The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym of Nantucket

by Edgar Allan Poe

  After having thus paid to these chiefs every mark of respect which is due to rank, and which I thought sound policy dictated, I took a few men, and commenced landing such articles as would be first wanted in curing the biche-de-mer. The work now appeared to be going on very pleasantly; the house being nearly ready for thatching, and two hundred and fifty of the natives assisting our workmen, for which we had agreed to pay them liberally. We had already landed several boat-loads of the necessary articles, and were preparing to despatch another, when at about half-past eleven, A.M., my ears were startled by a sound that sent the life-blood curdling to my heart. It was the war whoop of the savages on shore.

  I doubt whether the bursting of a volcano almost beneath my feet, the unexpected shock of an earthquake, or a bolt from heaven striking the deck of the Antarctic, could have startled and astounded me like that infernal yell. Were I to live till doomsday, it would still tingle in my ears by day, and visit my dreams by night. I too well knew the deadly import of that fatal shout; and I was not there to protect my men.

  The larboard battery of the vessel bore directly on the village; and without contemplating the distance, I snatched a lighted match, and discharged one of the cannon. The shot, as I might have anticipated, fell spent and harmless, without doing any execution. But the sudden and unexpected report alarmed my men, who were scattered about in the woods, pursuing their various occupations. Taking it as a signal of hostilities on the part of the natives, every man started for the beach, in front of the schooner, where they had carelessly left their arms, under the protection of two sentinels. On approaching the spot, they were met by about three hundred natives, who had just butchered their two shipmates the sentinels; and were waiting their own approach, with bows ready bent. The moment our ill-fated men emerged from the thicket, a shower of arrows was poured into their unshielded defenceless bodies. Only three of them fell from this volley, however, although scarcely any escaped one or more wounds.

  A well-manned whale-boat, despatched on the instant of the alarm, was flying to the rescue of my brave fellows on shore, as fast as the sturdy oarsmen could pull her over water, which her keel scarcely seemed to touch. She was commanded by Mr. Johnson, whose voice I could hear continually exclaiming, “Give way, men! Give way! For the love of God, give way, and rescue your shipmates!”

  But they required not this extra inducement to exertion. Their very souls seemed to be concentrated in their vigorous muscular arms, and I thought I could see the intensity of their anxiety in the agony of their countenances, which of course were turned to the Antarctic. As I gazed on their lessening boat, I could scarcely hold my glass, for the straining of my own muscles and sinews, which instinctively kept timely motion with their oars, as if I could lend them strength, and assist in propelling the boat. If the reader has ever experienced a similar sensation, arising from nervous sympathy, he will understand me. If not, I am unable to describe it.

  In the mean while, my gallant ill-fated lads on shore were selling their lives at as dear a rate as possible. After receiving the volley of arrows before-mentioned, when emerging from the thicket, the gallant Wallace (whose bravery, virtues, and melancholy fate declare his descent more unequivocally than his name) rallied his men, and well supported by his friend the chivalric Wiley, led them forward to play the desperate game of life or death, with such fearful odds against them. Perceiving that indiscriminate slaughter was the determined object of the savages, from whom no quarter could be expected, this undaunted Briton, with three arrows then in his body, thus exclaimed to his men, as they were plucking the pointed shafts from their own flesh. His words as I was informed by a survivor, were in substance these:—“My fine fellows, you see our fate! Let us die like men!—keep close together! draw your cutlasses, and follow me! If safety can be found at all, we must seek it at close quarters.” With these words he rushed forward to the charge, dealing death at every blow, in which he was closely followed and closely imitated by Wiley and the rest. The savages shrank back with astonishment, as these brave fellows literally mowed down their ranks, opening a spacious path for themselves through the thickest of their host. For every white man that fell, half a dozen black cannibals bit the dust; until the few survivors of our party were covered with wounds, and faint with exertion and the loss of blood.…

  But still there was no time to be lost. The savages were rendered doubly desperate by the failure of their diabolical scheme of treachery, and the loss of so many of their party. Their strength was momentarily increasing by a general turn-out from all the other islands, and preparations were quickly completed for attacking the Antarctic with an overwhelming force, while I had only eleven efficient men to defend the vessel. Under such circumstances we thought it best to slip the cable and make sail, which was soon effected. In the next moment, every man was at his quarters, ready to receive the enemy, who was now advancing with an immense flotilla of canoes.

  In this critical emergency, Heaven interposed in our favour. A gentle breeze sprang up from the eastward, and we soon perceived, to our great joy, that the canoes were dropping astern, and that the savages had relinquished the chase. Fortunate indeed was it for us that they did so, for the wind shortly died away to a dead calm; and at the same time (a little after 2 P.M.) every man on board, with the single exception of myself, was seized with a violent vomiting, which continued all that afternoon, and the greater part of the night, during which period I was several times apprehensive for their lives. This sickness was not the effect of fear; but was no doubt produced by the horrors they had just witnessed; the heart-rending spectacle of their slaughtered shipmates lying mangled on the beach, while some of their ruthless butchers were cutting and carving them with their own cutlasses! Others again were churning their spears into the writhing bodies of those who yet had life!

  It was very fortunate that the natives did not come upon us at this time; if they had, they must inevitably have taken the vessel. Had such been the case, however, their success would have been their destruction; for one of the wounded, a man on whom I could depend, was stationed at the magazine with a lighted match, to be applied to the powder if the natives got command of the deck.

  Having now a few moments for reflection, I took a telescope and directed my attention to the island. Fires were kindled on the beach, in every direction, among the dead bodies of my unfortunate crew, from which those hell-hounds were cutting the flesh, and roasting it in the fire; and then, with savage ferocity, tearing it to pieces with their teeth, while from the half-cooked fragment the fresh blood was running down their ebony chins!

  “Torn limb from limb, he spreads the horrid feast,

  And fierce devours it, like a mountain beast;

  He sucks the marrow, and the blood he drains,

  Nor entrails, flesh, nor solid bone remains.”

  —Dryden

  Soon after, they began to drag the bodies of their own fallen comrades to the edge of the beach, and then buried them in the bosom of the lagoon. When they had finished this necessary task, they proceeded to gather up their plunder, and divide the remains of our slaughtered friends among them; after which, each party of warriors embarked in their respective canoes, and started for the several islands to which they belonged, and which the last reached about dusk. All this I distinctly beheld, and my soul sickened.

  When I looked again, fires were being kindled on the different islands, until they were ranged along all the beaches that fronted the schooner. Around these fires the natives appeared to be very busy, for the greater part of the night. This was, no doubt, for the prosecution of their horrid orgies; but fearful that treachery lurked beneath, their operations, that these fires might be intended to deceive us, and that they intended to attack the Antarctic under cover of the darkness, every man was kept at his quarters during the whole of that melancholy night. Eighty muskets were loaded with buckshot, and laid upon the trunk. The guns and swivels were all double-shotted; the matches kept lighted in their places, and one man was station
ed in each top, to keep a sharp look-out for canoes; their matches were also lighted, and the top-swivels in complete readiness. During the night we cruised about among the shoals and reefs of the lagoon, anxiously waiting the tardy approach of daylight, which at last was hailed with joy, and heartfelt thankfulness.

  May 29th.—At the dawn of day we found ourselves within about two miles of the passage that led from the lagoon into the open ocean; and at 7, A.M., we were once more clear of the “Massacre Islands” as we concluded to name the group, one of them being baptized in the blood of our brethren. We put to sea with a fine breeze from east-south-east, and fair weather.

  The following are the names of the unhappy victims of savage treachery and cannibal ferocity: viz. John A. Wallace, trading officer, belonging to Newcastle, England; Henry Wiley, second officer, of Charlestown. Massachusetts; Joseph Hicks, armorer, of England; George Cartwright, carpenter, of England; Thomas Parker, carpenter, of England: Seamen,—George Webb, of London; James Butler, of Liverpool; Samuel Wood, of England;. Thomas Barnard, of Bristol, England; George Strong, of Albany, New-York; Alexander Mooney, of New-York; Stephen de la Cruz, a native of Manilla. The names of the wounded seamen are, John Keeler, of New-York; William Vanduzer, of New-York; Leonard Shaw, of Philadelphia, and John Harris, of England.

  —From Benjamin Morrell’s A Narrative of Four Voyages, published in 1832. Morrell was a sealing captain and explorer who made a number of voyages to the South Seas between 1823 and 1831. He, like Arthur Gordon Pym, ran away to sea at a young age. The veracity of his account of his travels has long been under debate; like Poe, Morrell may have incorporated other accounts into his own and dressed up some incidents for dramatic effect, a charge he seems to anticipate in the second selection included here. Poe seems to have drawn, in particular, his description of penguin and albatross rookeries and of Kerguelen’s Island (Chapter XIV of Pym) from Morrell.

  2. READING I

  MS. Found in a Bottle

  by Edgar Allan Poe

  Qui n’a plus qu’un moment a vivre

  N’a plus rien a dissimuler.

  —Quinault —Atys

  Of my country and of my family I have little to say. Ill usage and length of years have driven me from the one, and estranged me from the other. Hereditary wealth afforded me an education of no common order, and a contemplative turn of mind enabled me to methodize the stores which early study very diligently garnered up. —Beyond all things, the study of the German moralists gave me great delight; not from any ill-advised admiration of their eloquent madness, but from the ease with which my habits of rigid thought enabled me to detect their falsities. I have often been reproached with the aridity of my genius; a deficiency of imagination has been imputed to me as a crime; and the Pyrrhonism of my opinions has at all times rendered me notorious. Indeed, a strong relish for physical philosophy has, I fear, tinctured my mind with a very common error of this age—I mean the habit of referring occurrences, even the least susceptible of such reference, to the principles of that science. Upon the whole, no person could be less liable than myself to be led away from the severe precincts of truth by the ignes fatui of superstition. I have thought proper to premise thus much, lest the incredible tale I have to tell should be considered rather the raving of a crude imagination, than the positive experience of a mind to which the reveries of fancy have been a dead letter and a nullity.

  After many years spent in foreign travel, I sailed in the year 18—, from the port of Batavia, in the rich and populous island of Java, on a voyage to the Archipelago of the Sunda islands. I went as passenger—having no other inducement than a kind of nervous restlessness which haunted me as a fiend.

  Our vessel was a beautiful ship of about four hundred tons, copper-fastened, and built at Bombay of Malabar teak. She was freighted with cotton-wool and oil, from the Lachadive islands. We had also on board coir, jaggeree, ghee, cocoa-nuts, and a few cases of opium. The stowage was clumsily done, and the vessel consequently crank.

  We got under way with a mere breath of wind, and for many days stood along the eastern coast of Java, without any other incident to beguile the monotony of our course than the occasional meeting with some of the small grabs of the Archipelago to which we were bound.

  One evening, leaning over the taffrail, I observed a very singular, isolated cloud, to the N.W. It was remarkable, as well for its color, as from its being the first we had seen since our departure from Batavia. I watched it attentively until sunset, when it spread all at once to the eastward and westward, girting in the horizon with a narrow strip of vapor, and looking like a long line of low beach. My notice was soon afterwards attracted by the dusky-red appearance of the moon, and the peculiar character of the sea. The latter was undergoing a rapid change, and the water seemed more than usually transparent. Although I could distinctly see the bottom, yet, heaving the lead, I found the ship in fifteen fathoms. The air now became intolerably hot, and was loaded with spiral exhalations similar to those arising from heat iron. As night came on, every breath of wind died away, an more entire calm it is impossible to conceive. The flame of a candle burned upon the poop without the least perceptible motion, and a long hair, held between the finger and thumb, hung without the possibility of detecting a vibration. However, as the captain said he could perceive no indication of danger, and as we were drifting in bodily to shore, he ordered the sails to be furled, and the anchor let go. No watch was set, and the crew, consisting principally of Malays, stretched themselves deliberately upon deck. I went below—not without a full presentiment of evil. Indeed, every appearance warranted me in apprehending a Simoom. I told the captain my fears; but he paid no attention to what I said, and left me without deigning to give a reply. My uneasiness, however, prevented me from sleeping, and about midnight I went upon deck. —As I placed my foot upon the upper step of the companion-ladder, I was startled by a loud, humming noise, like that occasioned by the rapid revolution of a mill-wheel, and before I could ascertain its meaning, I found the ship quivering to its centre. In the next instant, a wilderness of foam hurled us upon our beam-ends, and, rushing over us fore and aft, swept the entire decks from stem to stern.

  The extreme fury of the blast proved, in a great measure, the salvation of the ship. Although completely water-logged, yet, as her masts had gone by the board, she rose, after a minute, heavily from the sea, and, staggering awhile beneath the immense pressure of the tempest, finally righted.

  By what miracle I escaped destruction, it is impossible to say. Stunned by the shock of the water, I found myself, upon recovery, jammed in between the stern-post and rudder. With great difficulty I gained my feet, and looking dizzily around, was, at first, struck with the idea of our being among breakers; so terrific, beyond the wildest imagination, was the whirlpool of mountainous and foaming ocean within which we were engulfed. After a while, I heard the voice of an old Swede, who had shipped with us at the moment of our leaving port. I hallooed to him with all my strength, and presently he came reeling aft. We soon discovered that we were the sole survivors of the accident. All on deck, with the exception of ourselves, had been swept overboard;—the captain and mates must have perished as they slept, for the cabins were deluged with water. Without assistance, we could expect to do little for the security of the ship, and our exertions were at first paralyzed by the momentary expectation of going down. Our cable had, of course, parted like pack-thread, at the first breath of the hurricane, or we should have been instantaneously overwhelmed. We scudded with frightful velocity before the sea, and the water made clear breaches over us. The frame-work of our stern was shattered excessively, and, in almost every respect, we had received considerable injury; but to our extreme Joy we found the pumps unchoked, and that we had made no great shifting of our ballast. The main fury of the blast had already blown over, and we apprehended little danger from the violence of the wind; but we looked forward to its total cessation with dismay; well believing, that, in our shattered condition, we should inevitably perish
in the tremendous swell which would ensue. But this very just apprehension seemed by no means likely to be soon verified. For five entire days and nights—during which our only subsistence was a small quantity of jaggeree, procured with great difficulty from the forecastle—the hulk flew at a rate defying computation, before rapidly succeeding flaws of wind, which, without equalling the first violence of the Simoom, were still more terrific than any tempest I had before encountered. Our course for the first four days was, with trifling variations, S.E. and by S.; and we must have run down the coast of New Holland. —On the fifth day the cold became extreme, although the wind had hauled round a point more to the northward. —The sun arose with a sickly yellow lustre, and clambered a very few degrees above the horizon—emitting no decisive light. — There were no clouds apparent, yet the wind was upon the increase, and blew with a fitful and unsteady fury. About noon, as nearly as we could guess, our attention was again arrested by the appearance of the sun. It gave out no light, properly so called, but a dull and sullen glow without reflection, as if all its rays were polarized. Just before sinking within the turgid sea, its central fires suddenly went out, as if hurriedly extinguished by some unaccountable power. It was a dim, sliver-like rim, alone, as it rushed down the unfathomable ocean.