The Tell-Tale Heart Read online

  Having completed our arrangements in regard to the security of the canoe, we now set sail to the south southeast for the present, with the view of weathering the most southerly of the group in sight. This being done, we turned the bow full to the southward. The weather could by no means be considered disagreeable. We had a prevailing and very gentle wind from the northward, a smooth sea, and continual daylight. No ice whatever was to be seen; nor did I ever see one particle of this after leaving the parallel of Bennet’s Islet. Indeed, the temperature of the water was here far too warm for its existence in any quantity. Having killed the largest of our tortoises, and obtained from him not only food but a copious supply of water, we continued on our course, without any incident of moment, for perhaps seven or eight days, during which period we must have proceeded a vast distance to the southward, as the wind blew constantly with us, and a very strong current set continually in the direction we were pursuing.

  March 1.*9—Many unusual phenomena now indicated that we were entering upon a region of novelty and wonder. A high range of light gray vapour appeared constantly in the southern horizon, flaring up occasionally in lofty streaks, now darting from east to west, now from west to east, and again presenting a level and uniform summit—in short, having all the wild variations of the Aurora Borealis. The average height of this vapour, as apparent from our station, was about twenty-five degrees. The temperature of the sea seemed to be increasing momentarily, and there was a very perceptible alteration in its colour.

  March 2.—To-day by repeated questioning of our captive, we came to the knowledge of many particulars in regard to the island of the massacre, its inhabitants, and customs—but with these how can I now detain the reader? I may say, however, that we learned there were eight islands in the group—that they were governed by a common king, named Tsalemon or Psalemoun, who resided in one of the smallest of the islands; that the black skins forming the dress of the warriors came from an animal of huge size to be found only in a valley near the court of the king—that the inhabitants of the group fabricated no other boats than the flat-bottomed rafts; the four canoes being all of the kind in their possession, and these having been obtained, by mere accident, from some large island in the southwest—that his own name was Nu-Nu—that he had no knowledge of Bennet’s Islet—and that the appellation of the island he had left was Tsalal. The commencement of the words Tsalemon and Tsalal was given with a prolonged hissing sound, which we found it impossible to imitate, even after repeated endeavours, and which was precisely the same with the note of the black bittern we had eaten up on the summit of the hill.

  March 3.—The heat of the water was now truly remarkable, and in colour was undergoing a rapid change, being no longer transparent, but of a milky consistency and hue. In our immediate vicinity it was usually smooth, never so rough as to endanger the canoe—but we were frequently surprised at perceiving, to our right and left, at different distances, sudden and extensive agitations of the surface—these, we at length noticed, were always preceded by wild flickerings in the region of vapour to the southward.

  March 4.—To-day, with the view of widening our sail, the breeze from the northward dying away perceptibly, I took from my coat-pocket a white handkerchief. Nu-Nu was seated at my elbow, and the linen accidentally flaring in his face, he became violently affected with convulsions. These were succeeded by drowsiness and stupor, and low murmurings of “Tekeli-li! Tekeli-li!”

  March 5.—The wind had entirely ceased, but it was evident that we were still hurrying on to the southward, under the influence of a powerful current. And now, indeed, it would seem reasonable that we should experience some alarm at the turn events were taking—but we felt none. The countenance of Peters indicated nothing of this nature, although it wore at times an expression I could not fathom. The polar winter appeared to be coming on—but coming without its terrors. I felt a numbness of body and mind—a dreaminess of sensation—but this was all.

  March 6.—The gray vapour had now arisen many more degrees above the horizon, and was gradually losing its grayness of tint. The heat of the water was extreme, even unpleasant to the touch, and its milky hue was more evident than ever. To-day a violent agitation of the water occurred very close to the canoe. It was attended, as usual, with a wild flaring up of the vapour at its summit, and a momentary division at its base. A fine white powder, resembling ashes—but certainly not such—fell over the canoe and over a large surface of the water, as the flickering died away among the vapour and the commotion subsided in the sea. Nu-Nu now threw himself on his face in the bottom of the boat, and no persuasions could induce him to arise.

  March 7.—This day we questioned Nu-Nu concerning the motives of his countrymen in destroying our companions; but he appeared to be too utterly overcome by terror to afford us any rational reply. He still obstinately lay in the bottom of the boat; and, upon reiterating the questions as to the motive, made use only of idiotic gesticulations, such as raising with his forefinger the upper lip, and displaying the teeth which lay beneath it. These were black. We had never before seen the teeth of an inhabitant of Tsalal.

  March 8.—To-day there floated by us one of the white animals whose appearance upon the beach of Tsalal had occasioned so wild a commotion among the savages. I would have picked it up, but there came over me a sudden listlessness, and I forbore. The heat of the water still increased, and the hand could no longer be endured within it. Peters spoke little, and I knew not what to think of his apathy. Nu-Nu breathed, and no more.

  March 9.—The whole ashy material fell now continually around us, and in vast quantities. The range of vapour to the southward had arisen prodigiously in the horizon, and began to assume more distinctness of form. I can liken it to nothing but a limitless cataract, rolling silently into the sea from some immense and far-distant rampart in the heaven. The gigantic curtain ranged along the whole extent of the southern horizon. It emitted no sound.

  March 21.—A sullen darkness now hovered above us—but from out the milky depths of the ocean a luminous glare arose, and stole up along the bulwarks of the boat. We were nearly overwhelmed by the white ashy shower which settled upon us and upon the canoe, but melted into the water as it fell. The summit of the cataract was utterly lost in the dimness and the distance. Yet we were evidently approaching it with a hideous velocity. At intervals there were visible in it wide, yawning, but momentary rents, and from out these rents, within which was a chaos of flitting and indistinct images, there came rushing and mighty, but soundless winds, tearing up the enkindled ocean in their course.

  March 22.—The darkness had materially increased, relieved only by the glare of the water thrown back from the white curtain before us. Many gigantic and pallidly white birds flew continuously now from beyond the veil, and their scream was the eternal Tekeli-li! as they retreated from our vision. Here-upon Nu-Nu stirred in the bottom of the boat; but upon touching him, we found his spirit departed. And now we rushed into the embraces of the cataract, where a chasm threw itself open to receive us. But there arose in our pathway a shrouded human figure, very far larger in its proportions than any dweller among men. And the hue of the skin of the figure was the perfect whiteness of the snow.

  NOTE

  The circumstances connected with the late sudden and distressing death of Mr. Pym are already well known to the public through the medium of the daily press. It is feared that the few remaining chapters which were to have completed his narrative, and which were retained by him, while the above were in type, for the purpose of revision, have been irrecoverably lost through the accident by which he perished himself. This, however, may prove not to be the case, and the papers, if ultimately found, will be given to the public.

  No means have been left untried to remedy the deficiency. The gentleman whose name is mentioned in the preface, and who, from the statement there made, might be supposed able to fill the vacuum, has declined the task—this for satisfactory reasons connected with the general inaccuracy of the details afforded h
im, and his disbelief in the entire truth of the latter portions of the narration. Peters, from whom some information might be expected, is still alive, and a resident of Illinois, but cannot be met with at present. He may hereafter be found, and will, no doubt, afford material for a conclusion of Mr. Pym’s account.

  The loss of the two or three final chapters (for there were but two or three) is the more deeply to be regretted, as, it cannot be doubted, they contained matter relative to the Pole itself, or at least to regions in its very near proximity; and as, too, the statements of the author in relation to these regions may shortly be verified or contradicted by means of the governmental expedition now preparing for the Southern Ocean.

  On one point in the Narrative some remarks may be well offered; and it would afford the writer of this appendix much pleasure if what he may here observe should have a tendency to throw credit, in any degree, upon the very singular pages now published. We allude to the chasms found in the island of Tsalal, and to the whole of the figures upon pages 371 and 372.

  Mr. Pym has given the figures of the chasm without comment, and speaks decidedly of the indentures found at the extremity of the most easterly of these chasms as having but a fanciful resemblance to alphabetical characters, and, in short, as being positively not such. This assertion is made in a manner so simple, and sustained by a species of demonstration so conclusive (viz., the fitting of the projections of the fragments found among the dust into the indentures upon the wall), that we are forced to believe the writer in earnest; and no reasonable reader should suppose otherwise. But as the facts in relation to all the figures are most singular (especially when taken in connexion with statements made in the body of the narrative), it may be as well to say a word or two concerning them all—this, too, the more especially as the facts in question have, beyond doubt, escaped the attention of Mr. Poe.

  Figure 1, then figure 2, figure 3, and figure 5, when conjoined with one another in the precise order which the chasms themselves presented, and when deprived of the small lateral branches or arches (which, it will be remembered, served only as means of communication between the main chambers, and were of totally distinct character), constitute an Ethiopian verbal root—the root : “To be shady”—whence all the inflections of shadow or darkness.

  In regard to the “left or most northwardly” of the indentures in figure 4, it is more than probable that the opinion of Peters was correct, and that the hieroglyphical appearance was really the work of art, and intended as the representation of a human form. The delineation is before the reader, and he may, or may not, perceive the resemblance suggested: but the rest of the indentures afford strong confirmation of Peters’ idea. The upper range is evidently the Arabic verbal root “To be white,” whence all the inflections of brilliancy and whiteness. The lower range is not so immediately perspicuous. The characters are somewhat broken and disjointed; nevertheless, it cannot be doubted that, in their perfect state, they formed the full Egyptian word, , “The region of the south.” It should be observed that these interpretations confirm the opinion of Peters in regard to the “most northwardly” of the figures. The arm is outstretched towards the south.

  Conclusions such as these open a wide field for speculation and exciting conjecture. They should be regarded, perhaps, in connexion with some of the most faintly-detailed incidents of the narrative; although in no visible manner is this chain of connexion complete. Tekeli-li! was the cry of the affrighted natives of Tsalal upon discovering the carcass of the white animal picked up at sea. This also was the shuddering exclamation of the captive Tsalalian upon encountering the white materials in possession of Mr. Pym. This also was the shriek of the swift-flying white, and gigantic birds which issued from the vapoury white curtain of the South. Nothing white was to be found at Tsalal, and nothing otherwise in the subsequent voyage to the region beyond. It is not impossible that “Tsalal,” the appellation of the island of the chasms, may be found, upon minute philological scrutiny, to betray either some alliance with the chasms themselves, or some reference to the Ethiopian characters so mysteriously written in their windings.

  “I have graven it within the hills, and my vengeance upon the dust within the rock.”

  POEMS

  Stanzas

  How often we forget all time, when lone

  Admiring Nature’s universal throne;

  Her woods—her wilds—her mountains—the intense

  Reply of HERS to OUR intelligence!

  BYRON, THE ISLAND

  I

  In youth have I known one with whom the Earth

  In secret communing held—as he with it,

  In daylight, and in beauty from his birth:

  Whose fervid, flick’ring torch of life was lit

  From the sun and stars, whence he had drawn forth

  A passionate light—such for his spirit was fit—

  And yet that spirit knew not—in the hour

  Of its own fervor—what had o’er it power.

  II

  Perhaps it may be that my mind is wrought

  To a fever by the moonbeam that hangs o’er,

  But I will half believe that wild light fraught

  With more of sov’reignty than ancient lore

  Hath ever told—or is it of a thought

  The unembodied essence, and no more

  That with a quick’ning spell doth o’er us pass

  As dew of the night-time, o’er the summer grass?

  III

  Doth o’er us pass, when, as th’ expanding eye

  To the lov’d object—so the tear to the lid

  Will start, which lately slept in apathy?

  And yet it need not be—(that object) hid

  From us in life—but common—which doth lie

  Each hour before us—but then only bid

  With a strange sound, as of a harp-string broken

  T’ awake us—’Tis a symbol and a token

  IV

  Of what in other worlds shall be—and giv’n

  In beauty by our God, to those alone

  Who otherwise would fall from life and Heav’n

  Drawn by their heart’s passion, and that tone,

  That high tone of the spirit which hath striv’n

  Tho’ not with Faith—with godliness—whose throne

  With desp’rate energy ’t hath beaten down;

  Wearing its own deep feeling as a crown.

  Romance

  Romance, who loves to nod and sing,

  With drowsy head and folded wing,

  Among the green leaves as they shake

  Far down within some shadowy lake,

  To me a painted paroquet

  Hath been—a most familiar bird—

  Taught me my alphabet to say—

  To lisp my very earliest word

  While in the wild wood I did lie,

  A child—with a most knowing eye.

  Of late, eternal Condor years

  So shake the very Heaven on high

  With tumult as they thunder by,

  I have no time for idle cares

  Through gazing on the unquiet sky.

  And when an hour with calmer wings

  Its down upon my spirit flings—

  That little time with lyre and rhyme

  To while away—forbidden things!

  My heart would feel to be a crime

  Unless it trembled with the strings.

  To Helen

  Helen, thy beauty is to me

  Like those Nicéan barks of yore,

  That gently, o’er a perfumed sea,

  The weary, way-worn wanderer bore

  To his own native shore.

  On desperate seas long wont to roam,

  Thy hyacinth hair, thy classic face,

  Thy Naiad airs have brought me home

  To the glory that was Greece,

  And the grandeur that was Rome.

  Lo! in yon brilliant window-niche

  How statue-like I see thee stand,<
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  The agate lamp within thy hand!

  Ah, Psyche, from the regions which

  Are Holy-Land!

  Israfel

  And the angel Israfel, whose heart-strings are a lute, and who has the sweetest voice of all God’s creatures.

  —KORAN

  In Heaven a spirit doth dwell

  “Whose heart-strings are a lute”;

  None sing so wildly well

  As the angel Israfel,

  And the giddy stars (so legends tell)

  Ceasing their hymns, attend the spell

  Of his voice, all mute.

  Tottering above

  In her highest noon,

  The enamoured moon

  Blushes with love,

  While, to listen, the red levin

  (With the rapid Pleiads, even,

  Which were seven,)

  Pauses in Heaven.

  And they say (the starry choir

  And the other listening things)

  That Israfeli’s fire

  Is owing to that lyre

  By which he sits and sings—

  The trembling living wire

  Of those unusual strings.

  But the skies that angel trod,

  Where deep thoughts are a duty—

  Where Love’s a grown-up God—

  Where the Houri glances are

  Imbued with all the beauty

  Which we worship in a star.

  Therefore, thou art not wrong,

  Israfeli, who despisest

  An unimpassioned song;