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Page 29
"Certainly not," said Castleton. "The mass of laymen are not only
ignorant--excuse me, sir, but I know you want the facts--not only
ignorant, but extremely and persistently ignorant on this subject. I
have heard it said that Byron drank twelve--or perhaps twenty--bottles
of wine the night he wrote 'The Corsair.' If he did, he simply wrote
'The Corsair' in spite of the wine. I have heard it stated that Poe was
intoxicated when he wrote 'The Raven'--which is not only an untrue
statement but one that could not possibly be true, and which certainly
every man who ever attempted to write under the influence of an
alcoholic stimulant knows to be false. Drugs--including alcohol--which
are supposed to stimulate what we might term a rational imagination,
only stimulate an irrational fancy. They seem to the person affected to
cause a play of imagination, but they really produce only a state of
nervous action which causes their subject to feel appreciation of
otherwise trifling mental pictures that in themselves are flimsy
nothings. Let a man so affected try to impart to another his fancies,
and--well, who has not been bored by a drunken man? Did De Quincey, with
that superb mind, succeed in fancying anything that even he could tell?
He speaks of glowing drug-born fancies, but he describes nothings. Now
Milton, the old Puritan--the cold-water man--he had fancies which he was
able to transmit, and which are worthy to be forever treasured. The
early Greeks were exceedingly temperate, and the men who composed the
'Nostoi' were not drunkards--Homer sang the 'Iliad' and the 'Odyssey'
with a sober tongue, and a sober brain back of his utterances. The man
who gets drunk to write poetry, will find it easier to write his poetry
on the following morning, spite of headache, blue-devils, and all." He
paused for a moment; and then this peculiar man continued:
"And I know! Why, sir, I have drunk barrels of whiskey--barrels of the
stuff. I have seen whiskey-snakes in squirming masses three feet deep. I
have gone into a parlor, and had a lady say when she saw me fumbling in
my pockets: 'Doctor, your handkerchief is in your back pocket.' Bless
her! I was only putting back into my pockets the jim-jam snake-heads as
the snakes _would_ try to emerge! I pity a weak devil that goes home and
to bed because of a mild attack of delirium tremens. I brush the vipers
away with a sweep of my hand, and go about my business. But I myself
draw the line at roosters. A man who may laugh at snakes will quail
before roosters. A fellow may shut his eyes to snakes, but he can't shut
his ears to roosters. Well, well: it's all in a life-time. But, believe
me, no good poetry, either in verse or in prose, is drunkenman poetry."
With which final remark he shot out of the room. Then Doctor Bainbridge
took his departure, and I retired to sleep and to dream of fiery
craters, with snakes crawling out of them, and gigantic roosters picking
up the snakes one by one and dropping them over a mountain of salt into
a lake of boiling water. I was pleased when morning came, and I heard
the comparatively cheering tinkle from bells on the team of mules
drawing the little "bob-tail" street-car past the hotel.
The ELEVENTH Chapter
On the following evening Bainbridge came to my room as he had promised,
arriving at about eight o'clock. I had not that day accompanied him on
his visit to Peters, who it seems was daily gaining strength. I had
spent my day in reading, except that Arthur had repeatedly come to my
room, remaining for fifteen or twenty minutes at a time as his duties
would permit, being curious to learn from me "some of the things about
that ante-arctic country," etc. He was much interested in the subject,
and studied with close attention the map made by Doctor Bainbridge.
Arthur had asked permission to be present when the doctor should come in
the evening, but I thought better to deny him that privilege. Doctor
Bainbridge was taking the matter seriously, and I knew Arthur too well
to expect from him a decorous reticence at any time. I could imagine the
effect on Bainbridge as he closed some glowing description, should
Arthur jump up with a remark about "ante-arctic niggers," or "gee
whallopin big females." I had occasion later to know that my caution was
most judicious, and to condemn myself for a want of firmness in
maintaining so sensible a decision.
Doctor Bainbridge, without unnecessary delay or preliminary remark,
began the relation of Peters' adventures at the point indicated by him
the evening before as the proper place of commencement.
"The great white curtain you have no doubt already surmised to be a
clear-cut line of dense fog, due to the fact that a perpendicular plane
of extremely cold air in that situation cuts through an atmosphere
which, on both sides of this sheet of frigid air, is exceedingly warm,
and laden with moisture to the saturation-point. This curtain of fog is
so thin that sudden gusts of wind, upon either of its surfaces, drive it
aside much as a double curtain is thrown on either side by the arms of a
person passing between. It was through such an opening that Pym and
Peters rushed, on a cross-current of warm water which was carrying them
along. The figure of a large, pure-white woman, into whose arms their
half-delirious fancies pictured them as rushing, was simply a large
statue of spotless marble, which stands at the entrance of the bay of
Hili-li. The ash-like material which for days had rained upon them and
into the ocean around them, was no longer seen. It proved to have been a
peculiar volcano dust or crater ash, which, carried into the upper air,
fell at a distance--sometimes directly on Hili-li; but rarely so close
as within eighty or ninety miles of the central fire.
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