In her arms the babe was a figure of mist, rosy, vague as a breath on a mirror.
"The earth alone lasts. Inâh! It is the end, O beloved!"
The words came from the mist--a mist as formless as the ether--a mist that drove in and crowded him, that came from the sea, from the clouds, from the earth at his feet. Faint with terror, he staggered forward calling, "Beloved! And thou, Chaské, O beloved! Aké u! Aké u!"
Far out at sea a rosy star glimmered an instant in the mist and went out.
A sea bird screamed, soaring over the waste of fog-smothered waters. Again he saw the rosy star; it came nearer; its reflection glimmered in the water.
He heard a voice, dull in the choking mist.
There was a sound on the shoal, a flicker in the fog, the flare of a torch, a face white, livid, terrible--the face of the dead.
He fell upon his knees; he closed his eyes and opened them. Tully stood beside him with a coil of rope.
Ihó! Behold the end! The earth alone lasts. The sand, the opal wave on the golden beach, the sea of sapphire, the dusted starlight, the wind, and love, shall die. Death also shall die, and lie on the shores of the skies like the bleached skull there on the Key to Grief, polished, empty, with its teeth embedded in the sand.
He that knows not, and knows not that he knows not, is a fool. Shun him. He that knows not, and knows that he knows not, is simple. Teach him. He that knows, and knows not that he knows, is asleep. Wake him. He that knows, and knows that he knows, is wise. Follow him.
Much as I dislike it, I am obliged to include this story in a volume devoted to fiction: I have attempted to tell it as an absolutely true story, but until three months ago, when the indisputable proofs were placed before the British Association by Professor James Holroyd, I was regarded as an impostor. Now that the Smithsonian Institute in Washington, the Philadelphia Zoölogical Society, and the Natural History Museum of New York city, are convinced that the story is truthful and accurate in every particular, I prefer to tell it my own way. Professor Holroyd urges me to do this, although Professor Bruce Stoddard, of Columbia College, is now at work upon a pamphlet, to be published the latter part of next month, describing scientifically the extraordinary discovery which, to the shame of the United States, was first accepted and recognised in England.