The Purple Cloud
Page 36
tired of work: butwithout once doing the least harm to anything, but containing myhumours, and fearing my Maker. And full of peaceful charm were thoselittle cruises through this Levantic world, which, truly, is rather likea light sketch in water-colours done by an angel than like the dun realearth; and full of self-satisfaction and pious contentment would Ireturn to Imbros, approved of my conscience, for that I had surmountedtemptation, and lived tame and stainless.
I had set up the southern of the two closed-lotus pillars, and theplatform-top was already looking as lovely as heaven, with its alternatetwo-foot squares of pellucid gold and pellucid jet, when I noticed onemorning that the _Speranza's_ bottom was really now too foul, and thewhim took me then and there to leave all, and clean her as far as Icould. I at once went on board, descended to the hold, took off mysudeyrie, and began to shift the ballast over to starboard, so as totilt up her port bottom to the scraper. This was wearying labour, andabout noon I was sitting on a bag, resting in the almost darkness, whensomething seemed to whisper to me these words: '_You dreamed last nightthat there is an old Chinaman alive in Pekin._' Horridly I started: I_had_ dreamed something of the sort, but, from the moment of waking,till then, had forgotten it: and I leapt livid to my feet.
I cleaned no _Speranza_ that day, nor for four days did I anything, butsat on the cabin-house and mused, my supporting palm among the hairydraperies of my chin: for the thought of such a thing, if it could byany possibility be true, was detestable as death to me, changing thecolour of the sun, and the whole aspect of the world: and anon, at theoutrage of that thing, my brow would flush with wrath, and my eyesblaze: till, on the fourth afternoon, I said to myself: 'That oldChinaman in Pekin is likely to get burned to death, I think, or blown tothe clouds!'
So, a second time, on the 4th March, the poor palace was left to builditself. For, after a short trip to Gallipoli, where I got some younglime-twigs in boxes of earth, and some preserved limes and ginger, I setout for a long voyage to the East, passing through the Suez Canal, andvisiting Bombay, where I was three weeks, and then destroyed it.
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I had the thought of going across Hindustan by engine, but did not liketo leave my ship, to which I was very attached, not sure of findinganything so suitable and good at Calcutta; and, moreover, I was afraidto abandon my petrol motor, which I had taken on board with theair-windlass, since I was going to uncivilised land. I therefore coasteddown western Hindustan.
All that northern shore of the Arabian Sea has at the present time anodour which it wafts far over the water, resembling odours of happyvague dream-lands, sweet to smell in the early mornings as if the earthwere nothing but a perfume, and life an inhalation.
On that voyage, however, I had, from beginning to end, twenty-sevenfearful storms, or, if I count that one near the Carolines, thentwenty-eight. But I do not wish to write of these rages: they were tooinhuman: and how I came alive through them against all my wildest hope,Someone, or Something, only knows.
I will write down here a thing: it is this, my God--something which Ihave observed: a definite obstreperousness in the mood of the elementsnow, when once roused, which grows, which grows continually. Tempestshave become very very far more wrathful, the sea more truculent andunbounded in its insolence; when it thunders, it thunders with a venomnew to me, cracking as though it would split the firmament, and bawlingthrough the heaven of heavens, as if roaring to devour all things; inBombay once, and in China thrice, I was shaken by earthquakes, thesecond and third marked by a certain extravagance of agitation, thatmight turn a man grey. Why should this be, my God? I remember readingvery long ago that on the American prairies, which from time immemorialhad been swept by great storms, the storms gradually subsided when manwent to reside permanently there. If this be true, it would seem thatthe mere presence of man had a certain subduing or mesmerising effectupon the native turbulence of Nature, and his absence now may haveremoved the curb. It is my belief that within fifty years from now thehuge forces of the earth will be let fully loose to tumble as they will;and this planet will become one of the undisputed playgrounds of Hell,and the theatre of commotions stupendous as those witnessed on the faceof Saturn.
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The Earth is all on my brain, on my brain, O dark-minded Mother, withthy passionate cravings after the Infinite, thy regrets, and mightygriefs, and comatose sleeps, and sinister coming doom, O Earth: and I,poor man, though a king, sole witness of thy bleak tremendous woes. Uponher I brood, and do not cease, but brood and brood--the habit, if Iremember right, first becoming fixed and fated during that long voyageeastward: for what is in store for her God only knows, and I have seenin my broodings long visions of her future, which, if a man should seewith the eye of flesh, he would spread the arms, and wheel and wheelthrough the mazes of a hiccuping giggling frenzy, for the vision only isthe very verge of madness. If I might cease but for one hour thatperpetual brooding upon her! But I am her child, and my mind grows andgrows to her like the off-shoots of the banyan-tree, that take rootdownward, and she sucks and draws it, as she draws my feet bygravitation, and I cannot take wing from her: for she is greater than I,and there is no escaping her; and at the last, I know, my soul willdash itself to ruin, like erring sea-fowl upon pharos-lights, againsther wild and mighty bosom. Often a whole night through I lie open-eyedin the dark, with bursting brain, thinking of that hollow Gulf ofMexico, how identical in shape and size with the protuberance of Africajust opposite, and how the protuberance of the Venezuelan and Braziliancoast fits in with the in-curve of Africa: so that it is obvious tome--it is quite _obvious_--that they once were one; and one night rushedso far apart; and the wild Atlantic knew that thing, and ran gladly,hasting in between: and how if eye of flesh had been there to see, andear to hear that cruel thundering, my God, my God--what horror! And ifnow they meet again, so long apart ...but that way fury lies. Yet onecannot help but think: I lie awake and think, for she fills my soul, andabsorbs it, with all her moods and ways. She has meanings, secrets,plans. Strange, strange, for instance, that similarity between thescheme of Europe and the scheme of Asia: each with three southernpeninsulas pointing south: Spain corresponding with Arabia, Italy withIndia, the Morea and Greece, divided by the Gulf of Corinth,corresponding with the Malay Peninsula and Annam, divided by the Gulf ofSiam; each with two northern peninsulas pointing south, Sweden andNorway, and Korea and Kamschatka; each with two great islands similarlyplaced, Britain and Ireland, and the Japanese Hondo and Yezo; the OldWorld and the New has each a peninsula pointing north--Denmark andYucatan: a forefinger with long nail--and a thumb--pointing to the Pole.What does she mean? What can she mean, O Ye that made her? Is sheherself a living being, with a will and a fate, as sailors said thatships were living entities? And that thing that wheeled at the Pole,wheels it still yonder, yonder, in its dark ecstasy? Strange thatvolcanoes are all near the sea: I don't know why; I don't think thatanyone ever knew. This fact, in connection with submarine explosions,used to be cited in support of the chemical theory of volcanoes, whichsupposed the infiltration of the sea into ravines containing thematerials which form the fuel of eruptions: but God knows if that istrue. The lofty ones are intermittent--a century, two, ten, of silentwaiting, and then their talk silenced for ever some poor district; thelow ones are constant in action. Who could know the dark way of theworld? Sometimes they form a linear system, consisting of several ventswhich extend in one direction, near together, like chimneys of some longfoundry beneath. In mountains, a series of serrated peaks denotes thepresence of dolomites; rounded heads mean calcareous rocks; and needles,crystalline schists. The preponderance of land in the northernhemisphere denotes the greater intensity there of the causes ofelevation at a remote geologic epoch: that is all that one can say aboutit: but whence that greater intensity? I have some knowledge of theearth for only ten miles down: but she has eight thousand miles: andwhether through all that depth she is flame or fluid, hard or soft, I donot know, I do not know. Her me
thod of forming coal, geysers and hotsulphur-springs, and the jewels, and the atols and coral reefs; themetamorphic rocks of sedimentary origin, like gneiss, the plutonic andvolcanic rocks, rocks of fusion, and the unstratified masses whichconstitute the basis of the crust; and harvests, the burning flame offlowers, and the passage from the vegetable to the animal: I do not knowthem, but they are of her, and they are like me, molten in the samefurnace of her fiery heart. She is dark and moody, sudden and ill-fated,and rends her young like a cannibal lioness; and she is old and wise,and remembers Hur of the Chaldees which Uruk built, and that Temple ofBel which rose in seven pyramids to symbolise the planets, andBirs-i-Nimrud, and Haran, and she bears still, as a thing of yesterday,old Persepolis and the tomb of Cyrus, and those cloister-likeviharah-temples of the ancient Buddhists, cut from the Himalayan rock;and returning from the Far East, I stopped at Ismailia, and so to Cairo,and saw where Memphis was, and