November Night Tales

by Henry Chapman Mercer

  He shook his head ominously and tapped his forehead.

  “As a finale, he places himself on a level with the several vulgar impostors,—old women, who have been prophesying disaster here for years past. Imagine his pretending to predict how and when this jack-o’-lantern city should rise from the sea.” The priest had followed me across the floor of the great library to the outer passage.

  “The worst of it is,” he added, as I took my leave, “that he is so certain of the event,—the earthquake,—that he dates it for next month, says he has given up his apartments, and ordered the removal of his collection to a place of safety. Of course, with his public influence, this kind of talk may end in a stampede of the inhabitants,—perhaps a riot.”

  ix

  The librarian sent me no further word. No rumor of collision between the count and the book-borrowers reached me, and I had begun to forget my concern in the affair, when an incident, which happened one hot night late in September, again associated me with the terrible events that follow.

  It was past midnight. Long after the uproar of the city below me had died away, I had been drudging at my Borsowitz correspondence, for the avaricious tyrant had heard of my detention and demanded fresh concessions. As the hot hours wore on, the heavy laboratory fumes seemed to grow intolerable; until at length, perspiring, disgusted, weary, I heard a rattle of the windows, that told of a stir in the outer air. Hoping to find relief, I laid down my pen, lit a candle, and went up the narrow steps leading to a large garret above. There I pulled open a rickety wooden shutter and scrambled out through the opening onto the adjoining top of the city wall.

  To my tired eyes, the paved footway, with its ascending moonlit staircases, seemed, like Jacob’s Ladder, to mount the clouds. I stood awhile in the refreshing breeze. Then, slowly following the winding wall, I walked toward the upper city, often stopping to look, now up, at the blue cloud-swept background, now down, upon the house-roofs, and below, where the waves sang their eternal song upon the crags.

  Reaching presently one of the turrets near the gable of a high building, I looked down over the brink and, for a while, fancied I saw the faint moving forms of several men on the face of the cliff. But soon concluding that the rock-shadows had deceived me, I sat down in the overhang and leaned back against the stones. The west wind and watery clamor soothed me, and I had almost fallen asleep when, at a disquieting sound, unmistakably the tread of marching soldiers upon the city wall, I got quickly out of the place.

  Unwilling to be arrested by the night watch, I would have hurried home, when, looking over the inner edge of the wall, I saw the end of a ladder, just within reach, and extending downward at the angle between the house-gable and the rampart. There was no time to be lost; so I soon climbed out of sight.

  The ladder was long but steady. At its foot, I found myself upon a pavement fronting a large house, where, stepping into the convenient shadow, I waited until the approaching footsteps passed overhead. Then I walked forward, looked about me, and, to my astonishment, thought I recognized the recently visited house and garden of the naturalists.

  It took some time, by the clouded light of the moon, finally to convince myself of the fact. When I did so, and was about to climb the ladder, suddenly one of the shuttered doorways opened. A broad stripe of light shot out just beyond me upon the flag stones. But as nothing followed it, I stepped back into the shadow, and waited. Presently I heard voices and saw a glimmer close to my face. Then, moving forward a little, I looked through a crack in the closed shutter upon the laboratory I expected to see.

  Several candles were burning upon the long, shell-littered table, beside which sat a heavily-built dark man with a short black beard. His frowning face, thrust forward, rested upon one arm, propped on the table, and his eyes were fixed vacantly on the display before him. Near him stood Debaclo, whose massive shoulders half hid the opening of a door beyond, through which a moving light in an inner room showed the corner of a high cupboard and an expanse of white wall. Upon the plaster near the floor a very black ragged-edged shadow presently took the shape of a large freshly-cut hole.

  Rather than make myself known, I would have left my hiding place and climbed up the ladder; but as the light was continually moving beyond the inner door, I feared that someone might come out upon the terrace, and waited.

  For a while, Debaclo, who was apparently suffering from the heat, wiping the perspiration from his high forehead, stood before the man at the table. He was evidently talking earnestly. But I could hear nothing distinctly until he walked to the window before me and suddenly opened its glass casement. I drew back, to allow the shutter to swing outward; but, as it did not, I again looked through the opening.

  Whether the book affair and the consequences involved justified my taking this advantage of the man I had been looking for, I leave my critics to judge. I thought it did.

  The talk had now become audible. The dark man at the table was speaking in a deliberate, critical tone: “You say you have the place fixed by buoys?”

  “Yes, and by bearings painted along the coast. We can reach it at any time,” replied Debaclo.

  “Can you see the thing?”

  “Dimly, at certain tides, with the water-glass. It is lying on its side in the mud.”

  “Never mind the mud. I understand that, and don’t object to night work in a diving-bell like this, if the buoys are properly placed. I ought to be at anchor. Still, if you insist, I can lie to outside. But,” he continued, looking the formidable men before him full in the face, and pointing to the black opening, seen through the inner door, “this crawling into the city through a hole in the wall is more than I bargained for. Suppose they arrest us. What then? In case of a lawsuit, what will be my compensation?”

  Debaclo laid his hand on the man’s shoulder with a laugh.

  “Compensation!” he repeated. “My friend, if you knew Mr. Underbridge, you would never ask that question. He is the last man in the world to quibble over money matters. Make your own terms.”

  There was a box of cigars on the table. Debaclo handed one to his friend, then, lighting another at the lamp, he continued:

  “As to that hole in the wall, and the city officials,—what if they do hear of it? You know them. So do I.”

  The listening man, who had risen from the table, sat down again, and Debaclo began pacing up and down the room. He was again without the goggles, which before had hidden the stamp of intellect upon his hawk-like face, and I saw again that his eyes were in bad condition. One of them had a peculiar fixed stare, while the other moved restlessly.

  “No,” he went on, after smoking awhile in silence, “the trouble is not with the authorities, nor the compensation, but with one man,—this infernal Count Seismo, a half-crazy egotist with a private museum. I have been suspecting that he must know of—of—our reasons for using a diving-bell. Now I am sure of it, for I lately managed to look into a book defaced with some of his scribblings,—a lot of rubbish about earthquakes and serpent worship,—which settles the matter. He knows everything, but has done nothing.”

  At this, Debaclo paused again, laid down his cigar, and stood looking directly at his companion. At length he went on:

  “This man will destroy or obstruct whatever he cannot monopolize. When I attacked his earthquake theory in a pamphlet, not long ago, I made a great mistake. The result is that I have to live here under an assumed name until he finds me out. This shell-hunt of ours cannot mask things much longer. I tell you, your ship must never be seen moored near the shore,—and we must proceed by night. We cut through the wall there,” he added, glancing over his shoulder, “because we had to find some way of getting in and out after dark.”

  At this point the talk was interrupted by the entrance of Underbridge from the other room. The restless little man carried a bottle of wine and several goblets. Placing the latter upon the table,
he filled them; then, with a characteristic giggle, he lifted one to his lips.

  “Let us drink to Æsculapius,” said he.

  While the others held up their glasses, at this singular toast, I stepped out of my hiding-place, quickly climbed to the wall-top, and hurried away.

  What I had seen astonished and puzzled me. Had I misunderstood these men and their marine studies? If not, how account for their extraordinary conversation? Why the ship’s captain?—with a diving-bell to study submerged shell-beds? Could this, as a piece of scientific extravagance, justify them in tunneling the city wall and working like thieves at night? The more I thought of Debaclo’s fear and abuse of Count Seismo, the more likely it seemed that some desperate, long-planned rivalry had brought the two men into collision in the maritime city. Yet, after all, what had I to do with their schemes, which continually intruding upon my affairs, had become more and more repellent to me?

  As I walked slowly homeward by the down-winding rampart, the moon, obscured by clouds, sank in the west. I climbed back into my lodgings, in the hope that my ramble had not been suspected by the watch,—for the unfastened shutter of my garret stood open and was rattling in the wind.

  x

  Two more weeks went by before I got through my exasperating negotiations with the governor of Borsowitz. All the more anxious to get away, before the tyrant should again change his mind, I had at last found my ship and taken passage. Then after a very regretful leave of the librarian, I set sail from the old harbor one fateful day early in October.

  Who that has ever seen the sunrise at Ragusa, said to be peculiar to its climate, can forget the enchanting moment when dawn, first waking the breeze, gilds the waves and restores to the mountains and city their magic colors?

  As I sat that morning on the ship’s deck, looking eastward, no finer weather ever guaranteed an auspicious voyage. The wind was fair. The sailors sang as the sails went up. The bright sky cast no shadow on land or sea.

  Then, suddenly, at about twelve miles from the coast, the day’s false promise failed. With startling abruptness, the wind died out, and we met a calm, which indefinitely ended our hope of progress.

  By the time morning had turned to midday, it grew very hot. The delay depressed me, and its dismal climax was reached when three men came in a rowboat, bringing a message from the governor of Borsowitz. The latter, it appeared, was in Ragusa, and wished to see me at once.

  Disgusted at the selfishness and intrigue of this man, who held the fate of my expedition in his hands, I hesitated, until the boatmen grew restless, before deciding to risk my passage. At last I stepped into the boat despite the last words of the captain, who pointed to some southerly clouds and warned me that, in case of a fair wind, he must sail without me.

  It was early in the afternoon, and with no breath of air, the heat was almost suffocating. I gave the sunburned boatmen each a small silver coin, and they began to row away with quick strokes, while I raised my umbrella and from under it, little thinking, gazed out for the last time at the distant rose-tinted picture of walls and towers.

  The clouds pointed out by the captain, and which I watched nervously, seemed to spread and darken as we went on. Blending with them, I saw the silhouette of a ship, with furled sails; and then a moving speck, enlarging into the outlines of a rowboat. For a time this came towards us, but just as I began to hope that it might bring the governor himself, or a message of countermand, it turned away, and, to my deep disappointment, I watched the erect rowing figures fade out on the horizon.

  At this, I screened my face under the umbrella, lay down in the bow of the boat and fell into an uneasy half-conscious doze.

  At least a half-hour must have passed, when I suddenly awoke with a shock. A tremendous noise,—muffled explosions and a continued clearer rattling, resembling quick successive gun-volleys, completely roused me. When I sat up the sounds stopped, and the boat began to rock violently. Clutching the sides, I rose upon my knees and looked about me. At first, unterrified, my thought was that the fantastic sight that danced before me was a freak of nightmare or sunstroke, since, beyond all reason, I saw that the mountains of the coast were moving, while the city of Ragusa, lurid against a portentous blackness, seemed to be melting into the sea.

  For some instants this caprice of vision was noiseless. Then, with loud crashing reverberations, came a weird, half-musical clang of distant shrieks, shouts, and minor echoes, until, overwhelmed with amazement and terror, I knew that I was awake and a witness of the stupendous drama of earthquake. With electric haste, the sinking outline of the city faded into a mist, while a funnel-shaped cloud, as of dust or smoke, illumined by lightning flashes, swung along the horizon and, whirling rapidly upward, overspread the whole sky, turning day into night. Two of the men, lying flat in the boat, were clinging to its sides. The other, who had lost his oar, knelt down and began to pray.

  I felt no wind; but the sea’s surface around us appeared to have tilted out of level, as the seething water whitened in crests or moulded itself into long, parallel troughs or currents, in one of which we seemed to be rushing towards the coast. Then came a halt, followed by a series of eccentric checks. We stopped, to dart backward, turn around, or skim forward, stern first, in a new direction.

  Presently, as if boiling on a gigantic scale, the surface rose in the form of a whirling dome, against which the boat clung at an extreme angle, and then upset.

  I heard the cries of my companions. But a stifling cloud hid them from sight; and when this darkness partly lifted, I saw only the shoulders and staring face of one of them.

  Sickened, choking, and believing that all was over, I still held on, until a violent but refreshing gust of wind dashed spray upon my face. Dark objects, enveloped in swirling masses of shadow, seemed to be rushing past me, and the boat, bottom upward, righted as it struck one of these. When we swung away again, I saw that my companion was gone.

  After this, the current ran slower in a chasm between rising projections, looming higher and higher into rectangular forms. Suddenly, when I thought I recognized the black holes of house-doors and windows, the rope was dragged from my hands. My body glanced upon the sides of a large, smooth object, and my feet touched bottom.

  I tried to grasp the thing I had struck, but shrank from it, while a slippery, rounded extension, which seemed to move under my hands, glided away from me. Swept headlong past overhanging masses seen dimly in the twilight, I at times gained my feet and staggered about, waist deep, in a swiftly-moving current. At length, I heard a loud gurgling noise, as of water sucked into culverts or troughs, and felt the flood around me subside.

  It must have been early in the afternoon when this happened, and I have thought, from a later reckoning of the time, that for two or three hours afterwards I was unconscious. I came to my senses slowly; and when, at last, I knew that I was awake, saw that I was lying upon a muddy pavement. A cloud of moving mist hung over me, broken by fitful gleams, as if from a distant conflagration. Looking around me, I became more and more aware of a peculiar resonant grating sound, mingled with the echoes of voices, which, like a faint strain of music, increased, died away, and finally stopped.

  I shouted, or tried to shout, but waited in vain to hear an answering cry. After this came a relapse into stupor. Then, suddenly, my body was violently shaken. I heard the noise of words called loudly in my ears, and saw a familiar face close to mine. The threatening features at first eluded me. Then I recognized Count Seismo. He was asking me questions, which I could not understand, in a fierce, menacing tone.

  While in confused and feeble words I tried to explain my terrible experience, the frown left his face. I remember taking a drink from a flask held toward me, crawling for some distance, rising to my feet, and leaning upon him, as he led or dragged me onward. We went down a steep and muddy decline, and passed through an arch, into an open space. There, in the shifts of ligh
t, groups of columns, arches, and roofs, bright in some places and black in others, seemed to change in size and come and go as if floating in the air. Suddenly I heard the clatter of feet and sound of voices. The fog lifted and I saw that we had come upon a group of men surrounding horses harnessed to a sled, and that the sled held a large, blanketed object that was wedged therein with bags apparently stuffed with straw.

  Staggering nearer, I stumbled over something lying in my way in the mud, when the count, who had caught me by the shoulder, pointed to the obstruction. It was a large saw. Near it lay several broken pieces of marble, a sledge, and a crowbar. The count stooped down, looked closely at the marble fragments, turned them over, and then seized the saw, a large framed instrument. The wood was dry and fresh, and the tightly-stretched steel blade glittered in the foggy light. He drew a knife, cut the twisted rope, wrenched the cross-bars from their sockets, and, setting his foot on the blade, bent it over until it snapped.

  “Vandals!” he shouted, as he hurled the pieces away into the mist.

  He was intensely excited. His arms and hands shook violently. “Get in,” he said; “you must not stay here.”

  I took another drink from the flask, then climbed into the sledge.

  “Where are we?” I asked.

  “What!” he exclaimed. “Here, in an earthquake. And you do not know that—this is Epidaurus? The city has risen from the sea! Ragusa is destroyed! I have come down from the mainland. The whole sea-coast is out of water!”