A bank of dark cloud had come down from the mountains, driven by one of those sudden strong winds that are so common in the region; Byron and Bysshe paid no attention to the change in the weather but looked intently ahead. “There is something,” Bysshe exclaimed impatiently. “We must reach it. Over there.” I saw nothing but the black glint of the increasingly turbulent water. “Do you see it now, Byron?”
“I see a shape,” he replied. “It has a peculiar movement. It seems to be writhing in the water.”
“It is the unusual light of the lake,” I told them. “It casts unfamiliar shadows.”
We sailed onward. And then there came upon us a sudden squall, ferocious, that rocked the boat almost to overturning. I had of course heard often of these lacustrine storms, erupting and subsiding in minutes, but I had never before experienced one of them. Then, most strangely, the boat began to turn in increasingly smaller circles; the wind had taken its sails and was spinning it around. More strangely yet, I began to hear a sound of scraping or clawing from beneath the boat. “Did you hear that?” I shouted. “There is something below us!” The others were distracted by the shrieking of the wind and the rapid turning of the boat. We were helpless before the peril of the storm. “Hold fast!” Byron shouted. “It is not over yet!” With brute force and animation he caught hold of the mast and managed to unloosen the sail from it, clinging to the canvas as the boat was still in danger of oversetting. His fingers were pudgy, his nails bitten to the quick. When the sail came down the momentum of the boat was halted. The squall passed, and we drifted back towards the shore. It had been a moment of sudden and intense peril that left us all exhausted. Some workers in an adjacent vineyard ran over to us. I spoke to one of them who described how he and his companions had seen “une forme” sporting in the water. He gave an involuntary shudder of horror, as he described to me its unnatural shape. Yet I still persisted in my belief that this “shape” was no more than an accidental effect of light and shadow, misinterpreted by the superstitious peasantry. I assured myself, too, that the sounds I had heard beneath the boat were the scraping of pebbles thrown up by the tempestuous lake.
The sudden squall presaged a greater storm. When we arrived at the villa, some hours later, the sky had already grown very dark. Mary and Lizzie had been seated in the garden, marvelling at the clouds, but now retreated with us indoors. “It was the most extraordinary sensation,” Byron was telling Mary as we entered the drawing room. “The boat tossed and turned upon the water as if it had no weight at all. I could sense the savage power of nature. It is capricious, like a woman. How I would enjoy being consumed by her!”
“Nature is an action, not an attitude,” Polidori said. “It has no personal intent.”
“You do not truly believe that,” Byron told him. “You think you are right. But you know that you are wrong.”
“On the contrary. My knowledge and belief coincide. Ah. Here is tea.” Lizzie had brought in a copper kettle to place on the fire.
“It is remarkable,” Bysshe said, “that the heat of our bodies has wholly dried our clothes. I was soaked through to the skin. Each of us must have a furnace within.”
“Energy,” I said. “Electrical energy. It pulsates in every living thing. It is the life force.”
“Is that,” Polidori asked me, with the trace of a smile, “the same thing as the human spirit?”
“Oh, no. I think not. That concerns itself with values and with morals. The electrical pulse is purely energy. It is blind force.”
“But energy can be joyous,” Bysshe said. “An infant laughs, does it not?”
“The infant is experiencing life,” I replied. “That is all. It has neither virtue nor vice. It laughs or cries on an instinct. Instinct does not possess qualities.”
At that moment there was a peal of thunder. Bysshe laughed. “You have the elements on your side, Victor. They applaud you. The season of darkness begins.”
“The thunder is electrical too, is it not?” Mary asked me. She was taking up the kettle with a cloth, and pouring the boiling water into a pot. “How is the energy of nature to be distinguished from the electrical force within the body?”
“It is not. It is not different in essentials. It animates all matter. Even the stones in the garden can be electrified.”
“We are surrounded by it, then?”
“I am afraid so. Yes.”
“Why be afraid?” Byron asked me. “What is there to fear in the primal nature of the world?”
It had grown quite dark, and Lizzie busied herself with lighting candles. It was a large drawing room, stretching from the front to the back of the house, and some portions of it were still in shadow. “On such a night as this,” Bysshe told us, “we must amuse ourselves after dinner by telling stories of elves and demons. If there is a lightning storm, so much the better.”
The cook, who came with the house, prepared a meal of veal and boiled cabbage; it was a favourite of the region, but it was not so much relished by our English poets. They complained of too much butter and of pepper in the sauce. We settled down comfortably enough after dinner, however, and Byron brought down from his room a collection of German tales translated into English. He told us that they were all of a wonderfully morbid and eerie nature, coming under the general title of Fantasmagoriana. By the light of the candles, placed on either side of his chair, he began reading one of them aloud. But then he threw the book aside. “This is all very well,” he said. “But it is not the thing. The genuine article. What I mean is this. We must tell our own stories on these dark nights. We must entertain ourselves-with truths, with inventions, what you wish. They will be a wonderful accompaniment to the storms.” He turned to Bysshe. “That is, if you can endure-”
“Oh, yes. I am not of a nervous disposition. I am perfectly happy to take part.”
It was agreed between us that, over the next two or three days, each of us would prepare a tale of terror which would then be read aloud. I retired to my room, that night, in a state of some perplexity. I had one tale that would fill them with horror, strike them to the root, but how could I narrate the history of the last months without my heart beating violently as a testament to its truth? I would seem to them an accursed thing, a manic or an outcast-it would not matter which. No, it could not be done. So at breakfast on the following morning I excused myself from the collective task. “I am not a poet,” I told Bysshe. “I am not a writer of tales. I am a mere mechanic and experimenter. I cannot divine the secrets of the soul.”
“You criticise yourself unjustly,” he replied. “The great experimenters are poets in their way. They are travellers in unknown realms. They explore the limits of the world.”
“But not in words, Bysshe. That is where I will fail.”
Mary had been listening intently. “I have the words,” she said. “I have thought of a story. I remained in the drawing room last night, after you had retired, when all at once it came to me as an idea far more powerful than any reverie. A sequence of images rose up before me, unbidden-”
“I know that sensation,” Bysshe said.
“In the first of them some pale student of unhallowed arts was kneeling beside a man stretched out, but yet it was not a man at all-”
At this moment Byron entered the room. “Have I missed the cutlets?” he asked Lizzie, who was standing behind Mary’s chair. “Be a good girl and rescue one for me from the kitchen.” He sat down beside Bysshe. “Where is the good Dr. Polidori?”
“He has not risen,” I replied. “Fred tells me that he heard him snoring.”
“Only if he put his ear to the door, I suspect. Fred is incorrigible.”
At that instant Polidori came into the room. His shirt was crumpled and his waistcoat undone. “You have not washed your face, Polidori,” Byron said in greeting. “Good day to you.”