 | CHAPTER IX. Nix's mate |  |
9. CHAPTER IX.
The great agent in this affair is the Sibyl.
Warburton, Div. Leg.
A type of Heaven, a lively hue of hell.
Gascoigne, Voyage into Holland.
Of that forbidden tree, whose mortal taste
Brought death—
Milton.
We return now to the Dolphin. The evening on
which she left her anchorage in the harbor of Mount
Wallaston, she passed down the inner bay of Boston,
with her sails all set, a gentle breeze blowing from
the south-west. Passing some of the loveliest islands
in the world, the rock-bound promontory of Nahant
appeared about a mile before her, just as the moon
arose from out the Atlantic horizon.
For wildness and natural beauty, few places can
compare with Nahant. It lies between Boston and
Salem, coastwise stretching out into the sea, and
nearly equidistant from those places. From the
only by a path over two beautiful beaches rolled by
the pressure of the waves harder than the best gravel-walk,
and glittering in the sunshine with exceeding
beauty. On the left, as you approach Nahant
by the beach, Egg-Rock lies off about a mile
and a half, towering in solitary grandeur one hundred
and fifty feet from the level of the sea.
At high tide it is very difficult to reach Nahant at
all by the beach, and it has sometimes happened, that
when there have been extraordinary tides, the traveller,
too rashly calculating on the possibility of the
passage, has been overwhelmed in the waves that on
such occasions roll in with terrific power and rapidity.
Many a time have we made that passage, when
the carriage was nearly lifted and borne away by the
surf,—or on horseback, when the animal had to
struggle for his life in the billows.
The wild beauties of Nahant are exceedingly peculiar.
There is a place there called the Spouting-Horn,—a
deep, curving fissure in the rocks, where
the waves, setting in with fury, dash the water up
mast-high with a subterranean roar that is sometimes
frightful;—but as the waves roll back again, and the
thunder below you for the moment ceases, the spray
of the subsiding waters catches the rays of the setting
sun, and forms the most beautiful rainbows.
The whole border of Nahant is one chain of black,
rugged rocks, that seem to have been heaved up
and thrown there in the utmost disorder; and
against and over these dark masses, the north-east furiously
drives the scared waves of the Atlantic, that
come tumbling in with unbroken precipitation, where
they are doomed to vex themselves for ever without
rest.
Next to the Spouting-Horn, Swallow's Cave is the
most remarkable feature of Nahant. It is a small
cavern lying to the south-west of the peninsula, close
to the water's edge, that seems to have been hollowed
out by the art and industry of man. From this cavern
there is a passage through to the south-east, formed
by a narrow fissure in the rock, which is bridged
ever by a single stone, covered with turf. The place
is supposed to have been named from a belief that it
was a favorite building-spot for swallows; but tradition
provides us with a more fanciful origin,—that it
was called after an Indian girl, who was the wonder
of the neighboring towns, and who was called the
Swallow, because she skimmed in her bark canoe,
swallow-like, over the waters.
Nameoke, the reputed grand-daughter of Massasoit,
and the daughter of Philip, king of the Wompanoags,
was now the sole occupant of Nahant. On the death
of her father and mother, whose fates were so melancholy,
the former having been slain after his defeat
by the white people, and the latter drowned in her
attempt to escape, Nameoke was for a while protected
to a young Englishman, she was seduced a way from
their guardianship and protection. But it was not
long before she was deserted by the heartless villain,
innocent through her own high virtue, but desolate
and brain-touched, to listen to the unhealthy throbbings
of her own sorrow-burthened heart, and to long for
that corporeal change which haply might bring with
it repose. In her despair she hired herself out as a
serving-maid to an old gentleman, who, in the neighborhood
of Lynn, passed his days in lonely contemplation.
The history of that man was never wholly
known; but he was believed to have fled from England
to shield himself from that fabricated scheme,
the Popish Plot, which it was the policy of the reformed
people of England to keep alive in the imagination
of the multitude, a participation in which
was more or less imputed to those who were particularly
odious to them and of the Catholic persuasion.
This man devoted his life, as many did in that
day, to the study of judicial astrology, and of those
Chaldæan experiments which at once show the aspiring
and heaven-projected genius of man, and explain
the mystery of the tree which stood in the garden
of God. As Plato revived the Know Thyself
of the ancients, and explained it to his disciples, so
shall still greater arcana be unfolded from those two
words, and revelations undreamed and unimagined
by man, be brought bodily before his vision. Here
let down upon the eyes of humanity, but as yet it could
not bear it, and it was withdrawn; yet has it been given
to a few to see what is now ineffable, and to speak darkly
of the future, that a gradual preparation may be
made for that which cannot be sudden in its advent.
To this man, Nameoke endeared herself by the
wildness and originality of her genius, and by the
gentleness of her affections. To her he imparted all
the wonders and mysteries of his learning. In short
he treated her more like a child of his own, than as
a domestic whose duty it was to serve him; and
as neither of them held much communion with the
world, they became mutually attached to each other
on that account. Under his tuition Nameoke soon
acquired the English language, which she spoke as
well as he, though she retained much of her native
modes of expression. The old man died, after Nameoke
had lived with him five years; and then she
was a beautiful girl of nineteen, thrown on the rough
world without any protection but her own powerful
character, and on this she determined forth with to
implicitly rely.
Once only had she visited Nahant in company
with her generous protector, to gather the wild yarrow
by moonlight, and pull the sponge from the Sunken
Ledge. Here, in her wanderings, she discovered
the rocky cavern, which even then appeared the
most alluring spot she had seen; and to this secluded
on the coffin of the old astrologer, and she found
herself once more alone in the pitiless world.
At the epoch of our story, Nameoke was twenty-two
years old, and eminently beautiful. Her figure
was tall, and curving in all the lines of elegance and
grace. She moved like the bending maize, and glided
over the ground like its shadow. Her eyes and
hair were as dark as the raven down of midnight
when to the vision of the poet it is smiling at the
music of the spheres. Her features were perfectly
regular: her teeth as white as the apple blossoms,
and her breath sweeter than their fragrance. The
expression of her eyes told of a bosom full of all
sweet harmonies, sweeter and infinitely purer and
dearer for the rude discords that had sometimes disturbed
their undulations, but had driven them nearer
to heaven. Alas! how few are there who are capable
of comprehending a true woman; how few of
the sex who are willing to be loved as they ought!
Nameoke's winter dress was a mantle of mole-skins,
opening over a neat tunic, upon which a necklace
of the rarest and whitest shells hung in graceful
festoons. Around her waist she wore a belt made
of interwoven porcupine quills variously colored, in
which was thrust a dirk in a silver sheath. Her lower
dress was of fine deer-skin, highly ornamented with
quills and other fancy-work; and her feet were protected
by half-boots of buck-skin, profusely in wrought
streamed over her shoulders, was confined by a narrow
band of silver round her forehead; and she held
in her hand a mace of ebony, damascened with
ivory and gold, and terminated by a massive head of
diamond cut steel, that glittered in the sunshine like
that it was intended to represent.
Such was Nameoke, or the Swallow as she was more
commonly called by those who know of her; and
now, since the death of her protector, she was often
sought by unhappy lovers or desperate maidens, and
sometimes by characters of the highest standing, who,
according to the current of the times, believed in the
influence of the stars.
When the Dolphin came within sight of the
Swallow's Cave, about half a mile off, and a little to
the east of the same, Morgan ordered to let go the
anchor, and in a few minutes the vessel was snug at
her moorings, with all her sails brailed up and furled
for the night.
During the passage down, Felton as well as Morgan
kept a sharp look-out; and as they had discovered
nothing in chase of them, and indeed no sail of
any sort in sight, they felt very confident that there
would no interruption occur that night: and they accordingly
set the usual watch, and were preparing to
turn in, when Morgan called the attention of the officer
to a singular light, which flamed up from the
peninsula in the neighborhood of the Spoting-Horn,
the latter to inquire into its cause.
While he was examining this appearance as well
as he could with the night-glass, he observed a figure
standing erect on the summit of Pulpit-Rock, a high
solitary cliff that, like the leaning tower of Pisa, seems
to threaten its down thundering every moment. The
figure looked to him like that of an Indian, but he
could not distinctly ascertain whether it were or not;
but while he was questioning his judgment relative
to it, a voice stole over the water, combining more
power, sweetness, and feeling than the mariner ever
remembered to have heard. So impressive was it, that
he bowed his head in his hands, and listened with
rapt entrancement. Presently it ceased; yet still he
listened in the hope of hearing more, when, raising
his eyes, he saw a canoe shoot forward in the bright
wake of the moon, while the same sweet sounds came
tremblingly over the water, and spell-bound the hearer
with its melody.
“Pray what sort of a place do you call this, Morgan?”
inquired the bewildered seaman; “it must be
Mermaid's Cove or the paradise of the Sirens, for I
never heard such music in my life.”
“It's a haunted island, to be sure,” said the pilot;
“pray tell us if you have never been here before?”
“Never!” replied Felton. “I never was in this
part of the world till this trip, and I must confess I
never saw any place wilder or more attractive.”
“Did you ever hear of a singing-swallow?” inquired
Morgan, spurting his tobacco-juice over the
leeward of the vessel, and looking up into the face of
the officer with a most knowing glance.
“I can't say that I ever did,” answered the other.
“But you have, though, notwithstanding,” resumed
the joker; “for the music which you have been
praising so mightily, comes from a swallow's throat as
sure as my name is Jake Morgan.”
“Don't try to fool me that way, Jake,” said Felton,
“I don't pretend to understand what you mean
by a singing-swallow and all that nonsense; but if
that voice which I heard just now doesn't come from
the throat of a woman, blow me if it did not come
from an angel's or a devil's—that's all.”
Morgan burst out into a loud fit of laughter at this
remark, but as he did not feel in a humor to joke any
more at present, he intimated his intention of taking
a night-cap, which he accomplished as soon as possible,
and then turned into his berth, where in a few
minutes he was sound asleep.
Felton paced the quarter-deck a long time in the
hope that the music would be repeated, but in vain.
At one time he thought that he perceived the canoe
glide by in the shadow of the shore toward the Swallow's
Cave, and the lurid light in the neighborhood
of the Spouting-Horn was now almost extinguished.
He therefore, despairing of hearing a renewal of the
songs that fascinated him so strongly, determined to
soon wrapped in the slumbers of oblivion; but though
the cares of the day were forgotten, he had moonlight
visitations in his dreams, and a voice sweeter
than the song of the nightingale's, which he had often
listened to at home, came to him like a voice from
faery land invested with the gayest influences of imagination.
Though the Dolphin remained several days at her
anchorage, there occurred no repetition of the sights
and sounds which had engaged the attention of Felton,
who, though he went often ashore, could never
discover any vestige of the singular apparition which
he had seen on the first night of his coming: but
had he found his way to the Swallow's Cave, he
might have seen traces of one who was destined to
have so large an interest in his fortunes.
It was on the evening of the fourth day that Felton,
in watching the horizon, as he constantly did in
every direction, at length discovered a sail-boat, that
seemed to be bearing down towards them.
“Take a squint through this glass, Morgan,” said
the officer, “and tell a body what you make of it; it
strikes me that it is the captain.”
Morgan took the glass, and almost immediately
exclaimed;
“That's she, as sure as a gun, and the Captain in
her. How the Jenny streaks it through the water!
There's a Swallow now, Mr. Felton, something like,
she's a beauty, that she is!”
“And that reminds me, Morgan,” said the officer,
“that you have not yet explained to me what you
meant the other evening when you yarned so obscurely
about a certain singing swallow. Come now,
clear away the fog, and give us a peep at your meaning.”
“Why, you see,” said Morgan, “the fact is, I was
afeard that if I gin you any information about the
petticoat that lives yonder, you would go crazy and
drown yourself. I knew well enough that such information
as I might have gin you would have made
you desert the Dolphin;—and by the way, I doubt
very much whether the Captain wouldn't have
changed his anchorage if he had known as much
about Nahant as I do.”
“You speak in riddles,” exclaimed the officer,
whose curiosity was excited to the highest pitch by
the insinuation of Morgan, “don't let a body die of
his ignorance, when you are able to relieve him; what
is all this about the Swallow, Jake!”
“Why, the story's a purty long one,” said Morgan,
“and I am afeard the Captain will be here afore it
is completed; howsomever, I'll gin you some idea on't.
You see, then, in the first place, there's an Indian gal
lives on that are place over there, all alone by herself”—
“The devil, you say!” exclaimed the mariner.
“No; I don't say no such thing,” said Morgan; “but
I do say she's the handsomest gal, by golly, that ever
you set your eyes on.”
“By the thundering Mars, then,” shouted the officer,
clapping his hands, “I'll see her yet.”
“There! I knew how it would be with you; but I
can tell you, you had better attack a grampus than
that same Indian gal.”
“And what has she to do with the singing-swallow,
I should like to know?”
“Plenty to do with it; but the devil of it is she
won't let any body else meddle with the swallow at
all—for, d'ye see, she's the singing swallow herself.”
“Do you mean to say,” inquired Felton, “that the
delicious voice I heard the other evening came from
an Indian girl?”
“I do mean jest that, and nothing more or less,”
replied Morgan; “but only look,” he continued, “at
the Jenny; Jehu! how she goes it; the Captain will
be here in ten minutes—I wonder if he will bring
us any news.”
“How long has that girl lived there?” asked Felton,
who was so deeply interested in the Indian girl,
that he was not willing to be so readily baulked out
of an account of her.
“Blazes!” exclaimed Morgan, “haven't you done
thinking of petticoat yet? I wonder if you have left
any wife at home who would be as much interested
in singing-swallows as you are:—perhaps it would
always, as the lawyers say, you can get one:—a
singing-swallow, in a cage near your house in the
country, hey? a good idea, isn't it?”
“Capital, no doubt;—how old is this girl you tell
of?”
“Ah! there's the rub—what do you think of forty-five?”
inquired Morgan, delighted that he had an
opportunity of tantalizing the sailor.
“Fudge!” exclaimed the officer, “if she had been
any thing like that time off the stocks, you wouldn't
have troubled your clam-shell all this while about her;
I suppose we may put her down at half that age,
hey?”
“You've hit it,” cried Morgan, “to the last turn of
a splice; the gal, they say, isn't twenty-two yet.”
“And is beautiful?”
“As the full moon!”
“And lives all alone?”
“A perfect she-hermit.”
“Won't she let people come to see her?”
“Ah, you are a knowing old wharf-rat,” cried Morgan,
cutting his eye cunningly at the officer.
“No, but none of your nonsense,” replied the officer
with a sort of moral indignant tone, “can't a
fellow ask such a question as that without being taken
for a wharf-rat as you call it? I am interested
about that girl:—but here comes your boat with the
Captain.”
Sure enough, Morgan's boat was now alongside
the Dolphin, the Captain seated in the stern-sheets.
As he came came up to the gangway, he brailed up
the sail, and heaving the painter aboard the vessel,
the boat was secured, and Fitzvassal once more stood
upon the deck of his favorite.
Our adventurer nodded to his officers, and expressed
towards them, as well as to his crew, the pleasure
he derived on being once more with them, and casting
a scrutinizing glance at his spars and rigging,
and finding them all as they should be, he turned to
admire the lovely spot which had been selected as a
harbor for the Dolphin. He was now standing on
the quarter-deck with Felton, and his eye roved with
a pleasurable expression around the scene.
“How is the bottom here, Mr. Felton?” inquired
Fitzvassal of his lieutenant, “does the anchor take
hold well?”
“Never better, Sir,” was the reply; “I think she
could hold on in a north-east gale of wind.”
“You have had no experience, Mr. Felton, of one
of our north-easters; they are hard enough sometimes
almost to blow yonder rocks out of water.
We are pretty well sheltered though, by the peninsula,
which is the best natural break-water I ever
saw; but I had rather be well out at sea with the wind
blowing a hurricane off shore, than anywhere hereabouts
within twenty miles of blue water.”
“Do the north easters prevail much this time
o'year?” inquired the officer.
“Not particularly,” said the Captain; “but they are
felt during all seasons. I have known as hard as any
in August. During the equinoxes, of course, they
rage most violently.”
“Have you any settled purpose about remaining
here?” asked the officer, turning his eyes in the
direction of the Swallow's Cave.
“It it important, Sir,” replied the commander, “to
remain here for the present—for you must know
that I am called on by circumstances unforeseen by
either of us, to take an active part in the political
movements of the day!”
“You surprise me!” exclaimed Felton in undisguised
astonishment; “how has that happened?”
“Would you believe it?” resumed Fitzvassal,
“the leading characters in Boston take me for Nix,
and I pass as Captain Nix among them.”
“How is that possible?”
“The packet which I felt an interest in delivering
according to the address, for the sake of those who
are suffering under the galling chains of tyrants,
was marked, you are aware, `By the favor of Captain
Nix;' it moreover contained a letter, recommending
the said worthy to the particular consideration
of the Bostonians, and so I, by a kind of pious
fraud, am reaping all the laurels of Nix.”
“Nix, then, was never in Boston?”
“Never.”
“And how are you so connected with political
matters, that your presence is necessary hereabouts?”
“There is a strong indication of a great popular
movement for liberty, and the people have no
navy.”
“Have you promised your assistance?”
“Most certainly!”
“Perhaps then, we shall have the honor of engaging
the Rose frigate!” said the officer, his face flushing
with the thought.
“I think it very probable,” replied the commander,
“that she will give us some work to do, and I
believe we could beat the frigate, though she is so
much heavier than the Dolphin. I think we shall
try it, if a chance offers.”
“What are they about in town?”
“They are as noisy and turbulent as butchers'
dogs,” answered the commander, “and no wonder at
it. There is nothing worth living for in that place,
with one glorious exception. Since the colonies
have been deprived of their charters, they have been
making leeway at a rapid rate. It is now several
years since I was in Boston, and positively I could
not believe my own eyes that such a change should
have taken place. There is no law or order there
whatever, and the people are treated like brutes.
Would yon believe it, Mr. Felton, a press-gang only
yesterday had the assurance to go ashore in open
to the frigate.”
“And did they succeed?”
“Succeed, hey? Why, what do you think the
people of Boston are made of? No, Sir, they did not
succeed; but they got most gloriously hammered as
they deserved, and such a mob as grew out of it you
hardly ever saw in London.”
“Did any mischief ensue?” inquired Felton.
“They made out to tar and feather one scoundrel.”
And Fitzvassal sighed deeply at the sorrows and
misery which the thought of his step-father suggested.
“The fellow richly deserved it,” he continued, rallying
himself; “he was a villain, and a Tory to boot.
But we must be in readiness for action, in case this
disturbance should result in a general insurrection;
though I have been assured that there is no danger of
it. The people are as yet ignorant of the extent of
their sufferings. They lean on hope, but the anchor
is too weak to hold them.”
In conversation like the foregoing, the remainder
of the day passed off, the Dolphin lying idly at anchor
within the curving bay, and nothing transpiring
to interrupt the monotony of the scene but the
large gulls that wheeled away in the blue air, and
now and then dipped to the water for fish, or the
stern of the vessel.
The mariners, some of them, were engaged in
mending the sails and rigging, and in such other
matters as were necessary to be attended to on
board; while others were fishing from about the
bows for perch and cod, and two were busying themselves
in the jolly-boat among the rocks for lobsters.
All these were procured in the greatest abundance;
nor was there wanting a goodly supply of ducks,
which the skill of the men brought down as they
rose from the water.
In the meantime, Felton had not failed to inform
the commander of the surprising appearances on
shore, with a view to obtain permission to go that
night and explore the causes of the same. This was
readily granted; for Fitzvassal considered it as nothing
more than a freak of sailor fancy, and a pretext,
perhaps, of passing a leisure hour on the main
land in the distance.
Felton was a gentlemanly-looking mariner, about
thirty years old. His eyes and hair were very black,
his complexion was olive. He was above the middle
height, and in his whole expression, air, and
manner, seemed to be a sensualist and desperado.
He was a person of great enterprize and daring, and
was always ready to engage in perilous encounters
and hair-breadth dangers. He was now bent on
finding the beautiful girl, the brief hint of whose existence
as the gong told the hour of changing the watch at
nine o'clock, he had entered a barge, and was on the
way to the shore.
His first determination was to land at the Swallow's
Cave; but as he was afraid of being watched by
his commander or by Jake Morgan, he changed his
purpose in this particular, and ordered the coxswain
to steer round the Sunken Ledge, which is a reef
of rocks stretching out by the southern part of
the peninsula, and to land him as near the Pulpit
Rock as was practicable. Accordingly, the barge
ran close under that beetling crag, and Felton, leaping
on the rocks, bade the coxswain return to the
vessel, and come again for him when he should make
a signal on the morning.
Felton was wrapped close in his watch-coat, a
pair of pistols and a dagger at his girdle inside; for
though he did not think of any thing but the lovely
recluse of Nahant, it was an indispensable habit with
all the officers as well as men of the Dolphin, to be
thus prepared for any emergency.
He had now climbed the rocks, and reached the
grassy plain above, from which position, by the
bright star-light, he could plainly discover the schooner
lying away to the right in the range of Boston,
and the barge moving rapidly through the water to
the regular cadence of the rowers. He waited where
he was till he saw the boat along-side, and heard the
the vessel's davits; and then, after listening awhile to
the beating of the surf on the rocks, he bent his footsteps
toward the eastern point of the peninsula, with
the purpose of reconnoitering the entire place.
He had not proceeded far before the same lurid
appearance, which had first attracted his notice,
presented itself in the vicinity of the Spouting-Horn;
and he heard from another direction the same music
that had before entranced him. His first impulse
was to hasten, and ascertain by a nearer examination
from what cause it proceeded, when his purpose was
arrested by a symphonious breathing like Æolian
lyres in concert. He turned, and paused to listen to
the sounds which seemed to proceed from the mysterious
cavern at the south-west; but as soon as he
had been convinced in this conjecture, the avenue
was on a sudden changed, and it seemed that Pulpit
Rock was the source of those sweet harmonies.
“It is very remarkable,” thought Felton, “that
precisely the same sounds should proceed from such
opposite directions!” And as he thought of the
heavenly minstrelsy, it seemed to him that he was
not so bad a man after all.
While he was yet flattering himself with this consolatory
reflection, a peal of such unnatural and diabolical
laughter rose on the wind from the Spouting-Horn,
that as Felton turned involuntarily in that direction,
his blood ran cold with horror.
Thrice was this hellish sound repeated ere the
mariner could sufficiently collect his energies to
think calmly and resolve coolly: and while he rallied
his courage, he saw the thick smoke curl away
above the blue flame, and he now urged his footsteps
thither. He had already proceeded some way under
the full determination of confronting whomever they
might be that uttered such hideous noises, when he
started to feel a touch upon his shoulder. He suddenly
turned, and the figure of the Indian enchantress
was standing full before him, the light of the
high blazing fire gleaming vividly upon it. Never
was there such majestic beauty as presented itself that
moment before the mariner. Her head and figure
thrown a little back, her left arm stretched toward
him, and the mace in her right hand thrown over
her shoulder, as if to indicate the way he ought to
go, she exclaimed:—
“Fly! white-man, fly!—Nameoke has read the
stars—go not where mirth is madness—fly ere it be
too late!”
As she spake, her hair streamed to the breeze, while
her eyes looked wilder and more beautiful than the
startled fawn's; and as she ceased, her lips were still
parted, as if a spirit of intelligence breathed through
them.
“What have I to fear,” exclaimed the entranced
voluptuary, “under the influence of such beauty?”
“Nameoke has seen the star of love in gloom,”
she replied; “and the cynosure drop blood from the
bear;—turn, white-man, ere the moon comes up from
the waters, for it will else rise drenched in thy life-blood—turn!”
The fire that gleamed so fearfully, now went
strangely out, but it flamed again in a moment, and
the figure of the Indian girl was gone. Felton was
confounded; but before he could realize her departure,
the same sweet music swelled upon the air, and
seemed to woo him to its birth-place.
“By the Spirit of darkness,” muttered the man in
his amazement, “but this is passing strange. Was
there ever such glorious beauty as that on earth before?
I will have her, if I go through hell to achieve
it!”
As though it were responsive to this oath, a peal of
the same infernal laughter echoed among the crags,
and went like an ice-bolt to his bosom.
Felton nevertheless sprang forward, more resolved
than ever to find out the cause of the unearthly
voices, which would have intimidated a bolder man
than he. Grasping a pistol in his right hand, he
redoubled his pace, and was moving at a rapid rate,
when the enchantress again checked his career.
“Beware!” she exclaimed, “the blood that falls
from the bear is now mingling with the dews—return
are breathing—return before it is too late.”
Felton caught her hand, exclaiming,
“Inexplicable woman! I will not return till my
curiosity is satisfied—I came here to find no other but
yourself—why do you now warn me away? I already
love you as my life, and will never leave you.”
The same diabolical laughter swelled again on the
air—and a noise swept by them like the rushing of
a hundred rockets.
“They have discovered you!” exclaimed the enchantress,
“I feared that it would be so—Look yonder!
did you see that meteor stream upon the sky?”
“I care for no meteors, nor for the old boy himself,”
said Felton; “but I will swear that yon are a
thousand times more beautiful than the stars.”
“And more fatal,” sighed the sibyl; “Nameoke is
a poison-flower of the forest. The flower saves and
destroys.”
“Charming Nameoke!” exclaimed the impassioned
voluptuary, “you are too beautiful to destroy;
save me then from the burning flames that consume
me—the flames that are kindled by thy beauty!”
“Follow me!” cried the beautiful enchantress,
“Nameoke would save thee and him from ruin—
but the stars tell of wailing and sorrow—there are
changes and deaths in their dwelling.”
She then gathered the millefolio, and taking from her
bosom a sprig of the Chaldæan roybra, said to him,
secure from every fear and fantasm.”
Felton took the plants, and held them as he was
directed to do; for the sorceress spoke with such authority,
that he vainly endeavored to throw off her
influence, and he was surprised to find that immediately
a supernatural courage took possession of
him, and, without feeling reckless, his heart was
strengthened with an irresistible power, which seemed
to clothe it in steel.
“This is very wonderful truly,” exclaimed the
astonished Felton; “whence do these herbs derive
such singular virtue?”
“All things are for good and evil,” replied Nameoke,
“and it is the fate of man never to be without
the knowledge of both. Nameoke loves to do
good, but her instruments are powerful as well for
evil.”
After walking for a few minutes, they came to the
rocky cavern where the enchantress dwelt. They
descended over rough stones andg rael close to the
water's edge.
“See where Nameoke dwells!” she exclaimed,
“a brave dwelling, where she sleeps and is lulled by
the lapsing of the waters; but we must have a
light.”
With one stroke of her mace she caused the fire
to stream from a huge fragment of flint upon a handful
of dry moss, and throwing on this pieces of wood
short time a fire flamed up through the cavern,
and sent across the water toward the vessel a brilliant
sheet of light.
As the flame arose, a current of cold air swept
through the fissure, and a hundred different sea-birds
went flapping and screaming to the night, and a dozen
bats came driving against the fire, attracted by its
dazzling splendor.
“Nameoke is not alone!” said the Sibyl, “hear
how the fowls scream at her coming—hark! 'tis the
roaring of the sea-monsters, the fire has aroused them
from their slumbers.”
The enchantress now took an iron pot from beneath
some sea-weed, and dipping up salt water with a
shell, poured it therein. She then cast into the same
handfulls of dried herbs, the Heliotrope, Virga-Pastoris,
Centaurea, Nepta Verbena, Rosa Serpentina,
and other magical plants, to which she added Alloes
and bits of Sandal-wood. She then climbed within
the fissure of the cavern, and brought down a couple
of star-fish, which she cast into the pot, murmuring
over it a charm in the Arabian dialect approved by
Albumazah.
Instantly a peculiarly red flame shot forth, and
then, a dense smoke smothering it, rose and filled the
cavern. Nameoke now murmured a brief incantation,
and the smoke again drove away and left the fire
flaming as before.
She now strained the decoction through a silver
seive, and pouring a part into a goblet of the same
metal, threw what remained into the sea.
“Now drink from this,” exclaimed the enchantress,
“and it will render you invisible to all who work
charms for evil, and then come with Nameoke, and
she will show you things equally novel and wonderful.”
“Charming Nameoke!” cried the ardent voluptuary,
“I have drunk so deeply from the magic of
thy beauty, that further sorcery would kill me.
Come to my arms,” he cried, clasping her violently;
“come to my arms, beautiful Nameoke, and make me
the happiest of mortals.”
“Felton!” said the enchantress, in a tone that surprised
him even more than the utterance of his name,
“drive away that viper from your bosom, or it will
sting you to death. I know you well, and those with
whom you are living. Begone from me, unless you
can be a man and not a fiend!”
“Is it any crime to adore one so beautiful?” exclaimed
Felton; “is there any thing more innocent
than love?”
“There is love in the heavens and love in the
hells,” replied the enchantress; “would Felton see
the difference between them?”
“Love knows no difference,” said the mariner,
his visage reddening with excitement, and his eyes
gloating on the imperial beauty, with the fire of the
“Love knows no difference, Nameoke;
it must be the same wherever it lives—whether in
a palace or in a rocky cavern, whether in your fabled
heaven or in your hell.”
“Nameoke will show you then the difference,”
exclaimed the Sibyl, “and when you know how
far they are from being the same, perhaps you may fly
from the love that curses, and leave her and your
evil courses, unless you are too fixed in their delights.
This talisman will draw away the veil that hangs
between the natural and the spiritual: take it!”
So saying, she suspended a mystic charm about
his neck, while she threw wood of the Aloes, Crocus
and Balsam into the fire, and at the same time smote
the rocky cavern with her mace: when immediately
a peal of thunder burst above their heads with the
uproar of an earthquake, and as if a thousand gongs
had been smitten at once, the cavern split asunder
and Felton found himself with Nameoke in the
midst of sylvan scenery, more magnificent and lovely
than the imagination of poet ever conceived in
dreams of Arabian intoxication.
They were walking hand in hand in a garden,
where apparently Nature and not Art strove for mastery;
for though flowers of innumerable genera and
species were blooming in every direction and in the
exactest order, there was a wildness in the arrangement
which was the result of perfect contrivance.
where countless stones of every imaginable shade
were blended in beautiful forms; and with such skill
had the artist designed them, that pictures of the
most exquisite loveliness varied like moving kaleidoscopes,
and seemed to carry out the very happiness of
the gazer into bodily creations; over these walks,
trees of infinite variety, in blossom, in leaf, and hanging
heavily with delicious fruits, arched in fantastic
garlands, and swung gracefully and wooingly in the
air. At the termination of some of the alleys stretched
immense lawns, bordered by gently undulating
uplands, and swelling higher and higher in the distance,
till hills were overtopped by hills more lofty
and still more lofty, and at length terminated by majestic
mountains, that sent their towering pinnacles
among the clouds, and rested in perpetual sunshine.
In the intermediate spaces were seen meandering
rivers, that, winding among the swelling waves of
greenery, broke out at intervals like sparkling crystal,
where swans were sailing two and two, and plashing
in the wider and nearer lake-like harbor that reflected
from its unruffled surface the whole landscape
and the sky around them; this deepened toward
the zenith, from the brightest ultramarine to the celestial
sapphire. In all directions fountains of clearest
water burst forth in forms that mocked all human
contrivance, and painted on the heavens such glorious
rainbows, that the heart overflowed with gladness
there were children engaged in innocent delights;
some of them sitting on banks of flowers, and weaving
garlands for each other's heads; others sporting
with lambs of brilliant whiteness, and bounding with
them over the waving hills of close herbage, laughing
and shouting, and clapping their hands, the very
pictures of careless enjoyment.
The enchantress watched the mariner, who gazed
around with a pale and haggard countenance. Surprise
was depicted in his features, but gladness was
a stranger to their expression.
“This is a paradise of beauty and innocence,” exclaimed
the enchantress; how does it suit the rover
of the seas?”
“I see no beauty here,” exclaimed Felton, “it is
more insipid and irksome than a dead calm.”
“But look upon the skies,” said the enchantress,
“Nameoke would live there for ever; look upon the
landscape, see how the lights and shades blend harmoniously
around us; can any thing be more lovely
than these walks and arbors? See there, how the
shadows from those beautiful clouds chase each other
over the fields, and are now lost in that dark forest;
and these fountains breaking up in so many directions!
Nameoke will tell you what they mean.
They are the correspondences of divine truth, and
they all come from one source. Their reservoir is
among those distant mountains, and they fall into the
different directions, that they may scatter blessings in
their path. See how they break up again, and lift
themselves toward their heaven, and rise to their
source proclaiming truth in their operations; how
beautifully they paint Hope among their rainbows!”
“I see the skies and the clouds, the shadows and
the landscape, the fountains and the rainbows,” exclaimed
Felton, listlessly; “but I see nothing to give
me any pleasure—come, let us go away!”
“Stay awhile,” said the Sibyl, “Nameoke has not
shown you all. Cast your eyes through those smaller
mountains, where toward the east they break into a
vista, and one more lofty and magnificent than the
rest rises toward the heavens: do you see the one
Nameoke means?”
“I see a mountain higher than the others,” replied
the mariner.
“And do you see any thing uncommon about its
appearance?”
“I see a bright light streaming from the side, like
a small cloud blushing in the sunset.”
“Nameoke would have you watch it narrowly,”
said the enchantress.
As she spoke, it came rapidly onward toward the
place where they were standing; and as it approached,
a strong light streamed as from a centre of intense
brightness surrounded by a circular Iris of transcendant
glory. As it approached, the day seemed to
of the fruit trees sang aloud with the bltyhsomeness
of morning. The clouds, which were hanging
about the sky in thick masses, and showing
their fine teints by every variety of contrast, now put
on the richest dresses of crimson and gold, while the
air seemed at once to be laden with the fragrance of
water-lilies and verbena.
Presently the seeming blaze of radiance assumed
another appearance. There was a chariot of mother
of pearl, wreathed into a more graceful form than a
sea-shell, and shining with enamel, in which diamonds
and chrysolites circled it in many beautiful
bands, and which was drawn by four white horses
abreast, whose manes and tails flowed like masses
of silver hair, and whose forms were such as never
were before seen by man, so faultlessly were they
modelled. As they trampled through the atmosphere,
it seemed as if they threw up clouds of gold
and diamond dust, which the winds scattered behind
them in glittering profusion; while the Iris deepened
its colors, and from the midst of it appeared a
man more glorious than the Apollo of antiquity, in
the lustre and beauty of early manhood, with his
head bound by a wreath of myrtle. His face shone
brighter than the sun, but so mildly in its lustre, that
to gaze on it was peace and tranquillity; and his hair
flowed over his shoulders like tresses of shadowing
topaz. Presently the chariot reached the ground,
their blossoms, and the vines waved their graceful festoons,
and the birds sang so melodiously that it seemed
as if an atmosphere of love were the breath that
gave life to every thing present.
On a sudden, the young man who sat in the chariot
appeared as two, a bride and a bridegroom. His
form and features were unchanged, but there sat by
his side a female, whose loveliness was so surpassing
all imagination, that it were mockery to attempt its
description. Her attention seemed wholly occupied
with her partner, and she gazed on him with such
gentle and delicate affection that she appeared to be
the embodied form of one delicious emotion, which
was that of a first and only love. He gazed on her
with reciprocal fondness, and seemed like personified
thought dwelling enamouredly on the ideal object of
its adoration. They were goodness and truth living
in inseparable communion.
The young man now gave his hand to the female,
and they both sprang lightly to the ground; and as
they walked in one of the arbors like two angels in
the paradise of marriage, music, from an undiscovered
source, swelled sweetly and softly among the foliage;
while the fragrance of the water-lilies and
verbena gave place to that of the orange-blossom and
the lime.
The enchantress turned from gazing on those
celestial objects to watch the mariner: but his eyes
where but in his own bosom, and the cloud that
shadowed his heart cast its gloom upon his pallid
countenance.
“Take me,” exclaimed he, “in pity take me from
this place, which is more horrible to me than the
grave!”
As he spoke, she smote the ground with her mace,
and in the midst of deafening thunder they were
once again by the seaside in the cave.
The sea-breeze sighing fitfully,swept coldly through
the fissures of the rocks, and fanned the cheek of
Felton, who, on reviving, found Nameoke feeding
again the flame that was nearly extinguished.
“Are you awake?” inquired the maiden.
“Yes!” replied the mariner; “but I have had a
disagreeable dream.”
“Nameoke would have the dream instructive,” said
the enchantress, with a look of melancholy; “return
now to thy vessel yonder, and think no more of love,
which flames only to destroy.”
“Never!” exclaimed the mariner, more impassionedly
than ever; “the insipidity of such love as comes
to us in dreams of flowers and romance will never
do for Felton. Nameoke, you must be mine to-night,
or I perish!”
“Stay!” cried the enchantress, “did not Nameoke
say that she had seen the star of love in gloom, and
the cynosure dropping blood from the bear? Did
drenched in the white-man's blood?”
“You are wild, beautiful creature,” cried the enamoured
mariner, “but your surprising beauty inflames
the more for your very extravagance. By the
mad dogs of Hell, you shall be mine this moment!”
“Hold!” shrieked the Sibyl, as the rude touch of
the sailor would have profaned her person! “hold,
for the love of heaven.—There is one chance for
Felton yet, before the moon shall bathe within his
blood—Appear!”
As she spake, she threw a portion of galbanus,
dark sandalus and resin on the fire, and amidst the
most deafening clangor that roared from beneath the
sea, the cavern of the enchantress was rent from its
basis, and she stood with the mariner in the abodes of
the damned.
They were standing in one of a long, interminable
succession of caverns that were vaulted by black
and smoky rocks, where bats of all horrible forms,
were flitting to and fro, and lizards and centipedes
were crawling amidst the damp, dripping walls.
There was a table spread in the centre of this apartment,
with a crimson cloth, and was lighted by flam-beaux
of pitch; a number of guests were seated at
it, carousing from large goblets, their heads bound
with poppy and mandragora, their faces red and glistening
with excitement. There were men and women
in that company, seated alternately; and the
falling to the ground by the arms of the men, so
drunken were they with the drink; but every now
and then a centipede dropped from the wall into a
goblet, and the man and woman who drank from it
fell together under the table, when a scream of delight
went up from the company, and scared the reptiles
on the walls.
The enchantress shuddered as she gazed on the
scene, and the heavy dew stood upon her forehead,
when she turned away sick at heart, for a smile of
delight was gleaming from the face of her companion.
“This is rare sport,” said he in a whisper, his heart
beating violently with emotion; “let us join them,
Nameoke!”
“Wait awhile,” responded Nameoke, “let us see
more before we do that:—Follow me!”
They passed the hall of the drinkers, and came
where were sounds of music and dancing. Here
were crowds of both sexes half naked, with their arms
encircling each other, and wheeling round the room
in the delirium of the waltz; their faces wore an
expression of loathing mingled with morbid desire,
and their limbs could hardly support their bloated
bodies. Some of them were emaciated and haggard;
but they all had garlands on their heads, which had
been drenched in alcohol, and they were now faded
and dry. On one side of the cavern, which was like
of skulls, was a number of persons, who dealt out
drink to the dancers, which was cold and black, and
seemed to refresh those who drank it, for they lay
down on couches and appeared to fall asleep.
“Let us join these people, charming Nameoke!”
exclaimed the heated Felton, let us drink and waltz
together;”—and he would have thrown off his
clothes for the pastime, but she checked him.
“Stay a moment,” said she, touching his arm;
“follow me yet a little further!”
They turned now into a hall, the odor of which
was horrible. The faint light which served it, came
only from the phosphorescence of putrifying bodies.
Thousands of coffins were piled up along the walls,
and pyramids of skulls and bones of men were heaped
up without number. There was a solitary couch
in the room, but it was without an occupant.
“Come,” said the enchantress, “we have seen
enough—let us depart—it is time for us to begone.”
“Not without one hour of love with my Nameoke,
—see, our bridal bed is ready!” exclaimed the infatuated
man.
And he seized her in his arms, and would have
thrown her on the couch in the midst of all the horrors
of the grave.
“Enough!” screamed the enchantress, and she
smote the solid rock as she spake amidst the wailings
and blasphemies of a million dissolute spirits; and
once more where the sea-breeze was moaning
in her cave.
Felton passed his hand across his eyes, as if to relieve
himself from a sudden attack of giddiness, and
exclaimed—
“You shall not escape me so easily, fascinating
enchantress; your charms and your sorceries only inflame
me the more.—By the powers of evil, you shall
be mine this moment!”
“Stay!” cried the enchantress, while her eye
gleamed with wildness; “for the love of heaven,
stay. Felton! you have seen a picture of heavenly
love and its reward, and a picture of hellish love
and its retribution; Nameoke might have shown
you better and worse. Choose now between them!
The three sisters are ruled by the stars, and the stars
are ruled by the will of man.”
“Nameoke!” exclaimed the mariner, frantic with
passion, attempting to spring towards her.
“Forbear!” replied the enchantress—“the star of
love is even now in mourning, and the pole-star of
the mariner reddens for thy life; fly me ere it be too
late.”
“I care not for the stars, but for Nameoke only;
then come to my bosom, for I will not endure delay!”
The expression of his countenance too well proclaimed
his purpose, and he was already springing
toward his victim, when her mace smote on his forehead
the altar; and as his body rolled to the mouth of the
cave, the round red moon came up from out the water,
and the prophecy of Nameoke was fulfilled.
| CHAPTER IX. Nix's mate | |