The Purple Cloud

Well, the memory seems to be getting rather impaired now, rather weak. What, for instance, was the name of that parson who preached, just before the Boreal set out, about the wickedness of any further attempt to reach the North Pole? I have forgotten! Yet four years ago it was familiar to me as my own name.

Things which took place before the voyage seem to be getting a little cloudy in the memory now. I have sat here, in the loggia of this Cornish villa, to write down some sort of account of what has happened⁠—God knows why, since no eye can ever read it⁠—and at the very beginning I cannot remember the parson’s name.

He was a strange sort of man surely, a Scotchman from Ayrshire, big and gaunt, with tawny hair. He used to go about London streets in shough and rough-spun clothes, a plaid flung from one shoulder. Once I saw him in Holborn with his rather wild stalk, frowning and muttering to himself. He had no sooner come to London, and opened chapel (I think in Fetter Lane), than the little room began to be crowded; and when, some years afterwards, he moved to a big establishment in Kensington, all sorts of men, even from America and Australia, flocked to hear the thunderstorms that he talked, though certainly it was not an age apt to fly into enthusiasms over that species of pulpit prophets and prophecies. But this particular man undoubtedly did wake the strong dark feelings that sleep in the heart; his eyes were very singular and powerful; his voice from a whisper ran gathering, like snowballs,

Clodagh was standing at a window holding a rose at her face. For quite a minute she made no reply. I saw her sharp-cut, florid face in profile, steadily bent and smelling. She said presently in her cold, rapid way:

“The man who first plants his foot on the North Pole will certainly be ennobled. I say nothing of the many millions⁠ ⁠… I only wish that I was a man!”

“I don’t know that I have any special ambition that way,” I rejoined. “I am very happy in my warm Eden with my Clodagh. I don’t like the outer Cold.”

“Don’t let me think little of you!” she answered pettishly.

“Why should you, Clodagh? I am not bound to desire to go to the North Pole, am I?”

“But you would go, I suppose, if you could?”

“I might⁠—I⁠—doubt it. There is our marriage.⁠ ⁠…”

“Marriage indeed! It is the one thing to transform our marriage from a sneaking difficulty to a ten times triumphant event.”

“You mean if I personally were the first to stand at the Pole. But there are many in an expedition. It is very unlikely that I, personally⁠—”

“For me you will, Adam⁠—” she began.

“ ‘Will,’ Clodagh?” I cried. “You say ‘will?’ there is not even the slightest shadow of a probability⁠—!”

“But why? There are still three weeks before the start. They say⁠ ⁠…”

She stopped, she stopped.

“They say what?”

Her voice dropped:

“That Peter takes atropine.”

Ah, I started then. She moved from the window, sat in a rocking-chair, and turned the leaves of a book, without reading.

They had died, it seemed, very suddenly, for nearly all the twelve were in poses of activity. Egan was in the very act of ascending the companionway; Lamburn was sitting against the chart-room door, apparently cleaning two carbines; Odling at the bottom of the engine-room stair seemed to be drawing on a pair of reindeer komagar; and Cartwright, who was often in liquor, had his arms frozen tight round the neck of Martin, whom he seemed to be kissing, they two lying stark at the foot of the mizzenmast.

Over all⁠—over men, decks, rope-coils⁠—in the cabin, in the engine-room⁠—between skylight leaves⁠—on every shelf, in every cranny⁠—lay a purplish ash or dust, very impalpably fine. And steadily reigning throughout the ship, like the very spirit of death, was that aroma of peach-blossom.

Here it had reigned, as I could see from the log-dates, from the rust on the machinery, from the look of the bodies, from a hundred indications, during something over a year. It was, therefore, mainly by the random workings of winds and currents that this fragrant ship of death had been brought hither to me.

I could not sleep that night: for all the operations of my mind and body seemed in abeyance. Mechanically I turned the ship westward again; and when the sun came up, there, hardly two miles from me, were the cliffs of Dover; and on the crenulated summit of the Castle I spied the Union Jack hang motionless.

I heard eight, nine o’clock strike in the cabin, and I was still at sea. But some mad, audacious whisper was at my brain: and at 10:30, the 2nd September, immediately opposite the Cross Wall Custom House, the Boreal’s anchor-chain, after a voyage of three years, two months, and fourteen days, ran thundering, thundering, through the starboard hawsehole.

Ah heaven! but I must have been stark mad to let the anchor go! for the effect upon me of that shocking obstreperous hubbub, breaking in upon all that cemetery repose that blessed morning, and lasting it seemed a year, was most appalling; and at the sudden racket I stood excruciated, with shivering knees and flinching heart, God knows: for not less terrifically uproarious than the clatter of the last Trump it raged and raged, and I thought that all the billion dead could not fail to start, and rise, at alarm so excessive, and question me with their eyes.⁠ ⁠…

Singular to say, my agitation, instead of intensifying to the point of apoplexy and death, now, at the actual sight, subsided to something very like calmness. With malign and sullen eye askance I stood, and steadily I watched her there.

She was on her knees, her palms lightly touching the ground, supporting her. At the edge of the streamlet she knelt, and she was looking with a species of startled shy astonishment at the reflection of her face in the limpid brown water. And I, with sullen eye askance regarded her a good ten minutes’ space.

I believe that her momentary laugh and sob, which I had heard, was the result of surprise at seeing her own image; and I firmly believe, from the expression of her face, that this was the first time that she had seen it.

Never, I thought, as I stood moodily gazing, had I seen on the earth a creature so fair (though, analysing now at leisure, I can quite conclude that there was nothing at all remarkable about her good looks). Her hair, somewhat lighter than auburn, and frizzy, was a real garment to her nakedness, covering her below the hips, some strings of it falling, too, into the water: her eyes, a dark blue, were wide in a most silly expression of bewilderment. Even as I eyed and eyed her, she slowly rose: and at once I saw in all her manner an air of unfamiliarity with the world, as of one wholly at a loss what to do. Her pupils did not seem accustomed to light; and I could swear that that was the first day in which she had seen a tree or a stream.