"Oh! The irony of it!" he observed. "To send others to that shore I may not tread!"
He withdrew the weapon from his middle and let it fall, also.
"Thanks," I said. "We'll do right by you one of these days. Really."
There came a short, barking laugh from my right and I looked that way just in time to see Peters rising from the deck, ruddy blade in his right hand, a scalp in his left.
"Counting a little coup," I observed.
"It's been a coup-coup day, Eddie," he replied, and we both turned toward the captain and Pfall.
Both men were still living but in very bad shape. We gave what aid we could. None of the mutineers had survived. Pfall grunted something in that guttural language of his.
"He says to get the balloon up here pronto, an' he'll tell us how ter set 'er up." Peters translated.
"Right," I answered. "Let's go."
Our rush took us past Ligeia, who stood in the companionway, smiling. For a moment I'd have sworn I saw a drop of blood at the corner of her mouth, but her tongue flicked and the illusion vanished, leaving only the smile.
We dragged the thing topside and unfolded it, not knowing how much time remained.
Pfall directed us in its inflation. Peters had to lean close to him for every instruction, for his voice had weakened and the Symmes' sounds increased yet again in volume. Valdemar and Ligeia labored with us, also; and when Pfall breathed his last after giving us some final information, Valdemar cursed bitterly that yet another man went unwilling to the place he most desired.
Captain Guy gestured to me and I went to him, there being nothing more to do just then but wait for the gasbag to achieve proper inflation.
"Eddie," he said weakly, "I've a favor to ask."
"Anything, sir," I replied.
"Take me forward, that I might see this thing that's about to swallow the Eidolon."
Peters and I fetched up a comfortable chair from my stateroom and placed him in it. We strapped him there for security's sake and carried him forward then.
"It's bigger than that canyon out in the West," Peters announced, when we beheld the great dark thunderhole beneath its shifting tower of mist.
"Find a way to secure the chair here, men," Captain Guy directed, and we fetched more lines and did that for him. In the meantime, he'd produced his pipe and filled its bowl and fetched his tinderbox from somewhere within his bloody jacket.
"Let me give you a hand with that," I suggested.
"I can manage."
"You really propose to remain here?"
"Haven't that much time left," he replied, taking his first puff, "and I wouldn't miss this for anything.
How many masters get to follow their vessel to the end in a fashion such as this?" He took another puff.
"Leave me now. You've work to do and I want to enjoy the view."
I squeezed his shoulder gently, leaving a bloody palmprint.
"God be with you, Captain," I said. "You did right by us. Thanks."
Peters said something, too, but I couldn't make out the words. When we turned to head back astern I realized how far we were inclined. Glancing forward again, I knew that we were seeing deeper into the Hole than we had before. We hurried.
Ligeia and Valdemar were already in the basket, the balloon tugging at its lines we had dogged to ringbolts in the deck.
"Cast off," the lady said, and I cut the lines and we shot skyward.
In a matter of moments we beheld the battered Eidolon quivering upon the brink of Symmes' abyss, pathetic human invention about to launch itself against eternity. For a moment, I thought of Poe.
Valdemar uttered a strange hissing noise, then observed, "To think that I should be a survivor."
There are many moments when, even to the sober eye of Reason, the world of our sad Humanity may assume the semblance of a Hell—but the imagination of man is no Carathis, to explore with impunity its every cavern. Alas! the grim legion of sepulchral terrors cannot be regarded as altogether fanciful—but, like the demons in whose company Afrasiab made his voyage down the Oxus, they must sleep, or they will devour us—they must be suffered to slumber, or we perish.
From The Premature Burial, Edgar Allan Poe
XIII
Science! true daughter of Old Time thou art!
Who alterest all things with thy peering eyes.
Why preyest thou thus upon the poet's heart, Vulture, whose wings are dull realities?
How should he love thee? or how deem thee wise?
Who wouldst not leave him in his wandering To seek for treasure in the jewelled skies, Albeit he soared with an undaunted wing?
Hast thou not dragged Diana from her car?
And driven the Hamadryad from the wood To seek a shelter in some happier star?
Hast thou not torn the Naiad from her flood, The Elfin from the green grass, and from me The summer dream beneath the tamarind tree?
Sonnet—To Science, Edgar Allan Poe
We continued to rise at a rapid rate, the thunder from the Earth's polar aperture finally beginning to diminish. Ligeia insisted on cleaning my lacerated palms thoroughly, then dressing them with heavy bandages. Fortunately, she had been able to provision our gondola considerably while Peters and I were occupied with our late captain.
Our wish was to return to Europe, or at least to some other civilized land. But we soon discovered that we had very little control over our course. At least, we were being borne northward by steady winds. We found that we could control our altitude to a great degree, by throwing over ballast or releasing gas, thus managing to maintain a sequence of favorable winds. But it was hard to tell directions.
Valdemar curled up on the floor, Ligeia covered him with a tarpaulin, and he became a general-purpose piece of furniture. Ligeia would sit and meditate upon him for hours at a time. Peters used him as a pillow; I, an ottoman.
There can be too much of excitement, too much of sensation. Our first day airborne was an affectless thing. We were psychically drained from all that we had experienced of late, from all that we continued to experience. As my feelings had been for a time following my ordeal at the hands of the Inquisition, as well as that maddening other-worldly journey aboard the Discovery, or the morning after Prince Prospero's party on the night of the Red Death, so now I knew the distancing of fatigue within a consciousness too stimulated for slumber and a consequent sense of the unreality of my present surroundings—akin, I suppose, to that of a late-night reader's, of some fantastical romance, with the difference that I could not escape by closing the book. (While this comparison may not be unique, little has been made of that reader's own prisonerhood within my life—so to speak—and the special solace for us both that the glory of language with its bright procession of tellings preceded the spurious consolations of philosophy by an age, as demonstrated in the fact that none misses sleep for philosophy.)
And my mind in this state is wont to divagate, eyes go unfocussed, body wisdoms rise to swamp all thinking.
The second and the third day were of the same order, though reality came scratching at the door more and more often, and we ate and we talked again and Grip granted us an occasional obscenity from basket rim or cable.
We maintained our swift, high-altitude northering for the better part of a week. I tried to discover whether it might be June, July, or August and neither Peters nor Ligeia was certain. And it seemed mean to rouse Valdemar on such a small matter.
So we sailed on, landing only once the following week on a tropical isle in a valley of many-colored grasses. We took this chance only because the one thing we were low on was water, and this colorful spot with its River of Silence come out of some hill by a route obscure and lonely, also bore numerous pot-holes and fissures, whence volcanic gases rose. After we had drunk our fill and loaded every container we possessed to its limit we were able to reinflate the balloon at one of these openings.