I was at sea in an open boat. Out of the pitch-black heaven
there rushed a mighty wind, and the pitch-black seas above me
rose high, and ever higher, flecked with hissing white; wherefore
I cast me face downwards in my little boat, that I might not
behold the horror of the waters; and above their ceaseless,
surging thunder there rose a long-drawn cry: "Charmian!"
I stood upon a desolate moor, and the pitiless rain lashed me,
and the fierce wind buffeted me; and, out of the gloom where
frowning earth and heaven met--there rose a long-drawn cry: "Charmian."
I started up in bed, broad awake, and listening; yet the tumult
was all about me still--the hiss and beat of rain, and the sound
of a rushing, mighty wind--a wind that seemed to fill the earth--a
wind that screamed about me, that howled above me, and filled the
woods, near and far, with a deep booming, pierced, now and then,
by the splintering crash of snapping bough or falling tree. And
yet, somewhere in this frightful pandemonium of sound, blended in
with it, yet not of it, it seemed to me that the cry still faintly
echoed: "Charmian."
So appalling was all this to my newly-awakened senses, that I
remained, for a time, staring into the darkness as one dazed.
Presently, however, I rose, and, donning some clothes, mended the
fire which still smouldered upon the hearth, and, having filled
and lighted my pipe, sat down to listen to the awful voices of
the storm.
What brain could conceive--what pen describe that elemental
chorus, like the mighty voice of persecuted Humanity, past and
present, crying the woes and ills, the sorrows and torments,
endured of all the ages? To-night, surely, the souls of the
unnumbered dead rode within the storm, and this was the voice of
their lamentation.
From the red mire of battlefields are they come, from the flame
and ravishment of fair cities, from dim and reeking dungeons,
from the rack, the stake, and the gibbet, to pierce the heavens
once more with the voice of their agony.
Since the world was made, how many have lived and suffered, and
died, unlettered and unsung--snatched by a tyrant's whim from
life to death, in the glory of the sun, in the gloom of night, in
blood and flame, and torment? Indeed, their name is "Legion."
But there is a great and awful Book, whose leaves are countless,
yet every leaf of which is smirched with blood and fouled with
nameless sins, a record, howsoever brief and inadequate, of human
suffering, wherein as "through a glass, darkly," we may behold
horrors unimagined; where Murder stalks, and rampant Lust; where
Treachery creeps with curving back, smiling mouth, and sudden,
deadly hand; where Tyranny, fierce-eyed, and iron-lipped, grinds
the nations beneath a bloody heel. Truly, man hath no enemy like
man. And Christ is there, and Socrates, and Savonarola--and
there, too, is a cross of agony, a bowl of hemlock, and a
consuming fire.