Yillah
While for a few days, now this way, now that, as our craft glides
along, surrounded by these locusts of the deep, let the story of Yillah
flow on.
Of her beauty say I nothing. It was that of a crystal lake in a
fathomless wood: all light and shade; full of fleeting revealings; now
shadowed in depths; now sunny in dimples; but all sparkling and
shifting, and blending together.
But her wild beauty was a vail to things still more strange. As often
she gazed so earnestly into my eyes, like some pure spirit looking far
down into my soul, and seeing therein some upturned faces, I started in
amaze, and asked what spell was on me, that thus she gazed.
Often she entreated me to repeat over and over again certain syllables
of my language. These she would chant to herself, pausing now and then,
as if striving to discover wherein lay their charm.
In her accent, there was something very different from that of the
people of the canoe. Wherein lay the difference. I knew not; but it
enabled her to pronounce with readiness all the words which I taught
her; even as if recalling sounds long forgotten.
If all this filled me with wonder, how much was that wonder increased,
and yet baffled again, by considering her complexion, and the cast of
her features.
After endeavoring in various ways to account for these things, I was
led to imagine, that the damsel must be an Albino (Tulla) occasionally
to be met with among the people of the Pacific. These persons are of an
exceedingly delicate white skin, tinted with a faint rose hue, like the
lips of a shell. Their hair is golden. But, unlike the Albinos of other
climes, their eyes are invariably blue, and no way intolerant of light.
As a race, the Tullas die early. And hence the belief, that they
pertain to some distant sphere, and only through irregularities in the
providence of the gods, come to make their appearance upon earth:
whence, the oversight discovered, they are hastily snatched. And it is
chiefly on this account, that in those islands where human sacrifices
are offered, the Tullas are deemed the most suitable oblations for the
altar, to which from their birth many are prospectively devoted. It was
these considerations, united to others, which at times induced me to
fancy, that by the priest, Yillah was regarded as one of these beings.
So mystical, however, her revelations concerning her past history, that
often I knew not what to divine. But plainly they showed that she had
not the remotest conception of her real origin.
But these conceits of a state of being anterior to an earthly existence
may have originated in one of those celestial visions seen
transparently stealing over the face of a slumbering child. And
craftily drawn forth and re-echoed by another, and at times repeated
over to her with many additions, these imaginings must at length have
assumed in her mind a hue of reality, heightened into conviction by the
dreamy seclusion of her life.
But now, let her subsequent and more credible history be related, as
from time to time she rehearsed it.