The Purple Cloud Read online

dazzling glister: in mounds, and parterres, andscattered disconnection they lay, like largesse of autumn leaves, spreadout over those Elysian fields and fairy uplands of wealth, trillions ofbillions, so that I had need to steer my twining way among them. Now,too, I noticed that, but for these stones, all roughness haddisappeared, not a trace of the upheaval going on a little further southbeing here, for the ice lay positively as smooth as a table before me.It is my belief that this stretch of smooth ice has never, never feltone shock, or stir, or throe, and reaches right down to the bottom ofthe deep.

  * * * * *

  And now with a wild hilarity I flew. Gradually, a dizziness, a lunacy,had seized upon me, till finally, up-buoyed on air, and dancing mad, Isped, I spun, with grinning teeth that chattered and gibbered, andeyeballs of distraction: for a Fear, too--most cold and dreadful--hadits hand of ice upon my heart, I being so alone in that place, face toface with the Ineffable: but still with a giddy levity, and a fatal joy,and a blind hilarity, on I sped, I spun.

  * * * * *

  The odometer measured nine miles from my start. I was in the immediateneighbourhood of the Pole.

  I cannot say when it began, but now I was conscious of a sound in myears, distinct and near, a steady sound of splashing, or fluttering,resembling the noising of a cascade or brook: and it grew. Forty moresteps I took (slide I could not now for the meteorites)--perhapssixty--perhaps eighty: and now, to my sudden horror, I stood by acircular clean-cut lake.

  One minute only, swaying and nodding there, I stood: and then I droppeddown flat in swoon.

  * * * * *

  In a hundred years, I suppose, I should never succeed in analysing_why_ I swooned: but my consciousness still retains the impression ofthat horrid thrill. I saw nothing distinctly, for my whole being reeledand toppled drunken, like a spinning-top in desperate death-struggle atthe moment when it flags, and wobbles dissolutely to fall; but the veryinstant that my eyes met what was before me, I knew, I knew, that herewas the Sanctity of Sanctities, the old eternal inner secret of the Lifeof this Earth, which it was a most burning shame for a man to see. Thelake, I fancy, must be a mile across, and in its middle is a pillar ofice, very low and broad; and I had the clear impression, or dream, ornotion, that there was a name, or word, graven all round in the ice ofthe pillar in characters which I could never read; and under the name along date; and the fluid of the lake seemed to me to be wheeling with ashivering ecstasy, splashing and fluttering, round the pillar, alwaysfrom west to east, in the direction of the spinning of the earth; and itwas borne in upon me--I can't at all say how--that this fluid was thesubstance of a living creature; and I had the distinct fancy, as mysenses failed, that it was a creature with many dull and anguished eyes,and that, as it wheeled for ever round in fluttering lust, it kept itseyes always turned upon the name and the date graven in the pillar. Butthis must be my madness....

  * * * * *

  It must have been not less than an hour before a sense of life returnedto me; and when the thought stabbed my brain that a long, long time Ihad lain there in the presence of those gloomy orbs, my spirit seemed togroan and die within me.

  In some minutes, however, I had scrambled to my feet, clutched at adog's harness, and without one backward glance, was flying from thatplace.

  Half-way to the halting-place, I waited Clark and Mew, being very sickand doddering, and unable to advance. But they did not come.

  Later on, when I gathered force to go further, I found that they hadperished in the upheaval of the ice. One only of the sledges, halfburied, I saw near the spot of our bivouac.

  * * * * *

  Alone that same day I began my way southward, and for five days madegood progress. On the eighth day I noticed, stretched right across thesouth-eastern horizon, a region of purple vapour which luridly obscuredthe face of the sun: and day after day I saw it steadily broodingthere. But what it could be I did not understand.

  * * * * *

  Well, onward through the desert ice I continued my lonely way, with abaleful shrinking terror in my heart; for very stupendous, alas! is theburden of that Arctic solitude upon one poor human soul.

  Sometimes on a halt I have lain and listened long to the hollow silence,recoiling, crushed by it, hoping that at least one of the dogs mightwhine. I have even crept shivering from the thawed sleeping-bag to floga dog, so that I might hear a sound.

  I had started from the Pole with a well-filled sledge, and the sixteendogs left alive from the ice-packing which buried my comrades. This wason the evening of the 13th April. I had saved from the wreck of ourthings most of the whey-powder, pemmican, &c., as well as thetheodolite, compass, chronometer, train-oil lamp for cooking, and otherimplements: I was therefore in no doubt as to my course, and I hadprovisions for ninety days. But ten days from the start my supply ofdog-food failed, and I had to begin to slaughter my only companions, oneby one.

  Well, in the third week the ice became horribly rough, and with moiland toil enough to wear a bear to death, I did only five miles a day.After the day's work I would crawl with a dying sigh into thesleeping-bag, clad still in the load of skins which stuck to me a merefilth of grease, to sleep the sleep of a swine, indifferent if I neverwoke.

  Always--day after day--on the south-eastern horizon, brooded sullenlythat curious stretched-out region of purple vapour, like the smoke ofthe conflagration of the world. And I noticed that its length constantlyreached out and out, and silently grew.

  * * * * *

  Once I had a very pleasant dream. I dreamed that I was in a garden--anArabian paradise--so sweet was the perfume. All the time, however, I hada sub-consciousness of the gale which was actually blowing from the S.E.over the ice, and, at the moment when I awoke, was half-wittedly droningto myself; 'It is a Garden of Peaches; but I am not really in thegarden: I am really on the ice; only, the S.E. storm is wafting to methe aroma of this Garden of Peaches.'

  I opened my eyes--I started--I sprang to my feet! For, of all themiracles!--I could not doubt--an actual aroma like peach-blossom was inthe algid air about me!

  Before I could collect my astonished senses, I began to vomit prettyviolently, and at the same time saw some of the dogs, mere skeletons asthey were, vomiting, too. For a long time I lay very sick in a kind ofdaze, and, on rising, found two of the dogs dead, and all very queer.The wind had now changed to the north.

  Well, on I staggered, fighting every inch of my deplorably weary way.This odour of peach-blossom, my sickness, and the death of the two dogs,remained a wonder to me.

  Two days later, to my extreme mystification (and joy), I came across abear and its cub lying dead at the foot of a hummock. I could notbelieve my eyes. There she lay on her right side, a spot of dirty-whitein a disordered patch of snow, with one little eye open, and herfierce-looking mouth also; and the cub lay across her haunch, bitinginto her rough fur. I set to work upon her, and allowed the dogs aglorious feed on the blubber, while I myself had a great banquet on thefresh meat. I had to leave the greater part of the two carcasses, and Ican feel again now the hankering reluctance--quite unnecessary, as itturned out--with which I trudged onwards. Again and again I foundmyself asking: 'Now, what could have killed those two bears?'

  With brutish stolidness I plodded ever on, almost like a walkingmachine, sometimes nodding in sleep while I helped the dogs, ormanouvred the sledge over an ice-ridge, pushing or pulling. On the 3rdJune, a month and a half from my start, I took an observation with thetheodolite, and found that I was not yet 400 miles from the Pole, inlatitude 84 deg. 50'. It was just as though some Will, some Will, wasobstructing and retarding me.

  However, the intolerable cold was over, and soon my clothes no longerhung stark on me like armour. Pools began to appear in the ice, andpresently, what was worse, my God, long lanes, across which, somehow, Ihad to get the sledge. But abo
ut the same time all fear of starvationpassed away: for on the 6th June I came across another dead bear, on the7th three, and thenceforth, in rapidly growing numbers, I met not bearsonly, but fulmars, guillemots, snipes, Ross's gulls, little awks--all,all, lying dead on the ice. And never anywhere a living thing, save me,and the two remaining dogs.

  If ever a poor man stood shocked before a mystery, it was I now. I had abig fear on my heart.

  On the 2nd July the ice began packing dangerously, and soon anotherstorm broke loose upon me from the S.W. I left off my trek, and put upthe silk tent on a five-acre square of ice surrounded by lanes: and_again_--for the second time--as I lay down, I smelled that delightfulstrange odour of peach-blossom, a mere whiff of it, and presentlyafterwards was taken sick. However, it passed off this time in a coupleof hours.

  Now it was all lanes, lanes, alas! yet no open water, and such was thedifficulty and woe of my life, that sometimes I would drop flat on theice, and sob: 'Oh, no more, no more, my God: here let me die.' Thecrossing