road, hewn out of the crags, down its stone steps, two mountaineers
of Abruzzi were descending from Anacapri. One had bag-pipes under his
leathern mantle,--a large bag made from the skin of a she-goat, with
two pipes; the other had something in the nature of wooden Pan’s-reeds.
They went on,--and all the land, joyous, splendid, sun-flooded, spread
out below them: the stony humps of the island, which was lying almost
in its entirety at their feet; and that faery-like deep-blue in which
it was aswim; and the radiant morning vapours over the sea, toward the
east, under the blinding sun, that was now beating down hotly, rising
ever higher and higher; and, still in their morning vagueness, the
mistily azure massive outlines of Italy, of her mountains near and
far, whose beauty human speech is impotent to express.... Half way
down the pipers slackened their pace: over the path, within a grotto
in the craggy side of Monte Solaro, all illumed by the sun, all bathed
in its warmth and glow, in snowy-white raiment of gypsum, and in a
royal crown, golden-rusty from inclement weathers, stood the Mother of
God, meek and gracious, her orbs lifted up to heaven, to the eternal
and happy abodes of Her thrice-blessed Son. The pipers bared their
heads, put their reeds to their lips,--and there poured forth their
naïve and humbly-jubilant praises to the sun, to the morning, to Her,
the Immaculate Intercessor for all those who suffer in this evil and
beautiful world, and to Him Who had been born of Her womb in a cavern
at Bethlehem, in a poor shepherd’s shelter in the distant land of
Judæa....
Meanwhile, the body of the dead old man from San Francisco was
returning to its home, to a grave on the shores of the New World.
Having gone through many humiliations, through much human neglect,
having wandered for a week from one port warehouse to another, it had
finally gotten once more on board that same famous ship upon which
but so recently, with so much deference, he had been borne to the Old
World. But now he was already being concealed from the quick,--he was
lowered in his tarred coffin deep into the black hold. And once more
the ship was sailing on and on upon its long sea voyage. In the night
time it sailed past the Island of Capri, and, to one watching them from
the island, there was something sad about the ship’s lights, slowly
disappearing over the dark sea. But, upon the ship itself, in its
brilliant _salons_ resplendent with lustres and marbles, there was a
crowded ball that night, as usual.
There was a ball on the second night also, and on the third,--again in
the midst of a raging snow storm, whirling over an ocean booming like
a funeral mass, and heaving in mountains trapped out in mourning by
the silver spindrift. The innumerable fiery eyes of the ship that was
retreating into the night and the snow gale were barely visible for
the snow to the Devil watching from the crags of Gibraltar, from the
stony gateway of two worlds. The Devil was as enormous as a cliff, but
the ship was still more enormous than he; many-tiered, many-funnelled,
created by the pride of the New Man with an ancient heart. The snow
gale smote upon its rigging and wide-throated funnels, hoary from
the snow, but the ship was steadfast, firm, majestic--and awesome.
Upon its topmost deck were reared, in their solitude among the snowy
whirlwinds, those snug, dimly-lit chambers where, plunged in a light
and uneasy slumber, was its ponderous guide who resembled a heathen
idol, reigning over the entire ship. He heard the pained howlings
and the ferocious squealings of the storm-stifled siren, but soothed
himself by the proximity of that which, in the final summing up, was
incomprehensible even to himself, that which was on the other side of
his wall: that large cabin, which had the appearance of being armoured,
and was being constantly filled by the mysterious rumbling, quivering,
and crisp sputtering of blue flames, flaring up and exploding around
the pale-faced operator with a metal half-hoop upon his head. In
the very depths, in the under-water womb of the _Atlantida_, were
the thirty-thousand-pound masses of boilers and of all sorts of
other machinery--dully glittering with steel, hissing out stream and
exuding oil and boiling water,--of that kitchen, made red hot from
infernal furnaces underneath, wherein was brewing the motion of the
ship. Forces, fearful in their concentration, were bubbling, were
being transmitted to its very keel, into an endlessly long catacomb,
into a tunnel, illuminated by electricity, wherein slowly, with an
inexorability that was crushing to the human soul, was revolving within
its oily couch the gigantean shaft, exactly like a living monster
that had stretched itself out in this tunnel. Meanwhile, amidship
the _Atlantida_, its warm and luxurious cabins, its dining halls and
ball rooms, poured forth radiance and joyousness, were humming with
the voices of a well-dressed gathering, were sweetly odorous with
fresh flowers, and the strains of the stringed orchestra were their
song. And again excruciatingly writhed and at intervals came together
among this throng, among this glitter of lights, silks, diamonds
and bared feminine shoulders, the supple pair of hired lovers: the
sinfully-modest, very pretty young woman, with eye-lashes cast down,
with a chaste coiffure, and the well-built young man, with black hair
that seemed to be pasted on, with his face pale from powder, shod in
the most elegant of patent-leather foot-gear, clad in a tight-fitting
dress coat with long tails,--an Adonis who resembled a huge leech. And
none knew that, already for a long time, this pair had grown wearied of
languishing dissemblingly in their blissful torment to the sounds of
the shamelessly-sad music,--nor that far, far below, at the bottom of
the black hold, stood a tarred coffin, in close proximity to the sombre
and sultry depths of the ship that was toilsomely overpowering the
darkness, the ocean, the snow storm....
_1915._
THE END
TRANSCRIBER’S NOTES
Page 24, 245: Misprinted single quote corrected to double quote.
Page 162: Extraneous closing quote removed after “in pleasing
Lushka....”; and page 238, after “brought to an end quick....”
Page 185: Comma added after “I’ve done for him”, before the closing
quote.
Page 197: The quote beginning with “I can’t catch her nohow” is missing
a closing quote mark. This has been left as-is.
Typos corrected: “submissve” to “submissive” (page 87); “Bittnerness”
to “Bitterness” (page 171); “trouser’s-pocket” to “trousers’-pocket”
(page 180); “pronounciation” to “pronunciation” (page 178); “acquiver”
to “aquiver” (page 222); “there is was just” to “there it was just”
(page 234); “that it, eh, So” to “that it, eh, so” (page 235);
“tremblng” to “trembling” (page 257); “the grave itelf” to “the grave
itself” (page 275).
Original spelling of “acrost”, “faery”, and “piazetta” retained.
Inconsistencies in hyphenation have been left unchanged.