But the awakening came.
On a certain day, when the boat brought water and a supply of
provisions, Skavinski came down an hour later from the tower, and saw
that besides the usual cargo there was an additional package. On the
outside of this package were postage stamps of the United States, and
the address: "Skavinski, Esq.," written on coarse canvas.
The old man, with aroused curiosity, cut the canvas, and saw books;
he took one in his hand, looked at it, and put it back; thereupon his
hands began to tremble greatly. He covered his eyes as if he did not
believe them; it seemed to him as if he were dreaming. The book was
Polish,--what did that mean? Who could have sent the book? Clearly,
it did not occur to him at the first moment that in the beginning of
his lighthouse career he had read in the _Herald_, borrowed from the
consul, of the formation of a Polish society in New York, and had
sent at once to that society half his month's salary, for which he
had, moreover, no use on the tower. The Society had sent him the
books with thanks. The books came in the natural way; but at the
first moment the old man could not seize those thoughts. Polish
books in Aspinwall, on his tower, amid his solitude,--that was for
him something uncommon, a certain breath from the past times, a kind
of miracle. Now it seemed to him, as to those sailors in the night,
that something was calling him by name with a voice greatly beloved
and nearly forgotten. He sat for a while with closed eyes, and was
almost certain that, when he opened them, the dream would be gone.
The package, cut open, lay before him, shone upon clearly by the
afternoon sun, and on it was an open book. When the old man
stretched his hand toward it again, he heard in the stillness the
beating of his own heart. He looked; it was poetry. On the outside
stood printed in great letters the title, underneath the name of the
author. The name was not strange to Skavinski; he saw that it
belonged to the great poet,[1] whose productions he had read in 1830,
in Paris. Afterward, when campaigning in Algiers and Spain, he had
heard from his countrymen of the growing fame of the great seer; but
he was so accustomed to the musket at that time that he took no book
in hand. In 1849 he went to America, and in the adventurous life
which he led he hardly ever met a Pole, and never a Polish book.
With the greater eagerness, therefore, and with a livelier beating of
the heart, did he turn to the title-page. It seemed to him then that
on his lonely rock some solemnity was about to take place. Indeed it
was a moment of great calm and silence. The clocks of Aspinwall were
striking five in the afternoon. Not a cloud darkened the clear sky;
only a few sea-mews were sailing through the air. The ocean was as
if cradled to sleep. The waves on the shore stammered quietly,
spreading softly on the sand. In the distance the white houses of
Aspinwall, and the wonderful groups of palm, were smiling. In truth,
there was something there solemn, calm, and full of dignity.
Suddenly, in the midst of that calm of Nature, was heard the
trembling voice of the old man, who read aloud as if to understand
himself better:
"Thou art like health, O my birth-land Litva![2]
How much we should prize thee he only can know who has lost thee.
Thy beauty in perfect adornment this day
I see and describe, because I am yearning for thee."
[1] Mickiewicz (pronounced Mitskyevich), the greatest poet of Poland.
[2] Lithuania.
His voice failed Skavinski. The letters began to dance before his
eyes; something broke in his breast, and went like a wave from his
heart higher and higher, choking his voice and pressing his throat.
A moment more he controlled himself, and read further:
"O Holy Lady, who guardest bright Chenstohova,
Who shinest in Ostrobrama and preservest
The castle town Novgrodek with its trusty people,
As Thou didst give me back to health in childhood,
When by my weeping mother placed beneath Thy care
I raised my lifeless eyelids upward,
And straightway walked unto Thy holy threshold,
To thank God for the life restored me,--
So by a wonder now restore us to the bosom of our birthplace."
The swollen wave broke through the restraint of his will. The old
man sobbed, and threw himself on the ground; his milk-white hair was
mingled with the sand of the sea. Forty years had passed since he
had seen his country, and God knows how many since he heard his
native speech; and now that speech had come to him itself--it had
sailed to him over the ocean, and found him in solitude on another
hemisphere,--it so loved, so dear, so beautiful! In the sobbing
which shook him there was no pain,--only a suddenly aroused immense
love, in the presence of which other things are as nothing. With
that great weeping he had simply implored forgiveness of that beloved
one, set aside because he had grown so old, had become so accustomed
to his solitary rock, and had so forgotten it that in him even
longing had begun to disappear. But now it returned as if by a
miracle; therefore the heart leaped in him.
Moments vanished one after another; he lay there continually. The
mews flew over the lighthouse, crying as if alarmed for their old
friend. The hour in which he fed them with the remnants of his food
had come; therefore, some of them flew down from the lighthouse to
him; then more and more came, and began to pick and shake their wings
over his head. The sound of the wings roused him. He had wept his
fill, and had now a certain calm brightness; but his eyes were as if
inspired. He gave unwittingly all his provisions to the birds, which
rushed at him in uproar, and he himself took the book again. The sun
had gone already behind the gardens and the forest of Panama, and was
going slowly beyond the isthmus to the other ocean; but the Atlantic
was full of light yet; in the open air there was still perfect
vision; therefore, he read further:
"Now bear my longing soul to those forest slopes, to those green
meadows."
At last the dusk obliterates the letters on the white paper--the dusk
short as a twinkle. The old man rested his head on the rock, and
closed his eyes. Then "She who defends bright Chenstohova" took his
soul, and transported it to "those fields coloured by various grain."
On the sky were burning yet those long stripes, red and golden, and
on those brightnesses he was flying to beloved regions. The
pine-woods were sounding in his ears; the streams of his native place
were murmuring. He saw everything as it was; everything asked him,
"Dost remember?" He remembers! he sees broad fields; between the
fields, woods and villages. It is night now. At this hour his
lantern usually illuminates the darkness of the sea; but now he is in
his native village. His old head dropped on his breast, and he is
dreaming. Pictures are passing before his eyes quickly, and a little
disorderly. He does not see the house in which he was born, for war
had destroyed it; he does not see his father and mother, for they
died when he was a child; but still the village is as if he had left
it yesterday,--the line of cottages with lights in the windows, the
mound, the mill, the two ponds opposite each other, and thundering
all night with a chorus of frogs. Once he had been on guard in that
village all night; now that past stood before him at once in a series
of views. He is an Ulan again, and he stands there on guard; at a
distance is the public-house; he looks with swimming eyes. There
thundering and singing and shouting amid the silence of the night
with voices of fiddles and bass-viols "U-ha! U-ha!" Then the Ulans
knock out fire with their horseshoes, and it is wearisome for him
there on his horse. The hours drag on slowly; at last the lights are
quenched; now as far as the eye reaches there is mist, and mist
impenetrable; now the fog rises, evidently from the fields, and
embraces the whole world with a whitish cloud. You would say, a
complete ocean. But those are fields; soon the land-rail will be
heard in the darkness, and the bitterns will call from the reeds.
The night is calm and cool,--in truth, a Polish night! In the
distance the pine-wood is sounding without wind, like the roll of the
sea. Soon dawn will whiten the East. In fact, the cocks are
beginning to crow behind the hedges. One answers to another from
cottage to cottage; the storks are screaming somewhere on high. The
Ulan feels well and bright. Some one had spoken of a battle
to-morrow. Hei! that will go on, like all the others, with shouting,
with fluttering of flaglets. The young blood is playing like a
trumpet, though the night cools it. But it is dawning. Already
night is growing pale; out of the shadows come forests, the thicket,
a row of cottages, the mill, the poplars. The well is squeaking like
a metal banner on a tower. What a beloved land, beautiful in the
rosy gleams of the morning! Oh, the one land, the one land!
Quiet! the watchful picket hears that some one is approaching. Of
course, they are coming to relieve the guard.