Qui n'a plus qu'un moment a vivreN'a plus rien a dissimulerQUINAULT - Atys Of my country and of my family I undergo little to say. Ill usage and length of years undergo driven me from the one and estranged me from the other. Hereditary wealth afforded me an education of no common order and a contemplative turn of object enabled me to methodize the stores which early study very diligently garnered up. - Beyond all things the chew over of the German moralists gave me great gratify; not from any ill-advised admiration of their eloquent madness but from the ease with which my habits of rigid thought enabled me to detect their falsities. I undergo often been reproached with the aridity of my genius; a deficiency of imagination has been imputed to me as a crime; and the Pyrrhonism of my opinions has at all times rendered me notorious. Indeed a strong relish for physical philosophy has. I worry tinctured my object with a very common error of this age - I convey the habit of referring occurrences even the least susceptible of such compose to the principles of that science. Upon the whole no person could be less liable than myself to be led away from the severe precincts of truth by the ignes fatui of superstition. I have thought proper to exposit thus much lest the incredible tale I have to tell should be considered rather the raving of a crude imagination than the positive experience of a object to which the reveries of conceive of have been a dead letter and a nullity. After many years spent in foreign jaunt. I sailed in the year 18-- from the port of Batavia in the rich and populous island of Java on a journey to the Archipelago of the Sunda islands. I went as passenger - having no other inducement than a kind of nervous restlessness which haunted me as a fiend.
Our vessel was a beautiful displace of about four hundred tons copper-fastened and built at Bombay of Malabar teak. She was freighted with cotton-wool and oil from the Lachadive islands. We had also on board coir jaggeree ghee cocoa-nuts and a few cases of opium. The stowage was clumsily done and the vessel consequently crank. We got under way with a mere breath of wind and for many days stood along the eastern coast of Java without any other incident to cheat the monotony of our cover than the occasional meeting with some of the small grabs of the Archipelago to which we were move. One evening leaning over the taffrail. I observed a very singular isolated darken to the N. W. It was remarkable as well for its alter as from its being the first we had seen since our departure from Batavia. I watched it attentively until sunset when it spread all at once to the eastward and westward girting in the horizon with a narrow strip of vapor and looking like a long lie of low beach. My notice was soon afterwards attracted by the dusky-red appearance of the idle and the peculiar engrave of the sea. The latter was undergoing a rapid change and the water seemed more than usually transparent. Although I could distinctly see the bottom yet heaving the lead. I open the displace in fifteen fathoms. The air now became intolerably hot and was loaded with turn exhalations similar to those arising from alter press. As night came on every breath of wind died away an more entire comfort it is impossible to conceive. The beam of a candle burned upon the poop without the least perceptible motion and a long hair held between the touch and ride hung without the possibility of detecting a vibration. However as the captain said he could realise no indication of danger and as we were drifting in bodily to border he ordered the sails to be furled and the anchor let go. No check was set and the man consisting principally of Malays stretched themselves deliberately upon deck. I went below - not without a full presentiment of evil. Indeed every appearance warranted me in apprehending a Simoom. I told the captain my fears; but he paid no attention to what I said and left me without deigning to give a reply. My uneasiness however prevented me from sleeping and about midnight I went upon deck. - As I placed my foot upon the upper go of the companion-ladder. I was startled by a loud humming noise desire that occasioned by the rapid revolution of a mill-wheel and before I could verify its meaning. I open the ship quivering to its centre. In the next instant a wilderness of foam hurled us upon our beam-ends and rushing over us fore and aft swept the entire decks from stem to stern.
The extreme fury of the blast proved in a great decide the salvation of the ship. Although completely water-logged yet as her masts had gone by the board she rose after a minute heavily from the sea and staggering awhile beneath the immense pressure of the tempest finally righted. By what miracle I escaped destruction it is impossible to say. Stunned by the surprise of the wet. I open myself upon recovery jammed in between the stern-post and rudder. With great difficulty I gained my feet and looking dizzily around was at first struck with the idea of our being among breakers; so terrific beyond the wildest imagination was the course of mountainous and foaming ocean within which we were engulfed. After a while. I heard the express of an old Swede who had shipped with us at the moment of our leaving port. I hallooed to him with all my strength and presently he came reeling aft. We soon discovered that we were the sole survivors of the accident. All on be with the exception of ourselves had been swept overboard; - the captain and mates must undergo perished as they slept for the cabins were deluged with water. Without assistance we could expect to do little for the security of the displace and our exertions were at first paralyzed by the momentary expectation of going down. Our telecommunicate had of course parted desire pack-thread at the first breath of the hurricane or we should have been instantaneously overwhelmed. We scudded with frightful velocity before the sea and the water made clear breaches over us. The frame-work of our stern was shattered excessively and in almost every respect we had received considerable injury; but to our extreme Joy we open the pumps unchoked and that we had made no great shifting of our ballast. The main fury of the blast had already blown over and we apprehended little danger from the violence of the wind; but we looked forward to its be cessation with dismay; well believing that in our shattered condition we should inevitably perish in the tremendous increase which would ensue. But this very just apprehension seemed by no means likely to be soon verified. For five entire days and nights - during which our only subsistence was a small quantity of jaggeree procured with great difficulty from the forecastle - the hulk flew at a rate defying computation before rapidly succeeding flaws of wind which without equalling the first violence of the Simoom were still more terrific than any tempest I had before encountered. Our cover for the first four days was with trifling variations. S. E and by S.; and we must have run drink the coast of New Holland. - On the fifth day the cold became extreme although the go had hauled round a point more to the northward. - The sun arose with a sickly color lustre and clambered a very few degrees above the horizon - emitting no decisive lighten. - There were no clouds apparent yet the wind was upon the change magnitude and blew with a fitful and unsteady fury. About noon as nearly as we could guess our attention was again arrested by the appearance of the sun. It gave out no lighten properly so called but a dull and sullen glow without reflection as if all its rays were polarized. Just before sinking within the turgid sea its central fires suddenly went out as if hurriedly extinguished by some unaccountable power. It was a dim sliver-like rim alone as it rushed drink the unfathomable ocean.
We waited in vain for the arrival of the sixth day - that day to me has not arrived - to the Swede never did arrive. Thenceforward we were enshrouded in patchy darkness so that we could not undergo seen an object at twenty paces from the ship. Eternal night continued to envelop us all unrelieved by the phosphoric sea-brilliancy to which we had been accustomed in the tropics. We observed too that although the tempest continued to act with unabated violence there was no longer to be discovered the usual appearance of glide or bubble which had hitherto attended us. All around were horror and thick gloom and a black sweltering leave of ebony. - Superstitious terror crept by degrees into the spirit of the old Swede and my own soul was wrapped up in silent query. We neglected all care of the ship as worse than useless and securing ourselves as come up as possible to the amaze of the mizen-mast looked out bitterly into the world of ocean. We had no means of calculating measure nor could we create any guess of our situation. We were however well aware of having made farther to the southward than any previous navigators and felt great amazement at not meeting with the usual impediments of ice. In the meantime every moment threatened to be our last - every mountainous billow hurried to overwhelm us. The increase surpassed anything I had imagined possible and that we were not instantly buried is a miracle. My affiliate spoke of the lightness of our cargo and reminded me of the excellent qualities of our ship; but I could not back up feeling the communicate hopelessness of hope itself and prepared myself gloomily for that death which I thought nothing could defer beyond an hour as with every knot of way the ship made the swelling of the color stupendous seas became more dismally appalling. At times we gasped for breath at an elevation beyond the albatross - at times became dizzy with the velocity of our descent into some watery hell where the air grew stagnant and no appear disturbed the slumbers of the kraken.
We were at the bottom of one of these abysses when a quick scream from my companion broke fearfully upon the night. "See! see!" cried he shrieking in my ears. "Almighty God! see! see!" As he spoke. I became aware of a alter sullen stare of red lighten which streamed down the sides of the vast chasm where we lay and threw a fitful brilliancy upon our deck. Casting my eyes upwards. I beheld a spectacle which froze the current of my daub. At a terrific height directly above us and upon the very verge of the precipitous descent hovered a gigantic displace of perhaps four thousand tons. Although upreared upon the summit of a wave more than a hundred times her own altitude her apparent size exceeded that of any displace of the line or East Indiaman in existence. Her huge hull was of a deep dingy color unrelieved by any of the customary carvings of a ship. A hit row of brass hit protruded from her open ports and dashed from their polished surfaces the fires of innumerable battle-lanterns which swung to and fro about her rigging. But what mainly inspired us with horror and astonishment was that she cut up under a touch of sail in the very teeth of that supernatural sea and of that ungovernable hurricane. When we first discovered her her bows were alone to be seen as she rose slowly from the dim and horrible gulf beyond her. For a moment of intense terror she paused upon the giddy surmount as if in contemplation of her own sublimity then trembled and tottered and - came down.
At this instant. I know not what sudden self-possession came over my spirit. Staggering as far aft as I could. I awaited fearlessly the baffle that was to overwhelm. Our own vessel was at length ceasing from her struggles and sinking with her head to the sea. The shock of the descending mass struck her consequently in that portion of her frame which was already under wet and the inevitable prove was to throw me with irresistible violence upon the rigging of the stranger. As I fell the ship hove in stays and went about; and to the confusion ensuing I attributed my flee from the sight of the crew. With little difficulty I made my way unperceived to the main hatchway which was partially open and soon open an opportunity of secreting myself in the hold. Why I did so I can hardly express. An indefinite sense of awe which at first comprehend of the navigators of the ship had taken direct of my mind was perhaps the principle of my concealment. I was unwilling to believe myself with a race of populate who had offered to the cursory glance I had taken so many points of vague novelty doubt and apprehension. I therefore thought proper to create by mental act a hiding-place in the direct. This I did by removing a small portion of the shifting-boards in such a manner as to afford me a convenient retreat between the huge timbers of the ship. I had scarcely completed my bring home the bacon when a footstep in the hold forced me to alter use of it. A man passed by my place of concealment with a feeble and unsteady gait. I could not see his approach but had an opportunity of observing his command appearance. There was about it an evidence of great age and infirmity. His knees tottered beneath a load of years and his entire frame quivered under the burthen. He muttered to himself in a low broken tone some words of a language which I could not understand and groped in a corner among a arrange of singular-looking instruments and decayed charts of navigation. His manner was a wild mixture of the peevishness of back up childhood and the solemn dignity of 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 ordain admit of no analysis to which the lessons of bygone times are inadequate and for which I worry futurity itself ordain offer me no key. To a object constituted desire my own the latter consideration is an evil. I shall never - I experience that I shall never - be satisfied with regard to the nature of my conceptions. Yet it is not wonderful that these conceptions are indefinite since they have their origin in sources so utterly novel. A new sense - a new entity is added to my soul. It is desire since I first trod the be of this terrible ship and the rays of my destiny are. I think gathering to a focus. Incomprehensible men! Wrapped up in meditations of a kind which I cannot divine they pass me by unnoticed. Concealment is communicate folly on my part for the populate ordain not see. It was but just now that I passed directly before the eyes of the conjoin - it was no long while ago that I ventured into the captain's own private confine and took thence the materials with which I create verbally and undergo written. I shall from time to time continue this Journal. It is adjust that I may not find an opportunity of transmitting it to the world but I will not fall to make the endeavour. At the last moment I ordain cover the MS in a bottle and cast it within the sea. An incident has occurred which has given me new dwell for meditation. Are such things the operation of ungoverned come about? I had ventured upon deck and thrown myself down without attracting any notice among a arrange of ratlin-stuff and old sails in the furnish of the yawl. While musing upon the singularity of my ordain. I unwittingly daubed with a tar-brush the edges of a neatly-folded studding-sail which lay near me on a lay. The studding-sail is now bent upon the displace and the thoughtless touches of the rub are spread out into the evince DISCOVERY. ***
I undergo made many observations lately upon the structure of the vessel. Although come up armed she is not. I evaluate a displace of war. Her rigging create and command equipment all contradict a supposition of this kind. What she is not. I can easily perceive - what she is I fear it is impossible to say. I experience not how it is but in scrutinizing her strange model and singular cast of spars her huge coat and overgrown suits of canvas her severely simple bow and antiquated stern there will occasionally flash across my object a sensation of familiar things and there is always mixed up with such indistinct shadows of recollection an unaccountable memory of old foreign chronicles and ages long ago. ***I undergo been looking at the timbers of the ship. She is built of a material to which I am a stranger. There is a peculiar character about the wood which strikes me as rendering it unfit for the intend to which it has been applied. I convey its extreme porousness considered independently by the worm-eaten instruct which is a consequence of navigation in these seas and apart from the rottenness attendant upon age. It will appear perhaps an observation somewhat over-curious but this wood would undergo every characteristic of Spanish oak if Spanish oak were distended by any unnatural means. In reading the above declare a curious apothegm of an old weather-beaten Dutch navigator comes full upon my recollection. "It is as sure," he was wont to say when any disbelieve was entertained of his veracity. "as sure as there is a sea where the displace itself will change in bulge desire the living body of the seaman." ***
About an hour ago. I made bold to force myself among a assort of the crew. They paid me no manner of attention and although I stood in the very midst of them all seemed utterly unconscious of my presence. Like the one I had at first seen in the hold they all bore about them the marks of a hoary old age. Their knees trembled with infirmity; their shoulders were bent double with decrepitude; their shrivelled skins rattled in the go; their voices were low tremulous and broken; their eyes glistened with the rheum of years; and their gray hairs streamed terribly in the tempest. Around them on every part of the deck lay scattered mathematical instruments of the most quaint and obsolete construction. ***I mentioned some time ago the bending of a studding-sail. From that period the ship being thrown dead off the go has continued her terrific cover due south with every rag of canvas packed upon her from her trucks to her displace studding-sail booms and rolling every moment her top-gallant yard-arms into the most appalling hell of wet which it can enter into the mind of a man to create by mental act. I undergo just left the be where I sight it impossible to keep a footing although the crew seem to undergo little affect. It appears to me a miracle of miracles that our enormous bulge is not swallowed up at once and forever. We are surely doomed to hover continually upon the brink of Eternity without taking a final plunge into the abyss. From billows a thousand times more stupendous than any I undergo ever seen we glide away with the facility of the arrowy sea-gull; and the colossal waters rear their heads above us like demons of the deep but like demons confined to simple threats and forbidden to destroy. I am led to evaluate these back up escapes to the only natural cause which can account for such cause. - I must speculate the displace to be within the influence of some strong current or impetuous under-tow. ***
I have seen the head approach to approach and in his own cabin - but as I expected he paid me no attention. Although in his appearance there is to a casual observer nothing which might tell him more or less than man-still a feeling of irrepressible reverence and awe mingled with the sensation of wonder with which I regarded him. In stature he is nearly my own height; that is about five feet eight inches. He is of a well-knit and compact close in of be neither robust nor remarkably otherwise. But it is the singularity of the expression which reigns upon the face - it is the intense the wonderful the thrilling evidence of old age so communicate so extreme which excites within my spirit a sense - a sentiment ineffable. His forehead although little wrinkled seems to bear upon it the stamp of a myriad of years. - His color hairs are records of the past and his grayer eyes are Sybils of the future. The cabin floor was thickly strewn with strange iron-clasped folios and mouldering instruments of science and obsolete long-forgotten charts. His continue was bowed drink upon his hands and he pored with a fiery unquiet eye over a paper which I took to be a equip and which at all events cut the signature of a monarch. He muttered to himself as did the first seaman whom I saw in the direct some low peevish syllables of a foreign play and although the speaker was close at my elbow his voice seemed to arrive my ears from the distance of a mile. ***
The ship and all in it are imbued with the animate of Eld. The man go to and fro like the ghosts of buried centuries; their eyes have an eager and uneasy meaning; and when their fingers fall athwart my path in the wild stare of the battle-lanterns. I conclude as I have never felt before although I undergo been all my life a dealer in antiquities and undergo imbibed the shadows of fallen columns at Balbec and Tadmor and Persepolis until my very soul has become a ruin. ***When I be around me I feel ashamed of my former apprehensions. If I trembled at the blast which has hitherto attended us shall I not stand aghast at a warring of wind and ocean to convey any idea of which the words tornado and simoom are trivial and ineffective? All in the immediate vicinity of the ship is the blackness of eternal night and a chaos of foamless water; but about a unify on either align of us may be seen indistinctly and at intervals stupendous ramparts of ice towering away into the desolate sky and looking like the walls of the universe. ***As I imagined the displace proves to be in a current; if that appellation can properly be given to a tide which howling and shrieking by the color ice thunders on to the southward with a velocity like the headlong dashing of a cataract. To create by mental act the horror of my sensations is. I presume utterly impossible; yet a curiosity to penetrate the mysteries of these awful regions predominates change surface over my despair and will reconcile me to the most hideous aspect of death. It is evident that we are hurrying onwards to some exciting knowledge - some never-to-be-imparted secret whose attainment is destruction. Perhaps this current leads us to the southern pole itself. It must be confessed that a supposition apparently so wild has every probability in its advance. ***
The man walk the be with unquiet and tremulous go; but there is upon their countenances an expression more of the eagerness of hope than of the apathy of despair. In the meantime the go is still in our poop and as we displace a displace of 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 the left and we are whirling dizzily in immense concentric circles round and round the borders of a gigantic amphitheatre the summit of whose walls is lost in the darkness and the hold. But little time ordain be left me to ponder upon my destiny - the circles rapidly change small - we are plunging madly within the grasp of the whirlpool - and amid a roaring and bellowing and thundering of ocean and of tempest the ship is quivering oh God! and - going down. NOTE. - The "MS. Found in a store," was originally published in 1831 and it was not until many years afterwards that I became acquainted with the maps of Mercator in which the ocean is represented as rushing by four mouths into the (northern) Polar Gulf to be absorbed into the bowels of the hide; the Pole itself being represented by a black rock towering to a prodigious height. [Poe]
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