CHAPTER VI.
STRUGGLE BETWEEN DEATH AND LIFE.
The child was before this thing, dumb, wondering, and with eyes fixed.
To a man it would have been a gibbet; to the child it was an apparition.
Where a man would have seen a corpse the child saw a spectre.
Besides, he did not understand.
The attractions of the obscure are manifold. There was one on the summitof that hill. The child took a step, then another; he ascended, wishingall the while to descend; and approached, wishing all the while toretreat.
Bold, yet trembling, he went close up to survey the spectre.
When he got close under the gibbet, he looked up and examined it.
The spectre was tarred; here and there it shone. The child distinguishedthe face. It was coated over with pitch; and this mask, which appearedviscous and sticky, varied its aspect with the night shadows. The childsaw the mouth, which was a hole; the nose, which was a hole; the eyes,which were holes. The body was wrapped, and apparently corded up, incoarse canvas, soaked in naphtha. The canvas was mouldy and torn. A kneeprotruded through it. A rent disclosed the ribs--partly corpse, partlyskeleton. The face was the colour of earth; slugs, wandering over it,had traced across it vague ribbons of silver. The canvas, glued to thebones, showed in reliefs like the robe of a statue. The skull, crackedand fractured, gaped like a rotten fruit. The teeth were still human,for they retained a laugh. The remains of a cry seemed to murmur in theopen mouth. There were a few hairs of beard on the cheek. The inclinedhead had an air of attention.
Some repairs had recently been done; the face had been tarred afresh, aswell as the ribs and the knee which protruded from the canvas. The feethung out below.
Just underneath, in the grass, were two shoes, which snow and rain hadrendered shapeless. These shoes had fallen from the dead man.
The barefooted child looked at the shoes.
The wind, which had become more and more restless, was now and theninterrupted by those pauses which foretell the approach of a storm. Forthe last few minutes it had altogether ceased to blow. The corpse nolonger stirred; the chain was as motionless as a plumb line.
Like all newcomers into life, and taking into account the peculiarinfluences of his fate, the child no doubt felt within him thatawakening of ideas characteristic of early years, which endeavours toopen the brain, and which resembles the pecking of the young bird in theegg. But all that there was in his little consciousness just then wasresolved into stupor. Excess of sensation has the effect of too muchoil, and ends by putting out thought. A man would have put himselfquestions; the child put himself none--he only looked.
The tar gave the face a wet appearance; drops of pitch, congealed inwhat had once been the eyes, produced the effect of tears. However,thanks to the pitch, the ravage of death, if not annulled, was visiblyslackened and reduced to the least possible decay. That which was beforethe child was a thing of which care was taken: the man was evidentlyprecious. They had not cared to keep him alive, but they cared to keephim dead.
The gibbet was old, worm-eaten, although strong, and had been in usemany years.
It was an immemorial custom in England to tar smugglers. They werehanged on the seaboard, coated over with pitch and left swinging.Examples must be made in public, and tarred examples last longest. Thetar was mercy: by renewing it they were spared making too many freshexamples. They placed gibbets from point to point along the coast, asnowadays they do beacons. The hanged man did duty as a lantern. Afterhis fashion, he guided his comrades, the smugglers. The smugglers fromfar out at sea perceived the gibbets. There is one, first warning;another, second warning. It did not stop smuggling; but public order ismade up of such things. The fashion lasted in England up to thebeginning of this century. In 1822 three men were still to be seenhanging in front of Dover Castle. But, for that matter, the preservingprocess was employed not only with smugglers. England turned robbers,incendiaries, and murderers to the same account. Jack Painter, who setfire to the government storehouses at Portsmouth, was hanged and tarredin 1776. L'Abbe Coyer, who describes him as Jean le Peintre, saw himagain in 1777. Jack Painter was hanging above the ruin he had made, andwas re-tarred from time to time. His corpse lasted--I had almost saidlived--nearly fourteen years. It was still doing good service in 1788;in 1790, however, they were obliged to replace it by another. TheEgyptians used to value the mummy of the king; a plebeian mummy canalso, it appears, be of service.
The wind, having great power on the hill, had swept it of all its snow.Herbage reappeared on it, interspersed here and there with a fewthistles; the hill was covered by that close short grass which grows bythe sea, and causes the tops of cliffs to resemble green cloth. Underthe gibbet, on the very spot over which hung the feet of the executedcriminal, was a long and thick tuft, uncommon on such poor soil.Corpses, crumbling there for centuries past, accounted for the beauty ofthe grass. Earth feeds on man.
A dreary fascination held the child; he remained there open-mouthed. Heonly dropped his head a moment when a nettle, which felt like an insect,stung his leg; then he looked up again--he looked above him at the facewhich looked down on him. It appeared to regard him the more steadfastlybecause it had no eyes. It was a comprehensive glance, having anindescribable fixedness in which there were both light and darkness, andwhich emanated from the skull and teeth, as well as the empty arches ofthe brow. The whole head of a dead man seems to have vision, and this isawful. No eyeball, yet we feel that we are looked at. A horror of worms.
Little by little the child himself was becoming an object of terror. Heno longer moved. Torpor was coming over him. He did not perceive that hewas losing consciousness--he was becoming benumbed and lifeless. Winterwas silently delivering him over to night. There is something of thetraitor in winter. The child was all but a statue. The coldness of stonewas penetrating his bones; darkness, that reptile, was crawling overhim. The drowsiness resulting from snow creeps over a man like a dimtide. The child was being slowly invaded by a stagnation resembling thatof the corpse. He was falling asleep.
On the hand of sleep is the finger of death. The child felt himselfseized by that hand. He was on the point of falling under the gibbet. Heno longer knew whether he was standing upright.
The end always impending, no transition between to be and not to be, thereturn into the crucible, the slip possible every minute--such is theprecipice which is Creation.
Another instant, the child and the dead, life in sketch and life inruin, would be confounded in the same obliteration.
The spectre appeared to understand, and not to wish it. Of a sudden itstirred. One would have said it was warning the child. It was the windbeginning to blow again. Nothing stranger than this dead man inmovement.
The corpse at the end of the chain, pushed by the invisible gust, tookan oblique attitude; rose to the left, then fell back, reascended to theright, and fell and rose with slow and mournful precision. A weird gameof see-saw. It seemed as though one saw in the darkness the pendulum ofthe clock of Eternity.
This continued for some time. The child felt himself waking up at thesight of the dead; through his increasing numbness he experienced adistinct sense of fear.
The chain at every oscillation made a grinding sound, with hideousregularity. It appeared to take breath, and then to resume. Thisgrinding was like the cry of a grasshopper.
An approaching squall is heralded by sudden gusts of wind. All at oncethe breeze increased into a gale. The corpse emphasized its dismaloscillations. It no longer swung, it tossed; the chain, which had beengrinding, now shrieked. It appeared that its shriek was heard. If it wasan appeal, it was obeyed. From the depths of the horizon came the soundof a rushing noise.
It was the noise of wings.
An incident occurred, a stormy incident, peculiar to graveyards andsolitudes. It was the arrival of a flight of ravens. Black flying speckspricked the clouds, pierced through the mist, increased in size, camenear, amalgamated, thickened, hastening towards the hill,
utteringcries. It was like the approach of a Legion. The winged vermin of thedarkness alighted on the gibbet; the child, scared, drew back.
Swarms obey words of command: the birds crowded on the gibbet; not onewas on the corpse. They were talking among themselves. The croaking wasfrightful. The howl, the whistle and the roar, are signs of life; thecroak is a satisfied acceptance of putrefaction. In it you can fancy youhear the tomb breaking silence. The croak is night-like in itself.
The child was frozen even more by terror than by cold.
Then the ravens held silence. One of them perched on the skeleton. Thiswas a signal: they all precipitated themselves upon it. There was acloud of wings, then all their feathers closed up, and the hanged mandisappeared under a swarm of black blisters struggling in the obscurity.Just then the corpse moved. Was it the corpse? Was it the wind? It madea frightful bound. The hurricane, which was increasing, came to itsaid. The phantom fell into convulsions.
The squall, already blowing with full lungs, laid hold of it, and movedit about in all directions.
It became horrible; it began to struggle. An awful puppet, with a gibbetchain for a string. Some humorist of night must have seized the stringand been playing with the mummy. It turned and leapt as if it would faindislocate itself; the birds, frightened, flew off. It was like anexplosion of all those unclean creatures. Then they returned, and astruggle began.
The dead man seemed possessed with hideous vitality. The winds raisedhim as though they meant to carry him away. He seemed struggling andmaking efforts to escape, but his iron collar held him back. The birdsadapted themselves to all his movements, retreating, then strikingagain, scared but desperate. On one side a strange flight was attempted,on the other the pursuit of a chained man. The corpse, impelled by everyspasm of the wind, had shocks, starts, fits of rage: it went, it came,it rose, it fell, driving back the scattered swarm. The dead man was aclub, the swarms were dust. The fierce, assailing flock would not leavetheir hold, and grew stubborn; the man, as if maddened by the cluster ofbeaks, redoubled his blind chastisement of space. It was like the blowsof a stone held in a sling. At times the corpse was covered by talonsand wings; then it was free. There were disappearances of the horde,then sudden furious returns--a frightful torment continuing after lifewas past. The birds seemed frenzied. The air-holes of hell must surelygive passage to such swarms. Thrusting of claws, thrusting of beaks,croakings, rendings of shreds no longer flesh, creakings of the gibbet,shudderings of the skeleton, jingling of the chain, the voices of thestorm and tumult--what conflict more fearful? A hobgoblin warring withdevils! A combat with a spectre!
At times the storm redoubling its violence, the hanged man revolved onhis own pivot, turning every way at once towards the swarm, as if hewished to run after the birds; his teeth seemed to try and bite them.The wind was for him, the chain against him. It was as if black deitieswere mixing themselves up in the fray. The hurricane was in the battle.As the dead man turned himself about, the flock of birds wound round himspirally. It was a whirl in a whirlwind. A great roar was heard frombelow. It was the sea.
The child saw this nightmare. Suddenly he trembled in all his limbs; ashiver thrilled his frame; he staggered, tottered, nearly fell,recovered himself, pressed both hands to his forehead, as if he felt hisforehead a support; then, haggard, his hair streaming in the wind,descending the hill with long strides, his eyes closed, himself almost aphantom, he took flight, leaving behind that torment in the night.