The Plague, Pestilence & Apocalypse MEGAPACK™

by Robert Reed

  “It is not from deck,” said the man at the helm, “something has been

  thrown from the aft cabin .” A call for the boat to be lowered was

  echoed from the deck . I rushed into my sister’s cabin; it was empty .

  With sails abaft, the engine stopt, the vessel remained unwillingly

  stationary, until, after an hour’s search, my poor Perdita was brought

  on board . But no care could re-animate her, no medicine cause her

  dear eyes to open, and the blood to flow again from her pulseless

  heart . One clenched hand contained a slip of paper, on which was

  written, “To Athens .” To ensure her removal thither, and prevent

  the irrecoverable loss of her body in the wide sea, she had had the

  precaution to fasten a long shawl round her waist, and again to the

  staunchions of the cabin window . She had drifted somewhat under

  the keel of the vessel, and her being out of sight occasioned the

  delay in finding her. And thus the ill-starred girl died a victim to my

  senseless rashness . Thus, in early day, she left us for the company of

  the dead, and preferred to share the rocky grave of Raymond, before

  the animated scene this cheerful earth afforded, and the society of

  loving friends . Thus in her twenty-ninth year she died; having en-

  joyed some few years of the happiness of paradise, and sustaining

  a reverse to which her impatient spirit and affectionate disposition

  were unable to submit . As I marked the placid expression that had

  settled on her countenance in death, I felt, in spite of the pangs of

  remorse, in spite of heart-rending regret, that it was better to die so,

  than to drag on long, miserable years of repining and inconsolable

  grief . Stress of weather drove us up the Adriatic Gulph; and, our ves-

  sel being hardly fitted to weather a storm, we took refuge in the port

  of Ancona . Here I met Georgio Palli, the vice-admiral of the Greek

  fleet, a former friend and warm partizan of Raymond. I committed

  the remains of my lost Perdita to his care, for the purpose of having

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  them transported to Hymettus, and placed in the cell her Raymond

  already occupied beneath the pyramid . This was all accomplished

  even as I wished . She reposed beside her beloved, and the tomb

  above was inscribed with the united names of Raymond and Perdita .

  I then came to a resolution of pursuing our journey to England

  overland . My own heart was racked by regrets and remorse . The

  apprehension, that Raymond had departed for ever, that his name,

  blended eternally with the past, must be erased from every anticipa-

  tion of the future, had come slowly upon me . I had always admired

  his talents; his noble aspirations; his grand conceptions of the glory

  and majesty of his ambition: his utter want of mean passions; his

  fortitude and daring . In Greece I had learnt to love him; his very

  waywardness, and self-abandonment to the impulses of superstition,

  attached me to him doubly; it might be weakness, but it was the

  antipodes of all that was grovelling and selfish. To these pangs were

  added the loss of Perdita, lost through my own accursed self-will

  and conceit . This dear one, my sole relation; whose progress I had

  marked from tender childhood through the varied path of life, and

  seen her throughout conspicuous for integrity, devotion, and true

  affection; for all that constitutes the peculiar graces of the female

  character, and beheld her at last the victim of too much loving,

  too constant an attachment to the perishable and lost, she, in her

  pride of beauty and life, had thrown aside the pleasant perception

  of the apparent world for the unreality of the grave, and had left

  poor Clara quite an orphan . I concealed from this beloved child that

  her mother’s death was voluntary, and tried every means to awaken

  cheerfulness in her sorrow-stricken spirit .

  One of my first acts for the recovery even of my own composure,

  was to bid farewell to the sea . Its hateful splash renewed again and

  again to my sense the death of my sister; its roar was a dirge; in

  every dark hull that was tossed on its inconstant bosom, I imaged a

  bier, that would convey to death all who trusted to its treacherous

  smiles . Farewell to the sea! Come, my Clara, sit beside me in this

  aerial bark; quickly and gently it cleaves the azure serene, and with

  soft undulation glides upon the current of the air; or, if storm shake

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  its fragile mechanism, the green earth is below; we can descend, and

  take shelter on the stable continent . Here aloft, the companions of the

  swift-winged birds, we skim through the unresisting element, fleetly

  and fearlessly . The light boat heaves not, nor is opposed by death-

  bearing waves; the ether opens before the prow, and the shadow of

  the globe that upholds it, shelters us from the noon-day sun . Beneath

  are the plains of Italy, or the vast undulations of the wave-like Apen-

  nines: fertility reposes in their many folds, and woods crown the

  summits . The free and happy peasant, unshackled by the Austrian,

  bears the double harvest to the garner; and the refined citizens rear

  without dread the long blighted tree of knowledge in this garden of

  the world . We were lifted above the Alpine peaks, and from their

  deep and brawling ravines entered the plain of fair France, and after

  an airy journey of six days, we landed at Dieppe, furled the feathered

  wings, and closed the silken globe of our little pinnace . A heavy rain

  made this mode of travelling now incommodious; so we embarked

  in a steam-packet, and after a short passage landed at Portsmouth .

  A strange story was rife here . A few days before, a tempest-struck

  vessel had appeared off the town: the hull was parched-looking and

  cracked, the sails rent, and bent in a careless, unseamanlike manner,

  the shrouds tangled and broken . She drifted towards the harbour,

  and was stranded on the sands at the entrance . In the morning the

  custom-house officers, together with a crowd of idlers, visited her.

  One only of the crew appeared to have arrived with her . He had

  got to shore, and had walked a few paces towards the town, and

  then, vanquished by malady and approaching death, had fallen on

  the inhospitable beach . He was found stiff, his hands clenched, and

  pressed against his breast . His skin, nearly black, his matted hair

  and bristly beard, were signs of a long protracted misery . It was

  whispered that he had died of the plague . No one ventured on board

  the vessel, and strange sights were averred to be seen at night, walk-

  ing the deck, and hanging on the masts and shrouds . She soon went

  to pieces; I was shewn where she had been, and saw her disjoined

  timbers tossed on the waves . The body of the man who had landed,

  had been buried deep in the sands; and none could tell more, than

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  that the vessel was American built, and that several months before

  the Fortunatas had sailed from Philadelphia, of which no tidings

  were afterwards received .

  CHAPTER IV.
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  I RETURNED to my family estate in the autumn of the year

  2092 . My heart had long been with them; and I felt sick with the

  hope and delight of seeing them again . The district which contained

  them appeared the abode of every kindly spirit . Happiness, love and

  peace, walked the forest paths, and tempered the atmosphere . After

  all the agitation and sorrow I had endured in Greece, I sought Wind-

  sor, as the storm-driven bird does the nest in which it may fold its

  wings in tranquillity .

  How unwise had the wanderers been, who had deserted its shel-

  ter, entangled themselves in the web of society, and entered on what

  men of the world call “life,”—that labyrinth of evil, that scheme

  of mutual torture . To live, according to this sense of the word, we

  must not only observe and learn, we must also feel; we must not be

  mere spectators of action, we must act; we must not describe, but be

  subjects of description . Deep sorrow must have been the inmate of

  our bosoms; fraud must have lain in wait for us; the artful must have

  deceived us; sickening doubt and false hope must have chequered

  our days; hilarity and joy, that lap the soul in ecstasy, must at times

  have possessed us . Who that knows what “life” is, would pine for

  this feverish species of existence? I have lived . I have spent days

  and nights of festivity; I have joined in ambitious hopes, and exulted

  in victory: now,—shut the door on the world, and build high the

  wall that is to separate me from the troubled scene enacted within

  its precincts . Let us live for each other and for happiness; let us seek

  peace in our dear home, near the inland murmur of streams, and

  the gracious waving of trees, the beauteous vesture of earth, and

  sublime pageantry of the skies . Let us leave “life,” that we may live .

  Idris was well content with this resolve of mine . Her native

  sprightliness needed no undue excitement, and her placid heart

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  reposed contented on my love, the well-being of her children, and

  the beauty of surrounding nature . Her pride and blameless ambition

  was to create smiles in all around her, and to shed repose on the

  fragile existence of her brother . In spite of her tender nursing, the

  health of Adrian perceptibly declined . Walking, riding, the common

  occupations of life, overcame him: he felt no pain, but seemed to

  tremble for ever on the verge of annihilation . Yet, as he had lived

  on for months nearly in the same state, he did not inspire us with

  any immediate fear; and, though he talked of death as an event most

  familiar to his thoughts, he did not cease to exert himself to render

  others happy, or to cultivate his own astonishing powers of mind .

  Winter passed away; and spring, led by the months, awakened life in

  all nature . The forest was dressed in green; the young calves frisked

  on the new-sprung grass; the wind-winged shadows of light clouds

  sped over the green cornfields; the hermit cuckoo repeated his mo-

  notonous all-hail to the season; the nightingale, bird of love and

  minion of the evening star, filled the woods with song; while Venus

  lingered in the warm sunset, and the young green of the trees lay in

  gentle relief along the clear horizon .

  Delight awoke in every heart, delight and exultation; for there

  was peace through all the world; the temple of Universal Janus was

  shut, and man died not that year by the hand of man .

  “Let this last but twelve months,” said Adrian; “and earth will

  become a Paradise . The energies of man were before directed to the

  destruction of his species: they now aim at its liberation and pres-

  ervation . Man cannot repose, and his restless aspirations will now

  bring forth good instead of evil . The favoured countries of the south

  will throw off the iron yoke of servitude; poverty will quit us, and

  with that, sickness . What may not the forces, never before united, of

  liberty and peace achieve in this dwelling of man?”

  “Dreaming, for ever dreaming, Windsor!” said Ryland, the old

  adversary of Raymond, and candidate for the Protectorate at the en-

  suing election . “Be assured that earth is not, nor ever can be heaven,

  while the seeds of hell are natives of her soil . When the seasons have

  become equal, when the air breeds no disorders, when its surface is

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  no longer liable to blights and droughts, then sickness will cease;

  when men’s passions are dead, poverty will depart . When love is no

  longer akin to hate, then brotherhood will exist: we are very far from

  that state at present .”

  “Not so far as you may suppose,” observed a little old astrono-

  mer, by name Merrival, “the poles precede slowly, but securely; in

  an hundred thousand years—”

  “We shall all be underground,” said Ryland .

  “The pole of the earth will coincide with the pole of the ecliptic,”

  continued the astronomer, “an universal spring will be produced,

  and earth become a paradise .”

  “And we shall of course enjoy the benefit of the change,” said

  Ryland, contemptuously .

  “We have strange news here,” I observed . I had the newspaper in

  my hand, and, as usual, had turned to the intelligence from Greece .

  “It seems that the total destruction of Constantinople, and the sup-

  position that winter had purified the air of the fallen city, gave the

  Greeks courage to visit its site, and begin to rebuild it . But they

  tell us that the curse of God is on the place, for every one who has

  ventured within the walls has been tainted by the plague; that this

  disease has spread in Thrace and Macedonia; and now, fearing the

  virulence of infection during the coming heats, a cordon has been

  drawn on the frontiers of Thessaly, and a strict quarantine exacted .”

  This intelligence brought us back from the prospect of paradise,

  held out after the lapse of an hundred thousand years, to the pain

  and misery at present existent upon earth . We talked of the ravages

  made last year by pestilence in every quarter of the world; and of the

  dreadful consequences of a second visitation . We discussed the best

  means of preventing infection, and of preserving health and activity

  in a large city thus afflicted—London, for instance. Merrival did not

  join in this conversation; drawing near Idris, he proceeded to assure

  her that the joyful prospect of an earthly paradise after an hundred

  thousand years, was clouded to him by the knowledge that in a cer-

  tain period of time after, an earthly hell or purgatory, would occur,

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  when the ecliptic and equator would be at right angles .4 Our party at

  length broke up; “We are all dreaming this morning,” said Ryland,

  “it is as wise to discuss the probability of a visitation of the plague

  in our well-governed metropolis, as to calculate the centuries which

  must escape before we can grow pine-apples here in the open air .”

  But, though it seemed absurd to calculate upon the arrival of the

  p
lague in London, I could not reflect without extreme pain on the

  desolation this evil would cause in Greece . The English for the most

  part talked of Thrace and Macedonia, as they would of a lunar terri-

  tory, which, unknown to them, presented no distinct idea or interest

  to the minds . I had trod the soil . The faces of many of the inhabitants

  were familiar to me; in the towns, plains, hills, and defiles of these

  countries, I had enjoyed unspeakable delight, as I journied through

  them the year before . Some romantic village, some cottage, or ele-

  gant abode there situated, inhabited by the lovely and the good, rose

  before my mental sight, and the question haunted me, is the plague

  there also?—That same invincible monster, which hovered over and

  devoured Constantinople—that fiend more cruel than tempest, less

  tame than fire, is, alas, unchained in that beautiful country—these

  reflections would not allow me to rest.

  The political state of England became agitated as the time drew

  near when the new Protector was to be elected . This event excited

  the more interest, since it was the current report, that if the popular

  candidate (Ryland) should be chosen, the question of the abolition

  of hereditary rank, and other feudal relics, would come under the

  consideration of parliament . Not a word had been spoken during the

  present session on any of these topics . Every thing would depend

  upon the choice of a Protector, and the elections of the ensuing year .

  Yet this very silence was awful, shewing the deep weight attributed

  to the question; the fear of either party to hazard an ill-timed attack,

  and the expectation of a furious contention when it should begin .

  4

  See an ingenious Essay, entitled, “The Mythological As-

  tronomy of the Ancients Demonstrated,” by Mackey, a shoemaker,

  of Norwich printed in 1822 .

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  But although St . Stephen’s did not echo with the voice which

  filled each heart, the newspapers teemed with nothing else; and in

  private companies the conversation however remotely begun, soon

  verged towards this central point, while voices were lowered and

  chairs drawn closer . The nobles did not hesitate to express their fear;

  the other party endeavoured to treat the matter lightly . “Shame on