Mardi: and A Voyage Thither, Vol. II

by Herman Melville

  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 offcapes, that beat back ships.

  Then, as I frenzied gazed; gaining the one dark arch, the revolvingshade darted out of sight, and the eddies whirled as before.

  "Stay, stay! let me go with thee, though thou glidest to gulfs ofblackness;--naught can exceed the hell of this despair!--Why beatlonger in this corpse oh, my heart!"

  As somnambulists fast-frozen in some horrid dream, ghost-like glideabroad, and fright the wakeful world; so that night, with death-glazedeyes, 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'sphantom'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 stoodthe 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 haddrifted on my track survived starvation; and lived to hunt me roundall Mardi's reef; and now at Odo, that last threshold, waited todestroy; or there, missing the revenge they sought, still swore tohunt me round Eternity.

  Behind the avengers, raged a stormy mob, invoking Media to renouncehis rule. But one hand waving like a pennant above the smoke of somesea-fight, straight through that tumult Media sailed serene: therioters parting from before him, as wild waves before a prowinflexible.

  A haven gained, he turned to Mohi and the minstrel:--"Oh, friends!after our long companionship, hard to part! But henceforth, for manymoons, 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, whoelse must soon be slain, or lost. Go: release him from the thrall ofHautia. Outfly the avengers, and gain Serenia. Reek not of me. Thestate is tossed in storms; and where I stand, the combing billows mustbreak over. But among all noble souls, in tempest-time, the headmostman last flies the wreck. So, here in Odo will I abide, though everyplank breaks up beneath me. And then,--great Oro! let the king dieclinging to the keel! Farewell!"

  Such Mohi's tale.

  In trumpet-blasts, the hoarse night-winds now blew; the Lagoon, blackwith the still shadows of the mountains, and the driving shadows ofthe clouds. Of all the stars, only red Arcturus shone. But through thegloom, 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 ocean-ward; nor will Itarry 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 willsteer 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 wemust now swim."

  And plunging, they struck out for land: Yoomy buoying Mohi up, and thesalt waves dashing the tears from his pallid face, as through thescud, 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 inmy white wake, headlong dashed a shallop, three fixed specters leaningo'er its prow: three arrows poising.

  And thus, pursuers and pursued flew on, over an endless sea.

  THE END.