The haunted island

by E. H. Visiak

A woful suffering it was; a stifling of the heart; a hand upon the brain, goading it to madness; an upheaval of the deeps, breaking up the standing surface-mould. But, amid the stress of it all, and as with a flash of seismic fire, there was made to me a revelation. All loneliness and loss were delusions; for the hearts of all are knit together in the heart of God.

So the affliction departed from me, and I came to myself. Yet it left me sore distraught, so that I shook with cold like one in an ague; and I made to go to the galley, where was a fire.

I descended the weather-ladder; but, coming under the break of the poop, I caught a curious sound of singing that proceeded from within the alley-way.

I passed in, and the sound led me towards the master’s cabin. Therein I beheld the Mosquito Indian. He was alone with the dead Englishman, pacing up and down before the body; and, ever as he went, he kept crooning and chanting a wild music, and swayed his body from side to side, and moved his hands and arms in strange mystic passes and convolutions.

Wild and inarticulate was the dirge, and the motions, I doubt not, were but the ceremonies of a savage fetish; but I watched and hearkened entranced. How much of what followed is accountable to the woful strain that recent trials—and especially that last great trial—had put upon me, I know not; but I think that there was nothing earthly in that chant, or rune (whatever it was), nothing of human artifice, and that it proceeded from the occult heart of things.

I saw a vision of a boundless expanse: the heavens loaden with masses of cloud ebon black, the firmament illumined with a spectral light, and, beneath it all, the deep! That was black as the clouds above, and surging in billows (though without foam) so stupendous, that the tops of them might not be descried, and sweeping together with a shock and tumult such as no man could imagine. But that which held my gaze—yea, and nigh unseated my reason!—was the Thing, whether brute or demon, that seemed to be the sole denizen of the waters, swimming and wallowing there. Merciful God! may I never look upon the like of it again.

Slowly the mood and measure of the singing changed; and now I beheld other scenes, and other images, which concerned the mid-period of things.

Again the measure changed; and, now, indeed, I saw god-like forms and god-like deeds: and there appeared before me (but oh, how transfigured, how glorified!) the similitudes of those whom I had known and loved: my mother, who was dead, my friends and playmates as a child, and my father, the Squire. They smiled on me; and so near they seemed, that I stretched forth my hand to have touched them, and would have spoken to them, when lo! they were gone. The Mosquito Indian had ceased from his singing, and stood silent and motionless, with bowed head.

I sprang to my feet. “Now, what manner of man are you?” cried I. “What was it that you sang?”

But he turned, and looked on me so friendly, and yet withal so manly, grave and majestic, that I was drawn to him. He saluted me; solemnly we shook hands, in testimony of friendship, a friendship that endured to the end—yea, to the end!