I did not succeed in getting back to Bainbridge and Peters so soon as I had expected. My business in the town dragged along far into the evening, and it was nine o'clock by the time I was at liberty. At ten o'clock I sent for a conveyance, and was driven to Peters' house, where I arrived just before midnight.
I found Peters sleeping soundly, and Bainbridge dozing in a chair. My entrance aroused Bainbridge. He arose, smiling, and was apparently glad to see me. I saw at a glance that he had been successful in obtaining from Peters the secrets of his antarctic voyage. "Well?" I asked.
"The information which I have gained," said Bainbridge, "even could I procure no more, would suffice to explain all those mysteries that Poe hints at as fact, and much that he seems to apprehend with that sixth sense which in the genius approaches a union of clairvoyance and prescience—mysteries of which he does not speak in language sufficiently clear for common comprehension. At all events, I am not disappointed; and more may yet be procured. There remains much of interest, in the way of minutiæ, which I expect to learn to-morrow. I know now what made that antarctic region more than tropical, and what the white curtain was—and is. I know how the hieroglyphics came in the caverns of black marl. That antarctic country exceeds, in the truly wonderful, anything in the world, old or new, with which I am acquainted, or of which I have heard."
"But is it true? Have you not been listening to fairy tales?—or, rather, to sailor tales?"
"When to-morrow I tell you what I have, hour after hour, with brief rests, drawn from that poor old battered hulk"—he pointed toward Peters' cot—"and when you consider what he is—then say if he is the man, or his sailor friends are the men, to invent such a story. I admit that at times during the day his mind seemed to wander slightly, and that he has the usual faculty of sea-faring men for exaggeration; so that at times I had to employ my best discrimination to enable me to separate the real from the fanciful, that I might retain the true and discard the untrue. He seems to have lived for more than a year in proximity to the South Pole, and his experiences were as marvellous as that country is strangely grand, and its people truly wonderful—Oh, no—nothing on the Gulliver order; the people are not dwarfs or giants, and they have no horses either that talk or that do not talk; no yahoos—nothing in that line. 'Wings?' Oh, no—no flying men or women, no women in gauze, either; everything quite in good taste and genteel. Just wait, now; you'll hear it all in an orderly way—which I myself did not, however. 'One-eyed?' I told you, just now, that it was all in good taste and genteel. No, no; nothing Homeric—no sheep, and no sirens. Now, I'm really tired, and you'll not succeed in starting me on a story that'll take six or eight hours to tell, even if we do not stop to discuss matters as we progress. To-morrow, as I before said, we will get from Peters all other possible facts, and no doubt we shall gather further particulars; then we will go to town. I intend to come out here every day till Peters gets better or dies—and I suppose you will not refuse to keep me company. Every evening we will meet in my rooms, or in yours, and I will recite the story in my own way. Now does that satisfy you?"
It satisfied me fully, I said; and then we spread our blankets, and made a night of it on the floor.
The next day Bainbridge spent the forenoon, for the most part, sitting on the edge of Dirk Peters' cot, listening to the old man talk, describe, explain. I walked out, and explored the immediately adjacent country, entertaining myself as best I could. At about two o'clock in the afternoon we started for town, leaving Peters much better than when two days before we had first, together, entered his humble home. We promised to see him the next day; and, in fact, one or both of us returned each day for many succeeding days. That evening Doctor Bainbridge came to my rooms, and began the recitation of Dirk Peters' story; and that, too, was continued from day to day.
And it is now time that the patient reader should also know the secrets of that far-distant antarctic region—secrets of which Poe himself died in ignorance—save as the genius, the seer, knows the wonders of heaven and earth—sees gems that lie in hidden places, and flowers that bloom obscurely, and feels the mysteries of ocean depths, and all that is so far—or near, so great—or small, that common vision sees it not.
The NINTH Chapter
There may be among my readers some who have never read "The Narrative of A. Gordon Pym," or have so long ago perused that interesting and mysterious conception, that they have forgotten even the outlines of the story. It is the purpose of the present chapter to review a few of the incidents in that narrative, a knowledge of which will add to the clearer understanding of Peters' story.