91. CHAPTER XCI.
MARDI BEHIND: AN OCEAN BEFORE.
Returned from the cave, Hautia reclined in her clematis
bower, invisible hands flinging fennel around her. And
nearer, and nearer, stole dulcet sounds dissolving my woes, as
warm beams, snow. Strange languors made me droop;
once more within my inmost vault, side by side, the Past and
Yillah lay:—two bodies tranced;—while like a rounding
sun, before me Hautia magnified magnificence; and through
her fixed eyes, slowly drank up my soul.
Thus we stood:—snake and victim: life ebbing out from
me, to her.
But from that spell, I burst again, as all the Past smote
all the Present in me.
“Oh Hautia! thou knowest the mystery I die to fathom.
I see it crouching in thine eye:—Reveal!”
“Weal or woe?”
“Life or death!”
“See, see!” and Yillah's rose-pearl danced before me.
I snatched it from her hand:—“Yillah! Yillah!”
“Rave on: she lies too deep to answer; stranger voices
than thine she hears:—bubbles are bursting round her.”
“Drowned! drowned then, even as she dreamed:—I
come, I come!—Ha, what form is this?—hast mosses? seathyme?
pearls?—Help, help! I sink!—Back, shining
monster!—What, Hautia,—is it thou?—Oh vipress, I
could slay thee!”
“Go, go,—and slay thyself: I may not make thee mine;
—go,—dead to dead!—There is another cavern in the hill.”
Swift I fled along the valley-side; passed Hautia's cave
of pearls; and gained a twilight arch; within, a lake transparent
shone. Conflicting currents met, and wrestled; and
one dark arch led to channels, seaward tending.
Round and round, a gleaming form slow circled in the
deepest eddies:—white, and vaguely Yillah.
Straight I plunged; but the currents were as fierce headwinds
off capes, that beat back ships.
Then, as I frenzied gazed; gaining the one dark arch,
the revolving shade darted out of sight, and the eddies
whirled as before.
“Stay, stay! let me go with thee, though thou glidest
to gulfs of blackness;—naught can exceed the hell of this
despair!—Why beat longer in this corpse oh, my heart!”
As somnambulists fast-frozen in some horrid dream, ghost-like
glide abroad, and fright the wakeful world; so that
night, with death-glazed eyes, to and fro I flitted on the
damp and weedy beach.
“Is this specter, Taji?”—and Mohi and the minstrel
stood before me.
“Taji lives no more. So dead, he has no ghost. I am
his spirit's phantom's phantom.”
“Nay, then, phantom! the time has come to flee.”
They dragged me to the water's brink, where a prow was
beached. Soon—Mohi at the helm—we shot beneath the
far-flung shadow of a cliff; when, as in a dream, I hearkened
to a voice.
Arrived at Odo, Media had been met with yells. Sedition
was in arms, and to his beard defied him. Vain all
concessions then. Foremost stood the three pale sons of
him, whom I had slain, to gain the maiden lost. Avengers,
from the first hour we had parted on the sea, they had
drifted on my track; survived starvation; and lived to hunt
me round all Mardi's reef; and now at Odo, that last threshold,
waited to destroy; or there, missing the revenge they
sought, still swore to hunt me round Eternity.
Behind the avengers, raged a stormy mob, invoking Media
to renounce his rule. But one hand waving like a pennant
above the smoke of some sea-fight, straight through that
tumult Media sailed serene: the rioters parting from before
him, as wild waves before a prow inflexible.
A haven gained, he turned to Mohi and the minstrel:—
“Oh, friends! after our long companionship, hard to
part! But henceforth, for many moons, Odo will prove
no home for old age, or youth. In Serenia only, will ye
find the peace ye seek; and thither ye must carry Taji,
who else must soon be slain, or lost. Go: release him
from the thrall of Hautia. Outfly the avengers, and gain
Serenia. Reck not of me. The state is tossed in storms;
and where I stand, the combing billows must break over.
But among all noble souls, in tempest-time, the headmost
man last flies the wreck. So, here in Odo will I abide,
though every plank breaks up beneath me. And then,—
great Oro! let the king die clinging to the keel! Farewell!”
Such Mohi's tale.
In trumpet-blasts, the hoarse night-winds now blew; the
Lagoon, black with the still shadows of the mountains, and
the driving shadows of the clouds. Of all the stars, only
red Arcturus shone. But through the gloom, and on the
circumvallating reef, the breakers dashed ghost-white.
An outlet in that outer barrier was nigh.
“Ah! Yillah! Yillah!—the currents sweep thee oceanward;
nor will I tarry behind.—Mardi, farewell!—Give
me the helm, old man!”
“Nay, madman! Serenia is our haven. Through yonder
strait, for thee, perdition lies. And from the deep beyond,
no voyager e'er puts back.”
“And why put back? is a life of dying worth living o'er
again?—Let me, then, be the unreturning wanderer. The
helm! By Oro, I will steer my own fate, old man.—Mardi,
farewell!”
“Nay, Taji: commit not the last, last crime!” cried
Yoomy.
“He's seized the helm! eternity is in his eye! Yoomy: for
our lives we must now swim.”
And plunging, they struck out for land: Yoomy buoying
Mohi up, and the salt waves dashing the tears from his pallid
face, as through the scud, he turned it on me mournfully.
“Now, I am my own soul's emperor; and my first act
is abdication! Hail! realm of shades!”—and turning my
prow into the racing tide, which seized me like a hand
omnipotent, I darted through.
Churned in foam, that outer ocean lashed the clouds; and
straight in my white wake, headlong dashed a shallop, three
fixed specters leaning o'er its prow: three arrows poising.
And thus, pursuers and pursued flew on, over an endless
sea.
THE END.
