FOOTNOTES:

FOOTNOTES:[27]Taken by permission fromThe Twilight of the Gods, by Richard Garnett. Published by John Lane Co., New York.

[27]Taken by permission fromThe Twilight of the Gods, by Richard Garnett. Published by John Lane Co., New York.

E si compiacque tanto Spinello di farlo orribile e contrafatto, che si dice (tanto può alcuna fiata l’immaginazione) che la detta figura da lui dipinta gli apparve in sogno, domandandolo dove egli l’ avesse veduta si brutta.[29](Vite de’ più eccellenti pittori, da MesserGiorgio Vasari.—“Vita di Spinello.”)

(Vite de’ più eccellenti pittori, da MesserGiorgio Vasari.—“Vita di Spinello.”)

Andrea Tafi, painter and worker-in-mosaic of Florence, had a wholesome terror of the Devils of Hell, particularly in the watches of the night, when it is given to the powers of Darkness to prevail. And the worthy man’s fears were not unreasonable, for in those days the Demons had good cause to hate the Painters, who robbed them of more souls with a single picture than a good little Preaching Friar could do in thirty sermons. No doubt the Monk, to instil a soul-saving horror in the hearts of the faithful, would describe to the utmost ofhis powers “that day of wrath, that day of mourning,” which is to reduce the universe to ashes,teste David et Sibylla, borrowing his deepest voice and bellowing through his hands to imitate the Archangel’s last trump. But there! it was “all sound and fury, signifying nothing,” whereas a painting displayed on a Chapel wall or in the Cloister, showing Jesus Christ sitting on the Great White Throne to judge the living and the dead, spoke unceasingly to the eyes of sinners, and through the eyes chastened such as had sinned by the eyes or otherwise.

It was in the days when cunning masters were depicting at Santa-Croce in Florence and the Campo Santo of Pisa the mysteries of Divine Justice. These works were drawn according to the account in verse which Dante Alighieri, a man very learned in Theology and in Canon Law, wrote in days gone by of his journey to Hell, and Purgatory and Paradise, whither by the singular great merits of his lady, he was able to make his way alive. So everything in these paintings was instructive and true, and we may say surely less profit is to be had of reading the most full and ample Chronicle than from contemplating such representative works of art. Moreover, the Florentine masters took heed to paint, under the shade of orange groves, on the flower-starred turf, fair ladies and gallant knights, with Death lying in wait for them with his scythe, while they were discoursing of love to the sound of lutes and viols. Nothing was better fitted to convert carnal-minded sinners who quaff forgetfulness of God on the lips of women. To rebuke the covetous, the painter would show to the life the Devils pouring molten gold down the throat of Bishop or Abbess,who had commissioned some work from him and then scamped his pay.

This is why the Demons in those days were bitter enemies of the painters, and above all of the Florentine painters, who surpassed all the rest in subtlety of wit. Chiefly they reproached them with representing them under a hideous guise, with the heads of bird and fish, serpents’ bodies and bats’ wings. This sore resentment which they felt will come out plainly in the history of Spinello of Arezzo.

Spinello Spinelli was sprung of a noble family of Florentine exiles, and his graciousness of mind matched his gentle birth; for he was the most skilful painter of his time. He wrought many and great works at Florence; and the Pisans begged him to complete Giotto’s wall-paintings in their Campo Santo, where the dead rest beneath roses in holy earth shipped from Jerusalem. At last, after working long years in divers cities and getting much gold, he longed to see once more the good city of Arezzo, his mother. The men of Arezzo had not forgotten how Spinello, in his younger days, being enrolled in the Confraternity of Santa Maria della Misericordia, had visited the sick and buried the dead in the plague of 1383. They were grateful to him besides for having by his works spread the fame of their city over all Tuscany. For all these reasons they welcomed him with high honours on his return.

Still full of vigour in his old age, he undertook important tasks in his native town. His wife would tell him:

“You are rich, Spinello. Do you rest, and leaveyounger men to paint instead of you. It is meet a man should end his days in a gentle, religious quiet. It is tempting God to be for ever raising new and worldly monuments, mere heathen towers of Babel. Quit your colours and your varnishes, Spinello, or they will destroy your peace of mind.”

So the good dame would preach, but he refused to listen, for his one thought was to increase his fortune and renown. Far from resting on his laurels, he arranged a price with the Wardens of Sant’ Agnolo for a history of St. Michael, that was to cover all the Choir of the Church and contain an infinity of figures. Into this enterprise he threw himself with extraordinary ardour. Re-reading the parts of Scripture that were to be his inspiration, he set himself to study deeply every line and every word of these passages. Not content with drawing all day long in his workshop, he persisted in working both at bed and board; while at dusk, walking below the hill on whose brow Arezzo proudly lifts her walls and towers, he was still lost in thought. And we may say the story of the Archangel was already limned in his brain when he started to sketch out the incidents in red chalk on the plaster of the wall. He was soon done tracing these outlines; then he fell to painting above the high altar the scene that was to outshine all the others in brilliancy. For it was his intent therein to glorify the leader of the hosts of Heaven for the victory he won before the beginning of time. Accordingly Spinello represented St. Michael fighting in the air against the serpent with seven heads and ten horns, and he figured with delight, in the bottom part of the picture, the Princeof the Devils, Lucifer, under the semblance of an appalling monster. The figures seemed to grow to life of themselves under his hand. His success was beyond his fondest hopes; so hideous was the countenance of Lucifer, none could escape the nightmare of its foulness. The face haunted the painter in the streets and even went home with him to his lodging.

Presently when night was come, Spinello lay down in his bed beside his wife and fell asleep. In his slumbers he saw an Angel as comely as St. Michael, but black; and the Angel said to him:

“Spinello, I am Lucifer. Tell me, where had you seen me, that you should paint me as you have, under so ignominious a likeness?”

The old painter answered, trembling, that he had never seen him with his eyes, never having gone down alive into Hell, like Messer Dante Alighieri; but that, in depicting him as he had done, he was for expressing in visible lines and colours the hideousness of sin.

Lucifer shrugged his shoulders, and the hill of San Gemignano seemed of a sudden to heave and stagger.

“Spinello,” he went on, “will you do me the pleasure to reason awhile with me? I am no mean Logician; He you pray to knows that.”

Receiving no reply, Lucifer proceeded in these terms:

“Spinello, you have read the books that tell of me. You know of my enterprise, and how I forsook Heaven to become the Prince of this World. A tremendous adventure,—and a unique one, had not the Giants in like fashion assailed the god Jupiter, as yourself have seen,Spinello, recorded on an ancient tomb where this Titanic war is carved in marble.”

“It is true,” said Spinello, “I have seen the tomb, shaped like a great tun, in the Church of Santa Reparata at Florence. ’Tis a fine work of the Romans.”

“Still,” returned Lucifer, smiling, “the Giants are not pictured on it in the shape of frogs or chameleons or the like hideous and horrid creatures.”

“True,” replied the painter, “but then they had not attacked the true God, but only a false idol of the Pagans. ’Tis a mighty difference. The fact is clear, Lucifer, you raised the standard of revolt against the true and veritable King of Earth and Heaven.”

“I will not deny it,” said Lucifer. “And how many sorts of sins do you charge me with for that?”

“Seven, it is like enough,” the painter answered, “and deadly sins one and all.”

“Seven!” exclaimed the Angel of Darkness; “well! the number is canonical. Everything goes by sevens in my history, which is close bound up with God’s. Spinello, you deem me proud, angry and envious. I enter no protest, provided you allow that glory was my only aim. Do you deem me covetous? Granted again; Covetousness is a virtue for Princes. For Gluttony and Lust, if you hold me guilty, I will not complain. RemainsIndolence.”

As he pronounced the word, Lucifer crossed his arms across his breast, and shaking his gloomy head, tossed his flaming locks:

“Tell me, Spinello, do you really think I am indolent? Do you take me for a coward? Do you holdthat in my revolt I showed a lack of courage? Nay! you cannot. Then it was but just to paint me in the guise of a hero, with a proud countenance. You should wrong no one, not even the Devil. Cannot you see that you insult Him you make prayer to, when you give Him for adversary a vile, monstrous toad? Spinello, you are very ignorant for a man of your age. I have a great mind to pull your ears, as they do to an ill-conditioned schoolboy.”

At this threat, and seeing the arm of Lucifer already stretched out towards him, Spinello clapped his hand to his head and began to howl with terror.

His good wife, waking up with a start, asked him what ailed him. He told her with chattering teeth, how he had just seen Lucifer and had been in terror for his ears.

“I told you so,” retorted the worthy dame; “I knew all those figures you will go on painting on the walls would end by driving you mad.”

“I am not mad,” protested the painter. “I saw him with my own eyes; and he is beautiful to look on, albeit proud and sad. First thing tomorrow I will blot out the horrid figure I have drawn and set in its place the shape I beheld in my dream. For we must not wrong even the Devil himself.”

“You had best go to sleep again,” scolded his wife. “You are talking stark nonsense, and unchristian to boot.”

Spinello tried to rise, but his strength failed him and he fell back unconscious on his pillow. He lingered on a few days in a high fever, and then died.

FOOTNOTES:[28]Taken by permission fromThe Well of St. Claire, by Anatole France, translated by Alfred Allinson. Published, 1909, by John Lane Co., New York.[29]“And so successful was Spinello with his horrible and portentous Production that it was commonly reported—so great is always the force of fancy—that the said figure (of Lucifer trodden underfoot by St. Michael in the Altar-Piece of the Church of St. Agnolo at Arezzo) painted by him had appeared to the artist in a dream, and asked him in what place he had beheld him under so brutish a form.”Lives of the most Excellent Painters, by Giorgio Vasari.—“Life of Spinello.”

[28]Taken by permission fromThe Well of St. Claire, by Anatole France, translated by Alfred Allinson. Published, 1909, by John Lane Co., New York.

[29]“And so successful was Spinello with his horrible and portentous Production that it was commonly reported—so great is always the force of fancy—that the said figure (of Lucifer trodden underfoot by St. Michael in the Altar-Piece of the Church of St. Agnolo at Arezzo) painted by him had appeared to the artist in a dream, and asked him in what place he had beheld him under so brutish a form.”Lives of the most Excellent Painters, by Giorgio Vasari.—“Life of Spinello.”

Lives of the most Excellent Painters, by Giorgio Vasari.—“Life of Spinello.”

Life is a burden in the Fall,—the sad season of decay and death!

The grey days, the weeping, sunless sky, the dark nights, the growling, whining wind, the heavy, black autumn shadows—all that drives clouds of gloomy thoughts over the human soul, and fills it with a mysterious fear of life where nothing is permanent, all is in an eternal flux; things are born, decay, die ... why? ... for what purpose?...

Sometimes the strength fails us to battle against the tenebrous thoughts that enfold the soul late in the autumn, therefore those who want to assuage their bitterness ought to meet them half way. This is the only way by which they will escape from the chaos of despair and doubt, and will enter on the terra firma of self-confidence.

But it is a laborious path, it leads through thorny brambles that lacerate the living heart, and on that path the devil always lies in ambush. It is that best of all the devils, with whom the great Goethe has made us acquainted....

My story is about that devil.

The devil suffered from ennui.

He is too wise to ridicule everything.

He knows that there are phenomena of life which the devil himself is not able to rail at; for example, he has never applied the sharp scalpel of his irony to the majestic fact of his existence. To tell the truth, our favourite devil is more bold than clever, and if we were to look more closely at him, we might discover that, like ourselves, he wastes most of his time on trifles. But we had better leave that alone; we are not children that break their best toys in order to discover what is in them.

The devil once wandered over the cemetery in the darkness of an autumn night: he felt lonely and whistled softly as he looked around himself in search of a distraction. He whistled an old song—my father’s favourite song,—

“When, in autumnal days,A leaf from its branch is tornAnd on high by the wind is borne.”

And the wind sang with him, soughing over the graves and among the black crosses, and heavy autumnal clouds slowly crawled over the heaven and with their cold tears watered the narrow dwellings of the dead. The mournful trees in the cemetery timidly creaked under the strokes of the wind and stretched their bare branches to the speechless clouds. The branches were now and then caught by the crosses, and then a dull, shuffling, awful sound passed over the churchyard....

The devil was whistling, and he thought:

“I wonder how the dead feel in such weather! Nodoubt, the dampness goes down to them, and although they are secure against rheumatism ever since the day of their death, yet, I suppose, they do not feel comfortable. How, if I called one of them up and had a talk with him? It would be a little distraction for me, and, very likely, for him also. I will call him! Somewhere around here they have buried an old friend of mine, an author.... I used to visit him when he was alive ... why not renew our acquaintance? People of his kind are dreadfully exacting. I shall find out whether the grave satisfies him completely. But where is his grave?”

And the devil who, as is well known, knows everything, wandered for a long time about the cemetery, before he found the author’s grave....

“Oh there!” he called out as he knocked with his claws at the heavy stone under which his acquaintance was put away.

“Get up!”

“What for?” came the dull answer from below.

“I need you.”

“I won’t get up.”

“Why?”

“Who are you, anyway?”

“You know me.”

“The censor?”

“Ha, ha, ha! No!”

“Maybe a secret policeman?”

“No, no!”

“Not a critic, either?”

“I am the devil.”

“Well, I’ll be out in a minute.”

The stone lifted itself from the grave, the earth burst open, and a skeleton came out of it. It was a very common skeleton, just the kind that students study anatomy by: only it was dirty, had no wire connections, and in the empty sockets there shone a blue phosphoric light instead of eyes. It crawled out of the ground, shook its bones in order to throw off the earth that stuck to them, making a dry, rattling noise with them, and raising up its skull, looked with its cold, blue eyes at the murky, cloud-covered sky. “I hope you are well!” said the devil.

“How can I be?” curtly answered the author. He spoke in a strange, low voice, as if two bones were grating against each other.

“Oh, excuse my greeting!” the devil said pleasantly.

“Never mind!... But why have you raised me?”

“I just wanted to take a walk with you, though the weather is very bad.

“I suppose you are not afraid of catching a cold?” asked the devil.

“Not at all, I got used to catching colds during my lifetime.”

“Yes, I remember, you died pretty cold.”

“I should say I did! They had poured enough cold water over me all my life.”

They walked beside each other over the narrow path, between graves and crosses. Two blue beams fell from the author’s eyes upon the ground and lit the way for the devil. A drizzling rain sprinkled over them, and the wind freely passed between the author’s bare ribsand through his breast where there was no longer a heart.

“We are going to town?” he asked the devil.

“What interests you there?”

“Life, my dear sir,” the author said impassionately.

“What! It still has a meaning for you?”

“Indeed it has!”

“But why?”

“How am I to say it? A man measures all by the quantity of his effort, and if he carries a common stone down from the summit of Ararat, that stone becomes a gem to him.”

“Poor fellow!” smiled the devil.

“But also happy man!” the author retorted coldly.

The devil shrugged his shoulders.

They left the churchyard, and before them lay a street,—two rows of houses, and between them was darkness in which the miserable lamps clearly proved the want of light upon earth.

“Tell me,” the devil spoke after a pause, “how do you like your grave?”

“Now I am used to it, and it is all right: it is very quiet there.”

“Is it not damp down there in the Fall?” asked the devil.

“A little. But you get used to that. The greatest annoyance comes from those various idiots who ramble over the cemetery and accidentally stumble on my grave. I don’t know how long I have been lying in my grave, for I and everything around me is unchangeable, and the concept of time does not exist for me.”

“You have been in the ground four years,—it will soon be five,” said the devil.

“Indeed? Well then, there have been three people at my grave during that time. Those accursed people make me nervous. One, you see, straight away denied the fact of my existence: he read my name on the tombstone and said confidently: ‘There never was such a man! I have never read him, though I remember such a name: when I was a boy, there lived a man of that name who had a broker’s shop in our street.’ How do you like that? And my articles appeared for sixteen years in the most popular periodicals, and three times during my lifetime my books came out in separate editions.”

“There were two more editions since your death,” the devil informed him.

“Well, you see? Then came two, and one of them said: ‘Oh, that’s that fellow!’ ‘Yes, that is he!’ answered the other. ‘Yes, they used to read him in the auld lang syne.’ ‘They read a lot of them.’ ‘What was it he preached?’ ‘Oh, generally, ideas of beauty, goodness, and so forth.’ ‘Oh, yes, I remember.’ ‘He had a heavy tongue.’ ‘There is a lot of them in the ground:—yes, Russia is rich in talents’ ... And those asses went away. It is true, warm words do not raise the temperature of the grave, and I do not care for that, yet it hurts me. And oh, how I wanted to give them a piece of my mind!”

“You ought to have given them a fine tongue-lashing!” smiled the devil.

“No, that would not have done. On the verge of the twentieth century it would be absurd for dead people to scold, and, besides, it would be hard on the materialists.”

The devil again felt the ennui coming over him.

This author had always wished in his lifetime to be a bridegroom at all weddings and a corpse at all burials, and now that all is dead in him, his egotism is still alive. Is man of any importance to life? Of importance is only the human spirit, and only the spirit deserves applause and recognition.... How annoying people are! The devil was on the point of proposing to the author to return to his grave, when an idea flashed through his evil head. They had just reached a square, and heavy masses of buildings surrounded them on all sides. The dark, wet sky hung low over the square; it seemed as though it rested on the roofs and murkily looked at the dirty earth.

“Say,” said the devil as he inclined pleasantly towards the author, “don’t you want to know how your wife is getting on?”

“I don’t know whether I want to,” the author spoke slowly.

“I see, you are a thorough corpse!” called out the devil to annoy him.

“Oh, I don’t know?” said the author and jauntily shook his bones. “I don’t mind seeing her; besides, she will not see me, or if she will, she cannot recognize me!”

“Of course!” the devil assured him.

“You know, I only said so because she did not like for me to go away long from home,” explained the author.

And suddenly the wall of a house disappeared or became as transparent as glass. The author saw the inside of large apartments, and it was so light and cosy in them.

“Elegant appointments!” he grated his bones approvingly: “Very fine appointments! If I had lived in such rooms, I would be alive now.”

“I like it, too,” said the devil and smiled. “And it is not expensive—it only costs some three thousands.”

“Hem, that not expensive? I remember my largest work brought me 815 roubles, and I worked over it a whole year. But who lives here?”

“Your wife,” said the devil.

“I declare! That is good ... for her.”

“Yes, and here comes her husband.”

“She is so pretty now, and how well she is dressed! Her husband, you say? What a fine looking fellow! Rather a bourgeois phiz,—kind, but somewhat stupid! He looks as if he might be cunning,—well, just the face to please a woman.”

“Do you want me to heave a sigh for you?” the devil proposed and looked maliciously at the author. But he was taken up with the scene before him.

“What happy, jolly faces both have! They are evidently satisfied with life. Tell me, does she love him?”

“Oh, yes, very much!”

“And who is he?”

“A clerk in a millinery shop.”

“A clerk in a millinery shop,” the author repeated slowly and did not utter a word for some time. The devil looked at him and smiled a merry smile.

“Do you like that?” he asked.

The author spoke with an effort:

“I had some children.... I know they are alive.... I had some children ... a son and a daughter.... I used to think then that my son would turn out in time a good man....”

“There are plenty of good men, but what the world needs is perfect men,” said the devil coolly and whistled a jolly march.

“I think the clerk is probably a poor pedagogue ... and my son....”

The author’s empty skull shook sadly.

“Just look how he is embracing her! They are living an easy life!” exclaimed the devil.

“Yes. Is that clerk a rich man?”

“No, he was poorer than I, but your wife is rich.”

“My wife? Where did she get the money from?”

“From the sale of your books!”

“Oh!” said the author and shook his bare and empty skull. “Oh! Then it simply means that I have worked for a certain clerk?”

“I confess it looks that way,” the devil chimed in merrily.

The author looked at the ground and said to the devil: “Take me back to my grave!”

... It was late. A rain fell, heavy clouds hung inthe sky, and the author rattled his bones as he marched rapidly to his grave.... The devil walked behind him and whistled merrily.

My reader is, of course, dissatisfied. My reader is surfeited with literature, and even the people that write only to please him, are rarely to his taste. In the present case my reader is also dissatisfied because I have said nothing about hell. As my reader is justly convinced that after death he will find his way there, he would like to know something about hell during his lifetime. Really, I can’t tell anything pleasant to my reader on that score, because there is no hell, no fiery hell which it is so easy to imagine. Yet, there is something else and infinitely more terrible.

The moment the doctor will have said about you to your friends: “He is dead!” you will enter an immeasurable, illuminated space, and that is the space of the consciousness of your mistakes.

You lie in the grave, in a narrow coffin, and your miserable life rotates about you like a wheel.

It moves painfully slow, and passes before you from your first conscious step to the last moment of your life.

You will see all that you have hidden from yourself during your lifetime, all the lies and meanness of your existence: you will think over anew all your past thoughts, and you will see every wrong step of yours,—all your life will be gone over, to its minutest details!

And to increase your torments, you will know that on that narrow and stupid road which you have traversed, others are marching, and pushing each other, and hurrying,and lying.... And you understand that they are doing it all only to find out in time how shameful it is to live such a wretched, soulless life.

And though you see them hastening on towards their destruction, you are in no way able to warn them: you will not move nor cry, and your helpless desire to aid them will tear your soul to pieces.

Your life passes before you, and you see it from the start, and there is no end to the work of your conscience, and there will be no end ... and to the horror of your torments there will never be an end ... never!

FOOTNOTES:[30]From theNational Magazine, vol. XV. By permission of the Editor and Translator.

[30]From theNational Magazine, vol. XV. By permission of the Editor and Translator.

Up away north, in the old days, in Chester, there was a man who never throve. Nothing he put his hand to ever prospered, and as his state worsened, his friends fell away, and he grew desperate. So one night when he was alone in his room, thinking of the rent due in two or three days and the money he couldn’t scrape together, he cried out, “I wish I could sell my soul to the devil like that man the old books tell about.”

Now just as he spoke the clock struck twelve, and, while it chimed, a sparkle began to burn about the room, and the air, all at once, began to smell of brimstone, and a voice said:

“Will these terms suit you?”

He then saw that some one had just placed a parchment there. He picked it up and read it through; and being in despair, and not knowing what he was doing, he answered, “Yes,” and looked round for a pen.

“Take and sign,” said the voice again, “but first consider what it is you do; do nothing rashly. Consider.”

So he thought awhile; then “Yes,” he said, “I’ll sign,” and with that he groped for the pen.

“Blood from your left thumb and sign,” said the voice.

So he pricked his left thumb and signed.

“Here is your earnest money,” said the voice, “nine and twenty silver pennies. This day twenty years hence I shall see you again.”

Now early next morning our friend came to himself and felt like one of the drowned. “What a dream I’ve had,” he said. Then he woke up and saw the nine and twenty silver pennies and smelt a faint smell of brimstone.

So he sat in his chair there, and remembered that he had sold his soul to the devil for twenty years of heart’s-desire; and whatever fears he may have had as to what might come at the end of those twenty years, he found comfort in the thought that, after all, twenty years is a good stretch of time, and that throughout them he could eat, drink, merrymake, roll in gold, dress in silk, and be care-free, heart at ease and jib-sheet to windward.

So for nineteen years and nine months he lived in great state, having his heart’s desire in all things; but, when his twenty years were nearly run through, there was no wretcheder man in all the world than that poor fellow. So he threw up his house, his position, riches, everything, and away he went to the port of Liverpool, where he signed on as A. B., aboard a Black Ball packet, a tea clipper, bound to the China seas.

They made a fine passage out, and when our friend had only three days more, they were in the Indian Ocean lying lazy, becalmed.

Now it was his wheel that forenoon, and it being deadcalm, all he had to do was just to think of things; the ship of course having no way on her.

So he stood there, hanging on to the spokes, groaning and weeping till, just twenty minutes or so before eight bells were made, up came the Captain for a turn on deck.

He went aft, of course, took a squint aloft, and saw our friend crying at the wheel. “Hello, my man,” he says, “why, what’s all this? Ain’t you well? You’d best lay aft for a dose o’salts at four bells tonight.”

“No, Cap’n,” said the man, “there’s no salts’ll ever cure my sickness.”

“Why, what’s all this?” says the old man. “You must be sick if it’s as bad as all that. But come now; your cheek is all sunk, and you look as if you ain’t slept well. What is it ails you, anyway? Have you anything on your mind?”

“Captain,” he answers very solemn, “I have sold my soul to the devil.”

“Oh,” said the old man, “why, that’s bad. That’s powerful bad. I never thought them sort of things ever happened outside a book.”

“But,” said our friend, “that’s not the worst of it, Captain. At this time three days hence the devil will fetch me home.”

“Good Lord!” groaned the old man. “Here’s a nice hurrah’s nest to happen aboard my ship. But come now,” he went on, “did the devil give you no chance—no saving-clause like? Just think quietly for a moment.”

“Yes, Captain,” said our friend, “just when I madethe deal, there came a whisper in my ear. And,” he said, speaking very quietly, so as not to let the mate hear, “if I can give the devil three jobs to do which he cannot do, why, then, Captain,” he says, “I’m saved, and that deed of mine is cancelled.”

Well, at this the old man grinned and said, “You just leave things to me, my son.I’llfix the devil for you. Aft there, one o’ you, and relieve the wheel. Now you run forrard, and have a good watch below, and be quite easy in your mind, for I’ll deal with the devil for you. You rest and be easy.”

And so that day goes by, and the next, and the one after that, and the one after that was the day the Devil was due.

Soon as eight bells was made in the morning watch, the old man called all hands aft.

“Men,” he said, “I’ve got an all-hands job for you this forenoon.”

“Mr. Mate,” he cried, “get all hands on to the main-tops’l halliards and bowse the sail stiff up and down.”

So they passed along the halliards, and took the turns off, and old John Chantyman piped up—

There’s a Black Ball clipperComin’ down the river.

And away the yard went to the mast-head till the bunt-robands jammed in the sheave.

“Very well that,” said the old man. “Now get my dinghy off o’ the half-deck and let her drag alongside.”

So they did that, too.

“Very well that,” said the old man. “Now forrardwith you, to the chain-locker, and rouse out every inch of chain you find there.”

So forrard they went, and the chain was lighted up and flaked along the deck all clear for running.

“Now, Chips,” says the old man to the carpenter, “just bend the spare anchor to the end of that chain, and clear away the fo’c’s’le rails ready for when we let go.”

So they did this, too.

“Now,” said the old man, “get them tubs of slush from the galley. Pass that slush along there, doctor. Very well that. Now turn to, all hands, and slush away every link in that chain a good inch thick in grease.”

So they did that, too, and wondered what the old man meant.

“Very well that,” cries the old man. “Now get below all hands! Chips, on to the fo’c’s’le head with you and stand by! I’ll keep the deck, Mr. Mate! Very well that.”

So all hands tumbled down below; Chips took a fill o’ baccy to leeward of the capstan, and the old man walked the weather-poop looking for a sign of hell-fire.

It was still dead calm—but presently, towards six bells, he raised a black cloud away to leeward, and saw the glimmer of the lightning in it; only the flashes were too red, and came too quick.

“Now,” says he to himself, “stand by.”

Very soon that black cloud worked up to windward, right alongside, and there came a red flash, and a strong sulphurous smell, and then a loud peal of thunder as the devil steps aboard.

“Mornin’, Cap’n,” says he.

“Mornin’, Mr. Devil,” says the old man, “and what in blazes do you want aboardmyship?”

“Why, Captain,” said the devil, “I’ve come for the soul of one of your hands as per signed agreement: and, as my time’s pretty full up in these wicked days, I hope you won’t keep me waiting for him longer than need be.”

“Well, Mr. Devil,” says the old man, “the man you come for is down below, sleeping, just at this moment. It’s a fair pity to call him up till it’s right time. So supposin’ I set you them three tasks. How would that be? Have you any objections?”

“Why, no,” said the devil, “fire away as soon as you like.”

“Mr. Devil,” said the old man, “you see that main-tops’l yard? Suppose you lay out on that main-tops’l yard and take in three reefs singlehanded.”

“Ay, ay, sir,” the devil said, and he ran up the rat-lines, into the top, up the topmast rigging and along the yard.

Well, when he found the sail stiff up and down, he hailed the deck:

“Below there! On deck there! Lower away ya halliards!”

“I will not,” said the old man, “nary a lower.”

“Come up your sheets, then,” cries the devil. “This main-topsail’s stiff up-and-down. How’m I to take in three reefs when the sail’s stiff up-and-down?”

“Why,” said the old man, “you can’t do it. Come out o’ that! Down from aloft, you hoof-footed son. That’s one to me.”

“Yes,” says the devil, when he got on deck again, “I don’t deny it, Cap’n. That’s one to you.”

“Now, Mr. Devil,” said the old man, going towards the rail, “suppose you was to step into that little boat alongside there. Will you please?”

“Ay, ay, sir,” he said, and he slid down the forrard fall, got into the stern sheets, and sat down.

“Now, Mr. Devil,” said the skipper, taking a little salt spoon from his vest pocket, “supposin’ you bail all the water on that side the boat on to this side the boat, using this spoon as your dipper.”

Well!—the devil just looked at him.

“Say!” he said at length, “which of the New England States d’ye hail from anyway?”

“Not Jersey, anyway,” said the old man. “That’s two up, alright; ain’t it, sonny?”

“Yes,” growls the devil, as he climbs aboard. “That’s two up. Two to you and one to play. Now, what’s your next contraption?”

“Mr. Devil,” said the old man, looking very innocent, “you see, I’ve ranged my chain ready for letting go anchor. Now Chips is forrard there, and when I sing out, he’ll let the anchor go. Supposin’ you stopper the chain with them big hands o’ yourn and keep it from running out clear. Will you, please?”

So the devil takes off his coat and rubs his hands together, and gets away forrard by the bitts, and stands by.

“All ready, Cap’n,” he says.

“All ready, Chips?” asked the old man.

“All ready, sir,” replies Chips.

“Then, stand by—Letgothe anchor,” and clink, clink, old Chips knocks out the pin, and away goes the spare anchor and greased chain into a five mile deep of God’s sea. As I said, they were in the Indian Ocean.

Well—there was the devil, making a grab here and a grab there, and the slushy chain just slipping through his claws, and at whiles a bight of chain would spring clear and rap him in the eye.

So at last the cable was nearly clean gone, and the devil ran to the last big link (which was seized to the heel of the foremast), and he put both his arms through it, and hung on to it like grim death.

But the chain gave such aYankwhen it came-to, that the big link carried away, and oh, roll and go, out it went through the hawsehole, in a shower of bright sparks, carrying the devil with it. There is no devil now. The devil’s dead.

As for the old man, he looked over the bows watching the bubbles burst, but the devil never rose. Then he went to the fo’c’s’le scuttle and banged thereon with ahand-spike.

“Rouse out, there, the port watch!” he called, “an’ get my dinghy inboard.”

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