen, and during a severe illness
accompanied with intense melancholia; and he had laughed himself out of
bed, and out of his melancholy. "Don Quixote" was, he said, the only
book which he had ever read in solitude--that is, read to himself--which
had compelled him to laugh aloud. Works of science, particularly
scientific works in the domain of physics, he delighted in. His
imagination was of a most charming character. It was at that time in my
life almost a passion with me to analyze human nature--to theorize over
the motives and the results of human action; over the probable causes of
known or assumed effects, and the reverse--in short, I thought myself a
philosopher. I have never met another person whom it so much interested
me to study as it did this young American. But after ample opportunity
to know him, even now as I sit writing more than twenty years later, and
I think of the pleasure of that temporary friendship in far-away
Illinois, I am puzzled about many things concerning Doctor Bainbridge.
He certainly possessed a scientific mind. He himself said that he had no
very great love for written poetry: had he a poetic mind? He loved the
beautiful in life: he loved symmetry in form, he loved harmony in color,
he loved good music. And yet, though he had read the English-writing
poets, he seemed to care less for their work than for anything else in
literature. The thought of this inconsistency has perplexed me whenever
I have thought of it through all these years. As I have intimated, he
was charmed by the beautiful, and by every known expression of beauty;
but for the strictly metrical in language-expression, he evinced almost
a distaste. I have often thought that he had, through some peculiar
circumstance in his earlier life, acquired a suggestive dislike to the
very form of verse. To this peculiarity there was, however, exception,
to which I am about to allude.

By the time we had smoked out a cigar apiece, we were exchanging views
and comments on such writers, English and American, as came to mind. One
of the books that lay on my table was a copy of Byron; though most of
the others were the works of American authors--Hawthorne, Irving,
Longfellow, Poe, and one or two others. He had picked up my Byron, and
glancing at it had remarked that if all the poets were like Byron he
would devote more time than he did to the reading of verse. I recall a
remark that, with Byron's personality in mind, he made as he returned
the book to the table. "Poor fellow!" he said. "But what are we to
expect of a man who had a volcano for a mother, and an iceberg for a
wife? A woman's character is largely formed by the quality of men that
enter into her life; a man's, even more so by the quality of women that
enter into his. I wonder if Byron ever intimately knew a true woman?--a
woman at once intellectually and morally normal, in a good wholesome
way--a woman with a good brain and a warm heart? No man, in my opinion,
is a really good man save through the influence of good women."

It is impossible for me to recall much of what he said of the American
authors of whom we talked, with the exception of Poe; and there are
reasons why I should clearly remember in substance, and almost in words,
everything that was said of him. Of all writers, with one exception, Poe
interests me the most; and I judge that in interest, both as a
personality and as a literary artist, Doctor Bainbridge placed Edgar
Allan Poe first and uppermost among those who have left to the world a
legacy of English verse or prose. And this feeling was, I truly believe,
in no measure influenced by Poe's nationality. If Bainbridge possessed
any narrow national prejudices I never learned of them.

He spoke rapturously of Poe as a poet--"The Raven," as a matter of
course, receiving high praise: Of that unique and really grand poem, he
said that he thought it the best in the English language.

It was at this point in our conversation that he told me he rarely read
verse; that he had, with certain exceptions, never done so with much
pleasure, but that in some way he had managed to read nearly all the
noted poetry published in our language. Still, he said, there were poems
which absorbed and almost fascinated him. Of the English poets of the
present century, Byron alone had written enough poetry to prove himself
a poet; and he explained that in his opinion the writing of an
occasional or chance poem, though the poem were true poetry, did not
make of the author a poet. Then he mentioned a poem which for more than
a century has been by the critical world accepted as of the highest
order of true poetry. Gradually warming to the subject, he said:

"A poem like this is not to my mind poetry. Byron wrote true poetry, and
sufficient of it in his short life to prove himself ten times over a
poet. To compare this poem with Byron's poetry--say with parts of
'Childe Harold,' or 'The Prisoner of Chillon,' or with some of his
shorter poems--would be like comparing the most perfect mechanical
device with a graceful animal--say the mechanical imitation of a tiger
or a gazelle with the living original; the first a wonderfully moving
piece of machinery, illustrating the limit of human constructive power;
perfectly under control, the movements smooth, unvarying, rhythmical,
charming, excelling in agility and power its living prototype--but
still, scientific--to the discerning eye, artful. The other, something
more than rhythmical, more than smooth, beyond the control of human
agency, beyond the power of man to analyze as to synthetize--more than
science can explain, more than even art dare claim. The one explicable,
the other inexplicable; the one from the hand of patient skill--of
talent; the other a result of force mysterious, divine. The lions of
Alexius Comnenus, it is said, could roar louder than the lions of the
desert."

"But what of Poe, and 'The Raven?'" I asked.

"The surprising thing about 'The Raven' is," he said, "and I assert only
what I believe to be from internal evidence demonstrable--first, that
the poem arose out of a true poetic impulse of the soul; and, second,
that it discloses the very highest art possible to a writer. Now I truly
believe that the first writing of 'The Raven'--and, too, the stanzas
were probably not first written in their present published
order--conveyed Poe's poetic sense just as completely as the published
poem now does. But this was not sufficient for Edgar Allan Poe--for the
scientific man, the artful man, the poetic genius with a genius for
concentrated mental toil in the effort to attain literary perfection.
This makes 'The Raven' a curiosity in true poetic expression."

"Then you believe," I said, "that both the state of feeling from which
true poetry arises, and the particular words by which the feeling is
conveyed, are inspired."

"I do. But Poe was able actually to improve the language of inspiration,
whilst transmitting uninjured the poetic conception. Those stanzas in
Grey's 'Elegy' which convey from him to us the psychic wave of poetic
impulse, may have been hundreds of times altered in their wording,
through seven years of tentative effort; and it is possible that he
succeeded in retaining the original feeling--the poem is certainly
artistic. But the feeling conveyed by Grey is commonplace enough,
anyway; whilst that transmitted by Poe is wholly unique, and intensely
absorbing--indeed, a startling revelation. I have always felt that
Byron, Milton, Shakespeare, found within their souls their poetry, and
that the linguistic expression of it came to them as naturally as did
the feeling."

"Such minds," I said, "will always be a mystery to common mortals."

"I take it," replied Bainbridge, "that waves and wavelets of poetic
feeling are common enough among men--quite as common as mental pictures
of beautiful material images; but the rarity is in the word-conception,
which I hold must as a rule be spontaneous if it is to convey
unblemished the original feeling. The musical genius is able to convey
his psychic impression in harmonious sounds; the true poet, in words. To
the rest of us the process is, as you say, a mystery--we call it
inspiration.

"Take an isolated poem, such as under, say patriotic feeling, springs
from the mind of one who never again writes poetry; does this not help
to prove my theory that all true poetry is a result of inspiration--is
in its inception and in its word-expression quite extraneous to its
apparent author?

"To both my intellect and my feeling, 'The Raven' stands a beautiful
masterpiece, which, because it is both the product of a strange psychic
state and the work of intellect will probably be the last poem, of those
now extant, to be admired by the human race when intellectual
development and growth shall finally have driven from the lives and the
minds of men all romance, all sentiment, all poetry, leaving to the race
only intellect and will."

After some further talk, and in reply to a statement of my own,
Bainbridge said,

"Of course I can speak only for myself; and for me there is music in the
poetry of Byron and of Poe, and there is the psychic effect of color.
The rhythm in certain of their poems, with the arrangement of
word-sound, produces the saddest music possible, I think, to the soul of
man--a prevailing monotone so measured as to result in an effect
decidedly strange and quite indescribable. But the real peculiarity of
their poetry--and in this Poe excels Byron--is a psychic effect the same
as that which remains after viewing certain pictures in black and white,
the shade gradations of which are so artistic as to create an illusion
of color--sombre, highly shaded, yet color. This color effect of Poe's
poetry I have felt very slightly, if at all, immediately on a first
reading, as I feel the music of his verse--a rereading, or the lapse of
time, being required for its full development. I have not read a line of
Poe in the last two or three years, and at the present moment I feel
_Ulalume_ as I would some weird scene or picture viewed long ago."

I asked him what particular color effects Poe's poetry produced in his
mind, and he replied,

"The impression of red I do not at all retain. That of black, more or
less intense, is predominant; but the color effects of almost any
variegated landscape--red being excluded, and the scene having been
viewed by moonlight, or in the dusk of evening, or possibly on a densely
clouded day--is at this moment alive within me. And yet, with a single
exception, I have never received from musical or other sounds a psychic
color effect--the exception being that certain tones of a violin leave
the same mental impression as does the sight of purple. As I am not
acquainted with the technical language of either painter or musician, I
can attempt to describe these effects only in common language. I speak
for myself only, and am anything but dogmatic on the subject of poetry.
The symbolism of Poe's verse we must solve, each for himself. To me, for
myself, the solution seems not difficult--and so no doubt says another;
but on comparison these solutions would no doubt be very different."

But highly as Bainbridge estimated Poe's verse, he placed Poe even
higher among writers of prose fiction than among poets. As I have said,
I am myself an admirer of Poe. His prose I have always thought the work
of a true genius--something, as Doctor Bainbridge said, "more than art,
aided by the most perfect art." But when we came to speak of his prose
writings, Bainbridge was able to express in language all that I had felt
of Poe, and to disclose and explain components of his genius that I had
never before fully recognized.

I then asked Bainbridge what it was in Poe's prose that he so much
admired.

"Poe's strong element of power as a writer of short stories," said
Bainbridge, "is, I think, his scientific imagination--the same capacity,
strange as the statement may appear, that, when directed into another
channel, makes a great physicist. It strikes me as inaccurate to say
that Newton discovered the law of gravitation. Newton imagined the fact
of a law of physical gravitation; and then he proceeded to prove _the_
law of gravitation, accomplishing the discovery by means of a second
attribute of genius--viz., tireless mental energy--the possession of a
talent for rigorous mental application and severe nervous strain. In the
sense that Columbus discovered America--in that sense, Newton discovered
the law of gravitation: Columbus imagined an America, and then proceeded
to make a physical demonstration of his belief by discovering the
Bahamas. The same faculty--scientific imagination--in Poe gave us 'A
Descent into the Maelstrom, The Murders in the Rue Morgue,' and other of
his tales. And not alone in physics, but in metaphysics, did his
imagination open up to him just conceptions; so that in the field of
both healthy and morbid mental action his 'intuitive' knowledge was
unerring. 'The Fall of the House of Usher' is so true to the real in
conception, and so consummate in portrayal, that the more one knows
about the mind, the more he inclines to wonder whether these
compositions might not have been aided by actual personal experience.
Yet these delineations are purely imaginative. Take 'The Imp of the
Perverse, The Tell-Tale Heart,' and similar of his stories, not all of
which could in reason have come within the experience of one man, and
which are undoubtedly grounded upon intuitive suggestion."

I asked him which of Poe's tales he thought the best.

"That would indeed be difficult to determine," he replied. "If the
criterion is to be my own intellectual enjoyment, I should mention one;
if my feelings, then another. It is possible that I might select one in
which my intellectual enjoyment, and my feelings pure and simple, were
about equally engaged. We shall probably agree that the most important
object of fiction is to produce in the reader a state of feeling, just
as musical composition is intended to produce a state of feeling--the
short story being comparable with a brief musical production intended to
produce a single variety of emotion; the novel, to the music of an opera
with its many parts, intended each to excite a particular state of
feeling. Naturally prose fiction may, and almost necessarily does, have
other objects. Now the reading of 'The Fall of the House of Usher'
produces a certain state of emotion, and that wholly apart from any
appeal to intellect; no endeavor to do more than produce that state of
feeling is made, nothing more than that is effected, and that much is
attained in a manner which no pen that has traced short-story fiction,
save that of Poe, has ever accomplished. Hence, if the production of
feeling--an appeal to the purely moral side of the triangle of mind--be
the paramount essential in fiction, 'The Fall of the House of Usher' is
the best short story in the English language."

Here Doctor Bainbridge rose from his chair, and taking a turn or two
across the floor, continued, in tones indicating vexation,

"Why has not somebody with a ray of the imagination necessary to a
comprehension of Poe's genius given us at least a decent sketch of his
brief life! Was Poe in a state of mental aberration when he made
Griswold his literary executor? Is the world forever to hear of him only
from those who see the dark side of his life and know nothing of his
life's work?--from those who look at his life and his life's work
through the smoked glass of their dull provincial minds? Let us hope for
an assay of what is left to us of Poe--an assay which, not wholly
ignoring the little dross, will still lose no grain of the pure, virgin
gold, and give to the world something approaching what is due to the
genius himself, and what, with such a subject, is due to the world."

"Let me alter my question--or, I should say, ask a different one," I
said, when he had again seated himself: "Which of Poe's stories most
interested you? From which did you receive the most satisfaction?"

"I have been more occupied and interested by 'The Narrative of A. Gordon
Pym' than by any two or three of his other stories."

I expressed surprise at this avowal; and my comments on what appeared to
me to show a peculiar taste implied a desire for explanation. He
continued:

"Although 'The Narrative of A. Gordon Pym' has served as a suggestion,
or even a pattern, for some of our best recent stories of adventure, and
although it has many points of excellence in itself, it is not the story
alone, but the opportunity which the story affords of an analysis of
Poe's mind, that creates the greater interest for me. I have always been
puzzled to find a reasonably adequate cause for the incomplete state of
that narrative. The supposition that Poe had not at his disposal, at the
moment he required it, the necessary time for its completion is an
hypothesis which I only mention to dispose of. At its close he wrote and
added to the narrative a 'Note' of nearly a thousand words; and in the
time required for the penning of that addition, he could have brought
the story to--perhaps an abrupt, but still, an artistic close. No. Then
did Poe not complete 'The Narrative of A. Gordon Pym' because his
imagination failed him--failed to supply material of such a quality as
his refined and faultless taste demanded? If so, then why did he begin
it? Why write more than sixty thousand words in his usual careful and
precise style, on a subject to him little known, in to him a new field
of literary effort? He could in the time required to write 'The
Narrative of A. Gordon Pym' have written from five to ten short stories
along familiar lines. No: none of these hypotheses explains the
unfinished state of that narrative. My explanation is that the story has
a foundation in fact, and that Poe himself never learned more than a
foundation for the portion which he wrote. Its leading character next to
Pym is one Dirk Peters, a sailor, mutineer, etc. It is my theory that
Pym and Peters existed in fact, but that Poe never met either of them,
though he did meet sailors who had known Dirk Peters, and that he heard
from them the first part of the story, in the form in which it grew to
be repeated by seafaring men along the New England coast in the '30s and
'40s. Having heard what he supposed to be sufficient, with the aid of
his own imagination, to make an interesting story for publication, Poe
began and continued to write. Then, as he progressed, he found that his
imagination was embarrassed--frustrated by the known facts already
employed--whilst it was not assisted by new facts which he was positive
existed, but which he could not procure. As he attempted to close the
narrative, the cold, written page was a very different thing from what
he had conceived it would be as he sat in the tap-room of some New
England old 'Sailor's Home,' with a couple of glasses of Burton ale on
the table, listening through the drowsy afternoon to the fact and
fiction of some old 'tar,' as the two looked across the white-sanded
floor at the old moss-grown dock without, and listened to the salt
wavelets splashing against its rotting timbers, and watched the far-
distant sails on the outer sea. It is not very difficult to picture to
one's self Poe searching among these sailors' lodging-houses for Dirk
Peters; nor is it unreasonable to assume that he did so search for him.
If Dirk Peters was twenty-seven years old in 1827, when the mutiny
occurred, he was only forty-nine at the time of Poe's death--in fact,
would be only seventy-seven if now alive. Poe says in his 'Note,' that
'Peters, from whom some information might be expected, is still alive,
and a resident of Illinois, but cannot be met with at present. He may
hereafter be found, and will, no doubt, afford material for a conclusion
of Mr. Pym's account.' I have no doubt that Poe eventually learned
exactly where Peters resided; but no matter how much Poe may have
desired to meet with Peters, he could not have done so. In the '40s it
was a long, tedious, expensive journey from New York to Illinois. Still,
Poe hoped some day to meet Peters, and did not care to say to the public
exactly where he could be met with. Then came Poe's unutterably sad
death, leaving the narrative incomplete."

As Bainbridge neared the close of his remarks, we heard a heavy and
rapid step approach along the hall. It stopped before my door; and just
as Bainbridge ceased to speak, a loud rap, evidently made with the head
of a heavy cane, sounded on the panel. The door flew open, and Doctor
Castleton rushed into the middle of the room--or, rather, bounded across
the room. Bainbridge and I instantly arose, and I stepped forward to
take Doctor Castleton's hand in mine, and to care for his hat and cane;
but he waved me off. "No, no: no time--not a minute to spare--three
patients waiting"--here he glanced at Bainbridge, as if to observe the
effect of his speech on a beginner, who was fortunate if he yet
possessed a single patient--"like to keep my word--fine evening." He
seated himself on the edge of a chair, and projected his glance around
the room. No better subject immediately presenting itself to mind, I
remarked that we had just been talking of Edgar Allan Poe, and his
unfinished story, "The Narrative of A. Gordon Pym"; and I spoke of Dirk
Peters.

"I know old man Peters--know him well, sir," said Doctor Castleton,
without a moment's hesitation; "short old fellow--seafaring man--about
four feet six, or seven--must have been a devil in his day--old man,
now--seventy or eighty; no hair, no beard; farms a few acres on the
Bluff; very sick man, right now."

Bainbridge and I had cast at each other a glance, which plainly said,
"Isn't that Castleton for you?" But as he continued, and we had time to
consider, the probability that Dirk Peters was alive, and the bare
possibility that he was in the neighborhood, and that, if he did reside
near Bellevue, Doctor Castleton would be very likely to have met him,
gradually dawned on our minds. Quick as was the glance we exchanged,
Castleton saw it--yes, and understood it.

"Gentlemen," he continued, "I know whereof I speak. It is true, I never
before thought of Peters in this connection. In the cases of my library,
the books stand two rows deep. Thousands of books have been carried into
my attic, to make room for newer books--I never need to glance twice at
a book. Of course I have Poe's works, and bound in morocco, too--the
grandest genius ever bestowed upon humanity by the prolific and liberal
hand of our Creator. Still, I never happened to read the grand and
mighty effort of that colossal intellect to which you refer--'The
Narrative of a Snorting Thing,' though I recall 'The Literary Life of
Thingum Bob.' But I am certain--certain as the unerring fiat of
Omnipotent Power--that this man Peters is within ten miles of us, and is
at this moment a mighty ill man--almost ready, in fact, to visit a land
from which he will be little likely to return. I refer to 'The
undiscovered country from whose bourne no traveller returns.' By
superhuman efforts I have kept this man Peters alive now long past the
time-limit set by his Creator for him to go--I mean, three score and ten
years; but even I and science have our limitations, and the beginning of
the end is at hand."

By this time Doctor Castleton was pacing up and down the room, stopping
now and then to look at an engraving on the wall, taking up and
replacing books, seeing everything. I could not but feel that already
the curiosity which had impelled him to "run in" was satisfied, and that
he would soon be going. A minute after his last recorded words, Dirk
Peters seemed to have dropped completely from his mind. I was wholly
absorbed with the thought that Dirk Peters might be within our reach;
and that if he really was, it was possible that we might learn whether
Pym and he had reached the South Pole, and if so, what they had there
discovered. It was plainly evident that the mind of Doctor Bainbridge
was deeply engaged with the same subject. I was anxious to know what he
thought of Castleton's statement; for the more I discussed the matter
within myself, the more I felt inclined to believe that Castleton was
not making a mistake. But Castleton was certainly now not thinking of
Peters. I could, amid my thoughts, hear him declaiming,

"Yes, sir; England is a mighty power. Her navy, sir, can--and mark me,
it will--sweep France and Russia and Prussia and Austria and Italy from
the ocean as--as a shar--a wha--a huge and voracious swordfish sweeps
before its imperious onslaught, with unerring certainty and cyclonic
power, a whole school of sneaking mackerel or codfish from the pathway
fixed for it by Eternal Destiny."

His prognostication was intended to be a graceful compliment paid to the
country of a visiting stranger, and, in the absence of other foreigners,
not discourteous to anybody. I never before or since knew his natural
flow of eloquence to waver as in this instance--a rarity that of itself
makes the remark worthy of record. Doctor Castleton soon, against all
protests, bounded out of the door, as he had bounded in; and then
Bainbridge and I discussed the astonishing possibilities should it prove
true that Dirk Peters was within our reach. We concluded that
Castleton's statement was one of great importance, and we agreed upon a
course of procedure. We spent the remainder of the evening in a manner
very enjoyable to myself, and evidently gratifying to Doctor Bainbridge;
and it was past midnight when we separated.

The following morning I looked up Doctor Castleton; and he, ever
courteous and obliging, did more than consent to permit me to drive out
to the home of his patient, Peters. He proposed that I wait a day, as he
knew that Peters would within that time, and might any hour, send for
him; and as soon as he was summoned he would notify me, and together we
would drive out to the old sailor's residence--which, the doctor said,
was a small, two-roomed log structure, where the old man dwelt entirely
alone.




The FOURTH Chapter


The summons from Doctor Castleton to accompany him came sooner than he
had led me to expect; and at a little past noon of the same day on which
he had made his promise to take me with him to see Dirk Peters, I
received a message, saying that if agreeable to me he would at two
o'clock be in front of my hotel, prepared to start for the home of the
old sailor.

At a minute or two before the time fixed, I was standing at the main
entrance to the Loomis House, and at precisely two o'clock Doctor
Castleton drove up in a two-horse, four-wheeled, top-buggy. He made room
for me on his left, and off we started.

We drove in a westerly direction for a full mile along the main street
before leaving the town behind us. Then we struck a level turf road; and
away trotted the superb team of rather small, wiry, black horses. Doctor
Castleton said that we should reach our destination--which was rather
more than ten miles from the city limits--within forty minutes; and we
did. Over a part of the level turf road I should estimate that we drove
at about a three-minute gait; but after traversing some four or five
miles, we turned south into a narrow road, which soon became hilly and
tortuous; yet even here it was only on particularly rough or uneven
portions of the way that the doctor moderated our speed to less than a
four-minute gait.

As we rode along at this exhilarating pace, the buggy whirling around
acute curves among the mighty oaks and maples, now and then dashing down
a forty-five-degree descent of fifty or sixty feet, again thundering
over a dilapidated bridge of resonant planks, the doctor remarked to me
that Peters was certain to die, it being only a question of days, or
perhaps of hours. "Old Peters," he said, "has been without visible means
of support for the past two or three years. The Lord only knows how he
has lived since the period when he became unable to work. Even his small
farm is mortgaged for all it is worth." I expressed to the doctor some
surprise that he should be making twenty-mile drives to see a lonely old
man whose illness he was unable to relieve, and from whom he could
expect no fee. I had grown to take an interest in hearing Castleton
express his opinions. Many of his conceptions of life were so unique;
his mental vision, always intensely acute, was often so oblique; his
station of mental observation so alterable, and so quickly altered; his
sentiments often so earthy, again so exalted--that I believe the man
would have interested me even under circumstances less quiet and
monotonous than were those of my stay, up to this time, in Bellevue. To
my expression of mild wonderment that he should tax his time and
energies to such an extent without pecuniary gain, he replied:

"My dear sir, you are a traveller. You have sailed the seas and crossed
the mighty main; you have dashed over mountains, and sweltered 'mid
tropical suns on sandy desert-wastes. To you our Rockies are
mole-hills--our great lakes mere ponds. You are not a child to cry out
in the darkness. Granted. Yet, sir, let us by a stretch of fancy imagine
ourselves in the place of Columbus, on the third day of August, 1492. We
are about to leave the Known, in search of the Unknown--about to
penetrate for the first time that vast expanse of water which for
uncounted ages has stretched away before the wondering vision and
baffled research of Europe. We are not leaving the world--we are not
alone. Yet is it not a solace that a few friends gather on the shore to
say good-by? The sympathy of the kind, the well-wishes of the brave--are
they not always a comfort? This poor fellow Peters, whose lowly home we
are now approaching, is alone--he is about to start on his last journey,
alone. The land to which he perhaps this day begins that journey is not
only unknown, but unknowable to us in our present state. And therefore
is it, sir, that the learned professions live. Even the worldly man,
when he comes to start upon this last journey, does not disdain the
sympathy and kindness of the loving, and the expressions of hopefulness
that come from the good and pure. True, you may say that the learned
professions are for the man who is about to die but frail supports on
which to lean. The wise man as well as the ignorant man, when he fears
that death is near, reaches out for help or at least some knowledge of
his future. He sends for his physician, who cannot promise him
anything--cannot number the days or hours of his remaining life; for his
lawyer, who cannot assure him beyond all doubt that his will can be made
to endure for a single day beyond his death. At last, he sends for a
minister of God--and what says the spiritual expert? Perhaps he
represents that old, old organization, whose history stretches back for
centuries through the dark ages to the borders of the brilliancy beyond;
that old hierarchy that claims to hold all spiritual power to which man
may appeal with reasonable hope. What says to the dying man this
representative and heir of the accumulated spiritual research and
culture of the past? He may with honesty say, 'Hope;' but if he says
more than Hope, he does it as the blind might sit and guide by signs
through unknown labyrinths the blind. All this is true; but the fact
that the learned professions have come into existence, and continue to
live and draw from the masses their material support--a tax greater in
amount than the income of the nations--shows that they meet, and
genuinely meet, a demand. I say genuinely, for 'You cannot fool all the
people all the time.' And so, my young friend, this poor man Peters
wants me. Later, if there is time, he will want the representative of
the religion which he professes, or which he remembers that his mother
or his father professed. I shall stand by his side and place my hand
upon his throbbing brow--and he will hope, and not despair. Who knows
whether or not our hope and our faith have power in some strange way to
link the present to the future, carrying forward the spirit-seed to
soil in which it blooms in splendor through eternity? As Byron says,

  'How little do we know that which we are,
   How less what we may be.'

But here we are; and I know by the face of that old neighbor-woman
looking from the doorway there that our man still lives."

We drew up in front of a small building some sixteen feet square, the
walls of which consisted of huge logs piled one upon another and
mortised at the corners. The doctor entered, leaving me seated in the
buggy. But soon he came to the door, and signalled for me. As I entered
the house I heard a voice say, "Yes, doctor, the old hulk's still
afloat--water-logged, but still afloat." Looking in the direction of the
voice, I saw on a bed in one corner of the room an old beardless man. I
had not a second's doubt that Dirk Peters of the 'Grampus,' sailor,
mutineer, explorer of the Antarctic Sea, patron and friend of A. Gordon
Pym, was before me. His body up to the waist was covered with an old
blanket; but I felt certain that he was less than five feet in height,
and felt quite positive that he would not then measure more than four
and a half feet. His height in 1827 was, Poe states, four feet and eight
inches. One of the old man's arms lay exposed by his side, and the
finger-ends reached below the knee; while his hand, spread out on the
blanket, would have covered the area of a small ham. His shoulders and
neck, and the one bare arm visible, were indicative of vast muscular
strength. There was the enormous head mentioned by Poe; and there was
the completely bald scalp, exposed, as by a semi-automatic movement of
respect he raised his hand to his head and removed a section of woolly
sheepskin; and there, too, was the indenture in the crown; there the
enormous mouth, spreading from ear to ear, with the lips which, as he
gave a chuckle, and the wrinkles about his eyes evinced a passing facial
contortion, I saw to be wholly wanting in pliancy. There was the
expression, fixed at least as far as the mouth and lower face was
concerned, the protruding teeth, and the grotesque appearance of a smile
such as a demon might have smiled over ruined innocence. Oh, there was
no possibility of a mistake. Doctor Castleton glanced at me
questioningly, but confidently; and I lowered my head in assent. But if
I expected to have an opportunity of learning much of anything from
Peters, I was mistaken. Doctor Castleton was almost ready to depart
before I had finished my visual examination of the old man. I heard the
aged neighbor-woman, a coal miner's wife, who had as an act of kindness
come in to assist the invalid, say, looking at the poor old fellow:

"My mon stayed wi' he the night, dochter. The poor mon, he had delerion
bad. He thot hesel' on a mountain o' ice, wi' tha mountain o' ice on
other like mountain o' salt, a lookin' at devils i' hell. But sin' tha
light o' day. Tha good mon's hesel' agin."

Doctor Castleton had produced from the recesses of a large medicine case
certain pills and powders, had given his directions, and was actually
about to leave without giving me an opportunity, or seeming to think
that I desired an opportunity, of speaking with Peters. I then appealed
for a moment more of time, and for consent to ask the patient a question
or two; and my appeal was granted. I stepped close to the bedside, and
looking down into the eyes that looked up into mine, asked the old man
if his name was Dirk Peters; to which he answered affirmatively. I then
asked him if he had in the year 1827 sailed from the port of Nantucket,
on the brig 'Grampus,' under Captain Bernard, in company, among others,
with a youth named A. Gordon Pym? And a moment later I wished that I had
been less abrupt in my questioning. Peters did manage quite coolly and
rationally to answer "Yes" to all my questions. But at the words "Pym,"
"Bernard," "Grampus," his eyes began, in appearance, to start from their
sockets; those awful teeth gleamed from that cavernous mouth, as he
uttered demoniac yell on yell, and raised himself to a sitting posture
in the bed. I thought his eyeballs must certainly burst, as he looked
off into nothingness wildly, as if a troop of fiends were rushing upon
him.

"Great God!" he screamed, "there, there--she's gone. Ah," quieting a
little; "ah; the old man with the eyes of a god, and the cubes of
crystal with the limpid liquid of heaven. Oh," his voice again raised to
piercing screams, "Oh, she's gone, and he loves her--and I love him. Now
man, they called you the human baboon--be more than man!--I loved the
boy--I tell you, I loved him from the first. I saved him once--aye, a
dozen times--but not like this--not from hell. Scale the chasms of salt,
and climb the lava cliffs, and--but the lake of fire at the bottom--the
old man--and the abyss, my God, the abyss! The snow-drift beard--the
godlike eyes"--his voice then quieting for a few words. "Ah, mother,
mother, mother." Then in a deep, earnest tone, "I'll be a human baboon,
and I'll do what man never yet did, nor beast--yes, and what never in
time will man do again."

Then he completely lost control of himself. He jumped from the bed.
Doctor Castleton stood near the doorway, and I quickly moved to his
side. The old woman had vanished. Peters poured forth yell on yell, such
as I had never conceived it possible for a human throat to utter. He
grasped a strong oak-pole, and broke it as I might have broken a dry
twig. I afterward placed the longer fragment of this pole with each of
its extremities on a large stone, the two about four feet apart; and
lifting into the air a rock weighing a hundred or more pounds, dropped
it on the middle of the fragment; and it did not even bend what this man
of awful strength had severed with his two hands as one would break a
wooden toothpick between the fingers. Then Peters picked up a stove
which stood, fireless, in the room; and he cast it through an open
window, seven or eight feet away, into the yard beyond, where it fell,
breaking into a hundred pieces. I need scarcely say that Doctor
Castleton and myself had left the room with decided alacrity. Well, to
terminate a description none too agreeable, Peters' wild delirium
continued until, out in the door-yard, forty or fifty feet from the
house, he fell, exhausted. Then we carried him back to his bed. Doctor
Castleton gave some directions to the old woman, and soon we left for
town, Peters being asleep.

"Strange," said Doctor Castleton, after we had driven for perhaps a
mile, "strange that a thought can do such things! A word is said, the
thread of memory is touched by suggestion, and it vibrates back through
half a century to some scene of terror stamped ineradicably upon the
brain--or if not upon the brain, then where?--and, lo! the reflexes
spring into action, and a maniac with Samson's strength takes the place
of a docile invalid. Ah, who can answer the mystery of mysteries, and
tell us what this consciousness is! Behind that gift of God rests the
secret of life, and of death, and probably of Eternity itself."

We rode along, returning a little more leisurely than we had come. I sat
wondering how we were to learn from such a man as Peters his secrets--if
secrets he possessed. Even if his past held only important facts not of
secret import, I had received striking evidence that the subject of that
wonderful sea-voyage was not to be carelessly broached to Dirk Peters. I
concluded to say nothing more of the matter until I should meet
Bainbridge, whom I knew would be anxiously awaiting my return, hardly
daring to hope that Poe's Dirk Peters was really in existence and
discovered.

As we neared town, my mind turned to the strange being at my side. Here
was a man who could think, and think both learnedly and poetically of
the wonders of heaven and earth; and yet who could talk of driving from
town a business competitor! Surely that part of his talk which seemed so
laughable was in spirit wholly dramatic--intended rather to fill the
assumed expectations of his hearers, than truly representing the
speaker's feeling. Then my thoughts reverted to the talk I had
overheard, when "Pickles" was made to see veritable showers of
"greenbacks" raining into his vacuous pocket. I smiled to myself; and
then a spirit of audacity coming over me, I determined to ascertain what
Castleton would say to me on the currency question. I concluded to admit
that I had overheard through my open window the conversation on monetary
matters alluded to. There would then be no opportunity for him to evade
the responsibility of assuming as his own the peculiar opinions
expressed by him on that occasion. Now, when he could not consistently
deny the advocacy of views to me so apparently untenable, and could not
seriously adopt them without lowering himself intellectually in the
estimation of a stranger--and I did not for an instant think that he
believed the nonsense which he had so glowingly represented and
demonstrated to poor old "Pickles"--then by what possible means would he
extricate himself from the dilemma?

When I broached the money question, he seemed to warm to the subject at
once; but as I led around to the fact of my overhearing the "Pickles"
incident, he seemed slightly disconcerted--but only momentarily. He was
himself again so quickly that I should not have noticed his
embarrassment had I not been closely observing him for that very
purpose.

"Well, now," he said, blithely, "as you are a stranger, a man of high
and irreproachable honor, _sans peur et sans reproche_--and one, I know,
who will not place me in an equivocal position here in my home by
divulging my true position--I don't mind telling you, in all confidence,
the truth. I am not, my dear sir, an ass. (What I say, remember, goes no
farther.) I am, sir, a theoretical and practical politician of great--I
only repeat what many of my friends (men of supreme mental attainments,
and the best of judges) herald forth as undeniable truth--a politician,
sir, of great depth and exceeding cunning--a rare combination,
philosophers tell us. What a humbug this whole greenback question is!
Why, sir, it is to that very element of scarcity over which they howl,
that money, or anything else, owes its commercial value. Diminish the
general scarcity of anything on earth to the point of a full supply for
everybody and the commercial value at once becomes _nil_. There is
nothing of more real value than atmospheric air; yet the supply is so
great that all demands are filled, leaving an enormous surplus; and
hence atmospheric air has no commercial value. There is nothing on earth
of much less service to humanity than are diamonds; yet the possession
of a pound of fair-sized diamonds would make a Croesus of a beggar. The
dreams of the Greenbacker are but new phases of our childhood fancies of
finding a mountain of pure gold, with which we are to make the whole
world happy; it is conceivable to find the mountain of gold--but, alas!
what will be its value when we have found it? Take actual money, for
instance. Any metal might be used as money which the world should agree
to call money, provided only that the metal is not so plentiful as to
make it impossible to handle because of bulk, or so scarce as to make
the unit of value impalpable. The standard may even from time to time be
changed, if we do not object to the enormous trouble of making the
change----"

"And," I remarked, as he paused for a moment, "if we do not object to
the robbery of either the debtor or the creditor, one or the other."

"Not at all," he replied. "I assume that the change shall be fairly
made. I have said that it would be a very great inconvenience to the
world, and without any benefit; it would in fact be so great a task to
make the change in our money standard that it would be practically
impossible to make it. But we are off the track--we were not to talk of
primary money; it was of currency, or greenbacks, that you spoke. Now it
puzzles you as a man of sense to conceive by what process of thought
another man of sense can bring himself to advocate unlimited inflation
of our currency; and yet there is a very good reason why the most
sensible man may do that very thing. Of course, my dear sir, I am aware
that the only honest way for a government to issue unlimited currency is
to give the stuff away, and later to repudiate it. Now, sir, I need not
tell one like yourself, who has studied the lives of such English
statesmen as the puissant Burke, the sagacious Pitt, the astute
Palmerston, that ninety per cent, of the people--and it is so even in
this glorious land of free schools and liberty--are relatively to the
remaining ten per cent, either poor and dishonest, or poor and ignorant;
and that none of the hundred per cent, goes into sackcloth and ashes
when he gets something for nothing. I, sir, am--or I was until
recently--a Jeffersonian Democrat. But our party made a great mistake a
few years ago by sticking to the slave interest too long. I finally
became hopeless of success at the polls. Now, when I whisper in your
all-comprehending ear that the leaders of this Greenback Party are
anything but Republicans, you will grasp the point. I repeat, sir, I am
not an ass--if I do bray sometimes. All's fair in love and politics. But
let me say to you, that the printing presses of the United States will
never be leased by the United States Treasury, whatever party wins at
the polls."

As he closed, we entered the town. It may not be wholly lacking in
interest to the reader when I say that, some years later, as I one
morning sat in my library looking through the window at the far-distant
smoke of Newcastle, I had just laid aside a copy of the _Times_, in
which paper I had read of the results of a political contest in the
State of Illinois. The Republicans had won. The Greenbackers and the
Democrats had lost. Then my eye caught the name of Castleton! The doctor
had made the race for Governor--not on the Greenback ticket, however;
not on the Democratic ticket; but--of all things!--on the _anti-liquor
or Prohibition ticket!_

As we drew up in front of the Loomis House, Doctor Bainbridge stood on
the sidewalk as if awaiting our return. I smiled, then nodded an
affirmative to the question in his eyes; and stepping out of the buggy,
I linked his arm within my own, and, thanking Doctor Castleton for his
kindness, piloted the way to my room.




The FIFTH Chapter


On opening the door of my sitting-room, I found Arthur, the factotum,
sitting in my large easy-chair, with one of my volumes of Poe in his
hand. He had overheard part of the conversation of the preceding
evening, and was evidently interested in "The Narrative of A. Gordon
Pym." I observed also that a bottle of cognac which sat upon my table,
and which I could have sworn was not more than one-fourth emptied when I
left the hotel directly after dinner, was now quite empty. The
atmosphere of the room was pervaded with the odor of "dead" brandy; and
Arthur's eyes were unusually glassy and staring--for so early an hour as
5 P.M. Then he settled the matter, beyond the shadow of a doubt, with a
hiccough.

"Well, Arthur," I said, pleasantly, as he clumsily rose in part from his
seat--into which he dropped back, however, as he heard my kindly tone of
address, and knew there was to be no severity of reckoning--"well, my
boy; been enjoying yourself?"

"Yes, sir," he replied, in a fairly steady voice--the words that
followed, however, being rhythmically interrupted by an aldermanic and
most vociferous hiccough, which shall be omitted from this record--"been
reading about Pym and Barnard. Wasn't that awful when they saw the
shipful of dead corpses? Just think of that ship, full of dead men--not
one of them alive, and all dead--and the sails set, and the old ship
wabbling around the ocean just as things might please to happen! When
the ship got close up to their brig, and that scream came from among the
corpses, I just jumped, myself! But wasn't it terrible when that gull
pulled its bloody old beak out of the dead man's back, and then flew
over the brig and dropped the piece of human flesh at poor hungry
Parker's feet? Gee-whillikens, now! Why, it just made my blood sink in
my heart and lungs."

"Yes," I thought, "and it just made my brandy sink pretty fast in my
bottle and down your throat." I was amused at his comments, and at
another time might have listened longer to his talk; but now I must be
making some arrangement with Doctor Bainbridge regarding a possible
interview with Peters; so I said to Arthur that he might take the volume
of Poe and keep it for two or three days, which offer he gladly
accepted; and with an involuntary wandering of the eye toward the brandy
bottle, he left the room.

Then Bainbridge and I seated ourselves, and I described the late scene
in Dirk Peters' room, repeating almost word for word all that had been
said. He pondered for a few minutes, during which I could see that his
versatile imagination was in active play. Then he said,

"Well, we have him! My, my, what a discovery! This will be like reaching
across the decrees of death and taking by the hand dear Poe himself! But
you were hasty--as I myself might have been. Well, we must see
Castleton--that is, you must--and get his consent for us to go right out
and stay with Peters, if necessary for a night and a day, or even
longer. We can take care of the poor old fellow, and watch our
opportunity to glean from him the facts of that strange voyage, onward
from the moment when, borne on that swift ocean current, he and Pym were
rushed into the mystery that opened to receive them, as the
white-shrouded figure arose in their pathway. 'Fire'--'salt'--'ice,'
said he? I begin almost--almost to understand! Did you ever, in England,
hear of the Peruvian tradition of an antarctic country, warm and
delightful, peopled by a civilized--or rather by a highly enlightened
and very mysterious race of whites? Such a tradition exists. Now, one
day in New York, about three years ago, I allowed myself a holiday, as
was my custom from time to time after a period of severe study. On the
day I speak of I entered the Astor Library, and was permitted to wander
at my pleasure among the books. I carried in my hand one of the small
camp-stools which stood around the room, and whenever I found a book
that particularly interested me, I would sit down and look it over. You
understand, I was dissipating in this great treasure-house of books.
About the middle of the afternoon I found myself in one of the most
unfrequented of the library alcoves. There, on a shelf so high that I
could just see over its edge as I stood on one of the library
step-ladders, I found a strange little book, purporting to have been
written in 1594. It had fallen down behind the other books. It had a
leather back, well-worn; I saw that it was a 1728 Leipsic publication;
and possibly came to the Astor Library by presentation from its wise and
liberal founder's private library--though this is pure surmise. The book
read much like other tales of the time, so far as its form went. I sat
down to look at it--and I did not arise until I had read it to its end,
some three hours later. I had not read two pages before I became
satisfied that the book had more truth than fiction in it. To have
assumed it wholly the work of imagination, I should have had to admit
that the author was an artist of artists, exceeding, through his
artfulness, in naturalness, all other fiction-writers. No; there was
truth behind the statements in the little book--truth at second or third
hand, but truth. Now this little book pretended to tell, and I believe
did tell, the story of a sailor under Sir Francis Drake, who accompanied
this English navigator on his 1577-1580 voyage. You will recall, as a
matter of history, that, in the voyage mentioned, Sir Francis crossed
the Atlantic, passed the Strait of Magellan, crossed the Pacific, and
returned to England by way of the Cape of Good Hope. Now during this
three-year voyage, the story is that he once lost his 'bearings' for a
month; in fact, it is intimated that a hiatus of two months in his 'log'
really did exist. This hiatus, however, could easily have been covered
in the ship's log-book. We may conceive of reasons for which he might
have preferred to keep a temporary silence concerning the discovery of a
strange people, in those early, savage times. The little book said,
that, when in the Pacific, after passing the strait, Sir Francis was for
two weeks driven in a southerly course--a severe, and in every way most
unusual storm prevailing. When the winds and the waves subsided, he was
surprised to find himself looking into the mouth of a harbor, on the
shores of which stood a city, by no means so large as London or even as
Paris; but exceeding in grandeur the London or the Paris of that day, as
the Paris of to-day exceeds in elegance the comparative squalor of the
Paris of three centuries ago. According to the leather-covered little
German book, the city was beautiful beyond comparison with any of the
European cities of that period. I should suppose that the author thought
of it as we do of Athens in the days of Pericles. Not much is said of
the inhabitants, who were probably infinitely superior, socially, to the
rough voyagers of that date. And for once the 'natives' were neither
bullied nor 'converted,' Sir Francis departing no richer than he
arrived, save for a few commercially valueless gifts. One thing the
natives, it seems, insisted on: Sir Francis arrived in the city without
knowing his longitude; and they compelled him on leaving to accept
conditions that prevented him from finding his bearings till he was more
than a thousand miles away. What the nature of the climate was in this
strange city may be judged by the expressions employed in the little
book, which, translated, were equivalent to 'perfect,' 'Eden-like,'
'balmy,' 'delicious.' Once the author compares this antarctic city to
Venice--admittedly to the Venice of his imagination. No; Sir Francis had
nothing to brag of in this adventure; and in those days when to be
physically subdued, or in a contest to fail to subdue others, was a
humiliation or even a disgrace, he would have kept very quiet about the
whole affair; particularly as a future navigator could not have found
the city, even had Sir Francis told all that he knew. Now I mention
these reports only to show you that others have thought of warm
antarctic lands; and I could refer you to many other old stories and
traditions, highly suggestive of inhabited lands in the Antarctic Ocean,
on which lands a refined people dwell. I certainly expect to learn from
Peters facts of some importance to the world, if only he does not die,
or is not so delirious as to throw a shadow on the verity of his story,
even if he does disclose the wonders which I most assuredly believe that
he will if he lives but another day. Really, I am, for the first time in
years, excited. How Castleton keeps so cool and so apparently
indifferent over this matter, when he is always excited over what seem
to me to be comparative nothings, I cannot comprehend. Now, sir, you
hunt him up again--he will no doubt be in his office across the street.
Get his consent, as I before suggested--Castleton is always obliging
when you appeal to him directly; then take your supper, and be ready. I
will be here at eight o'clock with my horse and a piano-box buggy. It
will be a beautiful moonlight night, and let us not risk waiting until
to-morrow. We will take with us some ice; also wine, beef extract, and a
few other things intended to sustain the poor old fellow's vitality--at
least till his story is told. We must go prepared to remain for
twenty-four hours, or even for thirty-six hours if necessary; so have
your overcoat ready, and I will find a couple of blankets in case we
have to lie down. Good-by till eight."

And off he went, as excited as a schoolboy at the beginning of an
adventure. I began to think he was allowing his imaginations to pray him
tricks--purposely allowing himself to be deceived, as a child that is
nearing the age of reason still delights in the old fairy tales and the
Santa Claus myth, long after its mind has penetrated the deception.
Still, in the end it proved we were very far--very far indeed from being
upon an idle quest.

By eight o'clock I had obtained Doctor Castleton's consent that
Bainbridge and I might visit Peters, and remain as long as we should
desire.

"I will run out myself, early in the morning," said Castleton, "and do
what I can to keep life in the old man. Don't let Bainbridge get into
the old fellow any of his newfangled, highfalutin remedies--if you do, I
will not answer for the consequences. I don't say that Bainbridge will
not in time--in time, mark you--be a dazzling therapeutist; but not
until experience has modified his views, and shown him that Rome was not
built in a day, nor with a toothpick, either. Don't tell him what I say,
please--I wouldn't like to hurt his young feelings, you know."

When Doctor Bainbridge drove up in front of the hotel, I was waiting for
him; and we were soon on our way toward the Peters domicile.




The SIXTH Chapter


The time required by Doctor Castleton to reach the home of Dirk Peters
had been about forty minutes; the time required by Doctor Bainbridge was
two and one-half times forty minutes, or only twenty minutes short of
two hours. Bainbridge drove a single horse, a beautiful, large, dappled
bay--an excellent animal, which, as most horses do, had learned those of
his master's ways that bore relation to his own interests. Bainbridge
was a lover of animals, as Castleton was not; Castleton was an admirer
of horses for their action, whilst with Bainbridge the welfare of his
horse was everything, and he never drove rapidly without a particular
and pressing necessity.

So we drove along in a leisurely way, conversing of Dirk Peters and the
Pym story, until we had arranged a plan of action for drawing out of the
old man an account of that voyage, the mere thought of which, coming
suddenly upon him, had affected him in the terrible manner which I had
that afternoon witnessed. Doctor Bainbridge explained to me that the
wild demonstrations made by Peters and described by me were a result,
not so much of any thought of those adventures on which he must have
pondered thousands of times in the forty-eight or forty-nine intervening
years, as it was of the manner in which the thoughts or mental pictures
had been brought to his mind.

"I need only remind you," he said, "of a single mental characteristic
within the experience of almost every person, to make this matter clear,
and to indicate what our course with the old man must be, and why I said
to you to come prepared for a long stay. Suppose, for instance, a woman
to have lost her husband through some extremely painful accident, his
death being not only sudden but of a horrifying nature, and that several
years have elapsed since she was widowed. Now, she has thought the
matter over ten thousand times, as the suggestion to do so entered her
mind by a hundred different routes, as, for instance, by the seeing of
something that her husband in life possessed, or by the drift of her own
thought bringing her to the subject by association or by indirect paths
of suggestion. Every day her mind has many times pictured the horrible
scene of death, until she is dry-eyed and passive amid a storm of sad
ideas. But now, after all these years, bring to her mind, suddenly and
by a strange route of suggestion, the same old horror--let a voice, and
particularly the voice of a stranger, remind her of the terrible
scene--and immediately the demonstration follows: the sobs of anguish,
the tears, all, as on the day of the accident. It is the method of
approach--the mode of suggestion when the fact is known but latent in
consciousness, that is responsible for the nervous demonstration. In
another instance, visual suggestion might have a similar result and
audible suggestion be harmless. I anticipate no serious obstruction in
the path to Peters' confidence. Patience, care, deliberate action--the
fact ever in mind that 'The more haste the less speed,' and we shall win
the prize for which we strive."

As we drove along in the bright moonlight, after we had determined on
our "method of approach" to Peters' mind, I felt confident that with the
knowledge and tact of Bainbridge we should certainly succeed in our
efforts; and I began to think along other lines. The friendly manner in
which I had been treated by all whom I had met in America, from the
millionaire coal operator down to the bell-boy, came into my thoughts. I
had not been treated as a foreigner, except to my own advantage, the
older residents of the town seeming to look upon me more as they might
look upon a man from another State of the Union. In America, even the
inland towns are cosmopolitan, while in England only the larger cities
and seaport towns have that characteristic. I was therefore able to
judge of certain questions not only from hearsay, but from actual
observation. I noticed, for example, that among the American
working-classes there existed a feeling of repugnance for the Chinaman.
Of the lower-class Italian, everybody thought enough to keep out of his
reach after dark. Germans and Irishmen were numerous, and each
individual was taken on his own merits. The English were universally
liked, wherever I went. True, there was a little tendency to allude to
the glories of Bunker Hill and the like; but this tendency was evinced
in a manner rather amusing than objectionable to an Englishman. If there
exists in the American heart a drop of bitterness for the English, I
never discovered it. I am writing now of the American-born American. I
gathered the idea that Frenchmen, as seen in America, were scarcely
taken seriously; though all Americans have been systematically educated
to respect and admire the French Nation. Of Spaniards, the prevalent
idea seemed to be that they were better at arm's length. (Anglo-Saxon
literature has been very unkind to the Spaniard.) I did not meet an
American that seemed to hate anybody--I do not conceive it possible for
an American to harbor the feeling of hatred.

As we jogged along, the idea entered my mind that I would, when I
returned home, write a treatise on "American Manners and Customs." "No
doubt," I said to myself, "I can in the next few minutes procure from
Bainbridge enough facts to make quite a book." I afterward abandoned the
intention; but at that moment my mind was filled with it. So I decided
to ask my companion a few leading questions, noting well his replies.
"And I will first," I determined within myself, "inquire into the mooted
point concerning the existence of an aristocratic feeling in the United
States. Some of our English writers on 'American Manners and Customs,'
and our most acute analysts of American character, say that the
Americans are great snobs, and are only too glad to claim the possession
of even the most distant aristocratic connection;" so I broached the
subject to Bainbridge.

"It interests me to convince you," he began, in reply, "that in the
United States there is scarcely a vestige of aristocratic feeling. In
fact as in theory, there is in this country but one class of people.
Such supposed barriers as wealth and political position are only
partitions of paper--relative nothings. I do not mention heredity,
because in the United States all attempts to establish a family line
result in the family rotting before it gets ripe. The only pretence to
hereditary pride which we have here, exists in two States; in one of
them some four or five hundred persons cannot forget that their
forefathers got to shore before somebody else; and in the other a few
families still dispute over the threadbare question of whose
great-great-grandmother cost the most pounds of tobacco. Now,
candidly--is this sufficient to justify a reproach from Europe that we
are striving to claim or to create an aristocracy?

"And then there is that other reproach--we're such outrageous
tuft-hunters. I shall not deny having seen an American run himself out
of breath to get a peep at a duke, but I never knew an American spend
money to see one, unless the American was too beastly rich to care for
money at all. And then, hereditary nobles do not wear well here. Let a
visiting duke be followed within a year by anything less than a king,
and the visitor will fail to excite anybody out of a walk. You must not
in England judge of this subject from the effect on our people of a
certain not remote visit; for the people of the United States have a
feeling of respect and affection for the present royal family of Great
Britain which no other royal family or individual, past or present, has
ever produced. Hum, hum! Our people mean well; but curiosity and
imitation will not die out of the human race till an inch or two more of
the spinal column drops off."

Still with a view to the gathering of facts for my intended treatise, I
asked Bainbridge to explain in what distinctive manner the people of the
United States were benefited by a republican form of government. He
replied that he knew nothing worth mentioning of the science of
government, and had never been outside of the United States.

"But," he continued, "I can tell you something of what the whole people
of this country enjoy. And to begin with, there is, as I have intimated,
in the United States but one class of people, aside from the criminal
class common to all lands, and that vicious but not relatively numerous
element which lives on the borderland between respectability and actual
crime. This truth seems sometimes to be questioned in Europe--why, I can
but guess. Who would attempt to enter the nurseries and schoolrooms of
our land today, and, by inquiring as to the parentage of the children,
select from among them any approximation to those from whom are to come,
in twenty or thirty years, the men that shall then govern our States,
sit in our National Congress, direct our army and navy, and control our
commerce? I have heard that in Europe it is rather the exception for a
son to reach exalted position when the father has earned a living by
manual labor. In the United States this is not the exception, but the
rule. At this moment the positions alluded to are here filled by the
sons of poor fathers. With us, inherited wealth appears to be rather a
detriment than an aid to political advancement of more than a petty
kind. 'And yet,' you may say, 'your people are not always satisfied.' No
advancing, upward-looking people is ever satisfied. With such a people,
too, the demagogue is a natural product; and the demagogue period of
this country is at hand. But there will never be a tom-fool revolution
in this fair land. The people here know that when they have universal
suffrage and majority rule they've pulled the last hair out of the end
of the cat's tail for them."

I made a remark, to which Bainbridge replied:

"Yes, we managed to finish up a pretty fair revolution here some twelve
years ago; but that revolution was caused by a disagreement about the R.
of B. Now----"

"Pardon me," I said "but what was the 'R. of B?'"

"Oh, excuse me," he answered. "The R. of B. was the Relic of Barbarism,
human slavery--the only relic the United States has ever had, too."

I prided myself that the material for my book was piling up at a great
rate; and I determined to persevere.

"How about the feeling of dislike of Americans for the English, of which
we have heard so much in England?" I asked. "Not that I have had any
evidence of such a feeling."

"That is a plant which has finally withered away in spite of some
careful artificial cultivation. The politician who shall attempt to
build on any such feeling against England (a statesman will never desire
to make the attempt) will soon learn his mistake. Oh, I suppose it
pleases some Americans to think we got the best of our mother in
1783--such a big, strong, wealthy mother, too. A little bit of talk
doesn't hurt her any, and it does some of us a heap of good. When a boy
runs away from home, half the glory and fun is in being missed; and if
the folks at home won't say they miss him, why, he must say all the
louder that they are mourning over the loss. But I will say to you--and
I say it with the fullest conviction of its truth--that the people of
the United States could not in any way be induced to take up arms
against Great Britain, save in their own undivided interest.
Individually, as you already know, I love England--not England's fops,
but her people; I love the literature of England, I love her memories, I
esteem and admire her well-executed laws. The literature of England has
been my mental food from boyhood--aye, almost from infancy; and her
memories, her memories! I think of London as Macaulay must have thought
of Athens. Decent Americans--that is, a majority--don't listen to jingo
politicians; and new arrivals with a grievance against England are left
to the _vis medicatrix naturæ_. There'll never be another war between
England and the United States. Our Anglo-Saxon element think normally;
and the vast majority of our German citizens have always been on the
sensible and morally right side of national questions--there's nothing
long-haired or cranky about them. I like the Germans because they don't
hanker after the unknown. I believe that most reading Americans--that is
to say three-fourths of all--feel toward England as Irving and Hawthorne
did.--But, from your description, that must be the home of Peters, just
ahead of us."

He was right; and we stopped in front of the old sailor's house. An aged
man, apparently a coal miner, came to the door as our buggy stopped. We
called him to us and inquired concerning Peters, who he told us was
quietly sleeping. Then we asked with regard to stabling accommodations,
and learned that Peters had an old unused stable, the last old horse
that he had owned having preceded its master into the beyond. The old
miner offered to care for our horse; so we gathered up our supplies, and
entered the little log house that contained so much of interest for us.
We found Peters asleep.

Making ourselves as comfortable as circumstances would permit, we
awaited developments. At about midnight Peters awoke. He asked for a
drink of water, which was given to him. His voice was feeble, and I saw
that Bainbridge felt doubtful as to the length of time that Peters might
remain alive and be able to talk intelligently. But after we had given
him a little diluted port, and followed it with a cup of prepared beef
extract, his actions betokened less weakness, his voice in particular
gaining in strength. The poor old fellow had been of necessity much
neglected, and our efforts to arouse him met with decidedly good
results. All through the night we gratified every want which he
expressed, and attended to every need of his that our own minds could
suggest. No attempt was made to draw from him any information concerning
his strange voyage; but, on the advice of Bainbridge, we occasionally
spoke aloud to each other, and now and then to Peters himself--always on
indifferent topics. This was done to familiarize the old sailor with our
voices; and as far as we could do so without any possible injury to him,
we kept a light in the room, that he should become accustomed to our
appearance. From time to time Bainbridge would step to the bedside, and
place his hand on the old man's forehead; and later he would every now
and then put an arm about the invalid's body, and raise him up to take a
swallow of nourishment or wine.

Before morning, Bainbridge had reached a stage of familiarity that
permitted him to sit on the edge of Peters' bed and talk to the old
fellow briefly and quietly about his farm, and of Doctor Castleton's
goodness and ability, and on other subjects presumably interesting to
the invalid. Bainbridge would gently pat the poor old man on a shoulder,
and smooth his head--somewhat as one does in making the acquaintance of
a big dog. By morning Peters was thoroughly accustomed to our presence;
and he seemed to take our watchfulness as a matter of course, and even
to look for our attentions as a kind of right. He had slept several
hours through the night, and at five o'clock was awake and seemingly
much improved. Not the slightest delirium, even of the passive form--in
fact, nothing of a nature that could alarm or disconcert us, had
occurred. Bainbridge had mentioned eight o'clock as about the time he
would broach the subject of subjects to Peters, intending, as a matter
of course, to lead up to it by very tactful gradations, passing from
journeys in the abstract to the journeys in the concrete, thence to sea
voyages, and thence, perhaps, to some mention of recent arctic (not
antarctic) explorations; and then, asking no questions yet, to proceed
to a mention of Nantucket, from which vantage ground the propriety of
risking a mention of the name Barnard would be considered. If up to this
point all went well, a more pointed question or allusion might well be
risked--the brig Grampus, for instance, might be named; and then,
without more delay than should be necessary for Peters' rest, we might
hope to elicit the whole story of that wonderful voyage of discovery,
the evidence of the completion of which certainly appeared to be before
our eyes in the form of Dirk Peters, the returned voyager to the South
Pole, in person.

At six o'clock we prepared our own breakfast, and enjoyed it, sweetened
as it was by a night in the pure country air, and seasoned with the
anticipation of marvellous discoveries, involving the mysteries of a
strange land, no doubt teeming with amazing surprises, and, as we felt
that we had reason to believe, peopled by a race of beings with customs
and attributes extremely wonderful.

We had just arisen from our breakfast when a buggy drove rapidly up to
the house, and stopped; and we heard the voice of Doctor Castleton,
shouting something to the old miner, who had gone forth a moment before
to care for Bainbridge's horse.




The SEVENTH Chapter


Doctor Castleton entered the sick-room with his usual impetuosity,
saluting us jointly in an off-hand but courteous manner as he crossed
the floor to the bedside of Peters, and took one of the invalid's wrists
in his hand.

"Ah," he said; "better! The quinine of yesterday has done its work; the
bed-time dose of calomel has gone through the liver and stirred up that
enemy of human health and happiness, the bile; and the morning dose of
salts will, beyond a peradventure, soon be heard from. Now we will throw
the whiskey toddy into him, and plenty of it, too; and--yes, we'll go on
with the quinine, repeat the calomel to-night, and have him ready for
something else by to-morrow."

Now I never like to mention doubtful incidents in such a manner as to
suggest my own belief in them; but I then suspected, and I am now
morally certain, that Doctor Bainbridge had, in assuming the care of
Peters, failed to execute medical orders, and had administered only
remedies or pretended remedies of his own, so as to prevent Peters,
myself, and the attending physician from detecting any omissions. This,
I am aware, is a terrible charge to make--still, I make it: Peters did
not get a fourth, if any, of the medicines left for him by Doctor
Castleton during the time that Bainbridge cared for the old man.

But if Bainbridge had, with the intention of prolonging the life of
Peters, and with greater confidence in his own professional judgment
than in that of Castleton, omitted the remedies prescribed, it was soon
apparent that the deception might prove in vain. I have already
intimated that the older physician's perceptions and intuitions were so
quick as sometimes to appear almost uncanny; and after asking a question
or two, he began to pour upon a square of white paper, from a small vial
which he took from one of his vest pockets, a very heavy white powder;
and we soon perceived that the powder was to be poured from the paper to
the invalid's tongue. Bainbridge was interested in Peters--not only
selfishly and with a motive to learn the facts of the old sailor's
strange voyage; but he was also interested in the poor old wreck for the
sake of the man himself. I saw that in the opinion of Bainbridge, if
that white powder were administered to the invalid it would injure
him--probably weaken him, and cause a relapse, and perhaps even an
earlier death than otherwise might occur; and I saw that Bainbridge was
really apprehensive and annoyed. At last he suggested to Castleton to
delay the administration of the intended remedy, if only for a few
hours. And when Castleton called attention to his own view of the
necessity for quick action, involving the instant administration of the
dose, it would obviously have been so unwise to contradict him, that
Bainbridge did not risk such a course. But, over-anxious to gain his
point, he did something still more impolitic. He suggested a remedy of
his own by which, he said, Peters would speedily be relieved--a new
drug, I believe, or at least a remedy not known to Castleton. For a
moment I looked for an explosion of offended dignity; but Castleton
controlled his first impulse, and, not looking at Bainbridge, he centred
his apparent attention wholly upon myself, and with exceedingly grave
vigor, said,

"I, sir, am a member of the Clare County Medical Society--I was once
President of that learned body, and have since then for seven
consecutive years been its Secretary--my penmanship being illegible to
the other members, and often to myself, preventing many disagreements,
by precluding a successful reference to the minutes of past meetings.
Now, sir, tell me, as man to man, can I consult with, or listen to
suggestions--even to suggestions, though worthy of a gigantic
intellect--can I listen to suggestions coming from the mentality of a
non-member of our learned body? Before replying, let me say that our
society is known throughout all of Egypt--that is, you know, Egypt,
Illinois. When a medical savant in Paris, or Leipsig, or London, alleges
a discovery, we determine the questions of its originality and its
value--the chief purpose of our meeting, however, being to present our
own discoveries. Now, sir, I appeal to you whether our rules should or
should not be strictly obeyed--and the second clause of section three of
those rules and regulations--an ethical necessity, and found in the
ethical codes of all well-regulated medical societies the world
over--says that a member shall not meet in consultation a non-member,
even to save a human life--a decidedly remote possibility."

He paused. Neither Bainbridge nor I spoke. In fact, an expression of our
thoughts would have been wholly unnecessary, as Castleton appeared to
comprehend what was in our minds, as shown by his continued remarks.

"'Liberality,'" you may say: "True, there should be liberality in this
eternal world. Individually we _are_ liberal--we _are_ gentlemen; but it
is different with us when you take us as a body. I am for harmony. I
admit that at our meetings we do sometimes fight like very devils--life
is a conflict, anyway. Sir, the country is full of cursed heresies and
growing schisms.--But let me ask--not the doctor here, whom I respect
for his immense learning and Cyclopsian (I mean large--not single-eyed)
wisdom--what _his_ remedy would be? I ask you, sir, not him."

Here Doctor Castleton stepped close to my side, and speaking into my ear
in a ghastly whisper, said, "The ass isn't Regular!" He then drew back,
and looked at me as if expecting astonishment on my part.

I then exchanged a few words with Bainbridge, and informed Castleton of
the result. "Ah, ha--ah, ha--indeed," he said, with as near an approach
to sarcasm as was possible with him. "So my learned young friend thinks
that an organ--the liver--weighing nearly four pounds is to be moved
with a hundredth of a drop of--of--anything! Damn it, sir, am I awake?"

"Ask Doctor Castleton, sir, what portion of a grain of small-pox virus
it would require to disseminate over a whole county, if not checked, a
dread disease? Ask him from what an oak-tree grows?"

"Ask him," said Castleton, "how long it takes an acorn to act. In this
case we require celerity of action--force and penetration."

"Ask him," said Bainbridge, "if the solar rays have celerity, and force,
and penetration; and how much they weigh. It requires fine shot to bring
down the essence of a disease----"

"Tell him," shouted Castleton, "that the liver is a mammoth that
requires a twenty-four-pounder to penetrate its hide. We don't hunt the
rhinoceros with bird-shot."

"Say to the gentleman," said Bainbridge, slightly flushed, but still
with dignity, "that in this case the animal is not to be slaughtered,
but to be cured."

"Damme," said Castleton, "who says slaughtered?--Have I, a surgeon of
renown, a gentleman and a scholar, a member of the County Society, sunk
so low that I can be called a murderer? Stop--stop where you are--stop
in time. Say to the Gentleman that he has gone too far--say that an
apology is in order--say that he treads the edge of a living crater. I
am dangerous--so my friends say--devilish dangerous"--a smile crossed
the face of Bainbridge; and even so slight and transient an appearance
as a passing smile was not lost on Castleton, though he seemed to be
looking another way--"I mean dangerous on the field of honor. Quackery,
sir, is my abhorrence----"

"Come, come, gentlemen," I said, "you are allowing your professional
_amour propre_ to mislead you. Now," I continued, assuming an air of
_bonhomie_, "it seems to me, an outsider, that this whole difference
might easily be adjusted. Doctor Castleton here advocates firing
twenty-four-pound balls into the patient, and Doctor Bainbridge suggests
peppering the invalid with bird-shot. There is certainly room between
the bowlders for the bird-shot to slip, and the one will not interfere
with the other--I say, give both. Doctor Castleton advises that the dose
be immediately given, whilst Doctor Bainbridge appears to think four or
five hours hence the better time. I suggest a compromise: let them be
given an hour or two hence. There seems to be also some obstacle in the
way of one of you giving the other's medicine--so let me administer
both the remedies. Now what possible objection can be advanced to this?"

They both laughed; and as Castleton would be on his way home in a few
moments, Bainbridge was thoroughly pleased with my proposal. Castleton
tacitly consented, and in half a minute seemed to have forgotten the
episode--or, at most, gave indication of remembrance only by an apparent
desire to be over-agreeable to Bainbridge. A moment later he said to me,

"My dear sir, I hastened my visit here this morning out of consideration
for yourself. Last evening after you had departed, Mr. ---- called at
the Loomis House to see you. I happened to meet him as, in some
disappointment at having missed you, he was leaving the hotel, where he
had learned that you might be gone for two days. I then offered to
deliver any message that he should send to you, this morning. When he
was informed that you were but ten miles away, in the country, he said
that his business with you was pressing; and he asked if it would be
possible for you to return to town for a few hours this morning. Then I
said that I would convey to you his wishes, and that if you so desired
you could be at your hotel before nine o'clock--at which hour he said he
would call at the Loomis House, with the hope of meeting you."

I thanked the doctor; and after consulting Bainbridge, said I would
avail myself of the offer to return at once to Bellevue. I appreciated
that it would be Bainbridge and not I who would have to manage Peters.
It was a disappointment to think of missing Peters' story at first-hand;
but I hoped to return by the middle of the afternoon, and I knew that
Bainbridge could repeat with accuracy all that the old sailor should
say. I doubted whether Bainbridge could extract very much from the old
man's senile intellect before my return, as the aged voyager was, both
in mind and body, quite feeble, and of little endurance. Besides, when
once started and warmed to his subject--and very little information
could be gained till he was so started--he would no doubt be garrulous.

Doctor Castleton and I started for town at a brisk trot, the doctor
having parted from Bainbridge in the best of humors. His last words,
shouted back as we drove off, were, "Don't forget the calomel at
nine-thirty, doctor; and add to the treatment whatever you may think
best. I trust you implicitly. Send me word if you need help."

Strange man! So pleasant, and so harsh; so grand, and so ignoble; so
great, and so small; so broad, and so narrow; so kind, and so unkind. As
my mind ran along in this channel, I wondered how one and the same man
could express the views that he had proclaimed in connection with his
medical association, and yet speak of life and death as he had spoken to
me on the day preceding. What did he really believe? Could the
actor-temperament, displaying itself on most occasions, in connection
with a display at times of his natural self, as we say, account for all
his eccentricities?

As we fairly flew along the forest road, nearing our destination by a
mile in each three minutes, we came to the only hill on the entire route
which was considerable, both in extent and in degree of gradient. Doctor
Castleton allowed the gait of his horses to slacken into a slow walk;
and--ever nervous, ever active--he reached into the side pocket of his
linen duster, and drew forth a small book, apparently fresh from the
publisher.

"'The Mistakes of the Gods, and Other Lectures,'" he said, looking at
the back of the volume, and reading its title. "Ah, 'The Gods.' The
title, sir, almost tells the whole story; and so far as you and I are
concerned, it is almost a waste of time for us to open the book--and a
crime against themselves for ignorant men to do so."

"The author must be one of your 'holy terrors' that I hear mentioned," I
said. "A Western 'bad man' no doubt. Sad! sad! is it not?"

"Oh, no, no; the author is not a cowboy--he's a perfect gentleman--as
polished as I am; and there's nothing very sad in the book. It contains
several lectures in the line of agnostic agitation, which were from time
to time delivered by a very talented, but, as I think, mistaken man.
When I say mistaken, I do not mean mistaken in the sense that our church
people might apply the term to him; for our church people seem to
misunderstand him, almost as greatly as he misapprehends the purposes of
nineteenth-century Anglo-Saxon Christian workers. But mark my words,
sir, you will soon, in England, hear of this young 'infidel' lecturer;
for with his keen brain, his invincible logic, his concise and beautiful
rhetoric, he will soon be recognized as the most popular living
agnostic. His home is not far distant from Bellevue, and I have
frequently heard him lecture. I think him the best platform orator I
have ever listened to, though I have twice been charmed by the eloquence
of Phillips, and a dozen times by that of Beecher. I shall not outrage
your own and my own manhood by alluding to anything which the more
partisan church people say of this brilliant agnostic; and I say what I
do, only because in your distant home you may some day wonder just what
is behind an agnostic demonstration such as he is leading up to, and
which is certain to centralize the dissatisfied spirit of the country
into an anti-church propaganda of no mean proportions. I am opposed to
such a movement; but I believe in truth as the only durable weapon, and
I love truth for truth's sake--I should refuse to enter the gateway of
heaven if liars were admitted. I cannot go into the history of this man,
but this much is fact: There are reasons which cause him to believe that
in striking at Christianity he is performing a highly praiseworthy
action. In this belief he is as sincere and as enthusiastic in his cold
logical way, as is any Christian in _his_ belief. If duplicity were
possible to this man--or if he could have found it consistent with his
sense of right even to keep silence concerning his opinion on religious
subjects--he would by this time have been Governor of Illinois; and,
with his ability, there is no elective office in the country to which he
might not aspire with reasonable certainty of success. He himself is
aware of all this, as are all who know him. At the early age of
thirty-three, before his views were generally known, he was our
Attorney-General. No political party will ever again dare to nominate
him for an office."

"This is all wrong," I said; "it savors of religious persecution."

"True," said Castleton, "it does; but the fact is as I state it. He
would if he ran for office lose enough votes from his own party to allow
his opponent to win."

"But, my dear doctor," I said, "I fail to catch your reasons for
thinking this man mistaken. You surely would not have him be untrue to
himself?"

"Oh, no--never that! I mean that he is intellectually mistaken in
thinking that the world is still to be benefited by agnostic agitation
among the masses. Voltaire had a good reason for proclaiming and
teaching his views, because in France, in his day, religious infidelity
was necessary to political liberty. Tom Paine had a good reason for his
course, because Christianity, misrepresented at that time by mistaken or
corrupt men, was arrayed on the side of the despot, and so continued up
to the beginning of the French Revolution. But this man has no good
excuse for a fight against church influence in the United States, now in
1877. The influence of the Christian church is now certainly exerted for
good, and does not attempt to restrict the liberty of any man, or of
society."

"But did you not just say that this agnostic's views would forever
prevent his election to public office, here in this great free country,
in the year 1877 and onward?"

"We cannot have a free country and not allow a man to vote against
another, even if his vote were influenced by the cut of a candidate's
trousers."

"Yes," I said; "but if the cut of a candidate's trousers influenced a
man's vote, such a man would be a good object for education. Your
agnostic would no doubt say that the influence of church is to be fought
so long as it judges of a man's capability to do one thing well by his
opinion on a totally different subject."

"You will never educate the people out of their prejudices; but I myself
should vote against this man because his course shows his views to be
inconsistent with statesmanship. No person desires to restrict another's
individual opinions; we only combat this man's because of their effects,
as he combats those of his opponents. There are as many agnostics,
proportionally, that would not vote for a Presbyterian, for instance,
for public office, as there are Presbyterians who, under like
circumstances, would not vote for an agnostic."

"But in what way does the belief, or want of belief, of an agnostic,
prevent an otherwise able man from being a statesman?" I asked.

"No doubt some of the best statesmen living are agnostics; but they are
not agnostic agitators. Men who are able to digest and assimilate
agnostic opinions, are able to initiate those ideas for themselves; and
only men who are able to properly digest and assimilate such ideas
should have them at all."

"Can you," I asked, "state an instance in which what you indicate as
premature education of the masses in agnostic ideas, might lead to
injury to the persons so instructed, or to society at large?"

"Yes, sir, I can. Your ignorant American--the 'cracker' element of the
South, your ignorant Italian, and your ignorant Irishman are injured by
taking away their religious beliefs. The first of these, when church
people, dress neatly, are honorable, and have some upward-tending
ambitions; whilst those of them that are infidels are reduced--men and
women--to a state of ambitionless inertia and tobacco saturation--if no
worse. The two latter are either under religious control, or under
secret-society control. If the lower-class Irishman or Italian,
unendowed with judgment to rightly use the little knowledge he already
possesses--to properly interpret his own feelings or guide his own
impulses--has not his church with its priestly control, he will have his
secret-society with its secret executive control, its bovine fury, and
its senseless pertinacity, the poison-bowl and the dagger. For my part,
if a man must either seek liberty from ambush, and learn independence
through treachery, or else be on his knees before a graven image, suited
to his mental calibre--let us keep him on his knees till he can rise to
something better than murder. Why, sir, an Irish Republican (a
rarity)--an editor, once said to me that some of our Irish emigrants
have hair on their teeth when they get to America; and, though I may be
wrong, I never see an Italian organ-grinder without first thinking of a
dagger between my ribs, and then settling down to a comfortable feeling
that if the fellow's a Catholic the confessional stands between me and
such a danger. The man who attempts to teach such fellows about complete
liberty should be responsible for any consequent acts."

"Still, doctor," I said, "the road to universal knowledge cannot be all
smooth. Ground must be broken by somebody. If there is anything in
Christianity that bars the way to final freedom of mind for the whole
human race, then I myself say, clear away the obstructions--the work
cannot begin too soon or continue too vigorously."

"I see nothing in true Christianity but good for the human race--surely
you speak only to call out my own views. If there is anything in any
church policy or polity which requires reforming, let it be reformed."

"Excuse me, doctor," I said; "but I had thought you yourself an
agnostic. Do you not think that if a religion will not bear the test of
cold reason, it should be discarded from the lives of men?"

"No, I do not. The human mind is not comprised in intellect alone--it
has its moral or emotional side, wholly apart from reason. Religion is
not to be reasoned about--it is to be felt. No founder of a religion
ever claimed for it a place in man's reason. Now just think for a
minute. Let us leave the ignorant, and consider what the best of men
are--men who have attained a mental cultivation certainly as great as
will ever be possible to the masses. Take the very highest society in
England and America--to what extent are its members controlled by
_reason_, and to what extent by _feeling_ and by the fixed sentiments
growing out of feeling? Ratiocination does not influence one of their
actions in a million. There is not within my knowledge a single instance
where a purely rational conception has been the basis of practice, in
opposition to feeling."

"Surely," I said, "you do not mean to say that educated men are not
governed in the main by reason?"

"I mean just what I say--that I do not know, in practice, a single
instance in which they are so governed in opposition to feeling. Pshaw,
pshaw! young man; if we are to compel the acts of practical daily life
to conform with a dialectic demonstration of what is best for us--to do
only what is in reason best for us--we must simply cease to live, though
we do continue to breathe. Even in physics, of what use are logical
demonstrations, when the premises are only a foundation more unstable
than quicksand--purely provisional?

"Now if these agnostics were truthful--which they try to be; and were
consistent--which they are not, they would be in a trying situation.
Reason shows no advantage to a man in kissing his wife; he has no
syllogistic endorsement for supporting her and the children; in fact, he
has no business to have children--all the result of feeling or
sentiment, all rubbish, and beneath the intellect of a man who worships
Pure Reason! And if the demands of man's moral or affectional nature are
a reason for such indulgences, then his aspirations to the great primal
cause of the known, the unknown, and (to us here and now) unknowable
wonders and mysteries of the universe without, and of ourselves within,
is also justifiable in reason, and ought not by wit and eloquence to be
juggled out of the ingenuous mind. The masses are governed by religion,
directly and indirectly, to an extent much greater than at first thought
appears. The daily life of the agnostic himself is shaped by his
Christian heredity and environment. Now our Author furnishes no
substitute for this intuitive demand of being. If reason can supply
nothing in place of religion, why not allow those who possess religious
conviction to retain so agreeable, and to others beneficial, a
belief?--Now right here I can detect the voice of the agnostic
agitator--this is his strongest situation, and he simply smiles when you
make this opening for him. The voice says, 'Agreeable? Agreeable to burn
forever in hell? Well, well, my friend--our ideas of pleasure differ.'
This is sophistical twaddle. It is not the Christian that suffers from a
fear of hell--it is the sinner, through his guilty conscience.
Conscience, conscience; the only barrier between us and hell on earth!
Christians are comforted by the thought of a loving Christ--Christians,
in my experience, do not suffer."

"Why, sir," I said, "I cannot but wonder that you are not yourself a
professed Christian."

"Never mind me, young man.--But here we are on the edge of town. I
could, if I wanted to, preach a sermon capable of converting every
heathen within sound of my voice. Once, at a camp-meeting, I did preach
a sermon; and I tell you, the old people looked mighty sober, and the
younger and more susceptible of my auditors covered their faces with
their hands and seemed to shake with grief and contrition. But, pshaw,
pshaw; people don't go to hear either witty agnostics lecture, or
preachers preach, to get something for their brain-boxes to reason
about. Believe me "--tapping the volume, still in his hand--"this sort
of thing won't make anybody reason. After all, the question is one of
swapping off Christ for an Illinois lawyer."




The EIGHTH Chapter


It lacked half an hour of nine o'clock as we drove up before the Loomis
House, where I alighted, and ran up to my rooms. I had scarcely more
than made a hasty toilet, when Arthur came in. After telling me who had,
during my absence, called to see me, and after attending to some
trifling wants which I expressed, he shuffled his feet in a style that I
had learned to recognize as indicating a desire to say something not
within the compass of our purely business relationship--a liberty which
the precedents of our first two days of acquaintanceship in connection
with later events had solidified into a vested right.

"Well, Arthur?" I said.

"I read the whole book, sir--there it is, on the table. That book just
did get me. But what did become of Pym and Peters? And is it true you've
found that old soc-doligin' pirate?"

I told him that Peters was found.

"Well, now!" he continued. "I'd like to see the old four-foot-eighter.
But if you love me, tell me what that white curtain reachin' down from
the sky was, and what made the ocean bilin' hot? What made them
ante-artic niggers so 'fraid of everything white, and what was the
hiryglificks on the black marble meant to say? And, most of all, who was
the female that stood in the way of the boat? Say--I don't blame
anybody--but if Mr. Poe knowed he didn't know these points, what did he
get our mouths waterin' for? Did you find out these points yet?"

I explained to him that probably at that very moment Doctor Bainbridge
was sitting on the edge of Dirk Peters' cot, drinking in the wonderful
story; and that as soon as a certain gentleman had called to see me, I
expected to return to Peters' house, and to remain until we knew all.

"Go slow," said Arthur, "and don't fall down on any importing points.
Better take time, and catch everything. I asked Doctor Castleton last
night what made that ocean bile; and he said he guessed the mouth of
hell was down that way, and Satin had just opened the door to air out.
That's him; if it ain't heaven it's got to be hell. But how old Peters
ever lived this long with Castleton monkeyin' with him is a mighty funny
thing.--But who's that?"

A rap had sounded on my door. My caller had arrived.

I did not succeed in getting back to Bainbridge and Peters so soon as I
had expected. My business in the town dragged along far into the
evening, and it was nine o'clock by the time I was at liberty. At ten
o'clock I sent for a conveyance, and was driven to Peters' house, where
I arrived just before midnight.

I found Peters sleeping soundly, and Bainbridge dozing in a chair. My
entrance aroused Bainbridge. He arose, smiling, and was apparently glad
to see me. I saw at a glance that he had been successful in obtaining
from Peters the secrets of his antarctic voyage. "Well?" I asked.

"The information which I have gained," said Bainbridge, "even could I
procure no more, would suffice to explain all those mysteries that Poe
hints at as fact, and much that he seems to apprehend with that sixth
sense which in the genius approaches a union of clairvoyance and
prescience--mysteries of which he does not speak in language
sufficiently clear for common comprehension. At all events, I am not
disappointed; and more may yet be procured. There remains much of
interest, in the way of _minutiæ_, which I expect to learn to-morrow. I
know now what made that antarctic region more than tropical, and what
the white curtain was--and is. I know how the hieroglyphics came in the
caverns of black marl. That antarctic country exceeds, in the truly
wonderful, anything in the world, old or new, with which I am
acquainted, or of which I have heard."

"But is it true? Have you not been listening to fairy tales?--or,
rather, to sailor tales?"

"When to-morrow I tell you what I have, hour after hour, with brief
rests, drawn from that poor old battered hulk"--he pointed toward
Peters' cot--"and when you consider what he is--then say if he is the
man, or his sailor friends are the men, to invent such a story. I admit
that at times during the day his mind seemed to wander slightly, and
that he has the usual faculty of sea-faring men for exaggeration; so
that at times I had to employ my best discrimination to enable me to
separate the real from the fanciful, that I might retain the true and
discard the untrue. He seems to have lived for more than a year in
proximity to the South Pole, and his experiences were as marvellous as
that country is strangely grand, and its people truly wonderful--Oh,
no--nothing on the Gulliver order; the people are not dwarfs or giants,
and they have no horses either that talk or that do not talk; no
yahoos--nothing in that line. 'Wings?' Oh, no--no flying men or women,
no women in gauze, either; everything quite in good taste and genteel.
Just wait, now; you'll hear it all in an orderly way--which I myself did
not, however. 'One-eyed?' I told you, just now, that it was all in good
taste and genteel. No, no; nothing Homeric--no sheep, and no sirens.
Now, I'm really tired, and you'll not succeed in starting me on a story
that'll take six or eight hours to tell, even if we do not stop to
discuss matters as we progress. To-morrow, as I before said, we will get
from Peters all other possible facts, and no doubt we shall gather
further particulars; then we will go to town. I intend to come out here
every day till Peters gets better or dies--and I suppose you will not
refuse to keep me company. Every evening we will meet in my rooms, or in
yours, and I will recite the story in my own way. Now does that satisfy
you?"

It satisfied me fully, I said; and then we spread our blankets, and made
a night of it on the floor.

The next day Bainbridge spent the forenoon, for the most part, sitting
on the edge of Dirk Peters' cot, listening to the old man talk,
describe, explain. I walked out, and explored the immediately adjacent
country, entertaining myself as best I could. At about two o'clock in
the afternoon we started for town, leaving Peters much better than when
two days before we had first, together, entered his humble home. We
promised to see him the next day; and, in fact, one or both of us
returned each day for many succeeding days. That evening Doctor
Bainbridge came to my rooms, and began the recitation of Dirk Peters'
story; and that, too, was continued from day to day.

And it is now time that the patient reader should also know the secrets
of that far-distant antarctic region--secrets of which Poe himself died
in ignorance--save as the genius, the seer, knows the wonders of heaven
and earth--sees gems that lie in hidden places, and flowers that bloom
obscurely, and feels the mysteries of ocean depths, and all that is so
far--or near, so great--or small, that common vision sees it not.




The NINTH Chapter


There may be among my readers some who have never read "The Narrative of
A. Gordon Pym," or have so long ago perused that interesting and
mysterious conception, that they have forgotten even the outlines of the
story. It is the purpose of the present chapter to review a few of the
incidents in that narrative, a knowledge of which will add to the
clearer understanding of Peters' story.

Those who are familiar with Edgar Allan Poe's admirable and entrancing
narrative just mentioned, are aware that it is written in
autobiographical form, the facts for the most part being furnished by
Pym in the shape of journal or diary entries, which are edited by Mr.
Poe. For such readers it will be but a waste of time to peruse the
present chapter, brief though it is. And let me further say to any
chance reader of mine who has never had opportunity to enjoy that
exciting and edifying work of America's great genius of prose fiction,
that he is to be envied the possession of the belated pleasure that
awaits him--only a treasured memory of which delight remains to the rest
of us.

From my own narrative I shall omit much of description and colloquy
which, during its development in 1877, occurred concerning discoveries
of a geographical and geological nature, and also many discussions of a
character purely philosophical; but no fact shall be discarded. The
historian has, in my opinion, no discretionary power concerning the
introduction or elimination of facts. His duty is plain, and in the
present instance it shall be faithfully performed.

The following presents a very general outline of "The Narrative of A.
Gordon Pym":

In the year 1827, Pym, just verging upon manhood, runs away from his
home in the town of Nantucket, on the island of the same name, in
companionship with his boy friend, Augustus Barnard, son of the captain
of the ship on which they depart. The name of the brig on which they
embark is the Grampus, which is starting for a trading voyage in the
South Pacific Ocean. Young Barnard secretes Pym in the hold of the brig,
to remain hidden until so far from land as to make a return of the
runaway impracticable. Pym, hidden amid the freightage of the hold,
falls into a prolonged slumber, probably caused by the foul air in that
part of the vessel. When the brig is four days at sea, a majority of the
crew mutiny; and after killing many of those who have not joined them,
Captain Barnard is set adrift in a small boat, without food and with
only a jug of water. Young Barnard is permitted to remain on the vessel.
There is a dog that plays a leading part in the mutiny episode by acting
as a messenger between Barnard and Pym, who had no other means of
communicating.

Next comes a counter mutiny, made necessary to preserve the life of one
Peters, a sailor to whom Barnard owes his life. The ship's cook is
determined to kill Peters, and is about to accomplish his purpose, when
Peters, young Barnard, and a sailor named Parker, who joins the two,
devise a plan for overcoming the mutineers of the "cook's party." This
they succeeded in doing by, at the right moment, producing from his
hiding-place young Pym, who is dressed to resemble a certain murdered
sailor whose corpse is still on the brig; and during the fright of the
"cook's party," Peters and Parker kill the cook and his followers.

Then the four--Barnard, Pym, Peters, and the sailor Parker--have many
thrilling adventures. The brig is finally wrecked in a storm, and only
the inverted hull remains above water, to which the four cling for many
days. The party is at last rescued by a trading-vessel on its way to
discover new lands in the Antarctic Ocean. They reach 83 south latitude,
soon after which a landing is made on an island inhabited by a tribe of
strange black people. Here, through a trick of the islanders, the crew
lose their lives--all save Pym and Peters. Parker had already died, and
in a manner more entertaining to the reader in the perusal than to
Parker in the performance; and which, Peters said forty-nine years
later, the mere thought of, always made him willing to wait for his
supper when he had of necessity to forego a dinner.

Whilst escaping in a small boat from this island, Pym and Peters abduct
one of the male natives. Like his fellows, this native is black, even to
his teeth; in fact, there is nothing white on the whole island; even the
water has its peculiarities. And also like his fellows, he dreads the
color _white_; and whenever he sees anything white he becomes almost
frenzied or paralyzed with terror. The small boat with its three
occupants is carried on an ocean current, to the south. One day Pym, in
taking a white handkerchief from his pocket allows the wind to flare it
into the face of the black islander, who sinks in convulsions to the
bottom of the boat, later moaning (as had moaned the other islanders on
seeing white), "Tekeli-li, tekeli-li." He continued to breathe, and no
more. The following day the body of a white animal floats by, a body
similar to one which they had seen on the beach of the island last
visited. Then they see in the south a white curtain, which, after their
further progress in its direction, they observe reaches from the sky to
the water. The water of the ocean current which is hurrying them along
becomes hour by hour warmer, and finally hot. An ash-like material,
which seems to melt as it touches the water, falls all around and over
them. Gigantic white birds fly from beyond the white curtain, screaming
the eternal "Teke-li-li, tekeli-li"--a syllabication that dies away on
the lips of the islander as his soul finally, on that last terrible day,
leaves his body.

The last words of the last of Pym's entries in his journal are as
follows:

"And now we rushed into the embraces of the cataract, where a chasm
threw itself open to receive us. But there arose in our pathway a
shrouded human figure, very far larger in its proportions than any
dweller among men. And the hue of the skin of the figure was of the
perfect whiteness of the snow."

The following description of Dirk Peters as he appeared in the year
1827, or just fifty years before I saw him, apparently a man of
seventy-five years (though we finally concluded that he was nearer
eighty), is Pym's, quoted from Poe's narrative:

"This man was the son of an Indian woman of the tribe of Upsarokas, who
live among fastnesses of the Black Hills, near the source of the
Missouri. His father was a fur-trader, I believe, or at least connected
in some manner with the Indian trading-posts on Lewis River. Peters
himself was one of the most ferocious looking men I ever beheld. He was
short in stature, not more than four feet eight inches high, but his
limbs were of Herculean mould. His hands, especially, were so enormously
thick and broad as hardly to retain a human shape. His arms, as well as
his legs, were bowed in the most singular manner, and appeared to
possess no flexibility whatever. His head was equally deformed, being of
immense size, with an indentation on the crown (like that on the head of
most negroes) and entirely bald. To conceal this latter deficiency,
which did not proceed from old age, he usually wore a wig formed of any
hair-like material which presented itself--occasionally the skin of a
Spanish dog or American grizzly bear. At the time spoken of, he had on a
portion of one of these bear-skins; and it added no little to the
natural ferocity of his countenance, which betook of the Upsaroka
character. The mouth extended nearly from ear to ear; the lips were
thin, and seemed, like some other portions of his frame, to be devoid of
natural pliancy, so that the ruling expression never varied under the
influence of any emotion whatever. This ruling expression may be
conceived when it is considered that the teeth were exceedingly long and
protruding, and were never even partially covered, in any instance, by
the lips. To pass this man with a casual glance, one might imagine him
to be convulsed with laughter; but a second look would induce a
shuddering acknowledgment, that if such an expression were indicative of
merriment, the merriment must be that of a demon. Of this singular being
many anecdotes were prevalent among the seafaring men of Nantucket.
These anecdotes went to prove his prodigious strength when under
excitement, and some of them had given rise to a doubt of his sanity."





The TENTH Chapter


During the early evening of the day on which Doctor Bainbridge and I
returned from our stay with Dirk Peters, I sat in my room at the Loomis
House, impatiently awaiting the moment when Bainbridge was to arrive. I
knew that he was wearied by his labors with Peters, and I did not
anticipate a prolonged talk from him. Still, I was anxious to hear at
least a beginning of the promised story. At the appointed time he came
in, and placing a roll of paper on the table, took the large easy-chair
which I had placed for him.

"As I know," he said, "that the developments of the past three days
must, quite naturally, have developed a curiosity in you of some
intensity to hear the sequel of the Pym adventures, I shall endeavor not
to keep you unnecessarily waiting; but shall allay at once a portion of
your curiosity. Later--tomorrow, if agreeable--I will deal with the
particulars of that strange voyage--perhaps the strangest ever made by
man."

He picked up, and smoothed out upon the table, the roll of paper which
he had brought with him; and then continued:

"In the first place, I will briefly and in a very general way describe
for you the south polar region, which, I feel certain, Pym and Peters
reached, and where they resided for somewhat more than one year. Here is
a map which I have with some care drawn from rough sketches jotted down
as I sat on the edge of Peters' cot, and each of which sketches I had
him verify.

[Illustration: Map of Southpolar region and hili-li

A. Central space of boiling lava Diameter 15 miles. Probable situation
South Pole
B. Ring of hot lava, white hot at inner edge, red hot at outer edge.
Width, about 4 miles
C. Ring of hot lava, dull red, shading to black heat at outer edge.
Width, about 4 miles
D. Ring 4m in width. Blocks of lava, rock salt, and coral-like terrains
EEE. Volcanic mountains, up to 8m in height and valleys
FFF. Antarctic Ocean with islands

SOUTH POLAR REGION _and_ HILI-LI LAND.]

"Now move this way with your chair, and look at this map. And in the
first place, I will tell you that at the South Pole--probably not
precisely at the pole, but certainly within the sixth of a degree of
it--is a circular surface of absolutely white-hot, boiling lava, about
fifteen miles in diameter. This surface was, in ages past, as indicated
by surroundings, many times its present surface extent--say from seventy
to seventy-five miles across. No doubt the surface of the earth at the
Antarctic Pole had once cooled, and later become covered with water,
though with very shallow water--probably at some points by none, at
others by a depth of ten or fifteen feet. From some cause--and many
causes might be imagined--this earth-and-water surface of say two
hundred miles in circumference, sank into the interior of the earth, and
the boiling lava came to the surface. We can scarcely conceive of the
awful effect when the Antarctic Sea poured over the circumference of
this mass of boiling earth and metal.

"Now it must be considered that this boiling lava was not merely a great
surface of white-hot matter, in which case it would, relatively
speaking, soon have cooled. To flood its edges with an overflow of ten
feet of water would be comparable to running a film of water a hundredth
of an inch in depth over the top of a red-hot stove in which a large
fire continues to burn and constantly to renew the heat on its surface.
This surface of boiling lava must have had a practically limitless
depth, and the water which poured over it must have evaporated
instantly. After thinking the matter over, with the _data_ which I have
well in view, I concluded that it required about two hundred years for
the water to reach the limit which it finally attained as water _en
masse_. A little thought on the subject has shown me that Peters is
telling the truth, because his description, to my mind, harmonizes with
the laws of physics. One of the earliest phenomena presented by this
condition, was that so much sea-water evaporated, and evaporated so
rapidly, that masses of rock-salt formed, creating a partial barrier to
the inroads of the sea--I say a partial barrier, because the
deliquescence of salt would cause it to be the poorest of all barriers
to water. Still, we must remember that the immediately surrounding water
must have reached, so far as salt is concerned, the saturation point,
and would have been a very slow solvent of hard rock-salt in enormous
masses and several miles in extent. Then, two other conditions soon
arose: First, the warm surrounding water permitted a coral-like
development, as shown by present appearances, and second, volcanic
action began.

"Now look at my map. This inner circle represents the present area of
boiling lava, which, as I have said, is about fifteen miles in
diameter--the South Pole, according to the natives, being at about the
point corresponding to this dot, marked 'a.' The ring next without the
circle I have made to represent a zone of lava which is at its inner
edge white-hot, and at its outer edge red-hot, its width, let us say, as
the division is arbitrary, about four miles. The second circle
represents a zone of lava which is dull red at its inner edge, and
black, but hot, at its outer. Of course the lava blends away from
white-hot within, to barely warm without; but I thus map it, the better
to picture reigning conditions. The next circle, some four or five miles
in width, represents a ring of cold lava-blocks, masses of rock-salt,
and animalculine remains, from twenty-five to two hundred feet high.
Outside of this last-mentioned zone, we have several rings of volcanic
mountains with intervening valleys, and many active craters at the
summit of mountains; while on the mountain-sides lie numerous masses of
rock-salt, thrown from below by eruptive action, glistening in the
brilliant volcanic light, and slowly deliquescing. This zone of
mountains and valleys is from ten to twenty miles in width, and whilst
in the main its mountains are not more than from half a mile to a mile
high, it contains peaks of five or six miles in height, and there is one
peak which rises nine miles above the sea-level.

"I want you to look particularly at these larger mountain-ranges, one at
the right, the other at the left side of my map--each of which as it
stretches out into the sea divides into two smaller chains. Upon these
ranges, and the comparatively diminutive height of the intervening
mountains, in connection with the fact that there is a constant
wind-current from the lower Pacific (generally speaking, from the west
of longitude 74 W.), depends the habitability of this large island, the
Island of Hili-li (here represented in about longitude 75 E.), and many
other islands which stretch out in the same direction from this enormous
active surface-crater. I say that upon such conditions depends the
habitability of these islands, and so I believe; but there is another
cause for their greater than tropical warmth: If you will glance here on
the right of this map, in the midst of the mountain zone you will see
represented a bay, which, winding among mountains, makes its way very
close to the zone of hot lava--in fact, is divided from it by little
more than the ring of lava-blocks, rock-salt, and animal remains, which
at this point is narrowed to a width of about two miles. The temperature
of the water of this bay at its inner extremity is probably about 180
F.--say 32 below the boiling-point of distilled water; and it flows in a
steady current past the Island of Hili-li. This bay is undoubtedly fed
from the opposite side of the great crater, and its supply flows for
miles in contact with hot lava. It is probable that this extremely warm
water current greatly assists the hot-air current in creating the
super-tropical climate of Hili-li.

"And now, as I have in part satisfied your curiosity, and as I am
somewhat exhausted with my two days' and nights' experience with Peters,
I know you will permit me to rest at so suitable a stopping-point.
To-morrow evening I will take up the story of Dirk Peters where it joins
the sudden break in Pym's journal, and will carry you along to the time
when the inhabitants of Hili-li thought that the atmosphere of some
other land would be more conducive to Peters' longevity and health, as
well as to their own tranquillity. And I assure your Sultanship, that
the story I shall relate to you to-morrow night will be more interesting
than the dry physical facts which I have this evening imparted, and
which it seemed best that you should know before hearing in consecutive
detail the particulars of Peters' voyage."

I assented to his suggestions, thanking him for the clear description
which he had given of that strange region, and for the pains he had
taken to draft of it so accurate a map--which map he allowed me to
retain. I was about to ask a question, when the door opened, and Doctor
Castleton rushed into the room.

"Well, how's the old man?" he asked.

We described Peters' condition; and I even recounted a few of the facts
which Bainbridge had just imparted to me. Then I asked the question
which Castleton's abrupt entry had delayed.

"But," I asked, "has not Peters' imagination, owing to the
administration of drugs, been unnaturally stimulated? There are drugs
which it is commonly believed may have a wonderful effect in stimulating
the imagination to flights of marvellous grandeur."

"No," said Bainbridge. "The doctor here will say the same. No drug on
earth could produce even an approach to such an effect."

"Certainly not," said Castleton. "The mass of laymen are not only
ignorant--excuse me, sir, but I know you want the facts--not only
ignorant, but extremely and persistently ignorant on this subject. I
have heard it said that Byron drank twelve--or perhaps twenty--bottles
of wine the night he wrote 'The Corsair.' If he did, he simply wrote
'The Corsair' in spite of the wine. I have heard it stated that Poe was
intoxicated when he wrote 'The Raven'--which is not only an untrue
statement but one that could not possibly be true, and which certainly
every man who ever attempted to write under the influence of an
alcoholic stimulant knows to be false. Drugs--including alcohol--which
are supposed to stimulate what we might term a rational imagination,
only stimulate an irrational fancy. They seem to the person affected to
cause a play of imagination, but they really produce only a state of
nervous action which causes their subject to feel appreciation of
otherwise trifling mental pictures that in themselves are flimsy
nothings. Let a man so affected try to impart to another his fancies,
and--well, who has not been bored by a drunken man? Did De Quincey, with
that superb mind, succeed in fancying anything that even he could tell?
He speaks of glowing drug-born fancies, but he describes nothings. Now
Milton, the old Puritan--the cold-water man--he had fancies which he was
able to transmit, and which are worthy to be forever treasured. The
early Greeks were exceedingly temperate, and the men who composed the
'Nostoi' were not drunkards--Homer sang the 'Iliad' and the 'Odyssey'
with a sober tongue, and a sober brain back of his utterances. The man
who gets drunk to write poetry, will find it easier to write his poetry
on the following morning, spite of headache, blue-devils, and all." He
paused for a moment; and then this peculiar man continued:

"And I know! Why, sir, I have drunk barrels of whiskey--barrels of the
stuff. I have seen whiskey-snakes in squirming masses three feet deep. I
have gone into a parlor, and had a lady say when she saw me fumbling in
my pockets: 'Doctor, your handkerchief is in your back pocket.' Bless
her! I was only putting back into my pockets the jim-jam snake-heads as
the snakes _would_ try to emerge! I pity a weak devil that goes home and
to bed because of a mild attack of delirium tremens. I brush the vipers
away with a sweep of my hand, and go about my business. But I myself
draw the line at roosters. A man who may laugh at snakes will quail
before roosters. A fellow may shut his eyes to snakes, but he can't shut
his ears to roosters. Well, well: it's all in a life-time. But, believe
me, no good poetry, either in verse or in prose, is drunkenman poetry."

With which final remark he shot out of the room. Then Doctor Bainbridge
took his departure, and I retired to sleep and to dream of fiery
craters, with snakes crawling out of them, and gigantic roosters picking
up the snakes one by one and dropping them over a mountain of salt into
a lake of boiling water. I was pleased when morning came, and I heard
the comparatively cheering tinkle from bells on the team of mules
drawing the little "bob-tail" street-car past the hotel.




The ELEVENTH Chapter


On the following evening Bainbridge came to my room as he had promised,
arriving at about eight o'clock. I had not that day accompanied him on
his visit to Peters, who it seems was daily gaining strength. I had
spent my day in reading, except that Arthur had repeatedly come to my
room, remaining for fifteen or twenty minutes at a time as his duties
would permit, being curious to learn from me "some of the things about
that ante-arctic country," etc. He was much interested in the subject,
and studied with close attention the map made by Doctor Bainbridge.
Arthur had asked permission to be present when the doctor should come in
the evening, but I thought better to deny him that privilege. Doctor
Bainbridge was taking the matter seriously, and I knew Arthur too well
to expect from him a decorous reticence at any time. I could imagine the
effect on Bainbridge as he closed some glowing description, should
Arthur jump up with a remark about "ante-arctic niggers," or "gee
whallopin big females." I had occasion later to know that my caution was
most judicious, and to condemn myself for a want of firmness in
maintaining so sensible a decision.

Doctor Bainbridge, without unnecessary delay or preliminary remark,
began the relation of Peters' adventures at the point indicated by him
the evening before as the proper place of commencement.

"The great white curtain you have no doubt already surmised to be a
clear-cut line of dense fog, due to the fact that a perpendicular plane
of extremely cold air in that situation cuts through an atmosphere
which, on both sides of this sheet of frigid air, is exceedingly warm,
and laden with moisture to the saturation-point. This curtain of fog is
so thin that sudden gusts of wind, upon either of its surfaces, drive it
aside much as a double curtain is thrown on either side by the arms of a
person passing between. It was through such an opening that Pym and
Peters rushed, on a cross-current of warm water which was carrying them
along. The figure of a large, pure-white woman, into whose arms their
half-delirious fancies pictured them as rushing, was simply a large
statue of spotless marble, which stands at the entrance of the bay of
Hili-li. The ash-like material which for days had rained upon them and
into the ocean around them, was no longer seen. It proved to have been a
peculiar volcano dust or crater ash, which, carried into the upper air,
fell at a distance--sometimes directly on Hili-li; but rarely so close
as within eighty or ninety miles of the central fire.

"They had scarcely passed the white fog-curtain when they were accosted
by a gay party of young men and young women, numbering some eight or ten
persons, in an elegant pleasure-boat. Pym and Peters being ignorant of
the language of Hili-li land, and the Hili-lites being ignorant of the
English tongue, it was of course impossible for them to hold converse
beyond that permitted by signs. The pleasure party, however, saw at once
that the two men were almost ready to expire from want of food and rest.
The Hili-lites took them into their own spacious boat, and hastened to a
landing-place in the suburbs of the capital and metropolis of the
nation, Hili-li City. There they all disembarked, and the strangers were
supported across a lawn, the grass of which was of the palest green--(so
nearly white, in fact, that its greenness of tint would scarcely have
been noticed but for the contrast afforded by many brilliant white
flowers that appeared here and there amid the grass)--up to a palace,
the equal of which, for size and beauty, neither of the Americans had
before seen, though Pym was familiar with the external appearance of the
finest residences in and about Boston, and also of those on the Hudson
River just above New York; whilst Peters had been in most of the
sea-coast cities of the habitable world.

"They were taken into this palace, were immediately escorted to the bath
(which Peters declined to enter), were furnished with liquid
nourishments, and were then allowed to sleep--which both of them did,
uninterruptedly, for twenty-four hours. When they awoke they were
furnished with new clothing of the best (the Hili-lites dressed
something in the style of Louis XIV.), and then invited to a full
repast. So well were they treated that in less than a week they felt
quite as strong and otherwise natural as they had on leaving the harbor
of Nantucket.

"So elegant and expressive, yet so simple was the language of Hili-li,
that Pym could in two weeks understand and speak it sufficiently well
for ordinary converse; whilst Peters was able to employ it sufficiently
for his purposes, in about a month.

"The residents of the palace seemed to comprehend just about what had
happened to the strangers. It appears that once or twice in a century
strangers similar in general exterior to this pair had arrived in that
region, generally in small boats, and on one occasion in a ship; but
none of the strangers had desired to depart from a land so beautiful, to
undertake a voyage both long and hazardous--none save the persons who
had come in a ship nearly three centuries before--(you will recall what
I told you of the small book that I read in the Astor Library). As there
was little which the Hili-lites had any desire to learn from the
strangers, there was not much to be said, anyway. Pym and Peters were
permitted to roam at will, and many Hili-lites came to look at them.
The palace in which they were permitted to reside belonged to a cousin
of the king, so that no troublesome surveillance was inflicted upon
these wrecked sailors--in fact, so completely isolated were the two,
that no feelings except a mild degree of sympathy and curiosity were
excited by their presence on the island. A small boat was at their
disposal, and they soon almost daily took the liberty of rowing across
the harbor to the wharf at the end of the main street of Hili-li, where
they would disembark, and wander for hours around this strange old city,
viewing in wonderment its beauties, its peculiarities, its mysteries.

"Hili-li is a city of from one to two hundred thousand people. But, oh,
lovely beyond power of language to describe!--past all conception, and
comparable alone with fancies such as float through the brain of
poet-lover as he lies dreaming of his soul's desire. I draw my
conclusions from Peters' state of mind when he attempts to describe this
strange city, rather than from what he says; and also from some of Pym's
remarks on the subject, which Peters was able to repeat. In your
imagination, compass within an area two miles in diameter the choicest
beauties of ancient Greece and Egypt, Rome and Persia; then brighten
them with natural surrounding scenery such as Homer and Dante and Milton
might have dreamed of--and you may feel a little of what Pym and Peters
felt when first they saw this glorious island. In ancient Greece a true
democrat would have been displeased with the extreme discrepancy between
the grandeur of public buildings, and the poverty of private dwellings;
but in Hili-li these two bore a perfectly just relationship of elegance,
each in its way being perfect.

"Yet mere inanimate beauties were the least of all. Even Peters, old and
dying--never a man to whom art spoke in more than whispers--even he was
aroused from the arms of death when he spoke of the women of Hili-li.
'Were they blondes?' I asked him. 'No.' 'Were they brunettes?' 'No.'
They were simply entrancing--never to be forgotten. Each and everyone of
them, like Helen, won by her mere presence the adoration of man. And the
men--even they must have been superb--were types of perfect manly
elegance.

"I spent many hours in trying to draw from Peters facts which I might
put together and so become competent to explain the perfection, physical
and mental--for they possessed both of these charms--of the Hili-lites.
And after combining what Peters could describe, and what he could recall
of Pym's sayings, with a statement or two of the natives that clings in
the old man's memory, I formed what I am able to assure you is a
reliable opinion of the origin of the Hili-lite race:

"At about the most trying period of the barbarian invasion of Southern
Europe--certainly preceding the foundation of Venice, and I think in the
fourth century--when the enlightened peoples of the Mediterranean were
fleeing hither and thither like rats in a burning house from which but
few escape--during this fearful time, a number of men with their
families and a few slaves, took advantage of a momentary lull in the
terrors of the period, to save themselves. They purchased a number of
vessels, and loading each with tools, seeds, animals, valued
manuscripts, and all that they possessed worth moving, started to seek a
land in which they might colonize, there in time to found a new empire
beyond the reach of all barbarians. They passed out of the Mediterranean
and down the west coast of Africa. Fortunately they had thoroughly
anticipated storms and wrecks, and each vessel was loaded in such a
manner as to be independent of the others. When well on their way, one
of those rare, prolonged storms from the north came on, and the vessels
were soon driven far from land, and separated, each from all the others.
One of these vessels managed to outlive the terrific storm, which lasted
for thirty days; and when the winds abated, the hundred or more men,
women, children, and slaves, found themselves among the islands of what
now is named Hili-liland. There they settled--there, where nature
furnishes, without labor, light and heat the year round, and vegetation
is literally perpetual. They met with none of the initial difficulties
of primitive peoples. They were educated, and they possessed the
treasures of knowledge born of a thousand years of Roman supremacy; from
the beginning they had that other priceless treasure, leisure--that real
essential of perfect culture; they had for the first five hundred years
no human enemy to contend with, and even then with the merest
weaklings--weaklings in the hands of a people at that period very
strong; for by that time the Hili-lites must have numbered a million
souls, or almost as many as they now are. But of all that they
possessed, the rest would have been comparatively little had they not
retained in lasting memory the lesson of Rome's downfall--the price a
people is compelled to pay for prolonged and unbroken luxurious
indolence. This lesson of the downfall of Rome they never forgot; and
to-day, with all their beauty and refinement, physical and mental
effeminacy is left solely to the women. True, it requires from each
inhabitant but a few hours of labor in the year to supply all purely
physical material wants; but, beginning with the year of the settlement
of Hili-li, up to the present time, the wealthiest in the land has
performed his share of physical labor quite as conscientiously as has
the poorest. Then with them, a man or woman is educated up to the time
of death. The children are taught as with us, and the young men, and the
young women, too, take a college course. But after the college course,
they go on with their study. A great jurist at forty, or for that matter
at seventy, concludes to make an exhaustive study of astronomy--or, if
earlier in life he has exhausted all desire to know the facts of
astronomy, he perhaps begins a study of anatomy--or whatever it may
happen to please his fancy to investigate. The Hili-lites claim that in
this way those who live to seventy or eighty acquire a fairly good
general education, but of this I have my doubts. After the age of
twenty, a man does not devote more than two hours a day to new branches
of learning; but two hours a day is sufficient time, if well employed,
to keep his mind always young and vigorous; and it has been shown by
this people that a person under such a system retains more of the
buoyancy and freshness of youth at eighty than do we in Europe and
America at the age of fifty.

"In Hili-liland the people have gone much farther than we in the
development of the purely reasoning faculties--in fact, they have gone
so far that they now ignore reason almost completely, having carried its
development to a finality, and found it comparatively worthless in the
practical affairs of life. They claim--and seem by their lives to
prove--that, practically, society is happier and more moral when it
exists without any pretence that it is controlled by anything else than
by feeling--that is, as a matter of course, by properly educated
feeling. Hili-li is a kingdom, but its people must, from what I can
learn, have as pure and perfect a constitutional liberty as it is
possible for mankind to enjoy--not liberty as the accident of a royal
whim, but such a perfect liberty as the people of England are
approaching, and in which by another century they will be able to
indulge themselves. They claim that as liberty does not mean license, so
government of self by feeling and not by reason need not mean
license--and never will mean license when correctly understood and
properly directed--and yet that such government alone brings complete
happiness. This putting aside and dwarfing of the reasoning faculty
seems to have resulted in an intuitional state of mind. Peters says that
the Hili-lites always seemed to know what he was thinking about, and
were always able to anticipate and thwart his acts when they so desired.

"As I was able to gain from Peters in so brief a time a very limited
range of fact from which to make correct deductions of importance, I did
not expend much of that valuable time in seeking for descriptions of
buildings; but I did learn sufficient in that direction to satisfy me
that, to the fund of architectural knowledge brought by the ancestors of
this people from Europe, they had, during the centuries, added much that
is new and valuable, even sublime and truly marvellous.

"But even here in this paradise on earth, there is a criminal class--not
very terrible, but, legally, a criminal class. It seems that a portion
of the old, restless, warrior-spirit must have trickled along in obscure
by-ways of the sanguineous system of many of these people, for among
the youths of each generation several thousand out of the whole
population (residing on a hundred islands, large and small), would,
despite every effort of their elders, become unmanageable. These--after
each young man had been given two or three opportunities to reform, and
in the end been judged incorrigible--were banished to the
mountain-ranges which surround the great active surface-crater already
described, and which are from thirty to eighty miles distant from the
Capital of Hili-li. There they might either freeze or roast, as taste
should dictate.

"To-morrow evening," concluded Bainbridge, "I shall relate some
particulars in the lives of Pym and Peters in Hili-liland. The purely
personal experiences of these two adventurers I should ignore, were it
not that they take us into the region of the wonderful crater and its
peculiar surrounding mountains and valleys, where we shall see nature in
one of the strangest of her many strange guises." Then, after a second's
pause:

"Do you accompany me to see the poor old fellow, tomorrow?"

I promised that I would; and we agreed upon two o'clock as the time for
starting. Five minutes later Doctor Bainbridge arose, and saying
good-night, left me until the morrow.




The TWELFTH Chapter


The next evening at the appointed hour Doctor Bainbridge came in. I had
not been able to accompany him in his daily visit to Peters. As
Bainbridge took his seat he said a few words concerning the old sailor,
who, to the surprise, I think, of both physicians, appeared to be
recovering. They hoped for scarcely more than a temporary improvement,
but a little longer life for the poor old man seemed now assured.

Doctor Bainbridge glanced at the map of Hili-li, which I had spread out
on the table, and began:

"In the ducal palace," said he, "in which through the kindness of the
younger members of the household, Pym and Peters were permitted to
reside--at first only in the servants' quarters--the servants, however,
being, at least in social manners, equal to the strangers--there were,
besides the immediate family of the duke, many more or less close family
connections. Among these was a young woman, corresponding in her period
of life to New England women in their twentieth or twenty-first year,
but really in her sixteenth year. Now I should imagine from the actions
of that old sea-dog, Peters, lying there in his seventy-eighth or
seventy-ninth year, and forty-nine years after he last set eyes on the
young woman, that she must have been the loveliest being in a land of
exceeding loveliness. Her eyes, the old man says, were in general like a
tropical sky in a dead calm, but on occasions they resembled a tropical
sky in a thunder-storm. She had one of those broad faces in which the
cheeks stand out roundly, supporting in merriment a hundred changing
forms, and laughing dimples enough to steal a heart of adamant--the
loveliest face, when it is lovely, in all the world. Her hair was
golden, but of the very lightest of pure gold--a golden white; and when
in the extreme warmth of her island home she sat amid the trees, and it
was allowed to fall away in rippling waves--to what then am I to liken
it? It was transcendently beautiful. I think that I can feel its
appearance. It must have looked like the sun's shimmer on the sea-foam
from which rose Aphrodite; or like the glint from Cupid's golden
arrow-heads as, later, sitting by the side of Aphrodite, he floated
along the shores of queenly Hellas, in gleeful mischief shooting
landward and piercing many a heart. Ah, love in youth! The cold
reasoning world shall never take away that charm; and when the years
shall cover with senile snows those who have felt it, then Intuition and
not Reason shall give Faith to them as the only substitute for glories
that have faded and gone.

"But the form of this lovely being--what shall I say of her form! Here I
pause. When Peters, at my urgent solicitation, attempted to describe it,
he simply gurgled away into one of his spells of delirium. It was no use
to try--though I did, again and again, try to draw from the old man
something definite. It seems that she was so rounded and so proportioned
as to meet every artistic demand, and to divert even from her beautiful
face the glance of her enraptured beholders. If we are to gain an
approximate idea of a figure so perfect, we must try to conceive what
might be the result of a supreme effort of nature to show by comparison
to the most artistic of her people just what puling infants they were in
their attempts to create forms of true beauty from marble.

"Her name was Lilama.

"It appears that young Pym was at this time a handsome fellow, almost
six feet tall; and in his attire, of which I have spoken as resembling
in many respects that of the court _habitués_ of Louis XIV, he was
indeed a fine example of natural and artificial beauty combined. And
then, he had suffered! Need I say more? What heart of maiden would not
have softened to this stranger youth?

"Well, these two loved. From what Peters tells me, the episode of Romeo
and Juliet sinks into insignificance by the side of the story of their
love. With leisure and with opportunity to love, for several months
these young people enjoyed an earthly heaven which it is rarely indeed
the lot of a young couple to enjoy. But alas! and alas! True as in the
days when moonlight fell amid the palaces of Babylon and Nineveh is the
old poetic expression--its truth older than Shakespeare, older than
historic man--that 'The course of true love never did run smooth.'

"It seems that among the so-called criminal exiles to the Volcanic
Mountains was a young man of good family, who had known--and of course
loved--Lilama. And I will say in passing that the youths who comprised
this class would, the larger part of them, never have been exiles, if
Hili-li had required a standing army, or had even not forbidden by law
the more rough and dangerous games to be played--I allude to some very
rough sports and pastimes, in which bones were frequently broken--games
which these youths and preceding generations of youths had initiated and
developed. But there was in Hili-li, aside from boating, no allowable
means for the gratification of that desire to contend with danger which
is inherent in manly youths the world over. Hence these young men were
by their very nature compelled to violate laws thus unnatural, and, as
generally happens, in doing so they went to extremes. The young
Hili-lite to whom I have alluded had been for more than a year with the
exiles. His name was Ahpilus. Lilama did not reciprocate his love. She
had known him from infancy, and for her there was no romance in poor
Ahpilus. But the young Hili-lite was madly infatuated with her, and it
seems by later developments that his enforced absence from her had
driven him almost, if not wholly, insane.

"Thus stood matters about three months after the arrival in Hili-li of
the Americans. It will be remembered that, according to Poe's account,
Pym and Peters passed through the 'great white curtain' on March 22d.
Peters says that this statement is probably correct. That date
corresponds to their autumnal equinox--about. Three months later
corresponds to our summer solstice--their midwinter. By the latter time,
and for weeks before, the antarctic sun never rose above the horizon.
But this season was in Hili-li the most beautiful and enjoyable period
of the year. The open crater of almost pure white boiling lava which I
have described, and which presented a surface of the most brilliant
light, covering an area of more than 150 square miles, was amply
sufficient to light islands from 45 to 75 miles distant. Hili-li
received some direct light from a hundred or more volcanic fires--two
within its own shores; but by far the greater illumination came from the
reflected light of the great central lake of boiling lava. The sky,
constantly filled with a circle of high-floating clouds formed of
volcanic dust, the circumference of which blended away beyond the
horizon, but in the centre of which, covering a space the diameter of
which was about thirty miles, was a circle of light of about the same
brilliancy as that of the moon, but in appearance thousands of times
larger. From this overhanging cloud (the City of Hili-li lay under a
part of its circumference) came during the antarctic winter a mild and
beautiful light, whiter than moonlight, and lighting the island to many
times the brilliancy of the brightest moonlight, though quite subdued in
comparison with that which would have been derived from the sun if
directly in the zenith. Peters says that the illumination in Hili-li at
its midwinter was about as intense as with us on a densely cloudy day;
the light not, however, being grayish, but of a pure white, now and
again briefly tinted with orange, green, red, blue, and shades of other
colors, caused by local and temporary outbursts of those colors in the
enormous crater fires.

"I will digress for a moment longer from the relation of those
occurrences which developed out of Pym's love affair, to say a word
concerning some of the physical effects of this artificial light, and to
explain certain facts related by Poe in his narrative of the earlier
adventures of our younger hero--I say of our younger hero, because I
cannot determine in my own mind which of the two, Pym or Peters,
deserves to be called the hero of their strange adventures.

"On the island of Hili-li the mean summer temperature was about 12° or
13° Fahrenheit higher than that of winter. The almost steady temperature
of the island in winter was 93° F.--occasionally dropping two or three
degrees, and, very rarely, rising one or two degrees. The extremes in
temperature during the year were caused by the sun's relative
position--constant sunlight in summer, and its complete absence in
winter. Each year, by December--the south-polar midsummer
month--vegetation has become colored; and its delicacy yet brilliancy of
tintage is then very beautiful, and varied beyond that of perhaps any
other spot in the world. Peters has travelled over much of the tropics
and subtropics, and he says that only in Florida has he seen anything to
compare with the beauty of Hili-li vegetation in October and November. I
should imagine from what he says that the coloring of vegetation is in
great part the merest tintage, the large admixture of white giving to it
a startling luminosity, and permitting the fullest effect of those
neutral tints which are capable of combinations at once so restful and
so pleasing to the refined eye. In the vegetation of Florida there is
luminosity; but chromatic depth, as in most tropical coloring, is the
chief characteristic of its visual effect. To hear Peters talk of the
flowers of Hili-li, almost half a century after he himself viewed them,
is a sympathetic treat to my sense of color. But for strangeness--and it
was not without its element of beauty, too--the vegetable growth of July
and August in that peculiar land must exceed anything else of the kind
known to man. Think for a moment of the effect on vegetable growth of
warmth and moisture, a rich soil, and the complete absence of sunlight!
From the middle of their winter to its close, though vegetation is
luxuriant, it is colorless; that is to say, it is apparently of a pure
white, though, on comparison, the faintest shades of hue are
discernible--a very light gray and a cream color prevailing. The
peculiar grass of Hili-li, probably not indigenous yet certainly
different in form from any other grass, is very tender and very
luxuriant, but, even in their summer months, has a pale, almost hueless
though luminous green; whilst in winter it is almost white. Many flowers
bloom in the winter, but they differ one from another only in form and
in odor--they are all quite hueless. And this effect of artificial heat
in connection with absence of sunlight has a similar effect on animal
life, the plumage of the birds being a pure white. But in the appearance
of animals the summer sun does not produce much change--in that of
birds, none whatever.

"This brings me to the point in Peters' story at which I may most
naturally explain certain of Poe's statements--or, rather, of A. Gordon
Pym's statements--which have caused more comment than any other part of
the narrative. Hand me your Poe, please.--Here now: Poe says, quoting
from Pym's diary:

"'On the seventeenth [of February, 1828], we set out with the
determination of examining more thoroughly the chasm of black granite
into which we had made our way in the first search' (this, you will
recall, was on the last island upon which they set foot before being
driven by winds and ocean currents farther south. They were then in
hiding from the barbarians of that island, and were only a few hundred
miles from the South Pole). 'We remembered that one of the fissures in
the sides of this pit had been partially looked into, and we were
anxious to explore it, although with no expectation of discovering here
any opening. We found no great difficulty in reaching the bottom of the
hollow as before, and were now sufficiently calm to survey it with some
attention. It was, indeed, one of the most singular-looking places
imaginable, and we could scarcely bring ourselves to believe it
altogether the work of nature.' He proceeds to explain that the sides of
the abyss had apparently never been connected, one surface being of
soapstone, the other of black marl. The average breadth between the two
cliffs was sixty feet. Here are Pym's own words again: 'Upon arriving
within fifty feet of the bottom [of the abyss], a perfect regularity
commenced. The sides were now entirely uniform in substance, in color
and in lateral direction, the material being a very black and shining
granite, and the distance between the two sides, at all points, facing
each other, exactly twenty yards.' The diary goes on to state that they
explored three chasms, and that in a fissure of the third of these
Peters discovered some 'singular-looking indentures in the surface of
the black marl forming the termination of the cul-de-sac.' It is
surmised by Pym and Peters that the first of these indentures is
possibly the intentional representation of a human figure standing
erect, with outstretched arm; and that the rest of them bore a
resemblance to alphabetical characters--such, at least, it seems from
Pym's diary, was the 'idle opinion' of Peters.

[Footnote: See Narrative of A. Gordon Pym, in any complete edition of
Poe's Works.]

"Pym later had a clew to the meaning of these characters, and no doubt
recorded the facts in a later diary, many of the pages of which Poe
never saw. But if Pym and Peters had analyzed more closely the
indentures, they might have gained at least the shadow of an idea of the
meaning of these representations. Pym made a copy of them, as you know,
and Poe here gives us a fac-simile of that copy in his Narrative. Peters
now knows in a general way of what these indentures were significant,
and I will in a moment explain to you their general meaning; but first
look at this fac-simile."

I drew up my chair to the side of Doctor Bainbridge, and together we
looked at the representation of these indentures which Poe has furnished
us. Bainbridge continued:

"Now look at this first figure, which Pym says 'might have been taken
for the intentional, though rude, representation of a human figure
standing erect, with outstretched arm.' The arm, observe, is here--the
arm and forearm, to my mind, separated; and directly above and parallel
with the arm is an arrow; and if we trace out the points of the compass
as described in the diary, we find that the arm is pointing to the
south, the arrow is pointing to the north; or in other words, the arm
points to Hili-li; the arrow, by inference, back to the island on which
the indentures exist. Now among most savages the arrow, as a symbol,
represents war--a fight--individual or even tribal death.

"Many centuries preceding the time at which Pym and Peters stood
examining the indentures in the black marl, and at least five centuries
after the foundation of Hili-li, the natives of that zone of islands
almost surrounding the South Pole at a distance of from three hundred to
seven hundred miles, were affected by one of those waves of feeling
which perhaps once in a thousand or several thousand years sweeps aside
all the common inclinations of a people, and for some reason which lies
buried in unfathomable mystery moves them to a concerted action not only
unknown in the past of those who participate in it, but, so far as can
be conceived, also unknown to the ancestors of the actors. Such a wave
of impulse, when it comes, seems to affect all the individuals of every
division of a race. In the example to which I am alluding, the impulse
seemed spontaneously to move the inhabitants of islands far apart, and
apparently not in communication--certainly not in direct communication.
With the singleness of purpose and uniformity of action seen in an army
under command of a leader, the natives of a hundred antarctic islands
swarmed into ten thousand fragile boats, and directed their course
toward the south. Why toward the south? Did instinct tell them that by
such a course the various bands would converge to a union? They knew
not. The first few boats arrived at Hili-li. Nine of every ten of those
that began the journey were lost--but still, boats continued to arrive
at the islands of the Hili-li group. Then, and after five hundred years
of peace, the Hili-lites saw that they were to be overrun by barbarians,
as their history told them their ancestors had once, in distant lands,
been overrun. The Hili-lites did not have formidable weapons; but
fortunately those of the invaders were scarcely more efficient. The
conflict came to a hand to hand engagement. The invaders could not
return, even had they so desired; so they must fight and win, or die.
The Hili-lites had no place of retreat, even had they been willing to
flee; and they too must fight and win, or die. The invaders numbered
more than a hundred thousand men; the Hili-lites, about forty thousand
that were able to fight in such a battle. The latter armed themselves
with clubs about four feet long, one inch in diameter at the handle, two
inches in diameter at the farther extremity, and made of a wood similar
to the dense tropical lignum-vitæ (almost an inconceivable growth in
that comparatively sunless region); and, for additional weapons, behind
natural and artificial barriers they heaped piles of lava-blocks, sharp,
jagged, and weighing each from one to five pounds. The invaders had a
few very flimsy bows, scarcely six arrows to each bow--and nothing else
in the way of weapons. From all sides, on came the invaders in their
frail boats, in one mad rush upon the main island of Hili-li, where the
Hili-lites had, including their women, children, and aged men, gathered.

"The invaders were ill-fed, tired out by a sea-voyage exhausting almost
past comprehension, ignorant, almost weaponless, and making a charge in
small boats; whilst for them the favorable elements in the coming battle
were that they possessed five men for each two of the defenders, and
were impelled by a mad, instinctive impulse to advance, similar to that
of a swarm of migratory locusts, which advances even through fire, and
though it require the charred bodies of ninety-nine thousand of their
number over which the remaining thousand may cross. The Hili-lites were
well-fed, not fatigued, intelligent, comparatively well-armed, and were
on land, prepared for the battle; whilst they possessed also the
inherited Roman spirit, once lost by their ancestors, but by the
descendants recovered amid new and pure surroundings.

"Before a landing could be made, half the invaders, in the confusion
incident to a bombardment with lava-blocks, were thrown from their boats
and drowned, or knocked on the head as they swam ashore. Of the other
half, a third were killed as they attempted to land, and another third
within five minutes after they reached the shore. Then the remaining
fifteen thousand or more rushed back to their boats, only to find them
sunk in the shallow water near the shore--it having been quite easy for
eight or ten Hili-lites to sink each boat, by bearing in unison their
weight on one gunwale--a thousand or two young Hili-lites having been
assigned to that duty. Then the poor wretches who remained threw down
their flimsy bows, and fell face-downward on the ground, at the feet of
the victors. Under the circumstances, what could so noble a people as
were the Hili-lites do? They could not slaughter in cold blood nearly
twenty thousand trembling human creatures. So it was finally decided to
build a thousand large-sized row-boats, and it being the best time of
the year for that purpose, take them back to their own islands. This was
done. But in punishment for their offence, and as a constant reminder of
the existence of the Hili-lites--(who, as these savages knew, had
destroyed more than eighty thousand of their number, with a loss of only
twelve of their own killed, and thirty-seven seriously wounded--which
fact, by the bye, Peters says is inscribed on a monument in the City of
Hili-li, as well as recorded in the official history of the
Hili-lites)--as a constant reminder, I say, of a people so powerful,
they were ordered never, on any island in their group, to display any
object of a white color--the national color of the Hili-lites. So strict
and inclusive was this command, that the natives were ordered to take
each of their descendants as soon as his teeth appeared, and color them
with an indelible, metallic blue-black dye, repeating the operation
every year up to ten, and thereafter once in five years. The command
closed with the statement that the natives would be allowed to retain
the whites of their eyes, but only for the reason that, as they looked
at each other they would there, and only there, see the national color
of Hili-li, and so have always in mind the promise of the victors, that
if another descent on Hili-li were ever attempted, no single
native--man, woman, or child--would be allowed to live. In addition to
this, the Hili-lites engraved on a number of suitable rocks on each
island an inscription, briefly recording a reminder of the terrible
results of this attempt at conquest, heading each inscription with the
rude representation of a man with arm extended to the south, over which
and parallel with which was placed an arrow pointing to the
north--meaning, 'There is the direction in which a certain foolish
people may go to find quick death: from there comes war and
extermination!'

"So effective were the means employed by the Hili-lites to prevent
future raids, that, though the inhabitants of these islands had again
increased, probably to a million or more, no second invasion had ever
been attempted by even the strongest and bravest of their savage
chiefs."

"Well," I said, as Bainbridge paused, and seemed to be thinking just
what to say next, "what of the beautiful Lilama and the infatuated
Ahpilus? I hope poor Pym is not to have so charming a love-feast broken
into by any untoward event. I must say, Bainbridge, those Hili-lites
were wonderfully careless of their loveliest women--of a beautiful girl
of sixteen, and so close to royalty itself."

"Well, my cold-blooded friend, what will you say when I tell you that
Lilama was an orphan, and had inherited from her father the only island
in the archipelago upon which precious stones were found, and that even
in that strange land she was wealthier than the king? Had she been able
to get the products of her islands into the markets of the world, she
would have been wealthi

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