"None, none!" replied the malicious Dive. "Know, miserable prince, thou art now in the abode of vengeance and despair! A few days are allotted thee as respite, and then thy heart also shall be kindled like those of the other worshippers of Eblis."
This, indeed, was the dreadful fate of Vathek and Nouronihar, a fate indeed to which the Princess Carathis was also most righteously condemned; for Vathek, knowing that the principles by which his mother had perverted his youth had been the cause of his perdition, summoned her to the palace of subterranean fire and enrolled her among the votaries of Eblis. Carathis entered the dome of Soliman, and she too marched in triumph through the vapour of perfumes.
[APHRA BEHN]
[Oroonoko: the Royal Slave]
In her introduction to "Oroonoko," Mrs. Aphra Behn states that her strange and romantic tale is founded on facts, of many of which she was an eye-witness. This is true. She was born at Wye, England, July 10, 1640, the daughter, it is said, of a barber. As a child, she went out to Dutch Guiana, then an English colony named after the Surinam River, returning to England about 1658. After the death of her husband, in 1666, she was dispatched as a spy to Antwerp by Charles II., and it was she who first warned that monarch of the Dutch Government's intention to send a fleet up the Thames. She died on April 16, 1689, and was buried in Westminster Abbey. It was while in Dutch Guiana that she met Oroonoko, in the circumstances described in the story. No doubt she has idealised her hero somewhat, but she does not seem to have exaggerated the extraordinary adventures of the young African chief. In the licentious age of the Restoration, when she had become famous--or, rather, notorious--as a writer of unseemly plays, she astonished the town, and achieved real fame by relating the story of Oroonoko's life. There are few plots of either plays or novels so striking as that of "Oroonoko." It is the first of those romances of the outlands, which, from the days of Defoe to the days of Mr. Rudyard Kipling, have been one of the glories of English literature.
I.--The Stolen Bride
I do not pretend to entertain the reader with a feigned hero, whose adventures I can manage according to my fancy. Of many of the events here set down, I was an eye-witness, and what I did not see myself, I learnt from the mouth of Oroonoko. When I made his acquaintance I was living in that part of our South American colony called Surinam, which we lately ceded to the Dutch--a great mistake, I think, for the land was fertile, and the natives were friendly, and many Englishmen had set up sugar plantations, which they worked by means of negroes. Most of these slaves came from that part of Africa known as Coromantien. The Coromantiens, being very warlike, were continually fighting other nations, and they always had many captives ready to be sold as slaves to our planters.
The king of Coromantien was a hundred years of age. All his sons had fallen in battle, and only one of them had left behind him an heir. Oroonoko, as the young prince was called, was a very intelligent and handsome negro, and as his grandfather engaged a Frenchman of wit and learning to teach him, he received an education better than that of many European princes. This I can speak of from my own knowledge, as I have often conversed with him. He had a great admiration for the ancient Romans; and in everything but the colour of his skin he reminded me of those heroes of antiquity.
His nose was finely curved, and his lips, too, were well shaped, instead of being thick as those of most Africans are. As the king of Coromantien, by reason of his great age, was unable to bear arms, he entrusted his chief headman with the duty of training Oroonoko in the arts of war. For two years, the young prince was away fighting with a powerful inland nation; the chief headman was killed in a fierce battle, and Oroonoko succeeded him in the command of the army. He was then only seventeen years of age, but he quickly brought the long war to a successful conclusion, and returned home with a multitude of captives. The greater part of these he gave to his grandfather, and the rest he took to Imoinda, the daughter and only child of the chief headman, as trophies of her father's victories.