The Purple Cloud

by M. P. Shiel

Infinite.

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  So that something preserves me, Something, Someone: _and for what?_ ...If I had slept in the cabin, I must most certainly have perished: forlying there on the poop, I dreamed a dream which once I had dreamed onthe ice, far, far yonder in the forgotten hyperborean North: that I wasin an Arabian paradise, a Garden of Peaches; and I had a very longvision of it, for I walked among the trees, and picked the fruit, andpressed the blossoms to my nostrils with breathless inhalations of love:till a horrible sickness woke me: and when I opened my eyes, the nightwas black, the moon gone down, everything wet with dew, the sky arrayedwith most glorious stars like a thronged bazaar of tiaraed rajahs andbegums with spangled trains, and all the air fragrant with that mortalscent; and high and wide uplifted before me--stretching from thenorthern to the southern limit--a row of eight or nine inflamed smokes,as from the chimneys of some Cyclopean foundry a-work all night, mostsolemn, most great and dreadful in the solemn night: eight or nine, Ishould say, or it might be seven, or it might be ten, for I did notcount them; and from those craters puffed up gusts of encrimsonedmaterial, here a gust and there a gust, with tinselled fumes thatconvolved upon themselves, and sparks and flashes, all veiled in agarish haze of light: for the foundry worked, though languidly; and upona rocky land four miles ahead, which no chart had ever marked, the_Speranza_ drove straight with the current of the phosphorus sea.

  As I rose, I fell flat: and what I did thereafter I did in a state ofexistence whose acts, to the waking mind, appear unreal as dream. I mustat once, I think, have been conscious that here was the cause of thedestruction of mankind; that it still surrounded its own neighbourhoodwith poisonous fumes; and that I was approaching it. I must have somehowcrawled, or dragged myself forward. There is an impression on my mindthat it was a purple land of pure porphyry; there is some faint memory,or dream, of hearing a long-drawn booming of waves upon its crags: I donot know whence I have them. I think that I remember retching withdesperate jerks of the travailing intestines; also that I was on my faceas I moved the regulator in the engine-room: but any recollection ofgoing down the stairs, or of coming up again, I have not. Happily, thewheel was tied, the rudder hard to port, and as the ship moved, shemust, therefore, have turned; and I must have been back to untie thewheel in good time, for when my senses came, I was lying there, my headagainst the under gimbal, one foot on a spoke of the wheel, no land insight, and morning breaking.

  This made me so sick, that for either two or three days I lay withouteating in the chair near the wheel, only rarely waking to sufficientsense to see to it that she was making westward from that place; and onthe morning when I finally roused myself I did not know whether it wasthe second or the third morning: so that my calendar, so scrupulouslykept, may be a day out, for to this day I have never been at the painsto ascertain whether I am here writing now on the 5th or the 6th ofJune.

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  Well, on the fourth, or the fifth, evening after this, just as the sunwas sinking beyond the rim of the sea, I happened to look where he hungmotionless on the starboard bow: and there I saw a clean-cut black-greenspot against his red--a most unusual sight here and now--a ship: a poorthing, as it turned out when I got near her, without any sign of mast,heavily water-logged, some relics of old rigging hanging over, even herbowsprit apparently broken in the middle (though I could not see it),and she nothing more than a hirsute green mass of old weeds andsea-things from bowsprit-tip to poop, and from bulwarks to water-line,stout as a hedgehog, only awaiting there the next high sea to founder.

  It being near my dinner-hour and night's rest, I stopped the _Speranza_some fifteen yards from her, and commenced to pace my spacious poop, asusual, before eating; and as I paced, I would glance at her, wonderingat her destiny, and who were the human men that had lived on her, theirChristian names, and family names, their age, and thought, and way oflife, and beards; till the desire arose within me to go to her, and see;and I threw off my outer garments, uncovered and unroped the cedarcutter--the only boat, except the air-pinnace, left to me intact--andgot her down by the mizzen five-block pulley-system. But it was aridiculous nonsense, for having paddled to her, I was thrown intoparoxysms of rage by repeated failures to scale her bulwarks, low asthey were; my hands, indeed, could reach, but I found no hold upon theslimy mass, and three rope-ends which I caught were also untenablyslippery: so that I jerked always back into the boat, my clothes a massof filth, and the only thought in my blazing brain a twenty-poundcharge of guncotton, of which I had plenty, to blow her to uttermostHell. I had to return to the _Speranza_, get a half-inch rope, then backto the other, for I would not be baulked in such a way, though now thedark was come, only slightly tempered by a half-moon, and I gettinghungry, and from minute to minute more fiendishly ferocious. Finally, bydint of throwing, I got the rope-loop round a mast-stump, drew myselfup, and made fast the boat, my left hand cut by some cursed shell: andall for what? the imperiousness of a whim. The faint moonlight shewed anample tract of deck, invisible in most parts under rolled beds of putridseaweed, and no bodies, and nothing but a concave, large esplanade ofseaweed. She was a ship of probably 1,500 tons, three-masted, and asailer. I got aft (for I had on thick outer babooshes), and saw thatonly four of the companion-steps remained; by a small leap, however, Icould descend into that desolation, where the stale sea-stench seemedconcentrated into a very essence of rankness. Here I experienced asingular ghostly awe and timorousness, lest she should sink with me, orsomething: but striking matches, I saw an ordinary cabin, with somefungoids, skulls, bones and rags, but not one cohering skeleton. In thesecond starboard berth was a small table, and on the floor a thickround ink-pot, whose continual rolling on its side made me look down;and there I saw a flat square book with black covers, which curvedhalf-open of itself, for it had been wet and stained. This I took, andwent back to the _Speranza_: for that ship was nothing but an emptiness,and a stench of the crude elements of life, nearly assimilated now tothe rank deep to which she was wedded, and soon to be absorbed into itsnature and being, to become a sea in little, as I, in time, my God,shall be nothing but an earth in little.

  During dinner, and after, I read the book, with some difficulty, for itwas pen-written in French, and discoloured, and it turned out to be thejournal of someone, a passenger and voyager, I imagine, who calledhimself Albert Tissu, and the ship the _Marie Meyer_. There was nothingremarkable in the narrative that I could see--common-place descriptionsof South Sea scenes, records of weather, cargoes, and the like--till Icame to the last written page: and that was remarkable enough. It wasdated the 13th of April--strange thing, my good God, incrediblystrange--that same day, twenty long years ago, when I reached the Pole;and the writing on that page was quite different from the neat look ofthe rest, proving immoderate excitement, wildest haste; and he heads it'_Cinq Heures_,'--I suppose in the evening, for he does not say: and hewrites: 'Monstrous event! phenomenon without likeness! the witnesses ofwhich must for ever live immortalised in the annals of the universe, anevent which will make even Mama, Henri and Juliette admit that I wasjustified in undertaking this most eventful voyage. Talking with CaptainTombarel on the poop, when a sudden exclamation from him--"_Mon Dieu!_"His visage whitens! I follow the direction of his gaze to eastward! Ibehold! eight kilometres perhaps away--, _ten monstrous waterspouts_,reaching up, up, high enough--all apparently in one straight line, withintervals of nine hundred _metres_, very regularly placed. They do notwander, dance, nor waver, as waterspouts do; nor are they at alllily-shaped, like waterspouts: but ten hewn pillars of water, withuniform diameter from top to bottom, only a little twisted here andthere, and, as I divine, fifty _metres_ in girth. Five, ten, stupendousminutes we look, Captain Tombarel mechanically repeating and repeatingunder his breath "_Mon Dieu!_" "_Mon Dieu!_" the whole crew now on thepoop, I agitated, but collected, watch in hand. And suddenly, all isblotted out: the pillars of water, doubtless still there, can no more beseen: for the ocean all about th
em is steaming, hissing higher than thepillars a dense white vapour, vast in extent, whose venomous sibilationwe at this distance can quite distinctly hear. It is affrighting, it isintolerable! the eyes can hardly bear to watch, the ears to hear! itseems unholy travail, monstrous birth! But it lasts not long: all atonce the _Marie Meyer_ commences to pitch and roll violently, and thesea, a moment since calm, is now rough! and at the same time, throughthe white vapour, we see a dark shadow slowly rising--the shadow of amighty back, a new-born land, bearing upwards ten flames of fire,slowly, steadily, out of the sea, into the clouds. At the moment whenthat sublime emergence ceases, or seems to cease, the grand thought thatsmites me is this: "I, Albert Tissu, am immortalised: my name shallnever perish from among men!" I rush down, I write it. The latitude is16 deg. 21' 13" South; the longitude 176 deg. 58' 19" West[1]. There is a greatdeal of running about