elixilorem

My present situation was one in which all voluntary thought was
swallowed up and lost.  I was hurried away by fury; revenge alone
endowed me with strength and composure; it moulded my feelings and
allowed me to be calculating and calm at periods when otherwise
delirium or death would have been my portion.

My first resolution was to quit Geneva forever; my country, which, when
I was happy and beloved, was dear to me, now, in my adversity, became
hateful.  I provided myself with a sum of money, together with a few
jewels which had belonged to my mother, and departed.  And now my
wanderings began which are to cease but with life.  I have traversed a
vast portion of the earth and have endured all the hardships which
travellers in deserts and barbarous countries are wont to meet.  How I
have lived I hardly know; many times have I stretched my failing limbs
upon the sandy plain and prayed for death.  But revenge kept me alive;
I dared not die and leave my adversary in being.

When I quitted Geneva my first labour was to gain some clue by which I
might trace the steps of my fiendish enemy.  But my plan was unsettled,
and I wandered many hours round the confines of the town, uncertain
what path I should pursue.  As night approached I found myself at the
entrance of the cemetery where William, Elizabeth, and my father
reposed.  I entered it and approached the tomb which marked their
graves.  Everything was silent except the leaves of the trees, which
were gently agitated by the wind; the night was nearly dark, and the
scene would have been solemn and affecting even to an uninterested
observer.  The spirits of the departed seemed to flit around and to
cast a shadow, which was felt but not seen, around the head of the
mourner.

The deep grief which this scene had at first excited quickly gave way
to rage and despair.  They were dead, and I lived; their murderer also
lived, and to destroy him I must drag out my weary existence.  I knelt
on the grass and kissed the earth and with quivering lips exclaimed,
"By the sacred earth on which I kneel, by the shades that wander near
me, by the deep and eternal grief that I feel, I swear; and by thee, O
Night, and the spirits that preside over thee, to pursue the daemon who
caused this misery, until he or I shall perish in mortal conflict.  For
this purpose I will preserve my life; to execute this dear revenge will
I again behold the sun and tread the green herbage of earth, which
otherwise should vanish from my eyes forever.  And I call on you,
spirits of the dead, and on you, wandering ministers of vengeance, to
aid and conduct me in my work.  Let the cursed and hellish monster
drink deep of agony; let him feel the despair that now torments me."  I
had begun my adjuration with solemnity and an awe which almost assured
me that the shades of my murdered friends heard and approved my
devotion, but the furies possessed me as I concluded, and rage choked
my utterance.

I was answered through the stillness of night by a loud and fiendish
laugh.  It rang on my ears long and heavily; the mountains re-echoed
it, and I felt as if all hell surrounded me with mockery and laughter.
Surely in that moment I should have been possessed by frenzy and have
destroyed my miserable existence but that my vow was heard and that I
was reserved for vengeance.  The laughter died away, when a well-known
and abhorred voice, apparently close to my ear, addressed me in an
audible whisper, "I am satisfied, miserable wretch!  You have
determined to live, and I am satisfied."

I darted towards the spot from which the sound proceeded, but the devil
eluded my grasp.  Suddenly the broad disk of the moon arose and shone
full upon his ghastly and distorted shape as he fled with more than
mortal speed.

I pursued him, and for many months this has been my task.  Guided by a
slight clue, I followed the windings of the Rhone, but vainly.  The
blue Mediterranean appeared, and by a strange chance, I saw the fiend
enter by night and hide himself in a vessel bound for the Black Sea.  I
took my passage in the same ship, but he escaped, I know not how.

Amidst the wilds of Tartary and Russia, although he still evaded me, I
have ever followed in his track.  Sometimes the peasants, scared by
this horrid apparition, informed me of his path; sometimes he himself,
who feared that if I lost all trace of him I should despair and die,
left some mark to guide me.  The snows descended on my head, and I saw
the print of his huge step on the white plain.  To you first entering
on life, to whom care is new and agony unknown, how can you understand
what I have felt and still feel?  Cold, want, and fatigue were the
least pains which I was destined to endure; I was cursed by some devil
and carried about with me my eternal hell; yet still a spirit of good
followed and directed my steps and when I most murmured would suddenly
extricate me from seemingly insurmountable difficulties.  Sometimes,
when nature, overcome by hunger, sank under the exhaustion, a repast
was prepared for me in the desert that restored and inspirited me.  The
fare was, indeed, coarse, such as the peasants of the country ate, but
I will not doubt that it was set there by the spirits that I had
invoked to aid me.  Often, when all was dry, the heavens cloudless, and
I was parched by thirst, a slight cloud would bedim the sky, shed the
few drops that revived me, and vanish.

I followed, when I could, the courses of the rivers; but the daemon
generally avoided these, as it was here that the population of the
country chiefly collected.  In other places human beings were seldom
seen, and I generally subsisted on the wild animals that crossed my
path.  I had money with me and gained the friendship of the villagers
by distributing it; or I brought with me some food that I had killed,
which, after taking a small part, I always presented to those who had
provided me with fire and utensils for cooking.

My life, as it passed thus, was indeed hateful to me, and it was during
sleep alone that I could taste joy.  O blessed sleep!  Often, when most
miserable, I sank to repose, and my dreams lulled me even to rapture.
The spirits that guarded me had provided these moments, or rather
hours, of happiness that I might retain strength to fulfil my
pilgrimage.  Deprived of this respite, I should have sunk under my
hardships.  During the day I was sustained and inspirited by the hope
of night, for in sleep I saw my friends, my wife, and my beloved
country; again I saw the benevolent countenance of my father, heard the
silver tones of my Elizabeth's voice, and beheld Clerval enjoying
health and youth.  Often, when wearied by a toilsome march, I persuaded
myself that I was dreaming until night should come and that I should
then enjoy reality in the arms of my dearest friends.  What agonizing
fondness did I feel for them!  How did I cling to their dear forms, as
sometimes they haunted even my waking hours, and persuade myself that
they still lived!  At such moments vengeance, that burned within me,
died in my heart, and I pursued my path towards the destruction of the
daemon more as a task enjoined by heaven, as the mechanical impulse of
some power of which I was unconscious, than as the ardent desire of my
soul.  What his feelings were whom I pursued I cannot know.  Sometimes,
indeed, he left marks in writing on the barks of the trees or cut in
stone that guided me and instigated my fury.  "My reign is not yet
over"--these words were legible in one of these inscriptions--"you
live, and my power is complete.  Follow me; I seek the everlasting ices
of the north, where you will feel the misery of cold and frost, to
which I am impassive.  You will find near this place, if you follow not
too tardily, a dead hare; eat and be refreshed.  Come on, my enemy; we
have yet to wrestle for our lives, but many hard and miserable hours
must you endure until that period shall arrive."

Scoffing devil!  Again do I vow vengeance; again do I devote thee,
miserable fiend, to torture and death.  Never will I give up my search
until he or I perish; and then with what ecstasy shall I join my
Elizabeth and my departed friends, who even now prepare for me the
reward of my tedious toil and horrible pilgrimage!

As I still pursued my journey to the northward, the snows thickened and
the cold increased in a degree almost too severe to support.  The
peasants were shut up in their hovels, and only a few of the most hardy
ventured forth to seize the animals whom starvation had forced from
their hiding-places to seek for prey.  The rivers were covered with
ice, and no fish could be procured; and thus I was cut off from my
chief article of maintenance.  The triumph of my enemy increased with
the difficulty of my labours.  One inscription that he left was in
these words:  "Prepare!  Your toils only begin; wrap yourself in furs
and provide food, for we shall soon enter upon a journey where your
sufferings will satisfy my everlasting hatred."

My courage and perseverance were invigorated by these scoffing words; I
resolved not to fail in my purpose, and calling on heaven to support
me, I continued with unabated fervour to traverse immense deserts,
until the ocean appeared at a distance and formed the utmost boundary
of the horizon.  Oh!  How unlike it was to the blue seasons of the
south!  Covered with ice, it was only to be distinguished from land by
its superior wildness and ruggedness.  The Greeks wept for joy when
they beheld the Mediterranean from the hills of Asia, and hailed with
rapture the boundary of their toils.  I did not weep, but I knelt down
and with a full heart thanked my guiding spirit for conducting me in
safety to the place where I hoped, notwithstanding my adversary's gibe,
to meet and grapple with him.

Some weeks before this period I had procured a sledge and dogs and thus
traversed the snows with inconceivable speed.  I know not whether the
fiend possessed the same advantages, but I found that, as before I had
daily lost ground in the pursuit, I now gained on him, so much so that
when I first saw the ocean he was but one day's journey in advance, and
I hoped to intercept him before he should reach the beach.  With new
courage, therefore, I pressed on, and in two days arrived at a wretched
hamlet on the seashore.  I inquired of the inhabitants concerning the
fiend and gained accurate information.  A gigantic monster, they said,
had arrived the night before, armed with a gun and many pistols,
putting to flight the inhabitants of a solitary cottage through fear of
his terrific appearance.  He had carried off their store of winter
food, and placing it in a sledge, to draw which he had seized on a
numerous drove of trained dogs, he had harnessed them, and the same
night, to the joy of the horror-struck villagers, had pursued his
journey across the sea in a direction that led to no land; and they
conjectured that he must speedily be destroyed by the breaking of the
ice or frozen by the eternal  frosts.

On hearing this information I suffered a temporary access of despair.
He had escaped me, and I must commence a destructive and almost endless
journey across the mountainous ices of the ocean, amidst cold that few
of the inhabitants could long endure and which I, the native of a
genial and sunny climate, could not hope to survive.  Yet at the idea
that the fiend should live and be triumphant, my rage and vengeance
returned, and like a mighty tide, overwhelmed every other feeling.
After a slight repose, during which the spirits of the dead hovered
round and instigated me to toil and revenge, I prepared for my journey.
I exchanged my land-sledge for one fashioned for the inequalities of
the frozen ocean, and purchasing a plentiful stock of provisions, I
departed from land.

I cannot guess how many days have passed since then, but I have endured
misery which nothing but the eternal sentiment of a just retribution
burning within my heart could have enabled me to support.  Immense and
rugged mountains of ice often barred up my passage, and I often heard
the thunder of the ground sea, which threatened my destruction.  But
again the frost came and made the paths of the sea secure.

By the quantity of provision which I had consumed, I should guess that
I had passed three weeks in this journey; and the continual protraction
of hope, returning back upon the heart, often wrung bitter drops of
despondency and grief from my eyes.  Despair had indeed almost secured
her prey, and I should soon have sunk beneath this misery.  Once, after
the poor animals that conveyed me had with incredible toil gained the
summit of a sloping ice mountain, and one, sinking under his fatigue,
died, I viewed the expanse before me with anguish, when suddenly my eye
caught a dark speck upon the dusky plain.  I strained my sight to
discover what it could be and uttered a wild cry of ecstasy when I
distinguished a sledge and the distorted proportions of a well-known
form within.  Oh!  With what a burning gush did hope revisit my heart!
Warm tears filled my eyes, which I hastily wiped away, that they might
not intercept the view I had of the daemon; but still my sight was
dimmed by the burning drops, until, giving way to the emotions that
oppressed me, I wept aloud.

But this was not the time for delay; I disencumbered the dogs of their
dead companion, gave them a plentiful portion of food, and after an
hour's rest, which was absolutely necessary, and yet which was bitterly
irksome to me, I continued my route.  The sledge was still visible, nor
did I again lose sight of it except at the moments when for a short
time some ice-rock concealed it with its intervening crags.  I indeed
perceptibly gained on it, and when, after nearly two days' journey, I
beheld my enemy at no more than a mile distant, my heart bounded within
me.

But now, when I appeared almost within grasp of my foe, my hopes were
suddenly extinguished, and I lost all trace of him more utterly than I
had ever done before.  A ground sea was heard; the thunder of its
progress, as the waters rolled and swelled beneath me, became every
moment more ominous and terrific.  I pressed on, but in vain.  The wind
arose; the sea roared; and, as with the mighty shock of an earthquake,
it split and cracked with a tremendous and overwhelming sound.  The
work was soon finished; in a few minutes a tumultuous sea rolled
between me and my enemy, and I was left drifting on a scattered piece
of ice that was continually lessening and thus preparing for me a
hideous death.  In this manner many appalling hours passed; several of
my dogs died, and I myself was about to sink under the accumulation of
distress when I saw your vessel riding at anchor and holding forth to
me hopes of succour and life.  I had no conception that vessels ever
came so far north and was astounded at the sight.  I quickly destroyed
part of my sledge to construct oars, and by these means was enabled,
with infinite fatigue, to move my ice raft in the direction of your
ship.  I had determined, if you were going southwards, still to trust
myself to the mercy of the seas rather than abandon my purpose.  I
hoped to induce you to grant me a boat with which I could pursue my
enemy.  But your direction was northwards.  You took me on board when
my vigour was exhausted, and I should soon have sunk under my
multiplied hardships into a death which I still dread, for my task is
unfulfilled.

Oh!  When will my guiding spirit, in conducting me to the daemon, allow
me the rest I so much desire; or must I die, and he yet live?  If I do,
swear to me, Walton, that he shall not escape, that you will seek him
and satisfy my vengeance in his death.  And do I dare to ask of you to
undertake my pilgrimage, to endure the hardships that I have undergone?
No; I am not so selfish.  Yet, when I am dead, if he should appear, if
the ministers of vengeance should conduct him to you, swear that he
shall not live--swear that he shall not triumph over my accumulated
woes and survive to add to the list of his dark crimes.  He is eloquent
and persuasive, and once his words had even power over my heart; but
trust him not.  His soul is as hellish as his form, full of treachery
and fiend-like malice.  Hear him not; call on the names of William,
Justine, Clerval, Elizabeth, my father, and of the wretched Victor, and
thrust your sword into his heart.  I will hover near and direct the
steel aright.