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The Tower of Dago
[Illustration: SANDS AND COMP^Y]
[Illustration: "He threw the lamp-light on her face" (p. 89)]
[Illustration: The Tower of Dago]
By Maurus Jókai
_Illustrations by A. M. Bishop_
[Illustration: London Sands & Co. 1899]
Printed by Ballantyne, Hanson & Co.
At the Ballantyne Press
CONTENTS
CHAP. PAGE
I. THE TOWER 1
II. BACK TO THE SEA 6
III. THE OBSERVATORY 20
IV. THE SORCERER 35
V. THE FAMINE 41
VI. COMPENSATION 52
VII. THE MEETING 54
VIII. RECONCILIATION 70
IX. THE MINSTER BELL 75
X. WEAKNESS 88
XI. THE SEVERED CORD 93
XII. NEMESIS 99
[Illustration]
CHAPTER I
The Tower
As the steamer from Stralsund is approaching the Gulf of Finland, the
passenger's attention is attracted by an object which projects high
out of the sea. He will hear the seamen call it the Tower of Dago. An
old and wealthy Englishman, he may be told, on one occasion felt
impelled by curiosity to ask the captain what it would cost him to
examine the ruin close at hand. The answer was clothed in language
less polite than forcible: "Merely the shrivelled skin and dried-up
bones you carry about with you, sir!"
For hitherto the Tower of Dago has been spared an appearance in our
art galleries only by the circumstance that it cannot well be got
before the painter's easel. It is built upon the outermost point of a
rocky promontory of the great island of Dago. The projecting headland
lies obliquely across the northern current, and the sea makes a
ceaseless seething whirlpool round the obstruction. The sea-bottom all
around is strewn with most perilous reefs. Among their intricate
labyrinths even the skiffs of the most adroit boatmen are in danger of
being dashed in pieces.
And yet, for a sight of the Tower of Dago one might well risk one's
life, especially at a time when the raging storm is clothing it with
all its picturesque grandeur.
The extreme ledge of the promontory is a great block of reddish-brown
rock. It rises precipitously out of the dark green waves, which
incessantly storm it with their foam-crested dragon-heads. Some
spring-tide monster will often lash itself aloft to the very summit,
frightening the seagulls and eagles that love to range themselves
along the verge of the rock.
From this ledge rises a six-sided tower some hundred and fifty feet
high. The lower part is built in Cyclopean fashion, of massive uncut
blocks of rock. The upper portion is of red stones. These reach to the
very summit of the tower, the battlements of which are to-day
surmounted by the luxuriant green of juniper shrubs. And when the
setting sun, bursting through a cloud, casts his rays upon the dead
giant rising there in his solitude, while round about the low ashen
clouds seem almost to touch his head; when the sea roars beneath and
breaks in foam against his feet; when the reflected sunlight streams
back, like the rays of a lighthouse, from some window the panes of
which are haply still unshattered--then the glowing colossus seems a
very Polyphemus, who with his one eye dares to defy the gods and wage
eternal feud with men. That is the Tower of Dago.
But in perfect calm the scene is changed. Veiled in translucent mists,
the tower rises aloft in grand repose beneath the hot, unclouded
summer sky. Towards the summit it shows a great semi-circular gap like
a mighty mouth petrified in the act of making an imprecation--a mouth
gaping wide as if to salute the sea, or hail yonder craft that glides
along the horizon. At ebb-tide, too, the great rock's hidden
companions, the sunken reefs, begin to show themselves all around.
Among them, half sunk in the sand, are seen the shattered remains of
masts, rusty anchors and guns, all overgrown with seaweed and
shell-fish. Here and there the eye perceives a human skull still
encased in a helmet, a skeleton still protected by a shirt of mail,
and innumerable remnants of stranded ships with their inscriptions and
marks still readable. At one spot is seen the bottom of a vessel,
whose copper plates, now hidden, now disclosed, by the restless motion
of the waves, are green with verdigris. And everywhere the great
sea-spiders and monster crabs--lords of the abyss--crawl and gloat
unceasingly among the wreckage. Then the spectator, shuddering at
this terrible arrangement of still life, is forced to ask himself,
"Who could have been so mad as to build a tower like this on such an
accursed spot, and who the madmen that could steer their vessels
hither on these cruel rocks?"
And could there be any link of destiny connecting that forbidding
edifice with the wreckage that lay around?
[Illustration]