CHAPTER XXVIIITHE VOYAGE AND THE WRECK
WHETHER this was a mere fable I was never able to verify by personal experience. Christendom will doubtless take it as wholly the creation of Sneekape’s brain, so unlike nature does it seem. The only feature that I could vouch for as fact was the warlike attack as we weighed anchor from Swoonarie. I was awakened from my meditation over the question by a low murmur from the women’s section; I listened, and was certain that it was a sleep-song they were chanting. Sneekape gave me the drift of each verse, and I tried to turn it into the same metre as they used:
Snowflakes of starlightDrift on us for ever.Suns lend their far light,Transmuter of riverAnd slumberous oceanTo shimmer of gold.Eyes dim with emotion,Eyes infinite-souled,With magic diaphanousOur spirits entrance;In our hearts, as they coffin us,Dreams quiver and dance.Dead to our kin we lie;Only the worlds of night,Wizards that charm the sky,See our unbodied flight.Dream-winged we hover,Death-drawn from birth;As lover to lover,Soul to its earth.Break we the bond at last,Breasting the infinite;Future is clear as past,Chaos as light.Afloat on the stellar deepRest, rest, we crave,Cradled to eyeless sleep,Dream we from wave to wave.Sleep, sleep, let us slumber!Oh, we have lived and fought,Borne pains without number.Waken, Oh, waken us not.
Snowflakes of starlightDrift on us for ever.Suns lend their far light,Transmuter of riverAnd slumberous oceanTo shimmer of gold.Eyes dim with emotion,Eyes infinite-souled,With magic diaphanousOur spirits entrance;In our hearts, as they coffin us,Dreams quiver and dance.Dead to our kin we lie;Only the worlds of night,Wizards that charm the sky,See our unbodied flight.Dream-winged we hover,Death-drawn from birth;As lover to lover,Soul to its earth.Break we the bond at last,Breasting the infinite;Future is clear as past,Chaos as light.Afloat on the stellar deepRest, rest, we crave,Cradled to eyeless sleep,Dream we from wave to wave.Sleep, sleep, let us slumber!Oh, we have lived and fought,Borne pains without number.Waken, Oh, waken us not.
Snowflakes of starlightDrift on us for ever.Suns lend their far light,Transmuter of riverAnd slumberous oceanTo shimmer of gold.Eyes dim with emotion,Eyes infinite-souled,With magic diaphanousOur spirits entrance;In our hearts, as they coffin us,Dreams quiver and dance.Dead to our kin we lie;Only the worlds of night,Wizards that charm the sky,See our unbodied flight.Dream-winged we hover,Death-drawn from birth;As lover to lover,Soul to its earth.Break we the bond at last,Breasting the infinite;Future is clear as past,Chaos as light.Afloat on the stellar deepRest, rest, we crave,Cradled to eyeless sleep,Dream we from wave to wave.Sleep, sleep, let us slumber!Oh, we have lived and fought,Borne pains without number.Waken, Oh, waken us not.
Snowflakes of starlight
Drift on us for ever.
Suns lend their far light,
Transmuter of river
And slumberous ocean
To shimmer of gold.
Eyes dim with emotion,
Eyes infinite-souled,
With magic diaphanous
Our spirits entrance;
In our hearts, as they coffin us,
Dreams quiver and dance.
Dead to our kin we lie;
Only the worlds of night,
Wizards that charm the sky,
See our unbodied flight.
Dream-winged we hover,
Death-drawn from birth;
As lover to lover,
Soul to its earth.
Break we the bond at last,
Breasting the infinite;
Future is clear as past,
Chaos as light.
Afloat on the stellar deep
Rest, rest, we crave,
Cradled to eyeless sleep,
Dream we from wave to wave.
Sleep, sleep, let us slumber!
Oh, we have lived and fought,
Borne pains without number.
Waken, Oh, waken us not.
It is impossible to give the drowsy sound of the melody in a language, like English, that has been forged in unflagging struggle, in the stress of battle with the forces of nature. Generations of ailooled nerves and lips had saturated every word with languorous music. No cradle-song that I had ever heard approached it in soporific power. All who sat within sound of it dropped their eyelids; the voices began to seem distant and stifled. At times the music died away, and again it rose in dim yet growing echo, at first like the murmur of bees in the still summer air, then like a wail swept fitfully by a breath that comes we know not whence and vanishes in a moment; out of unknown depths the lullaby threw its charm and then slowly withdrew it; the scarce-felt gradation of the cadence was as strong in its hypnotic fascination as the breeze-flung note. The singers seemed to fall into a dream as they sang. The words melted into one liquid rill of song. Faint and muffled its melody floated up as out of a dream. The falla lagged and dallied upon the gleaming levels of the sea; it was the barge of sleep, and we seemed to have been a thousand years fettered in trance. The sound of the paddles came only at intervals, and then it ceased, and the whole skyey vault and the weary sea and the specks of being that traversed it vanished. I fell countless fathoms through space. And then the existence snapped short; a crash rounded me up into the confines of life again. It was the fusillade of the boatswain’s whip. And before we were rightly awake the ship was swinging along to this loud chant sung at full lung-pitch by the paddlers:
We beat with our paddles the passionless sea;The flush of our wounding dies out on her face;We dance free as gods on her billowy lea;The trail of our feet no mortal can trace.The life in our veinsOutgallops all pains.Allanamoulin, Allanamoulin.We slake our fierce thirst from the cup of the sky;Its azure hath fathomless depths to exhaust;Translucent within it worlds numberless lie;With the gold of the dawn its rim is embossed.The life is divine,We drink with such wine.Allanamoulin, Allanamoulin.Our blood beats in time with the palpitant stars,Our paddles in harmony rise and fall;We cease from our labour, and life is a farce;We rest, and our hearts grow weary of all.For life, it is toil,And happiness moil.Allanamoulin, Allanamoulin.The grave is the only repose for our being;Thou ’rt welcome, Oh, death! When thou wilt, we are thine.There’s nought on this earth that’s worth thinking or seeing,And life’s fitful fever has no anodyne.To work is to rest;To die is the best.Allanamoulin, Allanamoulin.
We beat with our paddles the passionless sea;The flush of our wounding dies out on her face;We dance free as gods on her billowy lea;The trail of our feet no mortal can trace.The life in our veinsOutgallops all pains.Allanamoulin, Allanamoulin.We slake our fierce thirst from the cup of the sky;Its azure hath fathomless depths to exhaust;Translucent within it worlds numberless lie;With the gold of the dawn its rim is embossed.The life is divine,We drink with such wine.Allanamoulin, Allanamoulin.Our blood beats in time with the palpitant stars,Our paddles in harmony rise and fall;We cease from our labour, and life is a farce;We rest, and our hearts grow weary of all.For life, it is toil,And happiness moil.Allanamoulin, Allanamoulin.The grave is the only repose for our being;Thou ’rt welcome, Oh, death! When thou wilt, we are thine.There’s nought on this earth that’s worth thinking or seeing,And life’s fitful fever has no anodyne.To work is to rest;To die is the best.Allanamoulin, Allanamoulin.
We beat with our paddles the passionless sea;The flush of our wounding dies out on her face;We dance free as gods on her billowy lea;The trail of our feet no mortal can trace.The life in our veinsOutgallops all pains.Allanamoulin, Allanamoulin.
We beat with our paddles the passionless sea;
The flush of our wounding dies out on her face;
We dance free as gods on her billowy lea;
The trail of our feet no mortal can trace.
The life in our veins
Outgallops all pains.
Allanamoulin, Allanamoulin.
We slake our fierce thirst from the cup of the sky;Its azure hath fathomless depths to exhaust;Translucent within it worlds numberless lie;With the gold of the dawn its rim is embossed.The life is divine,We drink with such wine.Allanamoulin, Allanamoulin.
We slake our fierce thirst from the cup of the sky;
Its azure hath fathomless depths to exhaust;
Translucent within it worlds numberless lie;
With the gold of the dawn its rim is embossed.
The life is divine,
We drink with such wine.
Allanamoulin, Allanamoulin.
Our blood beats in time with the palpitant stars,Our paddles in harmony rise and fall;We cease from our labour, and life is a farce;We rest, and our hearts grow weary of all.For life, it is toil,And happiness moil.Allanamoulin, Allanamoulin.
Our blood beats in time with the palpitant stars,
Our paddles in harmony rise and fall;
We cease from our labour, and life is a farce;
We rest, and our hearts grow weary of all.
For life, it is toil,
And happiness moil.
Allanamoulin, Allanamoulin.
The grave is the only repose for our being;Thou ’rt welcome, Oh, death! When thou wilt, we are thine.There’s nought on this earth that’s worth thinking or seeing,And life’s fitful fever has no anodyne.To work is to rest;To die is the best.Allanamoulin, Allanamoulin.
The grave is the only repose for our being;
Thou ’rt welcome, Oh, death! When thou wilt, we are thine.
There’s nought on this earth that’s worth thinking or seeing,
And life’s fitful fever has no anodyne.
To work is to rest;
To die is the best.
Allanamoulin, Allanamoulin.
The refrain is untranslatable; it was as old as the race, I was told; it had been used from generation to generation in paddle-songs, till it had grown rounded and smooth in the stream of time and lost all trace of its inner grain and force. An approach to the meaning would be, “Farewell, Rest! There is none upon earth.” Sneekape and his friends were unwilling to taint their lips with it; for it had been a slave-word for centuries and they considered it beneath contempt. It was difficult even to get some translation of the paddle-song; but verse by verse and line by line I dragged it out of the haughty Figlefians.
Yet when they talked of their slaves, they spoke of them with leniency and even with kindness. Pressing questions home, I found that they considered the lash one of the most benevolent of institutions; it softened the asperities of slave-nature; for slaves were children, and had to be dealt with as children; they did not know what was good for them; and their masters had to find out and insist; their best welfare was obedience to law and routine, and the whip administered with judicious severity induced obedience and prevented too large doses of this wholesome physic.
It was the first outrunner of a breeze that had awakened the master of the paddles, a cool breeze that seemed to come off distant snows. Soon the falla was all bustle, and the great square sails that stretched beyond the bulwarks twice the breadth of the ship were taut before the wind. We spun along at a merry rate, and the paddles disappeared from the sides. But it was only a catspaw, and died away. The sails fell heavily against the masts, and had to be run down. The slaves again took their place at the paddles, and we lounged along the sultry leaden floor of the sea.
But suddenly there fell upon us like the stroke of a hammer a wandering gust; the masts creaked, the loose cordage lashed the ship in their fury till she staggered. Then all was still. The old leaden dulness came upon the waters; it had been like the gleam of gnashing teeth in the sullen monotony of enslaved work. A yell from the slaves’ quarters punctured the silence; it was partly from the whip of the boatswain, partly from the breaking of their paddles by the ridge of water that swept athwart us. In five minutes we were helpless between the surly rancour of the hurricane and the truculent floundering of the billows. On we rushed, staggering, drunken, with horror and frenzy. The slaves would not rise to the lash; the officers muttered curses between their teeth, and did what they could to guide her course. The daylight was blind with the angry dust of showers; the circle of grey film caged the ship, and eyes were futile and weary in their frantic eagerness to pierce it. Down in the women’s quarters I could see Sneekape and his fellows lying prostrate, their faces in their hands on the planks; the women were huddled together in apathetic limpness.
Out of the wreck that drowned so many of the Figlefians I was rescued by one of the slaves, who canoed me with his bride to the base of a great cliff. The tide was low: as high as we could reach, the surface was rough with living shells that moved to our touch, and streamers of seaweed rose and fell with the ripple. At last he forced the boat back from the rocky wall: there was strong suction inwards. He bade us with a gesture lie down flat in the bottom, whilst he at the bow grovelled with a hand raised to the low-valuted rock. We shot in underneath into darkness, but in a few minutes we were out of the torrent, moored in a peaceful bay.