"A gift-book for Christmas. A poem preferred. Limited text, and
profuse illustration." What should it be?
As if by invocation, the Ancient Mariner rose before me! He stood in
the doorway of my office, and held me with his glittering eye. He
lifted his skinny hand to his long gray beard, and then gravely tipped
his oiled hat. "The reader for Spry, Stromboli, and Smith?"
I had that honor, and handed him a chair. He sat in it after the
manner of a flounder, concentrated his eye upon me like a star-fish,
and produced a roll of manuscript with the fluttering claws of a
lobster. Then he stirred and squirmed, like an elderly eel, looking
distrustfully into the vestibule. I closed the door and begged to be
informed of his business.
"I have a great work for you," he said mysteriously, proffering his
manuscript. As he leaned over to do this, I saw a shining something on
the top of his head, but the thick white hair concealed it when he
resumed his place. The manuscript smelled as if it had contained
mackerel, and looked as if it had come from the bottom of the sea. I
found, curiously enough, some fish-scales adhering to it, and its
title very oddly confirmed these testimonies--"Five Years in the Great
Deep."
I glanced at the author with some surprise. He was the quaintest of
mariners, and if I had met him leagues under the sea, I should have
thought him in his proper element. His locks were like dry sea-weed;
his cheeks were so swollen that they might have contained gills, but
this was probably tobacco. When he wiped his nose with a handkerchief
like a scoop-net, some shells and pebbles fell from his pocket, and
his ears flapped like a pair of ventrals. I remarked as he pursued the
lost articles over the floor, that he wore a microscope strapped in a
leathern case, and a geological hammer belted to his side. He walked
as if habituated to swimming, and when he shrugged his shoulders I
expected to see a dorsal fin burst out of the back of his jacket. He
might have been sixty years of age, but looked much older, and behaved
like a well-born person, though, superficially judged, he might have
lived in Billingsgate.
"A good title for a fiction," I said encouragingly.
"I never penned a line of fiction in my life," exclaimed my visitor
sternly.
Referring to the copy again, I saw that it purported to be the work of
"Rudentia Jones, Fellow of the Palæontologic Society, Entomologist to
the Institute for Harmonizing the Universes, and Ruler of Subaqueous
Creation, excepting the Finny Mammalia."
"Ah! I see," said I; "a capital title for a satire!"
"Life is too grave, and science too sacred," replied my visitor, "for
the indulgence of idle banterings. The work is mine; I am its hero;
and it is all true." He wore so earnest a face, and looked so directly
and intelligently at me, that I forebore to smile. "I have travelled
in strange countries," he said; "Nature has been bountiful in her
revelations to me, indeed; my experiences have been so individual,
that I sometimes discredit them myself. I do not complain that others
ridicule them."
He spoke in the manner of one devoted to his species; and an easy
dignity, which some trace to high birth and the consciousness of
dominion, became him very naturally. The eldest of the admirals, or
old Neptune himself, could not have seemed more kingly; but once or
twice he started at a noise from the publishing-house, as if longing
to get back to his legitimate brine. I told him to leave the
manuscript in my hands for a fortnight, that I might form an opinion
as to its claims for publication.
"No!" he said quickly. "It is not a girl's romance, or a boy's poem,
or the strollings of a man-errant: it is of such rare value that gold
cannot purchase it; it is so priceless that I cannot own it myself; it
is like the air, or the water, or the light, or the magnet--the
property of all the peoples. It must not leave my sight. I must read
it to you now!"
He literally held me with his eye. He stood erect dilating, until he
seemed to reach the height of a mainmast, as long and lank and brown
as the subject of the veritable _rime_; and his ears, contracted,
flapped like the pectorals of a flying-fish. It was uncertain whether
he was going to fly or swim, or seize and shake me. I believed him to
be either a lunatic or an apparition; but when the frenzy of the
moment was over, he became a very harmless, kindly, and grave old
gentleman, who begged my pardon for transgressing decorum in the
enthusiasm for his "great work." He still smelled abominably of fish,
but I could not take it into my heart to be harsh with this most
pertinacious of authors.
I had been but a short time in the service of Spry, Stromboli & Smith,
and my nerves had not yet been exercised by sensitive and eccentric
writers. I had led a vagabond career myself, and had frequent reason,
in my incipient literary days, to be grieved with publishers'
"readers;" and when promoted to the same exalted place, I resolved to
be charitable, careful, and obliging--to do as I would be done by--to
crush no delicate Keats, to enrage no Johnson, by slight, prejudice,
or deprecation. But to suffer the infliction of a crack-brained old
naturalist, repeating an interminable manuscript in my own office,
went beyond my best resolve! Still there was little to do. It would be
a paltry task to select a poem for illustration, and had not this
same Ancient Mariner suggested an admirable one?
"I can grant your request in part, Mr. Jones," I said at length; "you
may read one hour; and if at the end of that period I do not think
favorably of your article, you must promise to read no further."
The old gentleman gave his parole at once, took a pair of great green
spectacles from a sea-grass case, and blowing his nose again, rained
pebbles and marine shells over the whole office. When he took the
manuscript from my hand, I saw the shining something distinctly on the
top of his head; and when he sat back to read, he was a perfect copy
of a dry old king-fish, looking through a pair of staring, glaring,
green eyes. Without more ado, and in a rippling kind of voice, as of
the rushing of deep water, the old naturalist read the following
introduction to a most wonderful manuscript:
"At a very early period of my life I manifested an inclination for the
study of the sciences. In my eighteenth year I submitted a theory of
inter-stellar telegraphing to the Gymnotian Academy. It was my purpose
to have placed the papers simultaneously before the scientific bodies
of each of the seven planets in our constellation, but having no
capital, the design failed, though I was complimented thereupon by the
'Institute for Harmonizing the Universes,' and elected a contributing
member of that society. For several years I petitioned annually for
outfit and transportation to Scilly Islands,[2] on the Ecliptic
Circle, where I purposed to develop my scheme of transferring a
portion of our globe to the system of Orion. In this I was opposed by
the Palæontologic Society, on the ground that some valuable fossils
were presumed to be there; and Parliament, opining that my protests
were subversive of the law of gravity, rejected them. A number of
projects, each of which, I firmly believe, would have benefited my
kind, and facilitated correspondence between all created beings,
terminated unfortunately, and my relatives at length placed it out of
my power to continue these philanthropic exertions. For some years I
was denied the ear of man, and in the interval my hair grew gray and
my body a trifle faint. But the lofty impulses of youth survived. My
mind could not be imprisoned, and I held communication with the stars
through the grating of my chamber in the still midnight. At last the
relief came. I had long prayed for it! My deliverer was Sirius, the
brightest of the celestial intelligences. He shone upon my window bars
with an intense concentrated light, and they reddened and melted
before daybreak. I fled to Glasgow in the month of April, 184-, and
obtained a captain's clerkship on the whaler Crimson Dragon.
[Footnote 2: This group of Scilly Islands is in the South Pacific; not
off Land's End.]
"We took in water at the Shetland Islands, and sailing north-westward,
skirted the coast of Greenland, whence, cruising in a southerly
direction, we lay off Labrador, and waited for our prey. Our crew was
fifty men, all told. Our captain had been a whaler thirty-eight years,
and had killed five hundred and six animals or eight more than the
renowned Scoresby. We carried seven light-boats for actual service,
and twenty-seven thousand feet, or more than five miles, of rope.
Three men kept watch, day and night, in the 'crow's-nest,' at the
maintop; but though we beat along the whole coast, through Davis'
Strait, and among the mighty icebergs of Baffin's Bay, we saw no
cetaceous creatures, save twice some floundering porpoises, and thrice
a solitary grampus. With these beings I endeavored to open
communication, but they made no intelligible responses. The stars also
of this latitude failed to comprehend my signals, from which I
concluded that they were less intelligent than those of more temperate
skies. But with the animalcules of the sea I obtained most gratifying
relations. A series of experiments with the _infusoria_ satisfied me
that they were not loath to an exchange of information, and finally
they followed the ship by myriads, so that all the waves were full of
fire, which the sailors remarked; and fearful of being observed, I
ceased my experiments for a time.
"On the evening of the fifth Saturday of our cruise, I waited till the
changing of the watch; then I stole noiselessly upon deck, and
secreted myself behind a life-boat which hung at the side of the
vessel. The helmsman was nodding silently upon his tiller; two seamen
sat motionless upon the bow, and the lookout party in the crow's-nest
talked mutteringly of our ill-luck as they scanned the horizon. The
Northern Lights were pulsing like some great radiating heart, and the
sea was alternately flame and shadow. The headlands of Labrador lay to
the south--bare, boundless, precipitous; and to the east a glittering
iceberg floated slowly towards us, like a palace of gold and emerald.
The ship rolled calmly upon the long swells, the ripples plashing in
low lulling monotone, and her hull and spars were reflected darkly
beneath me. I drew a long gray hair from my temple, and subjected it
to a gentle friction between my palm and finger; then I pricked my
wrist, and leaning forward, placed it against my heart: five
blood-drops--symbols of the five types of organized creation--fell
simmering into the depths, and the scintillant hair, floating after
them, described a true spiral. In an instant the Aurora grew bright to
blindness; there was a rush of infinite stars, and a host of beautiful
beings fluttered to the surface of the sea, within the shadow of the
ship! A gull darted along the water, and in the far distance I heard
the bellow of the huge Greenland whale. All animate nature had
acknowledged my message; I had touched the nerve of the universes!
"'Blow me if there warn't a whale, Ben!' said one of the men in the
maintop.
"'My eyes! but it wor like it,' replied the other.
"Fearful of being remarked, I slipped below, a second time
disappointed, but with such exultant feelings that I tried in vain to
sleep. The intimacy of species and their common language, lost in the
degeneracy of the first human beings, were about to be restored by me.
Confusion had overcome the counsels of the countless things which had
talked and dwelt together in the past, but science was about to win
back from sin the great secret of communication. I should translate
the scream of eagles and the cooing of doves; I should hear the gossip
of my household kittens, and speak familiarly with the mighty
hippopotami. The serpent should teach me his traditions, and the
multitude of mollusks should develop the mysteries of their sluggish
vitality; nay, the plurality of worlds should be demonstrated, and
with the combined intelligences of all the systems, we should wrest
the mysteries of life, matter, and eternity from their Divine
repository!
"I lay awake all night revelling in these anticipations, and at dawn
was quite weak of body. It was now the Sabbath, and at nine o'clock
all hands were summoned to the poop-deck for the customary worship. I
lay upon a coil of rope, when the mate commenced to read the service,
and a deep drowsiness came over me. The lesson was a part of the first
chapter of Genesis--the weird history of creation. He had reached the
twenty-eighth verse when I dropped asleep. It could have been only an
instant's forgetfulness, for when I awoke he had not finished the
reading of the same verse, but in that instant a vision had passed
before me.
"A female of marvellous beauty rose from the water. I had seen the
long green locks, the eyes of azure, and the glossy neck--it was
Tethys, the queen of the sea-nymphs. She was begotten of humidity in
the remote beginning, and seemed even now cloudy and incorporeal.
Euripius, the divinity of whirlpools, lay in the waves at her feet,
projecting a spectrum of spray, in an arch, above her head.
"'Man,' she said, or rather rippled, for it was like the even voice of
waters, 'your love of nature, the boundlessness of your kindness, the
daring of your speculation, the profoundness of your introspection,
have made you one of us. Awake, and hear our decree!'
"She melted into vapor, and disappeared. I opened my eyes. The crew
were grouped about the deck, the mate was reading the lesson, the
words which I heard were: 'Have dominion over the fish!'
"'A fall! a fall!' was shouted from the maintop. The men on watch had
discovered the long-expected prey.
"'Man the boats!' cried the captain; 'all hands be spry! Where away,
look out?'
"'Sou'-west!' answered the crow's-nest, 'about two leagues. There must
be hoceans of 'em! They 'eave like water-spouts, and, lor! how they
lobtail!'
"The seven boats were arranged in curved shape, so as to form a
semicircle around the animals; and the captain's, of which I took the
helm, formed the left tip of the crescent. We pulled steadily for a
half-hour over a smooth sea, and came at length so close to our
victims that we could count them. Truly it was 'a fall'! A few cubs
played recklessly around the surface; but there was an enormous bull,
whose bulk was much greater than that of the ship's hull, which came
once in full view, dived vertically, and beat the water with his
terrible tail, making such billows that a storm seemed to be raging.
The other animals swam in the froth and foam thus developed, now
plunging to the far depths, now shooting their huge bodies into the
air, and falling with a splash, as of the emptying of the ocean. The
scene was so exciting that even my wonderful discoveries passed out of
mind. Our oars dipped noiselessly; the crews were silent; the
harpooners stood, each in the bow of his launch, with naked weapons
extended, waiting to strike. The first opportunity occurred to the
launch on our extreme right. At the distance of twenty yards the
executioner hurled his javelin full into the back of the great bull; a
roar ensued and a frightful leap. The other creatures repeated the
agonized cry, and they swam southward with the velocity of a ship
under full sail.
"'Now, lads, bend your oars!' shouted the captain through his trumpet.
The entire length of rope unwound directly from the reel or 'bollard'
of the first launch, and the line of a second boat was attached
forthwith; a third and a fourth were annexed, but the whale exhibited
no sign of exhaustion, and dragged his pursuers like the wind. A fifth
and a sixth line spun out. The captain's cheek grew pale, and he
opened his clasp-knife with a curse upon his lips. There remained the
line of our boat alone: unless the monster stopped within ten minutes,
we should lose every foot of the ship's cordage, and this last rope
would have to be severed. Tremulously a seaman attached it; it was
whirled out as if by a locomotive. The oars moved like light, but no
human activity could approach that of our victim. He nearly swamped
the launch, and the friction of the bollard threatened to set it
ablaze.
"'What devil of the deep is this?' said the captain, bending forward
with his blade. The sailors ceased with hot faces, and stared aghast.
I seemed to hear calling voices; I grew faint and blind. The bollard
snapped with a dead, dull sound; I was entangled in the stout twine,
and tossed into the sea. Some oars were thrown overboard, that I might
be buoyed up. Three of the launches were turned toward me, and the
seamen called aloud that I should keep up courage. But the line pulled
me downward; my heart ceased to beat; I beheld with indescribable
terror the pale surface receding, and the dark shapes of the vessels
above me were finally lost to view. I knew that at the first
inhalation the brine would fill my mouth and lungs; I held my breath
hard, and tried to pray. Down, down, down into the blue depths--a
cycle of protracted years it seemed! My ears were stunned with
strange noises; my lips parted, and at length the sea rushed into my
throat; for an instant I seemed to strangle, but I did not perish.
"The fluid was mysteriously expelled from me. I breathed as freely of
the water as a moment before I had breathed of the air! A weight was
lifted from my brain, which had before been crushing it, and my
temples grew suddenly cool. A spiracle had developed at the apex of my
cranium, and I exuded water through a cavity or 'blow-hole' in the top
of my head, like the cetacea around me!"
The naturalist here paused and ran his hand through his hair. The
shining something among his gray locks revealed itself as a plate of
silver, circular in shape, covering what had evidently been an opening
in the skull. He looked less like a man than ever, and when,
consulting a glutinous old chronometer, like a jellyfish, he found
that his hour was passing, he begged so earnestly to be allowed to
finish his "Introduction," that I gave him leave. A boy coming in with
copy so frightened him, however, that I thought he was going to turn
upon his stomach, and swim away through the window.
"I became sensible directly of three organic changes: my heels clave
together, my feet flattened, and my toes turned out, like a caudal
fin; my integument grew thick and hard, and my blood thin and chill.
But these conditions being novel to me, and my fears only equalled by
my wonder as yet, I was paralyzed, and continued to sink. I had
descended about one hundred fathoms, and was experiencing a strange
oppression, as of the forcing together of my bones, when I heard a
sonorous voice close below me say! 'If you go any deeper, you will
sustain a pressure of twenty atmospheres, and may not get back at
all.'"
I looked beneath, and to my horror a huge whale was coming upward with
extended jaws. His half-human eyes were turned benignantly upon me;
but he was evidently in pain, and from a point in his back, where a
broken harpoon still remained, gouts of blood curdled upward, coloring
the water. His vocal power lay in his spiracle, and he said again:
"'I should have been asphyxiated in five minutes.'
"'Who is it that speaks?' I faltered. 'Leviathan, king of the sea, be
merciful!'
"'I am called _New England Tom_ by the creatures of the upper
element,' answered the whale, 'although falsely thought to be of the
family of the Spermaceti; but though my exploits have recommended me
to my species, I am not equal to the high title you have given me.
_That_ is possessed by you and our sovereign Jonah only!'
"The conviction rushed upon me that I had, indeed, 'dominion over the
fish'!
"'I have suffered this wound for your majesty's sake,' said the whale
again; 'for I had been deputed to wait in this latitude for your
arrival, and convey you to our sovereign. But though I am now in the
third century of my age, I can survive a dozen such prickings, and if
I chose could shiver the Crimson Dragon with a blow of my tail, as in
1804 I stove the Essex, and made driftwood of her spars.'
"In an instant I was seated within the mighty maw of this famous
monster. His jaw-bones were forty feet in length; the roof of his
mouth was fifteen feet high, and formed of a spacious arch of
'balleen,' or whale-bone. His crescent-shaped tail, thirty-five feet
from tip to tip, swept the depths twice or thrice; and when we emerged
into the air, the blood spouted from his pores, and he threw cataracts
of water through his spiracle. I saw the Crimson Dragon some miles
away, but there were no traces of her boats. The crews of the launches
were fathoms deep in the ocean!
"I passed the cape of Greenland, rounded the base of Mount Hecla, and
was escorted to the abode of the king of the cetacea by a multitude of
his subjects. A submarine island, forty fathoms from the surface, had
been occupied three thousand years by this venerable person. He came
out to meet me upon the back of a mighty 'rorqual,' and a body-guard
of four hundred picked narwhals swam before him. Fifty white whales
surrounded their monarch, and a host of dolphins, grampuses, and
porpoises brought up the rear. Banners of dyed seal-skin bore his
arms--three gourds, _argent_, upon a field _vert_; and with these were
carried as trophies the wrecks of ships, including the identical
shallop whence he was expelled on the voyage to Tarshish. But,
marvellous beyond all, the 'great fish' (falsely so translated, since
no cetaceous creature can be denominated a _fish_) into which he was
received still lived, and accompanied him. It was now the eldest of
the species, but very sprightly, and burdened with dignities. The
Seer-King saluted gravely, and gave me a draught of spirits, distilled
from the fronds of a rare sea-tangle. His long tenure in the deep had
obliterated much of the similitude to man, but his memory of
terrestrial matters was extraordinary. The weeds were wrapped about
his head after the manner of a crown, and he carried a sceptre of
walrus tusk. He told me that his original three days' experience under
the sea had so cooled his blood, that the suns of Nineveh parched him,
and he had cried for cooling water. I informed him that Nineveh no
longer existed, at which he was gratified beyond measure; for his only
knowledge of events happening on the earth had been derived from the
wrecks which had sunk into his domain. I found that he was badly
informed upon matters of science, and he heard my theories of
harmonizing the universes with impatience. In his days, he said, no
such ideas were broached, and he was indifferent to the intellectual
development of his subjects.
"My visit was brief, for, though the palace of Jonah had a sepulchral
grandeur about it--a mighty cavern beneath the waves--yet the
glittering stalactites which studded the roof, and the cold columns of
ice supporting its halls, nearly froze me, and at length I made ready
to depart.
"An escort of 'thrashers,' or grampuses, accompanied me. The Seer-King
would have detached a cohort of white whales, but the animosity of my
tribes might have provoked combat. I left the cetacea with some
foreboding. They were allied in some degree to man; they were capable
of some human impressions; their blood was warm like mine; they
breathed with lungs; they had double hearts; and nourished kindness
for their offspring. But I was now about to be delivered over to the
cold, cruel, gluttonous tribes of the fish. The family of sharks
received me. They could not be counted for multitude. The terrible
_requiem_ of the storm--the cannibal white shark--welcomed me with
open jaws; the blue shark flung up his caudal for joy; the fox-shark
lashed the sea; the northern shark glared through his purblind orbs;
the hammer-head dilated his yellow irides; the purple dog-fish made a
low purring huzza; and the spotted eyes of the monk-fish glistened
with satisfaction. The hound-shark, the basking-shark, and the
port-beagle were not less loyal; and these, the most perfectly
organized of my cartilaginous tribes, handed me over to the
deep-swimming Norwegian 'sea-rat.' Thus I kept steadily southward, the
water growing warmer hour by hour, now riding on the serrated snouts
of saw-fishes, now moving in the midst of battalions of sword-fish,
now acknowledged by the great pike, now vaulting above the surface on
the backs of flying-fish, now clinging to the spines of sturgeons, now
passing through illimitable shoals of cod, now borne by the swift
sea-salmon, now dazzled by the golden scales of the carp, now passing
over miles of flat-fish, now hailed by monster conger-eels, now
swimming down files of leering hippocampuses, now received by
congregations of staid aldermanic lobsters. The torpedo telegraphed my
coming to the tribes before, and at last I reached my abode, on the
line of the equator, in mid-Atlantic.
"The magnitude and beauty of my court no mind can realize. A truncated
cone of granitic rock, whose base extended to the profoundest depths
of the sea--even to the region of perpetual fire--formed with its
upper plane a circular lagoon at the surface of the ocean. Geysers or
volcanoes of fresh water gurgled up through the centre of this palace,
and vast submarine groves, intermixed with meadows, extended for
leagues along its sides. My household consisted entirely of silver and
golden carp, but my guards were of the loyal and gentle, yet
courageous and powerful xiphias (sword-fish). These barred the
unlicensed ingress of my subjects, and if the adventurous foot of man
should profane my lagoon, I could close its inlet and cover it with
floods. The dim aisles of the waters were full of wonderful lights:
combinations of colors, unknown above, were here developed in gigantic
_fuci_, around whose boles the scarlet tangle climbed, and parasites
of purple and emerald played upon their rinds. Some of these forests
pointed upward toward the sun; some grew downward, deriving light and
heat from the incandescent gulfs. My state apartments were built of
coral, in wondrous architecture, and trumpet-weed clothed their
battlements. Some cavernous recesses were lit with constellations of
shining zoophytes, and there were floors of pearl, studded with
diamonds. I could stroll through marvellous arch-ways, gathering
jewels at every step, or wander in my royal meadows, among the wrecks
and spoils of hurricanes; or rising through the mellow depths, sit
among the palms of the lagoon, watching the white sails of ships or
studying the awfulness of the storm.
"For a time I secluded myself, theorizing upon the policy of my
government. My dominions were vast and venerable; they comprehended
two thirds of the surface of the globe; no deluges had destroyed them,
and they had been peopled ages before the coming of man. Life here
inhabited forms, vegetable and animal, to which the greatest
terrestrials were puny. But the darkness which of old rested on the
face of the deep, now shadowed its depths. There was no _mind_ here.
These gigantic beings were shapes without souls. How should I reason
with creatures who could not feel, whose heads could not know till
to-morrow that their members had been severed to-day--some of whom, in
a single moment, passed their whole existences, and fulfilled all the
functions of eating, drinking, and generating--who were not only
incapable of thoughts, affections, and emotions, but who could not
see, smell, hear, taste, or touch? But such subjects are among the
afflictions of all wise rulers, and I resolved to conclude upon
nothing till I had visited every part of my dominions.
"During three years of travel I classified the fishes anew, all
previous enumeration being paltry, and made the notes and queries
which form the staple of my manuscript. I found fresh-water creatures
to which the sheat-fish would be a morsel, and hydras to which the
fabled sea-serpent would be a worm. I ascended the rivers with the
salmon, and fathomed the motives of the climbing-perch. I heard the
narrative of a _siluris_ tossed out of a volcano, and talked with a
haddock which produced at a birth more young than there are men upon
the globe. I have noted the harlequin-angler, which lived three weeks
in Amsterdam, hopping about on his fins like a toad; the sucking-fish
which adhered to Marc Antony's galley and held it fast; the
horned-fish (_fil en dos_) which the savages discard from their nets
in terror and prayer; and the sprats which rise with vapors into the
clouds, and are rained back into the sea. I have collected the
traditions of many of these beings, and have translated some of their
ballads. There is music under the ocean; but most of the fishes sing
with their fins, beating the water to rude measures. Among the
traditions of all the tribes is that of a time when the waters were
peaceful and the fishes happy, when none were rapacious, when death
was unknown, when no storms lashed the ripples into billows, and when
beings of the upper air bathed at the surface, and the fishes rendered
them homage. But some foul deed of which the finny folk were guiltless
brought confusion into the waters; the ocean covered all the globe,
corpses sank into the depths and were devoured, nets were let down
from above, strange fires were kindled beneath, and whirlpools,
water-spouts, storms, and volcanoes began.
"I devoted a fourth year to perfecting my system of organic
communication, and made some advance toward developing life in
inorganic matter. From this latter attainment it would be but a step
to _perpetuate_ life, and I should thus restore immortality to man.
But the shark family having threatened to revolt, I left off my
investigations for some months, and organized a military force, with
which I massacred the malcontents till my subjects swam in blood.
Returning victoriously at the head of my legions, a sad incident
occurred. A ship was crossing our line of march, and I had an
unaccountable curiosity to hear something of terrestrial affairs. Five
sawfish, at my bidding, staved in the ship's bottom, and she sank
almost instantly. The corpses of the drowned drifted slowly down, and
as I passed among them, turning up the faces, I recognized in one the
features of my mother!
"After a season of remorse I continued my investigations, but a novel
and unexpected discovery deranged my plans, and wrought a change in my
destiny.
"The subtlest forms of matter, as commonly known, are the
imponderables--light, heat, magnetism, and electricity. I had
concluded that these were manifestations of some still subtler form,
and that this was _life_, beyond which lay the ethereal elements
(called _principles_) of mind and soul--soul being ultimate and
eternal. To demonstrate this I resolved to descend as far as possible
into the depths of the sea, and examine the beings which dwelt in the
remotest darkness. The conical shape of my island allowed me to
descend within its shelving interior, and yet sustain no great
atmospheric pressure. I selected a sturgeon, whose body was so
powerfully plated that he could not be crushed, and his long-pointed
shape gave him great facility for penetrating dense waters. I attached
a phosphorescent light to his caudal, that I might not lose him in the
gloom, and he preceded me along the sloping interior. We passed the
foundations of my court, bade adieu to the deep-swimming hydras, left
the profoundest polypi behind, and came at length to uninhabited
regions, three thousand fathoms below the surface. My pioneer here
suffered great inconvenience, and only by the most vigorous efforts
was able to progress at all. The blackness was literally tangible, and
our lantern, at most, only 'darkness visible.' By threat and
persuasion I forced him forward, hardly able to make headway myself.
He swept the almost solid element with his powerful tail, depressed
his sharp snout, sucked a long breath, and we darted forward
simultaneously. There was a cracking as of bones forced together, and
my cranium seemed to split. We shot out of the density into lighter
water, and the momentum carried us fifty fathoms beyond!
"We had passed out of the limit of solar attraction, and were being
drawn toward the centre of the earth!
"Before, we had been descending; now, we were rising. The fluid grew
rarer and warmer as we proceeded, the darkness more luminous, and at
last we became visible to each other, swimming in a ruby and
transparent liquid, unlike any aspect or part of our native domain.
The fluid became so rare finally, that the sturgeon was unable to go
farther, kept down by his superior gravity. Some lights glimmering
above us, and some mysterious sounds alarming him, he turned and fled.
I was left alone.
"I reached the surface of this peaceful sea. A scene lay before me
more beautiful than any wonder of the deep. I knew that I was among
immortals, and that this was 'Happy Archipelago'!
"The surface was calm. Some purple islets were sprinkled here and
there, and creatures marvellously fair were basking in the roseate
waters. They looked like angels half way out of heaven. Their faces
were of a silvery hue; their hairs shone on the stream like tremulous
beams of light; their eyes were of a tender azure, and their bosoms
rose and fell as if they were all dreaming of blessedness. Some
strains of ravishing harmony that were floating among the islands
ceased when I appeared, and I thought I heard the snapping of a
lute-string. All the spirits started at once. They were
crescent-shaped, and stood upon their nether tips. A star upon their
foreheads shone like a pure diamond. They saw me and vanished!
"All but one! She was the fairest of the spirits, and looked, thus
frightened, like the pale new moon. The violet veins faded from her
lids, and her blue eyes were full of wonder. I felt as if, for the
first time, a sinless being had looked upon me, and my heart grew so
black and heavy that I sank a little way. I feared to breathe, for she
might vanish. I wished to lie forever with her face shining upon me.
What were science, and dominion, and the secret of man's immortality
to one pure glance like hers? In the agony of my soul I spoke:
'Spirit! Immortal! Woman! O stay! Speak to me!'
"'Who are you? Whence do you come? You are not of us, nor of our
element.'
"The voice was like a disembodied sound, coming from nothing, floating
in space eternally.
"'I am a creature of a cursed race--ruler of a blighted domain--a
realm filled with violence: it lies beneath you.'
"The pale face grew tender; the star on the forehead grew dim, like a
tearful eye. She pitied me.
"'There are beings above us,' she said, 'winged beings, that talk with
us sometimes; but nothing below. Are _they_ sorrowful as you are? Are
their brows all heavy with sadness like yours? Why are they unhappy?'
"I wept and moaned.
"'They have not your pure eyes; they cannot hear your voice. They have
sinned.'
"She glided toward me. I felt my gray hairs dropping one by one; my
heavy heart grew light; my groans softened to sighs.
"A shape came suddenly between us.
"I knew the long green locks, and the glossy neck. It was Tethys who
spoke. 'Man,' she said, 'you were made one of us, not one of these. Go
back to your domain, for you are mortal. Resume dominion over the
fish, or, striving to win more, lose all!'
"I turned my face seaward bitterly. I looked back once; the blue eyes
were gleaming--oh, so tenderly!--and I could not go. I muttered an
execration at my bitter fate. Straightway the sky rocked, the sea
rose, the pale star vanished. I had spoken a wicked word.
"I was consigned to Euripius, the divinity of whirlpools. In vain I
struggled in his watery arms; the swift current bore me circling away,
and finally whirled me with frightful velocity. My feet were shaken
asunder, my integument softened, my brain reeled. I was passed from
eddy to eddy; I became drunken with emotion; I suffered all the
tortures of the lost. A waterspout lifted me from the clutch of the
sea, and deposited me upon the dry land, close to the home of my
infancy.
"I have passed the weary hours of my penance in arranging the memoirs
which follow. Science has again wooed me with her allurements; the
stars continue their correspondence. I have not despaired of the great
secret of immortality; and though these hairs are few and white, I
shall be rejuvenated in the tranquil depths of the water, and reassert
for ages my rightful dominion over the fish!"
I was in doubt whether to laugh or wonder when the Ancient Mariner
concluded; but I was relieved from passing judgment upon his article
by the unceremonious entrance of a tall, lithe, gray-eyed person, who
wore gold seals and carried a thick walking-stick. The naturalist
appeared to be bent on diving through the floor, and swimming away
through the cellar; but he caught the stern, keen eye of the stranger
and cowered. The tall man lifted his cane, and struck the manuscript
out of his Highness's hands; he demolished the microscope at a blow,
and flung the geological hammer out of the window.
"Come along," he said. "No! drop that trash--every article of it, or
else you'll be experimenting again. Come along!"
They went away together, leaving my office littered with broken glass
and sea-shells. With some astonishment I followed through the
warehouse to the street; they had entered a carriage and were driving
rapidly away. The next morning's paper explained the whole occurrence
in the following paragraph:
"_Much Learning hath made him mad._--Yesterday noon an elderly lunatic,
named Robert Jones, committed suicide by leaping over the parapet of
London Bridge. He was in the custody at the time of Dr. Stretveskit, the
celebrated keeper of the Asylum for Monomaniacs. He had been at large
some days, and was traced to several publishing-houses, whither he had
gone to contrive the publication of some insane vagaries. He was finally
overhauled at the office of Spry, Stromboli & Co., and placed in a
carriage; but seizing a favorable moment when travel was impeded upon
the bridge, he burst through the glass door and cleared the parapet at a
bound. Jones was an adventurous and dangerous character. Some years ago
he set fire to the Shrimpshire Asylum, where his family had confined
him, and went abroad upon a whale-ship; but meeting with an accident, he
underwent the process of trepanning and came home more crazy than
before. At one time he attempted to drown his mother, in furtherance of
some strange experiment; but it was thought at the date of his death
that he was recovering his wits. Among his delusions was a strange
one--that he had been made viceroy over all the fishes. His body has not
been recovered."
I read the last sentence with a thrill. My late visitor might even now
be presiding at some finny council; and as I should have occasion to
cross the sea some day, an untimely shipwreck might place me in closer
relations with him. I determined, therefore, to print the manuscript
which remained in my hands. May it appease his Mightiness, the King of
the Fishes!