"You were wrong," the captain said.
I advanced upon the two who faced Peters, one of whom had snatched up the saber dropped by the earliest attacker. As he heard my approach, this one turned to face me. He bent from the waist and extended the weapon out to his side, point angling back in toward me, his other hand fluttering forward—an obvious and cumbersome attempt to transfer knife-fighting technique to the larger weapon.
I strode forward almost contemptuously then. This was no problem for a trained fencer.
My heel struck a patch of bird feces and I slipped. Thus is arrogance occasionally brought down by the lowly. My attacker was on me in an instant, trying to lay the edge of his weapon across my windpipe and lean upon it. We both, of course, tried kneeing the other in the groin, and both successfully turned a thigh against it. In that my right arm had gone high and then out to the side during my fall and that my opponent now had a knee upon its biceps, I released the blade. I couldn't swing it from that position, and it was just an added burden of weight. I brought the hand over quickly, getting it beneath his blade, where it joined the other in holding the weapon back. Unfortunately, it was the edge that I was blocking.
Fortunately, it was not too sharp. Unfortunately, it was sharp enough... .
I felt it cut into my hands and he grinned as the blood began to run and drip upon my shirtfront; and he breathed on me, which nearly proved my undoing. His teeth were in very bad condition.
I still heard the sounds of struggling from Peters' quarter. The ship skipped again, and the forte of the blade ground heavily against my left palm. The Symmes' thunder came like some thousands of Niagaras now, and from the awkward angle at which I lay I saw that far off to my left and high up in the sky a great tower of mist and fog had grown up, drifting, looming, inclining toward us like an enormous shrouded human figure, white as bone, snow, or the skin of a cadaver... .
I spat full in my assailant's face—ungentlemanly, unsanitary, and not a thing I'd learned from the French master; but rather a trick told me by a young British officer called Flash with whom I'd gone drinking one night, described by him as so unnerving it had almost cost him his life in a duel. It had remained in my mind as a particularly egregious breach of etiquette ever since. Fortunately, I am neither an officer nor a gentleman, and it worked beautifully. He drew back sufficiently for me to grit my teeth and push, which gave me just enough of an opening to form my right hand painfully into a fist and drive it forward against the source of his bad breath. He did not rock back as far as I hoped, his weight still holding me pinned, but a leaning corpse-white figure other than the misty apparition in the sky caught hold of his neck then and twisted, raising him from me. The man's body swung toward Valdemar as he was drawn to his feet. His right elbow went back like a piston, and the point of his blade against Valdemar's abdomen; then he drove it forward, running my rescuer through. Valdemar twisted his neck and I heard it crack. Then he released him and looked downward.
"Oh! The irony of it!" he observed. "To send others to that shore I may not tread!"
He withdrew the weapon from his middle and let it fall, also.
"Thanks," I said. "We'll do right by you one of these days. Really."
There came a short, barking laugh from my right and I looked that way just in time to see Peters rising from the deck, ruddy blade in his right hand, a scalp in his left.
"Counting a little coup," I observed.
"It's been a coup-coup day, Eddie," he replied, and we both turned toward the captain and Pfall.
Both men were still living but in very bad shape. We gave what aid we could. None of the mutineers had survived. Pfall grunted something in that guttural language of his.
"He says to get the balloon up here pronto, an' he'll tell us how ter set 'er up." Peters translated.
"Right," I answered. "Let's go."
Our rush took us past Ligeia, who stood in the companionway, smiling. For a moment I'd have sworn I saw a drop of blood at the corner of her mouth, but her tongue flicked and the illusion vanished, leaving only the smile.
We dragged the thing topside and unfolded it, not knowing how much time remained.
Pfall directed us in its inflation. Peters had to lean close to him for every instruction, for his voice had weakened and the Symmes' sounds increased yet again in volume. Valdemar and Ligeia labored with us, also; and when Pfall breathed his last after giving us some final information, Valdemar cursed bitterly that yet another man went unwilling to the place he most desired.
Captain Guy gestured to me and I went to him, there being nothing more to do just then but wait for the gasbag to achieve proper inflation.
"Eddie," he said weakly, "I've a favor to ask."
"Anything, sir," I replied.
"Take me forward, that I might see this thing that's about to swallow the Eidolon."
Peters and I fetched up a comfortable chair from my stateroom and placed him in it. We strapped him there for security's sake and carried him forward then.
"It's bigger than that canyon out in the West," Peters announced, when we beheld the great dark thunderhole beneath its shifting tower of mist.
"Find a way to secure the chair here, men," Captain Guy directed, and we fetched more lines and did that for him. In the meantime, he'd produced his pipe and filled its bowl and fetched his tinderbox from somewhere within his bloody jacket.
"Let me give you a hand with that," I suggested.
"I can manage."
"You really propose to remain here?"
"Haven't that much time left," he replied, taking his first puff, "and I wouldn't miss this for anything.
How many masters get to follow their vessel to the end in a fashion such as this?" He took another puff.
"Leave me now. You've work to do and I want to enjoy the view."
I squeezed his shoulder gently, leaving a bloody palmprint.
"God be with you, Captain," I said. "You did right by us. Thanks."
Peters said something, too, but I couldn't make out the words. When we turned to head back astern I realized how far we were inclined. Glancing forward again, I knew that we were seeing deeper into the Hole than we had before. We hurried.
Ligeia and Valdemar were already in the basket, the balloon tugging at its lines we had dogged to ringbolts in the deck.
"Cast off," the lady said, and I cut the lines and we shot skyward.
In a matter of moments we beheld the battered Eidolon quivering upon the brink of Symmes' abyss, pathetic human invention about to launch itself against eternity. For a moment, I thought of Poe.
Valdemar uttered a strange hissing noise, then observed, "To think that I should be a survivor."
There are many moments when, even to the sober eye of Reason, the world of our sad Humanity may assume the semblance of a Hell—but the imagination of man is no Carathis, to explore with impunity its every cavern. Alas! the grim legion of sepulchral terrors cannot be regarded as altogether fanciful—but, like the demons in whose company Afrasiab made his voyage down the Oxus, they must sleep, or they will devour us—they must be suffered to slumber, or we perish.
From The Premature Burial, Edgar Allan Poe
XIII
Science! true daughter of Old Time thou art!
Who alterest all things with thy peering eyes.
Why preyest thou thus upon the poet's heart, Vulture, whose wings are dull realities?
How should he love thee? or how deem thee wise?
Who wouldst not leave him in his wandering To seek for treasure in the jewelled skies, Albeit he soared with an undaunted wing?
Hast thou not dragged Diana from her car?
And driven the Hamadryad from the wood To seek a shelter in some happier star?
Hast thou not torn the Naiad from her flood, The Elfin from the green grass, and from me The summer dream beneath the tamarind tree?
Sonnet—To Science, Edgar Allan Poe