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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 wealthier than Croesus, the Count of Monte Cristo and the Rothschilds, all combined. However, in Hili-li, wealth was not—well, not an all-powerful factor; important, but not having the power which in the remainder of the civilized world it possesses. To have power, money must be able to purchase human labor or its products, as only by human power is all other force utilized. In Hili-li, a citizen possessed everything that he required for his ordinary wants, and it was almost impossible to purchase the leisure time of any man. It was possible on certain conditions to procure human labor, but it was extremely difficult to do so. Then, for seven or eight hundred years slavery had been prohibited in the land, all existing slaves having been emancipated—after which, in the course of a few generations, Hili-lian history says, the slaves and the slave-spirit were lost in the mass of the population.

"In thinking over the position of Lilama and Pym, you must consider that the older members of the family would probably not soon hear of such a thing as love between these two, and, even when they did hear of it, would have little doubt of being able to 'control the situation' as they should please. Then, with the ideas possessed by the Hili-lites, there would not arise any very serious objection to a union by marriage of Lilama and young Pym. The Hili-lites believed the feelings to be a guide to true happiness; and whilst they would certainly have controlled the circumstances leading up to the seemingly unwise marriage of a girl of sixteen—for they believed also in a proper education of the feelings—they would not have prevented even a seemingly unwise marriage, provided the feelings of those concerned loudly demanded such a union—I mean that if in reason such a marriage should seem unwise—But enough. The hour is late, and I shall not before to-morrow evening at eight o'clock begin a description of the exciting scenes through which the beautiful Lilama was so soon to pass, and the adventures of Pym and Peters—adventures so terrible that for centuries to come they will descend, a thrilling romance, from generation to generation, in those usually quiet and peaceful islands."

And then, against my protest, he took his departure.

The THIRTEENTH Chapter

The following morning, after leaving the hotel on some trifling errand, I returned to find Arthur awaiting me. He stood by my table, and occupied himself in turning the leaves of one of my books. He was looking with much interest at a picture in a work on paleontology, a book which by some chance had accompanied a few selected works that I had brought with me from England. The picture that so interested him, I saw as I drew nearer, represented the skeleton of a prehistoric mammoth with a man standing by its side, the latter figure placed in the picture, no doubt, for the purpose of showing relations of size. As I stepped up close to Arthur's side, he turned a page in the book and disclosed a still more startling representation, that of a reconstructed mammoth, wool, long coarse hair, enormous tusks, and the rest. Arthur, with his usual curiosity, wanted to be told "all about it," and I with my usual desire to teach the searcher after knowledge even of little things—though a mammoth is scarcely a "little thing"—briefly gave him some insight of the subject, running over the differences between the mastodontine and the elephantine mammoth; and then remarked to him, incidentally, that an American mastodon giganteus, found not far from where we stood, over in Missouri, a third of a century before, was now in our British Museum, where I had seen it. Of course Arthur had many questions to ask concerning the "gigantic-cus" which I had actually seen. I gave him, from memory, the best description possible, telling him that it was more than twenty feet in length, about ten feet high, and so on. He seemed very thoughtful for several moments, whilst I sat down to look at my morning paper. After somewhat of a pause, he asked permission to speak—for with all Arthur's lack of cultivation he was not wanting in a sense of propriety, which he usually displayed in his relations with those whom he liked. I gave the desired permission, when he said,

"I just wanted to say, sir, that I wish't you'd let me come up of an evenin' and sit off in the corner there on that chair, and hear Doctor Bainbridge tell about Pym and Peters. I know you've been mighty good to tell me the most of it so far, but to-night he'll tell how that beautiful female loves Pym, like you said early this morning he was goin' to; and I'm awful anxious to hear soon. Something big's goin' to happen, and I pity the natives if they rouse up that orang-outang Peters. You said I would disturb the flowin' of Doctor Bainbridge's retorick by goin' out and in. But I won't go out. I just won't go out; if the Boss don't like it he can lump it—I can quit. Right down the street I can rent a little shop-room, and a feller and me has been talking of startin' a ice-cream saloon for the summer—yes, I can quit if the Boss don't like it. I work all day, and half the night; I can't keep up my system with a single drink without there's a kick a-coming; and now if I can't have a little literature when it's right in the house, it's a pity. No: I'll not interrup' the retorick."

Well, the end of it was, I gave my consent; and Arthur went off delighted. I mention these facts in explanation of my position. It has been said by one who ought to know, and the statement has been often enough quoted to evidence some general belief in its truth, that consistency is a jewel. I had said, that, during Doctor Bainbridge's recitations of Dirk Peters' story, Arthur should not be present; and now that he will be seen in a corner of my room evening after evening, I desire that the reader shall know all the circumstances.

That afternoon I accompanied Bainbridge on his visit to the aged sailor. I was pleased to see the old lusus naturæ sitting in a chair, and seemingly quite strong. Bainbridge made himself agreeable, delivered to Peters some small gifts of edibles, and then proceeded to ask a number of questions—I presume, from their nature, concerning minutiæ relating to the adventures under consideration. Then we returned to town, and separated.

Promptly at eight o'clock Bainbridge entered, and, as he took his customary seat, cast a glance at Arthur, who sat on a chair in the corner of the room.

"Well," began Bainbridge, after a moment's thought, "we were remarking that within our own knowledge and experience, true love has been exceedingly likely to meet with obstructions to its complete fruition:—and Lilama and Pym met with a similar experience in far-away Hili-li. Peters took a great interest in Pym's love affair; in fact, he had grown almost to worship the young fellow whose life he had many times preserved, and who in less than a year had, under his eye, grown from a careless boy to a thoughtful man. Pym returned the liking of his old companion and benefactor; but Peters' sentiment was one of infatuation, such as only those persons who are 'close to nature' seem capable of feeling in its fullest development. When the feeling of which I speak exists in its most intense form, it includes a devotion equal to that of the dog for its master: it is wholly instinctive, and not even the certainty that death stalks in the path between can keep it from its object.

"One morning early, there was excitement in the ducal palace. Lilama was missing. Search was diligently made. Pym was wild with excitement; and as the morning wore on Peters grew almost mad. (I shall speak of morning, afternoon, evening, and night. The degree of light in Hili-li did not now vary in the twenty-four hours; but it is necessary that I should in some manner divide the day, and our usual method seems the best.) The Duke himself arrived at about ten o'clock, by which time the search had ceased, and what to do next had become the question. The Duke appeared surprised at something, and spoke a few words to his son, a young man of twenty-two or twenty-three, by name Diregus, who thereupon looked slightly foolish, as one does who has made some puerile mistake. The Duke appeared to feel a real touch of pity for Pym, who sat dejected, a picture of intense anguish, now and then casting a beseeching look at the Duke—the only person who, to his mind, might be able to assist him to regain his sweetheart. The Duke again spoke to his son, who, turning to Pym, motioned him to accompany them. Then, followed by Peters, they walked down to the shore, and entered a boat.

"From the moment of starting, every movement of the Hili-lites seemed as if prearranged. It was a peculiarity of this people that a number of them acting together talked very little, each of the party appearing to know the wishes and intentions of the others, without a word spoken. And so was it on this occasion. Scarcely a word was uttered, and each seemed to comprehend the wishes of the others, mainly by glances and by semi-involuntary movements. In the present instance, father and son did not once glance at each other, yet the son was evidently aware of each wish of the father. They finally came to a landing, across the bay, in the suburbs of the city most distant from the locality in which stood the ducal palace. There, some four hundred feet from the shore, amid giant trees, in spacious and seemingly neglected grounds, stood a very large residence, evidently many centuries old, and of a style of architecture not seen by the Americans elsewhere in Hili-li. The building had an eerie look, and as the party drew near to it Peters observed that but one of its wings was inhabited, the remainder of the mansion being in a state of almost complete decay. They all entered by a side doorway into the inhabited wing. Pym and Peters were motioned to seats in the hallway, the Duke remarking, in hushed tones, 'The home of Masusælili,' as he and Diregus passed through a broken and decaying doorway into apartments beyond. Soon Diregus returned, and, escorting Pym and Peters through several disordered rooms, finally paused before a large curtained doorway. Then Diregus spoke, but in a hushed voice, and with an awed solemnity that chilled his hearers through and through.

"'Fear not,' he said; 'no harm will befall you. If the benign Fate is to smile—well; if the Furies are to rage, we can but bow to the Will that has held in its hand for countless cycles this petty planet—a grain in the wastes of Eternity. Come!'

"He passed through the doorway, and the two followed him. The room they entered was spacious—almost thirty feet square. It was crowded with strange devices, and was lighted by six colored swinging globes. A strange odor filled the atmosphere of the apartment. The room was brilliantly enough illuminated, though the light was variously colored and its shades and blendings were confusing; whilst the strange, intoxicating perfume also helped to perplex the senses. If the apartment had contained not more than several objects, the visitors might soon have detected and observed all of them; but, as it was, Pym and Peters stood gazing confusedly about them, momentarily beholding fresh objects, all of them strange, many of them bizarre, some of them frightful. It was apparently at the same instant of time that the sight of Pym and Peters fell upon an object so awesome that their hearts almost ceased to beat, and then bounded on with throbs that sent the cold blood leaping down their spines and to their scalps in chilling waves that ceased only when their terror reached the numbing stage. There before them, not six feet away, among great cubes of crystal, and vast retorts, and enormous vase-like objects on the floor, stood an aged man. How aged? He was old when the antarctic barbarians were slain, and their remnant sent back to its home on those dreary islands to live forever in blackness. None knew how old he was—they, the rulers, knew not; or if they did, on that subject they were silent. Some said that on the ship which brought the nucleus of their race from Rome, came Masusælili with the others—an aged man, the oldest on the vessel. There he stood before the visitors, his white beard trailing on the tiling at his feet, his shrunken form erect. But, whence the terror? Three times ere I could learn this fact (and even then I learned it more by inference than by words) did Peters sink into delirium, muttering, 'Oh, those eyes—the eyes of a god—of a god of gods.' The aged man seated himself at a small Roman table, and, turning to the Duke without a question, said in a voice unlike any other voice in all the world—steady, but thin, high-pitched, sharp, penetrating and agitating depths within the hearer never reached before,

"'You come for knowledge of The Lily. Behold!'

"He pointed to a cube of crystal near him, which, Peters will swear, was a moment earlier perfectly transparent. But now it looked as if filled with milk of purest whiteness. As they gazed at it, a fire appeared in the centre; and soon around the fire there sprang into being a circular range of mountains, and on the side of one of these—the nearest—stood two persons.

"'Lilama—Ahpilus,' screamed Diregus; 'he has stolen her away!'

"Yes: for though Pym and Peters had never seen the exiled lover, they recognized Lilama; and even they could surmise the rest.

"'The youth is mad,' said the Duke. 'We must rescue our darling from the maniac.'

"Pym, in his impatience, was about to rush from the room; but the old man beckoned for him to approach. He did as desired. Then the aged man placed a hand upon Pym's head, and drew it down to him; and the man who had lived thousands of years whispered some words into the ear of the youth who had lived not yet four lustrums. As Peters described for me in his homely way the change that came over the face of Pym as that human millenarian spoke perhaps one hundred words into the young man's ear, I was reminded of reading as a boy, some years ago, a description of the burning somewhere in South America of a great cathedral. The fire occurred during a morning service, and with the alarm the doorways of the building were at once obstructed by a mass of struggling humanity. Some two or three thousand persons were consumed in this terrible holocaust. The correspondent who wrote the description of the fire of which I speak said that for ten minutes he stood outside the cathedral after the surrounding heat had become so intense that efforts at rescue ceased, and from a raised spot he looked through the windows from which the glass had crumbled—looked across the great window-sills raised eight feet from the cathedral floor, looked into the faces of the doomed. And as he gazed, he saw the faces of many maidens with their lovers by their side—(it was a gala day, and all were in their best attire). As he looked, within a brief ten minutes he saw horror-stricken eyes gaze at the approaching fire, and at other victims sixty feet away already burning; then quickly would the fire approach the owner of those eyes, reach him, consume him: And in those fleeting moments the face of a young girl would pass through every stage from youth to extreme age, and then sink down in death. As the aged mystic whispered to Pym, the young man's face turned ghastly, then worked convulsively, then settled into firm resolve. And Peters never again saw on the face of the youth whom he loved with the love of a mother and of a father in one—never again saw the old, careless, boyish smile. Did the old man—shall we call him a man?—did the old man whisper into Pym's ear the secret of eternity? Would such a revelation have changed youth to manhood in a hundred seconds?

"As Pym was led by Diregus from the room, Peters started to follow; but the aged mystic motioned for him, too, to approach. Peters says that after what he had just seen he felt much more like taking to flight than he did like obeying the summons; but he obeyed it. The old man pointed to one of the smaller crystal cubes, which would have measured some five feet across. As Peters gazed upon it, it began to take on the milky hue which he had before witnessed. Peters says that at first he thought these cubes were of solid crystal, but after he witnessed the strange alterations of which they were capable, he believed they were hollow. He continued to gaze as directed, and soon he saw, sitting at a table, with a lighted candle by her side, knitting, his poor old mother, from whose side he had, fifteen years before, when a thoughtless, wicked boy, ran away to sea. He had never seen her again—he has not seen her again to the present day. As he gazed upon that aged, wrinkled face—that hard, Indian face (his mother was a civilized Indian), he saw that look which man sees nowhere else on sea or land save only in a mother's face. He threw himself face-downward on the floor, and wrung in agony his hands, and moaned out pleas for forgiveness; but the poor, old, fragile form knitted on, and on, and the face was never raised. Alas! why must we all feel the full force of a mother's love and sacrifices only when too late? Why must it be that the deepest of all unselfish love goes ever unrewarded?

"Peters scarcely knows how he got from the room. He staggered out into the grounds, and saw that the remainder of the party were already seated in the boat.

"But I must hasten on. Let me say in a few words, that the party returned to the ducal palace, and immediately prepared to rescue Lilama from the power of her discarded lover, the exiled Ahpilus. The rescue party, on the advice of the Duke, was small. He explained to Peters that so far as mere human force was concerned, a thousand men could never rescue the maiden. Her return to them, alive and in health, would depend upon strategy, or possibly might be accomplished as a result of some superhuman individual effort. He was of opinion, he remarked—and he judged from what he had been told by government officials lately returned from 'Crater Mountains' and also from changes in the young man observed by himself preceding the sentence of banishment—that Ahpilus was a maniac. The Duke went on to say that he really felt but little hope of ever again seeing, alive, his loved young 'cousin.' Then he explained that, whilst there were spots on 'Crater Mountains,' from five to eight miles from the central crater, on the far side of the nearer hills, hot enough to roast a large animal, there were other spots on the far side of the remoter mountain ranges where, protected from crater radiation and exposed to antarctic air-currents, the temperature was almost always far below the freezing-point, and sometimes so cold that no animal life, even antarctic animal life, could endure it for an hour. He said that poor Lilama was lost, unless some other exile should save her—which was unlikely, even if possible—or unless we could invent some plan of capture so peculiar as to baffle the madman—a man, by the bye, of enormous physical strength, and with a madman's cunning. Peters stood drinking in every word spoken by the Duke; whilst Pym listened as if heartbroken, but in an impatient, anxious way, indicative of a restless impulse to be gone. The Duke continued to instruct and advise them, until a large sail-boat was provisioned and manned, when the rescue party hastened away on its errand of love and mercy.

"The party consisted of the young man Diregus, Lilama's cousin; of Pym and Peters; and of six boatmen, who might or might not be employed directly in the attack and rescue, as should later seem best. The party had no weapons other than a few peculiarly-shaped clubs, similar to those mentioned by me in describing the fight of the early Hili-lites against the invading barbarians, and a long dirk-knife in the possession of Peters.

"By glancing at this map of Hili-liland, you will observe that the sea-course to 'Crater Mountains' was almost direct, it lying in a straight line out of Hili-li Bay and across the open sea for thirty miles. They were to enter 'Volcano Bay,' which pursued a tortuous course amid the mountains, until they should reach a certain pass between two of the highest mountains in the whole range. In the centre of one of these mountains was a peak some eight miles high, named by the founders of Hili-li 'Mount Olympus.' It was possible to sail (or to push their boat) to within seven miles of a point where the lavabed was still red hot—about thirteen miles from the edge of the central, white-hot, boiling lava. This, however, they did not do; first, because the pass mentioned, which was the best course up into the mountains, began about three or four miles short of the inner extremity of Volcano Bay; and second, because within a mile or two of that extremity the water of the bay sometimes actually boiled, and the heat would there be quite unendurable."

Here Bainbridge paused for a moment, and then continued, "Well, my attentive friend, 'the witching hour' approaches. We lost too much time in discussion this evening—What! only ten o'clock?" he said, looking at his watch. "Well, I am at a good resting-place in the story, anyway, as you will to-morrow evening admit. Why, if I started you up into those mountains to-night, we should get no sleep before daylight. No, no: 'sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof; more I would'—how does it go? Well, it means that the evils of two days should not be crowded into one day. The attempted quotation—as generally happens when I attempt quotation from the Bible—is a double failure: not a success simply in accuracy of repetition; and, at best, not appropriate. For I have more, and a great deal more. But"—rising from his chair—"I must depart. So adieu until the morrow—and good-night to you."

He had not been gone five minutes, and I was just complimenting Arthur on his silence and otherwise commendable behavior, when Doctor Castleton bounced into the room. He knew in a general way the drift of Peters' story, up to the developments of the evening before. His curiosity to hear what Doctor Bainbridge had so patiently and laboriously gleaned from Peters did not seem intense, or it was wonderfully well suppressed. Still, he liked briefly to learn from me the outlines of the story, and had not failed to meet me at some period of each day, and to hint at a desire for information. Therefore, I knew with what object he had this evening come to see me, and I ran rapidly over the facts developed the preceding evening, and then over those of that evening.