CHAPTER XL
A Burning Trireme
The Solitary Voyager
Never was man more indifferent to the result than the solitary voyager of the burning trireme. What had life for me? I gazed round me. The element of fire reigned supreme. The shore—mountain, vale, and sand—was bright as day from the blaze of the tents and the floating fragments of the galleys. The heavens were an arch of angry splendor—every stooping cloud swept along reddened with the various dyes of the conflagration below. The sea was a rolling abyss of the fiercest color of slaughter. The blazing vessels, loosened from the shore, rushed madly before the storm, sheet and shroud shaking loose abroad like vast wings of flame.
At length all disappeared. The shore faded far into a dim line of light; the galleys sank or were consumed; the sea grew dark again. But the trireme, strongly built and of immense size, still fed the flame, and still shot on through the tempest, that fell on her the more furiously as she lost the cover of the land. The waves rose to a height that often baffled the wind, and left me floating in a strange calm between two black walls of water reaching to the clouds, and on whose smooth sides the image of the burning vessel was reflected as strongly as in a mirror. But the ascent to the summit of those fearful barriers again let in the storm in its rage. The tops of the billows were whirled off in sheets of foam; the wind tore mast and sail away, and the vessel was dashed forward like a stone discharged from an engine. I stood on the poop, which the spray and the wind kept clear of flame, and contemplated, with some feeling of the fierce grandeur of the spectacle, the fire rolling over the forward part of the vessel in a thousand shapes and folds.
While I was thus careering along, like the genius of fire upon his throne, I caught a glimpse of sails scattering in every direction before me—I had rushed into the middle of one of those small trading-fleets that coasted annually between the Euxine and the Nile. They flew, as if pursued by a fiend. But the same wind that bore them, bore me; and their screams, as the trireme bounded from billow to billow on their track, were audible even through the roarings of the storm. They gradually succeeded in spreading themselves so far that the contact with the flame must be partial. But on one, the largest and most crowded, the trireme bore inevitably down. The hunted ship tried every mode of escape in vain; it maneuvered with extraordinary skill; but the pursuer, lightened of every burden, rushed on like a messenger of vengeance.
The Sound of a Voice
I could distinctly see the confusion and misery of the crowd that covered the deck; men and women kneeling, weeping, fainting, or, in the fierce riot of despair, struggling for some wretched spoil that a few moments more must tear from all alike. But among the fearful mingling of sounds, one voice I suddenly heard that struck to my soul. It alone roused me from my stern scorn of human suffering. I no longer looked upon those beings as upon insects, that must be crushed in the revolution of the great wheel of fate. The heart, the living human heart, palpitated within me. I rushed to the side of the trireme, and with voice and hand made signals to the crew to take me on board. But at my call a cry of agony rang through the vessel. All fled to its farther part, but a few, who, unable to move, were seen on their knees, and in the attitudes of preternatural fear, imploring every power of heaven. Shocked by the consciousness that, even in the hour when mutual hazard softens the heart of man, I was an object of horror, I shrank back. I heard the voice once more, and once more resolving to get on board, flung a burning fragment over the side to help me through the waves.
“The solitary voyager of the burning trireme.”
