"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.