CHAPTER IX.
NOW--soft awhile--have I arrived so near the end? Yes! it is all overnow--a step or two over those new made graves, and the wearisome way isdone. Can I accomplish my task? Can I streak my paper with words capaciousof the grand conclusion? Arise, black Melancholy! quit thy Cimmeriansolitude! Bring with thee murky fogs from hell, which may drink up the day;bring blight and pestiferous exhalations, which, entering the hollowcaverns and breathing places of earth, may fill her stony veins withcorruption, so that not only herbage may no longer flourish, the trees mayrot, and the rivers run with gall--but the everlasting mountains bedecomposed, and the mighty deep putrify, and the genial atmosphere whichclips the globe, lose all powers of generation and sustenance. Do this, sadvisaged power, while I write, while eyes read these pages.
And who will read them? Beware, tender offspring of the re-born world--beware, fair being, with human heart, yet untamed by care, and human brow,yet unploughed by time--beware, lest the cheerful current of thy blood bechecked, thy golden locks turn grey, thy sweet dimpling smiles be changedto fixed, harsh wrinkles! Let not day look on these lines, lest garish daywaste, turn pale, and die. Seek a cypress grove, whose moaning boughs willbe harmony befitting; seek some cave, deep embowered in earth's darkentrails, where no light will penetrate, save that which struggles, red andflickering, through a single fissure, staining thy page with grimmestlivery of death.
There is a painful confusion in my brain, which refuses to delineatedistinctly succeeding events. Sometimes the irradiation of my friend'sgentle smile comes before me; and methinks its light spans and fillseternity--then, again, I feel the gasping throes--
We quitted Como, and in compliance with Adrian's earnest desire, we tookVenice in our way to Rome. There was something to the English peculiarlyattractive in the idea of this wave-encircled, island-enthroned city.Adrian had never seen it. We went down the Po and the Brenta in a boat;and, the days proving intolerably hot, we rested in the bordering palacesduring the day, travelling through the night, when darkness made thebordering banks indistinct, and our solitude less remarkable; when thewandering moon lit the waves that divided before our prow, and thenight-wind filled our sails, and the murmuring stream, waving trees, andswelling canvass, accorded in harmonious strain. Clara, long overcome byexcessive grief, had to a great degree cast aside her timid, cold reserve,and received our attentions with grateful tenderness. While Adrian withpoetic fervour discoursed of the glorious nations of the dead, of thebeauteous earth and the fate of man, she crept near him, drinking in hisspeech with silent pleasure. We banished from our talk, and as much aspossible from our thoughts, the knowledge of our desolation. And it wouldbe incredible to an inhabitant of cities, to one among a busy throng, towhat extent we succeeded. It was as a man confined in a dungeon, whosesmall and grated rift at first renders the doubtful light more sensiblyobscure, till, the visual orb having drunk in the beam, and adapted itselfto its scantiness, he finds that clear noon inhabits his cell. So we, asimple triad on empty earth, were multiplied to each other, till we becameall in all. We stood like trees, whose roots are loosened by the wind,which support one another, leaning and clinging with encreased fervourwhile the wintry storms howl. Thus we floated down the widening stream ofthe Po, sleeping when the cicale sang, awake with the stars. We entered thenarrower banks of the Brenta, and arrived at the shore of the Laguna atsunrise on the sixth of September. The bright orb slowly rose from behindits cupolas and towers, and shed its penetrating light upon the glassywaters. Wrecks of gondolas, and some few uninjured ones, were strewed onthe beach at Fusina. We embarked in one of these for the widowed daughterof ocean, who, abandoned and fallen, sat forlorn on her propping isles,looking towards the far mountains of Greece. We rowed lightly over theLaguna, and entered Canale Grande. The tide ebbed sullenly from out thebroken portals and violated halls of Venice: sea weed and sea monsters wereleft on the blackened marble, while the salt ooze defaced the matchlessworks of art that adorned their walls, and the sea gull flew out from theshattered window. In the midst of this appalling ruin of the monuments ofman's power, nature asserted her ascendancy, and shone more beauteous fromthe contrast. The radiant waters hardly trembled, while the rippling wavesmade many sided mirrors to the sun; the blue immensity, seen beyond Lido,stretched far, unspecked by boat, so tranquil, so lovely, that it seemed toinvite us to quit the land strewn with ruins, and to seek refuge fromsorrow and fear on its placid extent.
We saw the ruins of this hapless city from the height of the tower of SanMarco, immediately under us, and turned with sickening hearts to the sea,which, though it be a grave, rears no monument, discloses no ruin. Eveninghad come apace. The sun set in calm majesty behind the misty summits of theApennines, and its golden and roseate hues painted the mountains of theopposite shore. "That land," said Adrian, "tinged with the last glories ofthe day, is Greece." Greece! The sound had a responsive chord in the bosomof Clara. She vehemently reminded us that we had promised to take her onceagain to Greece, to the tomb of her parents. Why go to Rome? what should wedo at Rome? We might take one of the many vessels to be found here, embarkin it, and steer right for Albania.
I objected the dangers of ocean, and the distance of the mountains we saw,from Athens; a distance which, from the savage uncultivation of thecountry, was almost impassable. Adrian, who was delighted with Clara'sproposal, obviated these objections. The season was favourable; thenorth-west that blew would take us transversely across the gulph; and thenwe might find, in some abandoned port, a light Greek caique, adapted forsuch navigation, and run down the coast of the Morea, and, passing over theIsthmus of Corinth, without much land-travelling or fatigue, find ourselvesat Athens. This appeared to me wild talk; but the sea, glowing with athousand purple hues, looked so brilliant and safe; my beloved companionswere so earnest, so determined, that, when Adrian said, "Well, though it isnot exactly what you wish, yet consent, to please me"--I could no longerrefuse. That evening we selected a vessel, whose size just seemed fittedfor our enterprize; we bent the sails and put the rigging in order, andreposing that night in one of the city's thousand palaces, agreed to embarkat sunrise the following morning.
When winds that move not its calm surface, sweep The azure sea, I love the land no more; The smiles of the serene and tranquil deep Tempt my unquiet mind--
Thus said Adrian, quoting a translation of Moschus's poem, as in the clearmorning light, we rowed over the Laguna, past Lido, into the open sea--Iwould have added in continuation,
But when the roar Of ocean's gray abyss resounds, and foam Gathers upon the sea, and vast waves burst--
But my friends declared that such verses were evil augury;so in cheerful mood we left the shallow waters, and, whenout at sea, unfurled our sails to catch the favourable breeze.The laughing morning air filled them, while sun-light bathed earth, sky andocean--the placid waves divided to receive our keel, and playfully kissedthe dark sides of our little skiff, murmuring a welcome; as land receded,still the blue expanse, most waveless, twin sister to the azure empyrean,afforded smooth conduct to our bark. As the air and waters were tranquiland balmy, so were our minds steeped in quiet. In comparison with theunstained deep, funereal earth appeared a grave, its high rocks and statelymountains were but monuments, its trees the plumes of a herse, the brooksand rivers brackish with tears for departed man. Farewell to desolate towns--to fields with their savage intermixture of corn and weeds--to evermultiplying relics of our lost species. Ocean, we commit ourselves to thee--even as the patriarch of old floated above the drowned world, let us besaved, as thus we betake ourselves to thy perennial flood.
Adrian sat at the helm; I attended to the rigging, the breeze right aftfilled our swelling canvas, and we ran before it over the untroubled deep.The wind died away at noon; its idle breath just permitted us to hold ourcourse. As lazy, fair-weather sailors, careless of the coming hour, wetalked gaily of our coasting voyage, of our arrival at Athens. We wouldmake our home of one of the Cyclades, and there in myrtle-groves, am
idstperpetual spring, fanned by the wholesome sea-breezes--we would live longyears in beatific union--Was there such a thing as death in the world?--
The sun passed its zenith, and lingered down the stainless floor of heaven.Lying in the boat, my face turned up to the sky, I thought I saw on itsblue white, marbled streaks, so slight, so immaterial, that now I said--They are there--and now, It is a mere imagination. A sudden fear stung mewhile I gazed; and, starting up, and running to the prow,--as I stood, myhair was gently lifted on my brow--a dark line of ripples appeared to theeast, gaining rapidly on us--my breathless remark to Adrian, was followedby the flapping of the canvas, as the adverse wind struck it, and our boatlurched--swift as speech, the web of the storm thickened over head, thesun went down red, the dark sea was strewed with foam, and our skiff roseand fell in its encreasing furrows.
Behold us now in our frail tenement, hemmed in by hungry, roaring waves,buffeted by winds. In the inky east two vast clouds, sailing contrary ways,met; the lightning leapt forth, and the hoarse thunder muttered. Again inthe south, the clouds replied, and the forked stream of fire running alongthe black sky, shewed us the appalling piles of clouds, now met andobliterated by the heaving waves. Great God! And we alone--we three--alone--alone--sole dwellers on the sea and on the earth, we three mustperish! The vast universe, its myriad worlds, and the plains of boundlessearth which we had left--the extent of shoreless sea around--contractedto my view--they and all that they contained, shrunk up to one point,even to our tossing bark, freighted with glorious humanity.
A convulsion of despair crossed the love-beaming face of Adrian, while withset teeth he murmured, "Yet they shall be saved!" Clara, visited by anhuman pang, pale and trembling, crept near him--he looked on her with anencouraging smile--"Do you fear, sweet girl? O, do not fear, we shallsoon be on shore!"
The darkness prevented me from seeing the changes of her countenance; buther voice was clear and sweet, as she replied, "Why should I fear? neithersea nor storm can harm us, if mighty destiny or the ruler of destiny doesnot permit. And then the stinging fear of surviving either of you, is nothere--one death will clasp us undivided."
Meanwhile we took in all our sails, save a gib; and, as soon as we mightwithout danger, changed our course, running with the wind for the Italianshore. Dark night mixed everything; we hardly discerned the white crests ofthe murderous surges, except when lightning made brief noon, and drank thedarkness, shewing us our danger, and restoring us to double night. We wereall silent, except when Adrian, as steersman, made an encouragingobservation. Our little shell obeyed the rudder miraculously well, and ranalong on the top of the waves, as if she had been an offspring of the sea,and the angry mother sheltered her endangered child.
I sat at the prow, watching our course; when suddenly I heard the watersbreak with redoubled fury. We were certainly near the shore--at the sametime I cried, "About there!" and a broad lightning filling the concave,shewed us for one moment the level beach a-head, disclosing even the sands,and stunted, ooze-sprinkled beds of reeds, that grew at high water mark.Again it was dark, and we drew in our breath with such content as one may,who, while fragments of volcano-hurled rock darken the air, sees a vastmass ploughing the ground immediately at his feet. What to do we knew not--the breakers here, there, everywhere, encompassed us--they roared, anddashed, and flung their hated spray in our faces. With considerabledifficulty and danger we succeeded at length in altering our course, andstretched out from shore. I urged my companions to prepare for the wreck ofour little skiff, and to bind themselves to some oar or spar which mightsuffice to float them. I was myself an excellent swimmer--the very sightof the sea was wont to raise in me such sensations, as a huntsmanexperiences, when he hears a pack of hounds in full cry; I loved to feelthe waves wrap me and strive to overpower me; while I, lord of myself,moved this way or that, in spite of their angry buffetings. Adrian alsocould swim--but the weakness of his frame prevented him from feelingpleasure in the exercise, or acquiring any great expertness. But what powercould the strongest swimmer oppose to the overpowering violence of ocean inits fury? My efforts to prepare my companions were rendered nearly futile--for the roaring breakers prevented our hearing one another speak, andthe waves, that broke continually over our boat, obliged me to exert all mystrength in lading the water out, as fast as it came in. The whiledarkness, palpable and rayless, hemmed us round, dissipated only by thelightning; sometimes we beheld thunderbolts, fiery red, fall into the sea,and at intervals vast spouts stooped from the clouds, churning the wildocean, which rose to meet them; while the fierce gale bore the rackonwards, and they were lost in the chaotic mingling of sky and sea. Ourgunwales had been torn away, our single sail had been rent to ribbands, andborne down the stream of the wind. We had cut away our mast, and lightenedthe boat of all she contained--Clara attempted to assist me in heavingthe water from the hold, and, as she turned her eyes to look on thelightning, I could discern by that momentary gleam, that resignation hadconquered every fear. We have a power given us in any worst extremity,which props the else feeble mind of man, and enables us to endure the mostsavage tortures with a stillness of soul which in hours of happiness wecould not have imagined. A calm, more dreadful in truth than the tempest,allayed the wild beatings of my heart--a calm like that of the gamester,the suicide, and the murderer, when the last die is on the point of beingcast--while the poisoned cup is at the lips,--as the death-blow isabout to be given.
Hours passed thus--hours which might write old age on the face ofbeardless youth, and grizzle the silky hair of infancy---hours, while thechaotic uproar continued, while each dread gust transcended in fury the onebefore, and our skiff hung on the breaking wave, and then rushed into thevalley below, and trembled and spun between the watery precipices thatseemed most to meet above her. For a moment the gale paused, and ocean sankto comparative silence--it was a breathless interval; the wind which, asa practised leaper, had gathered itself up before it sprung, now withterrific roar rushed over the sea, and the waves struck our stern. Adrianexclaimed that the rudder was gone;--"We are lost," cried Clara, "Saveyourselves--O save yourselves!" The lightning shewed me the poor girlhalf buried in the water at the bottom of the boat; as she was sinking init Adrian caught her up, and sustained her in his arms. We were without arudder--we rushed prow foremost into the vast billows piled up a-head--they broke over and filled the tiny skiff; one scream I heard--one crythat we were gone, I uttered; I found myself in the waters; darkness wasaround. When the light of the tempest flashed, I saw the keel of our upsetboat close to me--I clung to this, grasping it with clenched hand andnails, while I endeavoured during each flash to discover any appearance ofmy companions. I thought I saw Adrian at no great distance from me,clinging to an oar; I sprung from my hold, and with energy beyond my humanstrength, I dashed aside the waters as I strove to lay hold of him. As thathope failed, instinctive love of life animated me, and feelings ofcontention, as if a hostile will combated with mine. I breasted the surges,and flung them from me, as I would the opposing front and sharpened clawsof a lion about to enfang my bosom. When I had been beaten down by onewave, I rose on another, while I felt bitter pride curl my lip.
Ever since the storm had carried us near the shore, we had never attainedany great distance from it. With every flash I saw the bordering coast; yetthe progress I made was small, while each wave, as it receded, carried meback into ocean's far abysses. At one moment I felt my foot touch the sand,and then again I was in deep water; my arms began to lose their power ofmotion; my breath failed me under the influence of the strangling waters--a thousand wild and delirious thoughts crossed me: as well as I can nowrecall them, my chief feeling was, how sweet it would be to lay my head onthe quiet earth, where the surges would no longer strike my weakened frame,nor the sound of waters ring in my ears--to attain this repose, not tosave my life, I made a last effort--the shelving shore suddenly presenteda footing for me. I rose, and was again thrown down by the breakers--apoint of rock to which I was enabled to cling, gave me a moment's r
espite;and then, taking advantage of the ebbing of the waves, I ran forwards--gained the dry sands, and fell senseless on the oozy reeds that sprinkledthem.
I must have lain long deprived of life; for when first, with a sickeningfeeling, I unclosed my eyes, the light of morning met them. Great changehad taken place meanwhile: grey dawn dappled the flying clouds, which spedonwards, leaving visible at intervals vast lakes of pure ether. A fountainof light arose in an encreasing stream from the east, behind the waves ofthe Adriatic, changing the grey to a roseate hue, and then flooding sky andsea with aerial gold.
A kind of stupor followed my fainting; my senses were alive, but memory wasextinct. The blessed respite was short--a snake lurked near me to stingme into life--on the first retrospective emotion I would have started up,but my limbs refused to obey me; my knees trembled, the muscles had lostall power. I still believed that I might find one of my beloved companionscast like me, half alive, on the beach; and I strove in every way torestore my frame to the use of its animal functions. I wrung the brine frommy hair; and the rays of the risen sun soon visited me with genial warmth.With the restoration of my bodily powers, my mind became in some degreeaware of the universe of misery, henceforth to be its dwelling. I ran tothe water's edge, calling on the beloved names. Ocean drank in, andabsorbed my feeble voice, replying with pitiless roar. I climbed a neartree: the level sands bounded by a pine forest, and the sea clipped roundby the horizon, was all that I could discern. In vain I extended myresearches along the beach; the mast we had thrown overboard, with tangledcordage, and remnants of a sail, was the sole relic land received of ourwreck. Sometimes I stood still, and wrung my hands. I accused earth and sky--the universal machine and the Almighty power that misdirected it. AgainI threw myself on the sands, and then the sighing wind, mimicking a humancry, roused me to bitter, fallacious hope. Assuredly if any little bark orsmallest canoe had been near, I should have sought the savage plains ofocean, found the dear remains of my lost ones, and clinging round them,have shared their grave.
The day passed thus; each moment contained eternity; although when hourafter hour had gone by, I wondered at the quick flight of time. Yet evennow I had not drunk the bitter potion to the dregs; I was not yet persuadedof my loss; I did not yet feel in every pulsation, in every nerve, in everythought, that I remained alone of my race,--that I was the LAST MAN.
The day had clouded over, and a drizzling rain set in at sunset. Even theeternal skies weep, I thought; is there any shame then, that mortal manshould spend himself in tears? I remembered the ancient fables, in whichhuman beings are described as dissolving away through weeping intoever-gushing fountains. Ah! that so it were; and then my destiny would bein some sort akin to the watery death of Adrian and Clara. Oh! grief isfantastic; it weaves a web on which to trace the history of its woe fromevery form and change around; it incorporates itself with all livingnature; it finds sustenance in every object; as light, it fills all things,and, like light, it gives its own colours to all.
I had wandered in my search to some distance from the spot on which I hadbeen cast, and came to one of those watch-towers, which at stated distancesline the Italian shore. I was glad of shelter, glad to find a work of humanhands, after I had gazed so long on nature's drear barrenness; so Ientered, and ascended the rough winding staircase into the guard-room. Sofar was fate kind, that no harrowing vestige remained of its formerinhabitants; a few planks laid across two iron tressels, and strewed withthe dried leaves of Indian corn, was the bed presented to me; and an openchest, containing some half mouldered biscuit, awakened an appetite, whichperhaps existed before, but of which, until now, I was not aware. Thirstalso, violent and parching, the result of the sea-water I had drank, and ofthe exhaustion of my frame, tormented me. Kind nature had gifted the supplyof these wants with pleasurable sensations, so that I--even I!--wasrefreshed and calmed, as I ate of this sorry fare, and drank a little ofthe sour wine which half filled a flask left in this abandoned dwelling.Then I stretched myself on the bed, not to be disdained by the victim ofshipwreck. The earthy smell of the dried leaves was balm to my sense afterthe hateful odour of sea-weed. I forgot my state of loneliness. I neitherlooked backward nor forward; my senses were hushed to repose; I fell asleepand dreamed of all dear inland scenes, of hay-makers, of the shepherd'swhistle to his dog, when he demanded his help to drive the flock to fold;of sights and sounds peculiar to my boyhood's mountain life, which I hadlong forgotten.
I awoke in a painful agony--for I fancied that ocean, breaking itsbounds, carried away the fixed continent and deep rooted mountains,together with the streams I loved, the woods, and the flocks--it ragedaround, with that continued and dreadful roar which had accompanied thelast wreck of surviving humanity. As my waking sense returned, the barewalls of the guard room closed round me, and the rain pattered against thesingle window. How dreadful it is, to emerge from the oblivion of slumber,and to receive as a good morrow the mute wailing of one's own hapless heart--to return from the land of deceptive dreams, to the heavy knowledge ofunchanged disaster!--Thus was it with me, now, and for ever! The sting ofother griefs might be blunted by time; and even mine yielded sometimesduring the day, to the pleasure inspired by the imagination or the senses;but I never look first upon the morning-light but with my fingers pressedtight on my bursting heart, and my soul deluged with the interminable floodof hopeless misery. Now I awoke for the first time in the dead world--Iawoke alone--and the dull dirge of the sea, heard even amidst the rain,recalled me to the reflection of the wretch I had become. The sound camelike a reproach, a scoff--like the sting of remorse in the soul--Igasped--the veins and muscles of my throat swelled, suffocating me. I putmy fingers to my ears, I buried my head in the leaves of my couch, I wouldhave dived to the centre to lose hearing of that hideous moan.
But another task must be mine--again I visited the detested beach--again I vainly looked far and wide--again I raised my unanswered cry,lifting up the only voice that could ever again force the mute air tosyllable the human thought.
What a pitiable, forlorn, disconsolate being I was! My very aspect and garbtold the tale of my despair. My hair was matted and wild--my limbs soiledwith salt ooze; while at sea, I had thrown off those of my garments thatencumbered me, and the rain drenched the thin summer-clothing I hadretained--my feet were bare, and the stunted reeds and broken shells madethem bleed--the while, I hurried to and fro, now looking earnestly onsome distant rock which, islanded in the sands, bore for a moment adeceptive appearance--now with flashing eyes reproaching the murderousocean for its unutterable cruelty.
For a moment I compared myself to that monarch of the waste--RobinsonCrusoe. We had been both thrown companionless--he on the shore of adesolate island: I on that of a desolate world. I was rich in the so calledgoods of life. If I turned my steps from the near barren scene, and enteredany of the earth's million cities, I should find their wealth stored up formy accommodation--clothes, food, books, and a choice of dwelling beyondthe command of the princes of former times--every climate was subject tomy selection, while he was obliged to toil in the acquirement of everynecessary, and was the inhabitant of a tropical island, against whose heatsand storms he could obtain small shelter.--Viewing the question thus, whowould not have preferred the Sybarite enjoyments I could command, thephilosophic leisure, and ample intellectual resources, to his life oflabour and peril? Yet he was far happier than I: for he could hope, norhope in vain--the destined vessel at last arrived, to bear him tocountrymen and kindred, where the events of his solitude became a fire-sidetale. To none could I ever relate the story of my adversity; no hope had I.He knew that, beyond the ocean which begirt his lonely island, thousandslived whom the sun enlightened when it shone also on him: beneath themeridian sun and visiting moon, I alone bore human features; I alone couldgive articulation to thought; and, when I slept, both day and night wereunbeheld of any. He had fled from his fellows, and was transported withterror at the print of a human foot. I would have knelt down and worshippedthe same. The wild and cruel
Caribbee, the merciless Cannibal--or worsethan these, the uncouth, brute, and remorseless veteran in the vices ofcivilization, would have been to me a beloved companion, a treasure dearlyprized--his nature would be kin to mine; his form cast in the same mould;human blood would flow in his veins; a human sympathy must link us forever. It cannot be that I shall never behold a fellow being more!--never!--never!--not in the course of years!--Shall I wake, and speak tonone, pass the interminable hours, my soul, islanded in the world, asolitary point, surrounded by vacuum? Will day follow day endlessly thus?--No! no! a God rules the world--providence has not exchanged its goldensceptre for an aspic's sting. Away! let me fly from the ocean-grave, let medepart from this barren nook, paled in, as it is, from access by its owndesolateness; let me tread once again the paved towns; step over thethreshold of man's dwellings, and most certainly I shall find this thoughta horrible vision--a maddening, but evanescent dream.
I entered Ravenna, (the town nearest to the spot whereon I had been cast),before the second sun had set on the empty world; I saw many livingcreatures; oxen, and horses, and dogs, but there was no man among them; Ientered a cottage, it was vacant; I ascended the marble stairs of a palace,the bats and the owls were nestled in the tapestry; I stepped softly, notto awaken the sleeping town: I rebuked a dog, that by yelping disturbed thesacred stillness; I would not believe that all was as it seemed--Theworld was not dead, but I was mad; I was deprived of sight, hearing, andsense of touch; I was labouring under the force of a spell, which permittedme to behold all sights of earth, except its human inhabitants; they werepursuing their ordinary labours. Every house had its inmate; but I couldnot perceive them. If I could have deluded myself into a belief of thiskind, I should have been far more satisfied. But my brain, tenacious of itsreason, refused to lend itself to such imaginations--and though Iendeavoured to play the antic to myself, I knew that I, the offspring ofman, during long years one among many--now remained sole survivor of myspecies.
The sun sank behind the western hills; I had fasted since the precedingevening, but, though faint and weary, I loathed food, nor ceased, while yeta ray of light remained, to pace the lonely streets. Night came on, andsent every living creature but me to the bosom of its mate. It was mysolace, to blunt my mental agony by personal hardship--of the thousandbeds around, I would not seek the luxury of one; I lay down on thepavement,--a cold marble step served me for a pillow--midnight came;and then, though not before, did my wearied lids shut out the sight of thetwinkling stars, and their reflex on the pavement near. Thus I passed thesecond night of my desolation.