Crowned with a mystic radiance as of trembling stars of fire, that
sublime Figure towered between me and the moonlit sky; the face,
austerely grand and beautiful, shone forth luminously pale,--the eyes
were full of unquenchable pain, unspeakable remorse, unimaginable
despair! The features I had known so long and seen day by day in
familiar intercourse were the same,--the same, yet transfigured with
ethereal splendour, while shadowed by an everlasting sorrow! Bodily
sensations I was scarcely conscious of;--only the Soul of me, hitherto
dormant, was awake and palpitating with fear. Gradually I became aware
that others were around me, and looking, I saw a dense crowd of faces,
wild and wonderful,--imploring eyes were turned upon me in piteous or
stern agony,--and pallid hands were stretched towards me more in appeal
than menace. And I beheld as I gazed, the air darkening, and anon
lightening with the shadow and the brightness of wings!--vast pinions of
crimson flame began to unfurl and spread upwards all round the ice-bound
vessel,--upwards till their glowing tips seemed well-nigh to touch the
moon. And He, my Foe, who leaned against the mast, became likewise
encircled with these shafted pinions of burning rose, which like
finely-webbed clouds coloured by a strong sunset, streamed outward
flaringly from his dark Form and sprang aloft in a blaze of scintillant
glory. And a Voice infinitely sad, yet infinitely sweet, struck solemn
music from the frozen silence.
"Steer onward, Amiel! Onward, to the boundaries of the world!"
With every spiritual sense aroused, I glanced towards the steerman's
wheel,--was _that_ Amiel whom I had instinctively loathed?--that Being,
stern as a figure of deadliest fate, with sable wings and tortured
countenance? If so, I knew him now for a fiend in very truth!--if
burning horror and endless shame can so transfigure the soul of man! A
history of crime was written in his anguished looks, ... what secret
torment racked him no living mortal might dare to guess! With pallid
skeleton hands he moved the wheel;--and as it turned, the walls of ice
around us began to split with a noise of thunder.
"Onward Amiel!" said the great sad Voice again--"Onward where never man
hath trod,--steer on to the world's end!"
The crowd of weird and terrible faces grew denser,--the flaming and
darkening of wings became thicker than driving storm-clouds rent by
lightning,--wailing cries, groans and dreary sounds of sobbing echoed
about me on all sides, ... again the shattering ice roared like an
earthquake under the waters, ... and, unhindered by her frozen
prison-walls, the ship moved on! Dizzily, and as one in a mad dream I
saw the great glittering bergs rock and bend forward,--the massive
ice-city shook to its foundations, ... glistening pinnacles dropped and
vanished, ... towers lurched over, broke and plunged into the sea,--huge
mountains of ice split up like fine glass, yawning asunder with a green
glare in the moonlight as the 'Flame' propelled, so it seemed, by the
demon-wings of her terrific crew, cut through the frozen passage with
the sharpness of a sword and the swiftness of an arrow! Whither were we
bound? I dared not think,--I deemed myself dead. The world I saw was not
the world I knew,--I believed I was in some spirit-land beyond the
grave, whose secrets I should presently realize perchance too well!
On,--on we went,--I keeping my strained sight fixed for the most part on
the supreme Shape that always confronted me,--that Angel-Foe whose eyes
were wild with an eternity of sorrows! Face to face with such an
Immortal Despair, I stood confounded and slain forever in my own
regard,--a worthless atom, meriting naught but annihilation. The wailing
cries and groans had ceased,--and we sped on in an awful silence,--while
countless tragedies,--unnameable histories,--were urged upon me in the
dumb eloquence of the dreary faces round me, and the expressive teaching
of their terrific eyes!
Soon the barriers of ice were passed,--and the 'Flame' floated out
beyond them into a warm inland sea, calm as a lake, and bright as silver
in the broad radiance of the moon. On either side were undulating
shores, rich with lofty and luxuriant verdure,--I saw the distant hazy
outline of dusky purple hills,--I heard the little waves plashing
against hidden rocks, and murmuring upon the sand. Delicious odours
filled the air;--a gentle breeze blew, ... was this the lost
Paradise?--this semi-tropic zone concealed behind a continent of ice and
snow? Suddenly, from the tops of the dark branching trees, came floating
the sound of a bird's singing,--and so sweet was the song, so
heart-whole was the melody, that my aching eyes filled with tears.
Beautiful memories rushed upon me,--the value and graciousness of
life,--life on the kindly sunlit earth,--seemed very dear to my soul!
Life's opportunities,--its joys, its wonders, its blessings, all
showered down upon a thankless race by a loving Creator,--these appeared
to me all at once as marvellous! Oh for another chance of such life!--to
redeem the past,--to gather up the wasted gems of lost moments,--to live
as a man should live, in accordance with the will of God, and in
brotherhood with his fellow-men! ... The unknown bird sang on in a
cadence like that of a mavis in spring, only more tunefully,--surely no
other woodland songster ever sang half so well! And as its dulcet notes
dropped roundly one by one upon the mystic silence, I saw a pale
Creature move out from amid the shadowing of black and scarlet wings,--a
white woman-shape, clothed in her own long hair. She glided to the
vessel's edge, and there she leaned, with anguished face upturned,--it
was the face of Sibyl! And even while I looked upon her, she cast
herself wildly down upon the deck and wept! My soul was stirred within
me, ... I saw in very truth all that she might have been,--I realized
what an angel a little guiding love and patience might have made her,
... and at last I pitied her! I never pitied her before!
And now many familiar faces shone upon me like white stars in a mist of
rain,--all faces of the dead,--all marked with unquenchable remorse and
sorrow. One figure passed before me drearily, in fetters glistening with
a weight of gold,--I knew him for my college-friend of olden days;
another, crouching on the ground in fear, I recognised as him who had
staked his last possession at play, even to his immortal soul,--I even
saw my father's face, worn and aghast with grief, and trembled lest the
sacred beauty of Her who had died to give me birth, should find a place
among these direful horrors. But no!--thank God I never saw
her!----_her_ spirit had not lost its way to Heaven!
Again my eyes reverted to the Mover of this mystic scene,--that Fallen
Splendour whose majestic shape now seemed to fill both earth and sky. A
fiery glory blazed about him, ... he raised his hand, ... the ship
stopped,--and the dark Steersman rested motionless on the wheel. Round
us the moonlit landscape was spread like a glittering dream of
fairyland,--and still the unknown bird of God sang on with such
entrancing tenderness as must have soothed hell's tortured souls.
"Lo, here we pause!" said the commanding Voice--"Here, where the
distorted shape of Man hath never cast a shadow!--here,--where the
arrogant mind of Man hath never conceived a sin!--here, where the
godless greed of Man hath never defaced a beauty, or slain a woodland
thing!--here, the last spot on earth left untainted by Man's presence!
Here is the world's end!--when this land is found, and these shores
profaned,--when Mammon plants its foot upon this soil,--then dawns the
Judgment-Day! But, until then, ... here, where only God doth work
perfection, angels may look down undismayed, and even fiends find
rest!"
A solemn sound of music surged upon the air,--and I who had been as one
in chains, bound by invisible bonds and unable to stir, was suddenly
liberated. Fully conscious of freedom I still faced the dark gigantic
figure of my Foe,--for his luminous eyes were now upon me, and his
penetrating voice addressed me only.
"Man, deceive not thyself!" he said--"Think not the terrors of this
night are the delusion of a dream or the snare of a vision! Thou art
awake,--not sleeping,--thou art flesh as well as spirit! This place is
neither hell nor heaven nor any space between,--it is a corner of thine
own world on which thou livest. Wherefore know from henceforth that the
Supernatural Universe in and around the Natural is no lie,--but the
chief Reality, inasmuch as God surroundeth all! Fate strikes thine
hour,--and in this hour 'tis given thee to choose thy Master. Now, by
the will of God, thou seest me as Angel;--but take heed thou forget not
that among men I am as Man! In human form I move with all humanity
through endless ages,--to kings and counsellors, to priests and
scientists, to thinkers and teachers, to old and young, I come in the
shape their pride or vice demands, and am as one with all. Self finds in
me another Ego;--but from the pure in heart, the high in faith, the
perfect in intention, I do retreat with joy, offering naught save
reverence, demanding naught save prayer! So am I,--so must I ever
be,--till Man of his own will releases and redeems me. Mistake me not,
but know me!--and choose thy Future for truth's sake and not out of
fear! Choose and change not in any time hereafter,--this hour, this
moment is thy last probation,--choose, I say! Wilt thou serve Self and
Me? or God only?"
The question seemed thundered on my ears, ... shuddering, I looked from
right to left, and saw a gathering crowd of faces, white, wistful,
wondering, threatening and imploring,--they pressed about me close, with
glistening eyes and lips that moved dumbly. And as they stared upon me I
beheld another spectral thing,--the image of Myself!--a poor frail
creature, pitiful, ignorant, and undiscerning,--limited in both
capacity and intelligence, yet full of strange egotism and still
stranger arrogance; every detail of my life was suddenly presented to me
as in a magic mirror, and I read my own chronicle of paltry intellectual
pride, vulgar ambition and vulgarer ostentation,--I realised with shame
my miserable vices, my puny scorn of God, my effronteries and
blasphemies; and in the sudden strong repulsion and repudiation of my
own worthless existence, being and character, I found both voice and
speech.
"GOD only!" I cried fervently--"Annihilation at His hands, rather than
life without Him! GOD only! I have chosen!"
My words vibrated passionately on my own ears, ... and ... even as they
were spoken, the air grew misty with a snowy opalescent radiance, ...
the sable and crimson wings uplifted in such multitudinous array around
me, palpitated with a thousand changeful hues, ... and over the face of
my dark Foe a light celestial fell like the smile of dawn! Awed and
afraid I gazed upward, ... and there I saw a new and yet more wondrous
glory, ... a shining Figure outlined against the sky in such surpassing
beauty and vivid brilliancy as made me think the sun itself had risen in
vast Angel-shape on rainbow pinions! And from the brightening heaven
there rang a silver voice, clear as a clarion-call,--
"_Arise, Lucifer, Son of the Morning! One soul rejects thee,--one hour
of joy is granted thee! Hence and arise!_"
Earth, air, and sea blazed suddenly into fiery gold,--blinded and
stunned, I was seized by compelling hands and held firmly down by a
force invisible, ... the yacht was slowly sinking under me! Overwhelmed
with unearthly terrors, my lips yet murmured,
"GOD! God only!" The heavens changed from gold to crimson--anon to
shining blue, ... and against this mass of wavering colour that seemed
to make a jewelled archway of the sky, I saw the Form of him whom I had
known as man, swiftly ascend god-like, with flaming pinions and upturned
glorious visage, like a vision of light in darkness! Around him
clustered a million winged shapes,--but He, supreme, majestic,
wonderful, towered high above them all, a very king of splendour, the
glory round his brows resembling meteor-fires in an Arctic
midnight,--his eyes, twin stars, ablaze with such great rapture as
seemed half agony! Breathless and giddy, I strained my sight to follow
him as he fled; ... and heard the musical calling of strange sweet
voices everywhere, from east to west, from north to south.
"Lucifer! ... Belovëd and unforgotten! Lucifer, Son of the morning!
Arise! ... arise! ..."
With all my remaining strength I strove to watch the vanishing upward of
that sublime Luminance that now filled the visible universe,--the
demon-ship was still sinking steadily, ... invisible hands still held me
down, ... I was falling,--falling,--into unimaginable depths, ... when
another Voice, till then unheard, solemn yet sweet, spoke aloud--
"Bind him hand and foot, and cast him into the outermost darkness of the
world! There let him find My Light!"