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Page 33
"But the form of this lovely being--what shall I say of her form! Here I
pause. When Peters, at my urgent solicitation, attempted to describe it,
he simply gurgled away into one of his spells of delirium. It was no use
to try--though I did, again and again, try to draw from the old man
something definite. It seems that she was so rounded and so proportioned
as to meet every artistic demand, and to divert even from her beautiful
face the glance of her enraptured beholders. If we are to gain an
approximate idea of a figure so perfect, we must try to conceive what
might be the result of a supreme effort of nature to show by comparison
to the most artistic of her people just what puling infants they were in
their attempts to create forms of true beauty from marble.
"Her name was Lilama.
"It appears that young Pym was at this time a handsome fellow, almost
six feet tall; and in his attire, of which I have spoken as resembling
in many respects that of the court _habitu�s_ of Louis XIV, he was
indeed a fine example of natural and artificial beauty combined. And
then, he had suffered! Need I say more? What heart of maiden would not
have softened to this stranger youth?
"Well, these two loved. From what Peters tells me, the episode of Romeo
and Juliet sinks into insignificance by the side of the story of their
love. With leisure and with opportunity to love, for several months
these young people enjoyed an earthly heaven which it is rarely indeed
the lot of a young couple to enjoy. But alas! and alas! True as in the
days when moonlight fell amid the palaces of Babylon and Nineveh is the
old poetic expression--its truth older than Shakespeare, older than
historic man--that 'The course of true love never did run smooth.'
"It seems that among the so-called criminal exiles to the Volcanic
Mountains was a young man of good family, who had known--and of course
loved--Lilama. And I will say in passing that the youths who comprised
this class would, the larger part of them, never have been exiles, if
Hili-li had required a standing army, or had even not forbidden by law
the more rough and dangerous games to be played--I allude to some very
rough sports and pastimes, in which bones were frequently broken--games
which these youths and preceding generations of youths had initiated and
developed. But there was in Hili-li, aside from boating, no allowable
means for the gratification of that desire to contend with danger which
is inherent in manly youths the world over. Hence these young men were
by their very nature compelled to violate laws thus unnatural, and, as
generally happens, in doing so they went to extremes. The young
Hili-lite to whom I have alluded had been for more than a year with the
exiles. His name was Ahpilus. Lilama did not reciprocate his love. She
had known him from infancy, and for her there was no romance in poor
Ahpilus. But the young Hili-lite was madly infatuated with her, and it
seems by later developments that his enforced absence from her had
driven him almost, if not wholly, insane.
"Thus stood matters about three months after the arrival in Hili-li of
the Americans. It will be remembered that, according to Poe's account,
Pym and Peters passed through the 'great white curtain' on March 22d.
Peters says that this statement is probably correct. That date
corresponds to their autumnal equinox--about. Three months later
corresponds to our summer solstice--their midwinter. By the latter time,
and for weeks before, the antarctic sun never rose above the horizon.
But this season was in Hili-li the most beautiful and enjoyable period
of the year. The open crater of almost pure white boiling lava which I
have described, and which presented a surface of the most brilliant
light, covering an area of more than 150 square miles, was amply
sufficient to light islands from 45 to 75 miles distant. Hili-li
received some direct light from a hundred or more volcanic fires--two
within its own shores; but by far the greater illumination came from the
reflected light of the great central lake of boiling lava. The sky,
constantly filled with a circle of high-floating clouds formed of
volcanic dust, the circumference of which blended away beyond the
horizon, but in the centre of which, covering a space the diameter of
which was about thirty miles, was a circle of light of about the same
brilliancy as that of the moon, but in appearance thousands of times
larger. From this overhanging cloud (the City of Hili-li lay under a
part of its circumference) came during the antarctic winter a mild and
beautiful light, whiter than moonlight, and lighting the island to many
times the brilliancy of the brightest moonlight, though quite subdued in
comparison with that which would have been derived from the sun if
directly in the zenith. Peters says that the illumination in Hili-li at
its midwinter was about as intense as with us on a densely cloudy day;
the light not, however, being grayish, but of a pure white, now and
again briefly tinted with orange, green, red, blue, and shades of other
colors, caused by local and temporary outbursts of those colors in the
enormous crater fires.
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