"And I know! Why, sir, I have drunk barrels of whiskey—barrels of the stuff. I have seen whiskey-snakes in squirming masses three feet deep. I have gone into a parlor, and had a lady say when she saw me fumbling in my pockets: 'Doctor, your handkerchief is in your back pocket.' Bless her! I was only putting back into my pockets the jim-jam snake-heads as the snakes would try to emerge! I pity a weak devil that goes home and to bed because of a mild attack of delirium tremens. I brush the vipers away with a sweep of my hand, and go about my business. But I myself draw the line at roosters. A man who may laugh at snakes will quail before roosters. A fellow may shut his eyes to snakes, but he can't shut his ears to roosters. Well, well: it's all in a life-time. But, believe me, no good poetry, either in verse or in prose, is drunkenman poetry."
With which final remark he shot out of the room. Then Doctor Bainbridge took his departure, and I retired to sleep and to dream of fiery craters, with snakes crawling out of them, and gigantic roosters picking up the snakes one by one and dropping them over a mountain of salt into a lake of boiling water. I was pleased when morning came, and I heard the comparatively cheering tinkle from bells on the team of mules drawing the little "bob-tail" street-car past the hotel.
The ELEVENTH Chapter
On the following evening Bainbridge came to my room as he had promised, arriving at about eight o'clock. I had not that day accompanied him on his visit to Peters, who it seems was daily gaining strength. I had spent my day in reading, except that Arthur had repeatedly come to my room, remaining for fifteen or twenty minutes at a time as his duties would permit, being curious to learn from me "some of the things about that ante-arctic country," etc. He was much interested in the subject, and studied with close attention the map made by Doctor Bainbridge. Arthur had asked permission to be present when the doctor should come in the evening, but I thought better to deny him that privilege. Doctor Bainbridge was taking the matter seriously, and I knew Arthur too well to expect from him a decorous reticence at any time. I could imagine the effect on Bainbridge as he closed some glowing description, should Arthur jump up with a remark about "ante-arctic niggers," or "gee whallopin big females." I had occasion later to know that my caution was most judicious, and to condemn myself for a want of firmness in maintaining so sensible a decision.
Doctor Bainbridge, without unnecessary delay or preliminary remark, began the relation of Peters' adventures at the point indicated by him the evening before as the proper place of commencement.
"The great white curtain you have no doubt already surmised to be a clear-cut line of dense fog, due to the fact that a perpendicular plane of extremely cold air in that situation cuts through an atmosphere which, on both sides of this sheet of frigid air, is exceedingly warm, and laden with moisture to the saturation-point. This curtain of fog is so thin that sudden gusts of wind, upon either of its surfaces, drive it aside much as a double curtain is thrown on either side by the arms of a person passing between. It was through such an opening that Pym and Peters rushed, on a cross-current of warm water which was carrying them along. The figure of a large, pure-white woman, into whose arms their half-delirious fancies pictured them as rushing, was simply a large statue of spotless marble, which stands at the entrance of the bay of Hili-li. The ash-like material which for days had rained upon them and into the ocean around them, was no longer seen. It proved to have been a peculiar volcano dust or crater ash, which, carried into the upper air, fell at a distance—sometimes directly on Hili-li; but rarely so close as within eighty or ninety miles of the central fire.
"They had scarcely passed the white fog-curtain when they were accosted by a gay party of young men and young women, numbering some eight or ten persons, in an elegant pleasure-boat. Pym and Peters being ignorant of the language of Hili-li land, and the Hili-lites being ignorant of the English tongue, it was of course impossible for them to hold converse beyond that permitted by signs. The pleasure party, however, saw at once that the two men were almost ready to expire from want of food and rest. The Hili-lites took them into their own spacious boat, and hastened to a landing-place in the suburbs of the capital and metropolis of the nation, Hili-li City. There they all disembarked, and the strangers were supported across a lawn, the grass of which was of the palest green—(so nearly white, in fact, that its greenness of tint would scarcely have been noticed but for the contrast afforded by many brilliant white flowers that appeared here and there amid the grass)—up to a palace, the equal of which, for size and beauty, neither of the Americans had before seen, though Pym was familiar with the external appearance of the finest residences in and about Boston, and also of those on the Hudson River just above New York; whilst Peters had been in most of the sea-coast cities of the habitable world.
"They were taken into this palace, were immediately escorted to the bath (which Peters declined to enter), were furnished with liquid nourishments, and were then allowed to sleep—which both of them did, uninterruptedly, for twenty-four hours. When they awoke they were furnished with new clothing of the best (the Hili-lites dressed something in the style of Louis XIV.), and then invited to a full repast. So well were they treated that in less than a week they felt quite as strong and otherwise natural as they had on leaving the harbor of Nantucket.
"So elegant and expressive, yet so simple was the language of Hili-li, that Pym could in two weeks understand and speak it sufficiently well for ordinary converse; whilst Peters was able to employ it sufficiently for his purposes, in about a month.
"The residents of the palace seemed to comprehend just about what had happened to the strangers. It appears that once or twice in a century strangers similar in general exterior to this pair had arrived in that region, generally in small boats, and on one occasion in a ship; but none of the strangers had desired to depart from a land so beautiful, to undertake a voyage both long and hazardous—none save the persons who had come in a ship nearly three centuries before—(you will recall what I told you of the small book that I read in the Astor Library). As there was little which the Hili-lites had any desire to learn from the strangers, there was not much to be said, anyway. Pym and Peters were permitted to roam at will, and many Hili-lites came to look at them. The palace in which they were permitted to reside belonged to a cousin of the king, so that no troublesome surveillance was inflicted upon these wrecked sailors—in fact, so completely isolated were the two, that no feelings except a mild degree of sympathy and curiosity were excited by their presence on the island. A small boat was at their disposal, and they soon almost daily took the liberty of rowing across the harbor to the wharf at the end of the main street of Hili-li, where they would disembark, and wander for hours around this strange old city, viewing in wonderment its beauties, its peculiarities, its mysteries.