MS. FOUND IN A BOTTLE
Qui n’a plus qu’un moment a vivre
N’a plus rien a dissimuler.
--Quinault--Atys.
OF my country and of my family I have little to say. Ill usage andlength of years have driven me from the one, and estranged me from theother. Hereditary wealth afforded me an education of no common order,and a contemplative turn of mind enabled me to methodize the storeswhich early study very diligently garnered up.--Beyond all things,the study of the German moralists gave me great delight; not from anyill-advised admiration of their eloquent madness, but from the ease withwhich my habits of rigid thought enabled me to detect their falsities.I have often been reproached with the aridity of my genius; a deficiencyof imagination has been imputed to me as a crime; and the Pyrrhonismof my opinions has at all times rendered me notorious. Indeed, a strongrelish for physical philosophy has, I fear, tinctured my mind witha very common error of this age--I mean the habit of referringoccurrences, even the least susceptible of such reference, to theprinciples of that science. Upon the whole, no person could be lessliable than myself to be led away from the severe precincts of truth bythe ignes fatui of superstition. I have thought proper to premise thusmuch, lest the incredible tale I have to tell should be consideredrather the raving of a crude imagination, than the positive experienceof a mind to which the reveries of fancy have been a dead letter and anullity.
After many years spent in foreign travel, I sailed in the year 18-- ,from the port of Batavia, in the rich and populous island of Java, ona voyage to the Archipelago of the Sunda islands. I went aspassenger--having no other inducement than a kind of nervousrestlessness which haunted me as a fiend.
Our vessel was a beautiful ship of about four hundred tons,copper-fastened, and built at Bombay of Malabar teak. She was freightedwith cotton-wool and oil, from the Lachadive islands. We had also onboard coir, jaggeree, ghee, cocoa-nuts, and a few cases of opium. Thestowage was clumsily done, and the vessel consequently crank.
We got under way with a mere breath of wind, and for many days stoodalong the eastern coast of Java, without any other incident to beguilethe monotony of our course than the occasional meeting with some of thesmall grabs of the Archipelago to which we were bound.
One evening, leaning over the taffrail, I observed a very singular,isolated cloud, to the N.W. It was remarkable, as well for its color, asfrom its being the first we had seen since our departure from Batavia.I watched it attentively until sunset, when it spread all at once tothe eastward and westward, girting in the horizon with a narrow stripof vapor, and looking like a long line of low beach. My notice was soonafterwards attracted by the dusky-red appearance of the moon, and thepeculiar character of the sea. The latter was undergoing a rapid change,and the water seemed more than usually transparent. Although I coulddistinctly see the bottom, yet, heaving the lead, I found the ship infifteen fathoms. The air now became intolerably hot, and was loaded withspiral exhalations similar to those arising from heat iron. As nightcame on, every breath of wind died away, an more entire calm it isimpossible to conceive. The flame of a candle burned upon the poopwithout the least perceptible motion, and a long hair, held between thefinger and thumb, hung without the possibility of detecting a vibration.However, as the captain said he could perceive no indication of danger,and as we were drifting in bodily to shore, he ordered the sails tobe furled, and the anchor let go. No watch was set, and the crew,consisting principally of Malays, stretched themselves deliberately upondeck. I went below--not without a full presentiment of evil. Indeed,every appearance warranted me in apprehending a Simoom. I told thecaptain my fears; but he paid no attention to what I said, and left mewithout deigning to give a reply. My uneasiness, however, prevented mefrom sleeping, and about midnight I went upon deck.--As I placed my footupon the upper step of the companion-ladder, I was startled by aloud, humming noise, like that occasioned by the rapid revolution of amill-wheel, and before I could ascertain its meaning, I found the shipquivering to its centre. In the next instant, a wilderness of foamhurled us upon our beam-ends, and, rushing over us fore and aft, sweptthe entire decks from stem to stern.
The extreme fury of the blast proved, in a great measure, the salvationof the ship. Although completely water-logged, yet, as her masts hadgone by the board, she rose, after a minute, heavily from the sea, and,staggering awhile beneath the immense pressure of the tempest, finallyrighted.
By what miracle I escaped destruction, it is impossible to say. Stunnedby the shock of the water, I found myself, upon recovery, jammed inbetween the stern-post and rudder. With great difficulty I gained myfeet, and looking dizzily around, was, at first, struck with the idea ofour being among breakers; so terrific, beyond the wildest imagination,was the whirlpool of mountainous and foaming ocean within which we wereengulfed. After a while, I heard the voice of an old Swede, who hadshipped with us at the moment of our leaving port. I hallooed tohim with all my strength, and presently he came reeling aft. We soondiscovered that we were the sole survivors of the accident. All on deck,with the exception of ourselves, had been swept overboard;--the captainand mates must have perished as they slept, for the cabins were delugedwith water. Without assistance, we could expect to do little for thesecurity of the ship, and our exertions were at first paralyzed by themomentary expectation of going down. Our cable had, of course, partedlike pack-thread, at the first breath of the hurricane, or we shouldhave been instantaneously overwhelmed. We scudded with frightfulvelocity before the sea, and the water made clear breaches over us. Theframe-work of our stern was shattered excessively, and, in almost everyrespect, we had received considerable injury; but to our extreme Joy wefound the pumps unchoked, and that we had made no great shifting ofour ballast. The main fury of the blast had already blown over, and weapprehended little danger from the violence of the wind; but we lookedforward to its total cessation with dismay; well believing, that, in ourshattered condition, we should inevitably perish in the tremendous swellwhich would ensue. But this very just apprehension seemed by no meanslikely to be soon verified. For five entire days and nights--duringwhich our only subsistence was a small quantity of jaggeree, procuredwith great difficulty from the forecastle--the hulk flew at a ratedefying computation, before rapidly succeeding flaws of wind, which,without equalling the first violence of the Simoom, were still moreterrific than any tempest I had before encountered. Our course for thefirst four days was, with trifling variations, S.E. and by S.; and wemust have run down the coast of New Holland.--On the fifth day the coldbecame extreme, although the wind had hauled round a point more to thenorthward.--The sun arose with a sickly yellow lustre, and clambered avery few degrees above the horizon--emitting no decisive light.--Therewere no clouds apparent, yet the wind was upon the increase, and blewwith a fitful and unsteady fury. About noon, as nearly as we couldguess, our attention was again arrested by the appearance of the sun.It gave out no light, properly so called, but a dull and sullen glowwithout reflection, as if all its rays were polarized. Just beforesinking within the turgid sea, its central fires suddenly went out, asif hurriedly extinguished by some unaccountable power. It was a dim,sliver-like rim, alone, as it rushed down the unfathomable ocean.
We waited in vain for the arrival of the sixth day--that day to mehas not arrived--to the Swede, never did arrive. Thenceforward we wereenshrouded in patchy darkness, so that we could not have seen an objectat twenty paces from the ship. Eternal night continued to envelop us,all unrelieved by the phosphoric sea-brilliancy to which we had beenaccustomed in the tropics. We observed too, that, although the tempestcontinued to rage with unabated violence, there was no longer to bediscovered the usual appearance of surf, or foam, which had hithertoattended us. All around were horror, and thick gloom, and a blacksweltering desert of ebony.--Superstitious terror crept by degrees intothe spirit of the old Swede, and my own soul was wrapped up in silentwonder. We neglected all care of the ship, as worse than useless, andsecuring ourselves, as well as possible, to the stump of the mizen-mast,looked out bitterly into the world of ocean. We had no means ofcalculating time, nor could we form any guess of our situation. We were,however, well aware of having made farther to the southward than anyprevious navigators, and felt great amazement at not meeting with theusual impediments of ice. In the meantime every moment threatened to beour last--every mountainous billow hurried to overwhelm us. The swellsurpassed anything I had imagined possible, and that we were notinstantly buried is a miracle. My companion spoke of the lightness ofour cargo, and reminded me of the excellent qualities of our ship; butI could not help feeling the utter hopelessness of hope itself, andprepared myself gloomily for that death which I thought nothing coulddefer beyond an hour, as, with every knot of way the ship made,the swelling of the black stupendous seas became more dismallyappalling. At times we gasped for breath at an elevation beyond thealbatross--at times became dizzy with the velocity of our descent intosome watery hell, where the air grew stagnant, and no sound disturbedthe slumbers of the kraken.
We were at the bottom of one of these abysses, when a quick screamfrom my companion broke fearfully upon the night. “See! see!” cried he,shrieking in my ears, “Almighty God! see! see!” As he spoke, I becameaware of a dull, sullen glare of red light which streamed down the sidesof the vast chasm where we lay, and threw a fitful brilliancy upon ourdeck. Casting my eyes upwards, I beheld a spectacle which froze thecurrent of my blood. At a terrific height directly above us, and uponthe very verge of the precipitous descent, hovered a gigantic ship of,perhaps, four thousand tons. Although upreared upon the summit of a wavemore than a hundred times her own altitude, her apparent size exceededthat of any ship of the line or East Indiaman in existence. Her hugehull was of a deep dingy black, unrelieved by any of the customarycarvings of a ship. A single row of brass cannon protruded from her openports, and dashed from their polished surfaces the fires of innumerablebattle-lanterns, which swung to and fro about her rigging. But whatmainly inspired us with horror and astonishment, was that she bore upunder a press of sail in the very teeth of that supernatural sea, and ofthat ungovernable hurricane. When we first discovered her, her bowswere alone to be seen, as she rose slowly from the dim and horrible gulfbeyond her. For a moment of intense terror she paused upon the giddypinnacle, as if in contemplation of her own sublimity, then trembled andtottered, and--came down.
At this instant, I know not what sudden self-possession came over myspirit. Staggering as far aft as I could, I awaited fearlessly the ruinthat was to overwhelm. Our own vessel was at length ceasing from herstruggles, and sinking with her head to the sea. The shock of thedescending mass struck her, consequently, in that portion of her framewhich was already under water, and the inevitable result was to hurl me,with irresistible violence, upon the rigging of the stranger.
As I fell, the ship hove in stays, and went about; and to the confusionensuing I attributed my escape from the notice of the crew. With littledifficulty I made my way unperceived to the main hatchway, which waspartially open, and soon found an opportunity of secreting myself in thehold. Why I did so I can hardly tell. An indefinite sense of awe, whichat first sight of the navigators of the ship had taken hold of my mind,was perhaps the principle of my concealment. I was unwilling to trustmyself with a race of people who had offered, to the cursory glance Ihad taken, so many points of vague novelty, doubt, and apprehension. Itherefore thought proper to contrive a hiding-place in the hold. This Idid by removing a small portion of the shifting-boards, in such a manneras to afford me a convenient retreat between the huge timbers of theship.
I had scarcely completed my work, when a footstep in the hold forced meto make use of it. A man passed by my place of concealment with a feebleand unsteady gait. I could not see his face, but had an opportunityof observing his general appearance. There was about it an evidence ofgreat age and infirmity. His knees tottered beneath a load of years, andhis entire frame quivered under the burthen. He muttered to himself,in a low broken tone, some words of a language which I could notunderstand, and groped in a corner among a pile of singular-lookinginstruments, and decayed charts of navigation. His manner was a wildmixture of the peevishness of second childhood, and the solemn dignityof a God. He at length went on deck, and I saw him no more.
* * * * *
A feeling, for which I have no name, has taken possession of my soul--a sensation which will admit of no analysis, to which the lessons ofbygone times are inadequate, and for which I fear futurity itselfwill offer me no key. To a mind constituted like my own, the latterconsideration is an evil. I shall never--I know that I shallnever--be satisfied with regard to the nature of my conceptions. Yet itis not wonderful that these conceptions are indefinite, since they havetheir origin in sources so utterly novel. A new sense--a new entity isadded to my soul.
* * * * *
It is long since I first trod the deck of this terrible ship, and therays of my destiny are, I think, gathering to a focus. Incomprehensiblemen! Wrapped up in meditations of a kind which I cannot divine, theypass me by unnoticed. Concealment is utter folly on my part, for thepeople will not see. It was but just now that I passed directly beforethe eyes of the mate--it was no long while ago that I ventured into thecaptain’s own private cabin, and took thence the materials with whichI write, and have written. I shall from time to time continue thisJournal. It is true that I may not find an opportunity of transmittingit to the world, but I will not fall to make the endeavour. At the lastmoment I will enclose the MS. in a bottle, and cast it within the sea.
* * * * *
An incident has occurred which has given me new room for meditation. Aresuch things the operation of ungoverned Chance? I had ventured upon deckand thrown myself down, without attracting any notice, among a pile ofratlin-stuff and old sails in the bottom of the yawl. While musing uponthe singularity of my fate, I unwittingly daubed with a tar-brush theedges of a neatly-folded studding-sail which lay near me on a barrel.The studding-sail is now bent upon the ship, and the thoughtless touchesof the brush are spread out into the word DISCOVERY.
I have made many observations lately upon the structure of the vessel.Although well armed, she is not, I think, a ship of war. Her rigging,build, and general equipment, all negative a supposition of thiskind. What she is not, I can easily perceive--what she is I fear it isimpossible to say. I know not how it is, but in scrutinizing her strangemodel and singular cast of spars, her huge size and overgrown suitsof canvas, her severely simple bow and antiquated stern, there willoccasionally flash across my mind a sensation of familiar things, andthere is always mixed up with such indistinct shadows of recollection,an unaccountable memory of old foreign chronicles and ages long ago.
* * * * *
I have been looking at the timbers of the ship. She is built of amaterial to which I am a stranger. There is a peculiar character aboutthe wood which strikes me as rendering it unfit for the purpose towhich it has been applied. I mean its extreme porousness, consideredindependently by the worm-eaten condition which is a consequence ofnavigation in these seas, and apart from the rottenness attendant uponage. It will appear perhaps an observation somewhat over-curious, butthis wood would have every characteristic of Spanish oak, if Spanish oakwere distended by any unnatural means.
In reading the above sentence a curious apothegm of an oldweather-beaten Dutch navigator comes full upon my recollection. “Itis as sure,” he was wont to say, when any doubt was entertained of hisveracity, “as sure as there is a sea where the ship itself will grow inbulk like the living body of the seaman.”
* * * * *
About an hour ago, I made bold to thrust myself among a group of thecrew. They paid me no manner of attention, and, although I stood in thevery midst of them all, seemed utterly unconscious of my presence. Likethe one I had at first seen in the hold, they all bore about them themarks of a hoary old age. Their knees trembled with infirmity; theirshoulders were bent double with decrepitude; their shrivelled skinsrattled in the wind; their voices were low, tremulous and broken; theireyes glistened with the rheum of years; and their gray hairs streamedterribly in the tempest. Around them, on every part of the deck, layscattered mathematical instruments of the most quaint and obsoleteconstruction.
* * * * *
I mentioned some time ago the bending of a studding-sail. From thatperiod the ship, being thrown dead off the wind, has continued herterrific course due south, with every rag of canvas packed upon her,from her trucks to her lower studding-sail booms, and rolling everymoment her top-gallant yard-arms into the most appalling hell of waterwhich it can enter into the mind of a man to imagine. I have just leftthe deck, where I find it impossible to maintain a footing, although thecrew seem to experience little inconvenience. It appears to me a miracleof miracles that our enormous bulk is not swallowed up at once andforever. We are surely doomed to hover continually upon the brink ofEternity, without taking a final plunge into the abyss. From billows athousand times more stupendous than any I have ever seen, we glide awaywith the facility of the arrowy sea-gull; and the colossal waters reartheir heads above us like demons of the deep, but like demons confinedto simple threats and forbidden to destroy. I am led to attribute thesefrequent escapes to the only natural cause which can account for sucheffect.--I must suppose the ship to be within the influence of somestrong current, or impetuous under-tow.
* * * * *
I have seen the captain face to face, and in his own cabin--but, as Iexpected, he paid me no attention. Although in his appearance there is,to a casual observer, nothing which might bespeak him more or less thanman--still a feeling of irrepressible reverence and awe mingled with thesensation of wonder with which I regarded him. In stature he is nearlymy own height; that is, about five feet eight inches. He is of awell-knit and compact frame of body, neither robust nor remarkablyotherwise. But it is the singularity of the expression which reigns uponthe face--it is the intense, the wonderful, the thrilling evidence ofold age, so utter, so extreme, which excites within my spirit a sense--asentiment ineffable. His forehead, although little wrinkled, seems tobear upon it the stamp of a myriad of years.--His gray hairs are recordsof the past, and his grayer eyes are Sybils of the future. The cabinfloor was thickly strewn with strange, iron-clasped folios, andmouldering instruments of science, and obsolete long-forgotten charts.His head was bowed down upon his hands, and he pored, with a fieryunquiet eye, over a paper which I took to be a commission, and which, atall events, bore the signature of a monarch. He muttered to himself, asdid the first seaman whom I saw in the hold, some low peevish syllablesof a foreign tongue, and although the speaker was close at my elbow, hisvoice seemed to reach my ears from the distance of a mile.
* * * * *
The ship and all in it are imbued with the spirit of Eld. The crew glideto and fro like the ghosts of buried centuries; their eyes have an eagerand uneasy meaning; and when their fingers fall athwart my path in thewild glare of the battle-lanterns, I feel as I have never felt before,although I have been all my life a dealer in antiquities, and haveimbibed the shadows of fallen columns at Balbec, and Tadmor, andPersepolis, until my very soul has become a ruin.
* * * * *
When I look around me I feel ashamed of my former apprehensions. If Itrembled at the blast which has hitherto attended us, shall I not standaghast at a warring of wind and ocean, to convey any idea of whichthe words tornado and simoom are trivial and ineffective? All in theimmediate vicinity of the ship is the blackness of eternal night, and achaos of foamless water; but, about a league on either side of us, maybe seen, indistinctly and at intervals, stupendous ramparts of ice,towering away into the desolate sky, and looking like the walls of theuniverse.
* * * * *
As I imagined, the ship proves to be in a current; if that appellationcan properly be given to a tide which, howling and shrieking by thewhite ice, thunders on to the southward with a velocity like theheadlong dashing of a cataract.
* * * * *
To conceive the horror of my sensations is, I presume, utterlyimpossible; yet a curiosity to penetrate the mysteries of these awfulregions, predominates even over my despair, and will reconcile me to themost hideous aspect of death. It is evident that we are hurrying onwardsto some exciting knowledge--some never-to-be-imparted secret, whoseattainment is destruction. Perhaps this current leads us to the southernpole itself. It must be confessed that a supposition apparently so wildhas every probability in its favor.
* * * * *
The crew pace the deck with unquiet and tremulous step; but there isupon their countenances an expression more of the eagerness of hope thanof the apathy of despair.
In the meantime the wind is still in our poop, and, as we carry a crowdof canvas, the ship is at times lifted bodily from out the sea--Oh,horror upon horror! the ice opens suddenly to the right, and to theleft, and we are whirling dizzily, in immense concentric circles, roundand round the borders of a gigantic amphitheatre, the summit of whosewalls is lost in the darkness and the distance. But little time will beleft me to ponder upon my destiny--the circles rapidly grow small--weare plunging madly within the grasp of the whirlpool--and amid aroaring, and bellowing, and thundering of ocean and of tempest, the shipis quivering, oh God! and--going down.
NOTE.--The “MS. Found in a Bottle,” was originally published in 1831,and it was not until many years afterwards that I became acquainted withthe maps of Mercator, in which the ocean is represented as rushing, byfour mouths, into the (northern) Polar Gulf, to be absorbed into thebowels of the earth; the Pole itself being represented by a black rock,towering to a prodigious height.