Across the Zodiac - Percy Greg
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ACROSS THE ZODIAC: The Story of a Wrecked Record
DECIPHERED, TRANSLATED AND EDITED BY PERCY GREG
AUTHOR OF "THE DEVIL'S ADVOCATE" ETC.
"Thoughts he sends to each planet,
Uranus, Venus, and Mars;
Soars to the Centre to span it,
Numbers the infinite Stars."
_Courthope's Paradise of Birds_
CONTENTS
I. SHIPWRECK.
II. OUTWARD BOUND.
III. THE UNTRAVELLED DEEP.
IV. A NEW WORLD.
V. LANGUAGE, LAWS, AND LIFE.
VI. AN OFFICIAL VISIT.
VII. ESCORT DUTY.
VIII. A FAITH AND ITS FOUNDER.
IX. MANNERS AND CUSTOMS.
X. WOMAN AND WEDLOCK.
XI. A COUNTRY DRIVE.
XII. ON THE RIVER.
XIII. THE CHILDREN OF LIGHT.
XIV. BY SEA.
XV. FUR-HUNTING.
XVI. TROUBLED WATERS.
XVII. PRESENTED AT COURT.
XVIII. A PRINCE'S PRESENT.
XIX. A COMPLETE ESTABLISHMENT.
XX. LIFE, SOCIAL AND DOMESTIC.
XXI. PRIVATE AUDIENCES.
XXII. PECULIAR INSTITUTIONS.
XXIII. CHARACTERISTICS.
XXIV. WINTER.
XXV. APOSTACY.
XXVI. TWILIGHT.
XXVII. THE VALLEY OF THE SHADOW.
XXVIII. DARKER YET.
XXIX. AZRAEL.
XXX. FAREWELL.
CHAPTER I - SHIPWRECK.
Once only, in the occasional travelling of thirty years, did I lose
any important article of luggage; and that loss occurred, not under
the haphazard, devil-take-the-hindmost confusion of English, or the
elaborate misrule of Continental journeys, but through the absolute
perfection and democratic despotism of the American system. I had to
give up a visit to the scenery of Cooper's best Indian novels--no
slight sacrifice--and hasten at once to New York to repair the loss.
This incident brought me, on an evening near the middle of September
1874, on board a river steamboat starting from Albany, the capital of
the State, for the Empire City. The banks of the lower Hudson are as
well worth seeing as those of the Rhine itself, but even America has
not yet devised means of lighting them up at night, and consequently I
had no amusement but such as I could find in the conversation of my
fellow-travellers. With one of these, whose abstinence from personal
questions led me to take him for an Englishman, I spoke of my visit to
Niagara--the one wonder of the world that answers its warranty--and to
Montreal. As I spoke of the strong and general Canadian feeling of
loyalty to the English Crown and connection, a Yankee bystander
observed--
"Wal, stranger, I reckon we could take 'em if we wanted tu!"
"Yes," I replied, "if you think them worth the price. But if you do,
you rate them even more highly than they rate themselves; and English
colonists are not much behind the citizens of the model Republic in
honest self-esteem."
"Wal," he said, "how much du yew calc'late we shall hev to pay?"
"Not more, perhaps, than you can afford; only California, and every
Atlantic seaport from Portland to Galveston."
"Reckon yew may be about right, stranger," he said, falling back with
tolerable good-humour; and, to do them justice, the bystanders seemed
to think the retort no worse than the provocation deserved.
"I am sorry," said my friend, "you should have fallen in with so
unpleasant a specimen of the character your countrymen ascribe with
too much reason to Americans. I have been long in England, and never
met with such discourtesy from any one who recognised me as an
American."
After this our conversation became less reserved; and I found that I
was conversing with one of the most renowned officers of irregular
cavalry in the late Confederate service--a service which, in the
efficiency, brilliancy, and daring of that especial arm, has never
been surpassed since Maharbal's African Light Horse were recognised by
friends and foes as the finest corps in the small splendid army of
Hannibal.
Colonel A---- (the reader will learn why I give neither his name nor
real rank) spoke with some bitterness of the inquisitiveness which
rendered it impossible, he said, to trust an American with a secret,
and very difficult to keep one without lying. We were presently joined
by Major B----, who had been employed during the war in the conduct of
many critical communications, and had shown great ingenuity in
devising and unravelling ciphers. On this subject a somewhat
protracted discussion arose. I inclined to the doctrine of Poe, that
no cipher can be devised which cannot be detected by an experienced
hand; my friends indicated simple methods of defeating the processes
on which decipherers rely.
"Poe's theory," said the Major, "depends upon the frequent recurrence
of certain letters, syllables, and brief words in any given language;
for instance, of _e_'s and _t_'s, _tion_ and _ed_, _a_, _and_, and
_the_ in English. Now it is perfectly easy to introduce abbreviations
for each of the common short words and terminations, and equally easy
to baffle the decipherer's reliance thereon by inserting meaningless
symbols to separate the words; by employing two signs for a common
letter, or so arranging your cipher that no one shall without extreme
difficulty know which marks stand for single and which for several
combined letters, where one letter ends and another begins."
After some debate, Colonel A---- wrote down and handed me two lines in
a cipher whose character at once struck me as very remarkable.
"I grant," said I, "that these hieroglyphics might well puzzle a more
practised decipherer than myself. Still, I can point out even here a
clue which might help detection. There occur, even in these two lines,
three or four symbols which, from their size and complication, are
evidently abbreviations. Again, the distinct forms are very few, and
have obviously been made to serve for different letters by some slight
alterations devised upon a fixed rule. In a word, the cipher has been
constructed upon a general principle; and though it may take a long
time to find out what that principle is, it affords a clue which,
carefully followed out, will probably lead to detection."
"You have perceived," said Colonel A----, "a fact which it took me
very long to discover. I have not deciphered all the more difficult
passages of the manuscript from which I took this example; but I have
ascertained the meaning of all its simple characters, and your
inference is certainly correct."
Here he stopped abruptly, as if he thought he had said too much, and
the subject dropped.
We reached New York early in the morning and separated, having
arranged to visit that afternoon a celebrated "spiritual" medium who
was then giving _seances_ in the Empire City, and of whom my friend
had heard and repeated to me several more or less marvellous stories.
Our visit, however, was unsatisfactory; and as we came away Colonel
A---- said--
"Well, I suppose this experience confirms you in your disbelief?"
"No," said I. "My first visits have generally been failures, and I
have more than once been told that my own temperament is most
unfavourable to the success of a seance. Nevertheless, I have in some
cases witnessed marvels perfectly inexplicable by known natural laws;
and I have heard and read of others attested by evidence I certainly
cannot consider inferior to my own."
"Why," he said, "I thought from your conversation last night you were
a complete disbeliever."
"I believe," answered I, "in very little of what I have seen. But that
little is quite sufficient to dispose of the theory of pure imposture.
On the other hand, there is nothing spiritual and nothing very human
in the pranks played by or in the presence of the mediums. They remind
one more of the feats of traditionary goblins; mischievous, noisy,
untrustworthy; insensible to ridicule, apparently delighting to make
fools of men, and perfectly indifferent to having the tables turned
upon themselves."
"But do you believe in goblins?"
"No," I replied; "no more than in table-turning ghosts, and less than
in apparitions. I am not bound to find either sceptics or
spiritualists in plausible explanations. But when they insist on an
alternative to their respective theories, I suggest Puck as at least
equally credible with Satan, Shakespeare, or the parrot-cry of
imposture. It is the very extravagance of illogical temper to call on
me to furnish an explanation _because_ I say 'we know far too little
of the thing itself to guess at its causes;' but of the current
guesses, imposture seems inconsistent with the evidence, and
'spiritual agency' with the character of the phenomena."
"That," replied Colonel A----, "sounds common sense, and sounds even
more commonplace. And yet, no one seems really to draw a strong, clear
line between non-belief and disbelief. And you are the first and only
man I ever met who hesitates to affirm the impossibility of that which
seems to him wildly improbable, contrary at once to received opinion
and to his own experience, and contrary, moreover, to all known
natural laws, and all inferences hitherto drawn from them. Your men of
science dogmatise like divines, not only on things they have not seen,
but on things they refuse to see; and your divines are half of them
afraid of Satan, and the other half of science."
"The men of science have," I replied, "like every other class, their
especial bias, their peculiar professional temptation. The
anti-religious bigotry of Positivists is quite as bitter and
irrational as the theological bigotry of religious fanatics. At
present the two powers countervail and balance each other. But, as
three hundred years ago I should certainly have been burnt for a
heretic, so fifty or a hundred years hence, could I live so long, I
should be in equal apprehension of being burnt by some successor of
Mr. Congreve, Mr. Harrison, or Professor Huxley, for presuming to
believe in Providential government."
"The intolerance of incredulity," returned Colonel A----, "is a sore
subject with me. I once witnessed a phenomenon which was to me quite
as extraordinary as any of the 'spiritual' performances. I have at
this moment in my possession apparently irresistible evidence of the
reality of what then took place; and I am sure that there exists at a
point on the earth's surface, which unluckily I cannot define, strong
corroborative proof of my story. Nevertheless, the first persons who
heard it utterly ridiculed it, and were disposed to treat me either as
a madman, or at best as an audacious trespasser on that privilege of
lying which belonged to them as mariners. I told it afterwards to
three gentlemen of station, character, and intelligence, every one of
whom had known me as soldier, and I hope as gentleman, for years; and
in each case the result was a duel, which has silenced those who
imputed to me an unworthy and purposeless falsehood, but has left a
heavy burden on my conscience, and has prevented me ever since from
repeating what I know to be true and believe to be of greater
interest, and in some sense of greater importance, than any scientific
discovery of the last century. Since the last occasion on which I told
it seven years have elapsed, and I never have met any one but yourself
to whom I have thought it possible to disclose it."
"I have," I answered, "an intense interest in all occult phenomena;
believing in regard to alleged magic, as the scientists say of
practical science, that every one branch of such knowledge throws
light on others; and if there be nothing in your story which it is
personally painful to relate, you need not be silenced by any
apprehension of discourteous criticism on my part."
"I assure you," he said, "I have no such wish now to tell the story as
I had at first. It is now associated with the most painful incident of
my life, and I have lost altogether that natural desire for sympathy
and human interest in a matter deeply interesting to myself, which,
like every one else, I felt at first, and which is, I suppose, the
motive that prompts us all to relate often and early any occurrence
that has keenly affected us, in whatever manner. But I think that I
have no right to suppress so remarkable a fact, if by telling it I can
place it effectually on record for the benefit of men sensible enough
to believe that it may have occurred, especially since somewhere in
the world there must yet exist proof that it did occur. If you will
come to my rooms in ---- Street tomorrow, Number 999, I will not
promise, but I think that I shall have made up my mind to tell you
what I have to tell, and to place in your hands that portion of the
evidence which is still at my command--evidence that has a
significance of its own, to which my experience is merely episodical."
I spent that evening with the family of a friend, one of several
former officers of the Confederacy, whose friendship is the one
permanent and valuable result of my American tour. I mentioned the
Colonel's name, and my friend, the head of the family, having served
with him through the Virginian campaigns, expressed the highest
confidence in his character, the highest opinion of his honour and
veracity; but spoke with bitter regret and pain of the duels in which
he had been engaged, especially of one which had been fatal; remarking
that the motive in each instance remained unknown even to the seconds.
"I am sure," he said "that they were not, could not have been, fought
for the one cause that would justify them and explain the secrecy of
the quarrel--some question involving female honour or reputation. I
can hardly conceive that any one of his adversaries could have called
in question in any way the personal loyalty of Colonel A----; and, as
you remarked of General M----, it is too absurd for a man who had
faced over and over again the fire of a whole brigade, who had led
charges against fourfold numbers, to prove his personal courage with
sword or pistol, or to think that any one would have doubted either
his spirit or his nerve had he refused to fight, whatever the
provocation. Moreover, in each case he was the challenger."
"Then these duels have injured him in Southern opinion, and have
probably tended to isolate him from society?"
"No," he replied. "Deeply as they were regretted and disapproved, his
services during the war were so brilliant, and his personal character
stands so high, that nothing could have induced his fellow-soldiers to
put any social stigma upon him. To me he must know that he would be
most welcome. Yet, though we have lived in the same city for five
years, I have only encountered him three or four times in the street,
and then he has passed with the fewest possible words, and has neither
given me his address nor accepted my urgent invitations to visit us
here. I think that there is something in the story of those duels that
will never be known, certainly something that has never been guessed
yet. And I think that either the circumstances in which they must have
had their origin, or the duels themselves, have so weighed upon his
spirits, perhaps upon his conscience, that he has chosen to avoid his
former friends, most of them also the friends of his antagonists.
Though the war ruined him as utterly as any of the thousands of
Southern gentlemen whom it has reduced from wealth to absolute
poverty, he has refused every employment which would bring him before
the public eye."
"Is there," I asked, "any point of honour on which you could suppose
him to be so exceptionally sensitive that he would think it necessary
to take the life of a man who touched him on that point, though
afterwards his regret, if not repentance, might be keen enough to
crush his spirit or break his heart?"
The General paused for a moment, and his son then interposed--
"I have heard it said that Colonel A---- was in general the least
quarrelsome of Confederate officers; but that on more than one
occasion, where his statement upon some point of fact had been
challenged by a comrade, who did not intend to question his veracity
but simply the accuracy of his observation, their brother officers had
much trouble in preventing a serious difficulty."
The next day I called as agreed upon my new-found friend, and with
some reluctance he commenced his story.
"During the last campaign, in February 1865, I was sent by General Lee
with despatches for Kirby Smith, then commanding beyond the
Mississippi. I was unable to return before the surrender, and, for
reasons into which I need not enter, I believed myself to be marked
out by the Federal Government for vengeance. If I had remained within
their reach, I might have shared the fate of Wirz and other victims of
calumnies which, once put in circulation during the war, their
official authors dared not retract at its close. Now I and others,
who, if captured in 1865, might probably have been hanged, are neither
molested nor even suspected of any other offence than that of
fighting, as our opponents fought, for the State to which our
allegiance was due. However, I thought it necessary to escape before
the final surrender of our forces beyond the Mississippi. I made my
way to Mexico, and, like one or two Southern officers of greater
distinction than myself, entered the service of the Emperor
Maximilian, not as mere soldiers of fortune, but because, knowing
better than any but her Southern neighbours knew it the miserable
anarchy of Mexico under the Republic, we regarded conquest as the one
chance of regeneration for that country, and the Emperor Maximilian as
a hero who had devoted himself to a task heroic at once in its danger
and difficulty--the restoration of a people with whom his house had a
certain historical connection to a place among the nations of the
civilised world. After his fall, I should certainly have been shot had
I been caught by the Juarists in pursuit of me. I gained the Pacific
coast, and got on board an English vessel, whose captain--loading for
San Francisco--generously weighed anchor and sailed with but half a
cargo to give me a chance of safety. He transferred me a few days
afterwards to a Dutch vessel bound for Brisbane, for at that time I
thought of settling in Queensland. The crew was weak-handed, and
consisted chiefly of Lascars, Malays, and two or three European
desperadoes of all languages and of no country. Her master was barely
competent to the ordinary duties of his command; and it was no
surprise to me when the first storm that we encountered drove us
completely out of our course, nor was I much astonished that the
captain was for some days, partly from fright and partly from drink,
incapable of using his sextant to ascertain the position of the ship.
One night we were awakened by a tremendous shock; and, to spare you
the details of a shipwreck, which have nothing to do with my story, we
found ourselves when day broke fast on a coral reef, about a mile from
an island of no great size, and out of sight of all other land. The
sextant having been broken to pieces, I had no means of ascertaining
the position of this island, nor do I now know anything of it except
that it lay, in the month of August, within the region of the
southeast trade winds. We pulled on shore, but, after exploring the
island, it was found to yield nothing attractive to seamen except
cocoa-nuts, with which our crew had soon supplied themselves as
largely as they wished, and fish, which were abundant and easily
caught, and of which they were soon tired. The captain, therefore,
when he had recovered his sobriety and his courage, had no great
difficulty in inducing them to return to the ship, and endeavour
either to get her off or construct from her timbers a raft which,
following the course of the winds, might, it was thought, bring them
into the track of vessels. This would take some time, and I meanwhile
was allowed to remain (my own wish) on _terra firma_; the noise, dirt,
and foul smells of the vessel being, especially in that climate,
intolerable.
"About ten o'clock in the morning of the 25th August 1867, I was lying
towards the southern end of the island, on a little hillock tolerably
clear of trees, and facing a sort of glade or avenue, covered only
with brush and young trees, which allowed me to see the sky within
perhaps twenty degrees of the horizon. Suddenly, looking up, I saw
what appeared at first like a brilliant star considerably higher than
the sun. It increased in size with amazing rapidity, till, in a very
few seconds after its first appearance, it had a very perceptible
disc. For an instant it obscured the sun. In another moment a
tremendous shock temporarily deprived me of my senses, and I think
that more than an hour had elapsed before I recovered them. Sitting
up, somewhat confused, and looking around me, I became aware that some
strange accident had occurred. In every direction I saw such traces of
havoc as I had witnessed more than once when a Confederate force
holding an impenetrable woodland had been shelled at random for some
hours with the largest guns that the enemy could bring into the field.
Trees were torn and broken, branches scattered in all directions,
fragments of stone, earth, and coral rock flung all around.
Particularly I remember that a piece of metal of considerable size had
cut off the tops of two or three trees, and fixed itself at last on
what was now the summit of one about a third of whose length had been
broken off and lay on the ground. I soon perceived that this
miraculous bombardment had proceeded from a point to the
north-eastward, the direction in which at that season and hour the sun
was visible. Proceeding thitherward, the evidences of destruction
became every minute more marked, I might say more universal. Trees had
been thrown down, torn up by the roots, hurled against one another;
rocks broken and flung to great distances, some even thrown up in the
air, and so reversed in falling that, while again half buried in the
soil, they exposed what had been their undermost surface. In a word,
before I had gone two miles I saw that the island had sustained a
shock which might have been that of an earthquake, which certainly
equalled that of the most violent Central American earthquakes in
severity, but which had none of the special peculiarities of that kind
of natural convulsion. Presently I came upon fragments of a shining
pale yellow metal, generally small, but in one or two cases of
remarkable size and shape, apparently torn from some sheet of great
thickness. In one case I found embedded between two such jagged
fragments a piece of remarkably hard impenetrable cement. At last I
came to a point from which through the destruction of the trees the
sea was visible in the direction in which the ship had lain; but the
ship, as in a few moments I satisfied myself, had utterly disappeared.
Reaching the beach, I found that the shock had driven the sea far up
upon the land; fishes lying fifty yards inland, and everything
drenched in salt water. At last, guided by the signs of
ever-increasing devastation, I reached the point whence the mischief
had proceeded. I can give no idea in words of what I there found. The
earth had been torn open, rooted up as if by a gigantic explosion. In
some places sharp-pointed fragments of the coral rock, which at a
depth of several feet formed the bed of the island, were discernible
far below the actual surface. At others, the surface itself was raised
several feet by _debris_ of every kind. What I may call the
crater--though it was no actual hole, but rather a cavity torn and
then filled up by falling fragments--was two or three hundred feet in
circumference; and in this space I found considerable masses of the
same metallic substance, attached generally to pieces of the cement.
After examining and puzzling myself over this strange scene for some
time, my next care was to seek traces of the ship and of her crew; and
before long I saw just outside the coral reef what had been her
bowsprit, and presently, floating on the sea, one of her masts, with
the sail attached. There could be little doubt that the shock had
extended to her, had driven her off the reef where she had been fixed
into the deep water outside, where she must have sunk immediately, and
had broken her spars. No traces of her crew were to be seen. They had
probably been stunned at the same time that they were thrown into deep
water; and before I came in sight of the point where she had perished,
whatever animal bodies were to be found must have been devoured by the
sharks, which abounded in that neighbourhood. Dismay, perplexity, and
horror prevented my doing anything to solve my doubts or relieve my
astonishment before the sun went down; and during the night my sleep
was broken by snatches of horrible dreams and intervals of waking,
during which I marvelled over what I had seen, scarcely crediting my
memory or my senses. In the morning, I went back to the crater, and
with some tools that had been left on shore contrived to dig somewhat
deeply among the _debris_ with which it was filled. I found very
little that could enlighten me except pieces of glass, of various
metals, of wood, some of which seemed apparently to have been portions
of furniture; and one damaged but still entire relic, which I
preserved and brought away with me."