Caxton's Book: A Collection of Essays, Poems, Tales, and Sketches Part 23

This verse was repeated over and over again inaudibly. Gradually, however, his voice became a little louder, and a little louder still, until finally poor Hal hallooed it vociferously forth so sonorously that it drowned the very thunder. He had repeated it just seventy-seven times, when suddenly a monstrous head was thrust in at the door, and demanded, in a voice that sounded like the maelstrom, "What do _you_ want with Odin?" "Oh, nothing--nothing in the world, I thank you, sir,"

politely responded poor Hal, shaking from head to foot. Here the head was followed by the shoulders, arms, body and legs of a giant at least forty feet high. Of course he came in on all fours, and approached in close proximity to Black Hal. Hal involuntarily retreated, as far as he could, reciting to himself the only prayer he remembered, "Now I lay me down to sleep," etc.

The giant did not appear desirous of pursuing Hal, being afraid--so Hal said--that he would draw his knife on him. But be the cause what it might, he seated himself at the head of the nine-pin alley, and shouted, "Stand up!" As he did so, the nine-pins at the other end arose and took their places.

"Now, sir," said he, turning again to Hal, "I'll bet you an ounce of your blood I can beat you rolling."

Hal trembled again, but meekly replied, "Please, sir, we don't bet _blood_ nowadays--we bet _money_."

"Blood's my money," roared forth the giant. "Fee, fo, fum!" Hal tried in vain to hoist the window.

"Will you bet?"

"Yes, sir," said Hal; and he thought as it was only _an ounce_, he could spare that without much danger, and it might appease the monster's appet.i.te.

"Roll first!" said the giant.

"Yes, sir," replied Hal, as he seized what he supposed to be the largest and his favorite ball.

"What are you doing with Mimir's head?" roared forth the monster.

"I beg your pardon, most humbly," began Hal, as he let the b.l.o.o.d.y head fall; "I did not mean any harm."

"Rumble, bang-whang!" bellowed the thunder.

Hal fell on his knees and recited most devoutly, "Now I lay me down,"

etc.

"Roll on! roll on! I say," and the giant seized poor Hal by the collar and set him on his feet.

He now selected a large ball, and poising it carefully in his hand, ran a few steps, and sent it whirling right in among the nine-pins; but what was his astonishment to behold them jump lightly aside, and permit the ball to pa.s.s in an avenue directly through the middle of the alley. Hal shuddered. The second and third ball met with no better success.

Odin--for Hal said it was certainly he, as he had Mimir's head along--now grasped a ball and rolled it with all his might; but long before it reached the nine-pins, they had, every one of them, tumbled down, and lay sprawling on the alley.

"Two spares!" said the giant, as he grinned most gleefully at poor Hal.

"Get up!" and up the pins all stood instantly. Taking another ball, he hurled it down the alley, and the same result followed. "Two more spares!" and Odin shook his gigantic sides with laughter.

"I give up the game," whined out Hal.

"Then you lose double," rejoined Odin.

Hal readily consented to pay two ounces, for he imagined, by yielding at once, he would so much the sooner get rid of his grim companion. As he said so, Odin pulled a pair of scales out of his coat pocket, made proportionably to his own size. He poised them upon a beam in the alley, and drew forth what he denominated two ounces, and put them in one scale. Each ounce was about the size of a twenty-eight pound weight, and was quite as heavy.

"Ha! ha! ha!! Ha! ha! ha!!! Ha! ha! ha!!!!" shouted the giant, as he grasped the gasping and terrified gambler. He soon rolled up his sleeves, and bound his arm with a pocket handkerchief. Next he drew forth a lancet as long as a sword, and drove the point into the biggest vein he could discover. Hal screamed and fainted. When he returned to consciousness, the sun was s.h.i.+ning brightly in at the window, and the sweet rumbling of the b.a.l.l.s a.s.sured him that he still lay where the giant left him. On rising to his feet he perceived that a large coagulum of blood had collected where his head rested all night, and that he could scarcely walk from the effects of his exhaustion. He returned immediately home and told his wife all that had occurred; and though, like some of the neighbors, she distrusted the tale, yet she never intimated her doubts to Black Hal himself. The alley-keeper a.s.sured me in a whisper, one day, that upon the very night fixed on by Hal for the adventure, he was beastly drunk, and had been engaged in a fight with one of his boon companions, who gave him a black eye and a b.l.o.o.d.y nose.

But the alley-keeper was always jealous of Black Hal's superiority in story telling; besides, he often drank too much himself, and I suspect he originated the report he related to me in a fit of wounded pride, or drunken braggadocio. One thing is certain, he never ventured to repeat the story in the presence of Black Hal himself.

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In spite of the attention I endeavored to bestow on the marvelous history of Black Hal and his grim companion, my mind occasionally wandered far away, and could only find repose in communing with her who I now discovered for the first time held in her own hands the thread of my destiny. Lucy was not blind to these fits of abstraction, and whenever they gained entire control of my attention, she would pause, lay down the ma.n.u.script, and threaten most seriously to discontinue the perusal, unless I proved a better listener. I ask no man's pardon for declaring that my sister was an excellent reader. Most brothers, perhaps think the same of most sisters; but there _was_ a charm in Lucy's accent and a distinctness in her enunciation I have never heard excelled. Owing to these qualities, as much, perhaps, as to the strangeness of the story, I became interested in the fate of the drunken gambler, and when Lucy concluded, I was ready to exclaim, "And pray where is Black Hal now?"

My thoughts took another direction, however, and I impatiently demanded whether or not the sample story had been imitated. A guilty blush a.s.sured me quite as satisfactorily as words could have done, that Miss Lucy had herself made an attempt, and I therefore insisted that as she had whetted and excited the appet.i.te, it would be highly unfraternal--(particularly in my present very precarious condition)--that parenthesis settled the matter--to deny me the means of satisfying it.

"But you'll laugh at me," timidly whispered my sister.

"Of course I shall," said I, "if your catastrophe is half as melancholy as Black Hal's. But make haste, or I shall be off to St. Louis. But pray inform me, what is the subject of your composition?"

"The Origin of Marriage."

"I believe, on my soul," responded I, laughing outright, "you girls never think about anything else."

I provoked no reply, and the ma.n.u.script being unfolded, my sister thus attempted to elucidate

THE ORIGIN OF MARRIAGE.

Professor Williams having ceased his manipulations, my eyes involuntarily closed, and I became unconscious to everything occurring around me. There's truth in mesmerism, after all, thought I, and being in the clairvoyant state, I beheld a most beautiful comet at this moment emerging from the constellation Taurus, and describing a curve about the star Zeta, one of the Pleiades. Now for a trip through infinite s.p.a.ce!

and as this thought entered my brain, I grasped a hair in the tail of the comet as it whizzed by me.

I climbed up the glittering hair until I found myself seated very comfortably on the comet's back, and was beginning to enjoy my starlit ramble exceedingly, when I was suddenly aroused from my meditations by the song of a heavenly minstrel, who, wandering from star to star and system to system, sang the fate of other worlds and other beings to those who would listen to his strains and grant him the rites of hospitality. As I approached, his tones were suddenly changed, his voice lowered into a deeper key, and gazing intently at me, or at what evidenced my presence to his sight, thus began:

The flaming sword of the cherub, which had waved so frightfully above the gate of the garden of Eden, had disappeared; the angel himself was gone; and Adam, as he approached the spot where so lately he had enjoyed the delights of heaven, beheld with astonishment and regret that Paradise and all its splendors had departed from the earth forever.

Where the garden lately bloomed, he could discover only the dark and smouldering embers of a conflagration; a hard lava had incrusted itself along the golden walks; the birds were flown, the flowers withered, the fountains dried up, and desolation brooded over the scene.

"Ah!" sighed the patriarch of men, "where are now the pleasures which I once enjoyed along these peaceful avenues? Where are all those beautiful spirits, given by Heaven to watch over and protect me? Each guardian angel has deserted me, and the rainbow glories of Paradise have flown. No more the sun s.h.i.+nes out in undimmed splendor, for clouds array him in gloom; the earth, forgetful of her verdure and her flowers, produces thorns to wound and frosts to chill me. The very air, once all balm and zephyrs, now howls around me with the voice of the storm and the fury of the hurricane. No more the notes of peace and happiness greet my ears, but the harsh tones of strife and battle resound on every side. Nature has kindled the flames of discord in her own bosom, and universal war has begun his reign!"

And then the father of mankind hid his face in the bosom of his companion, and wept the bitter tears of contrition and repentance.

"Oh, do not weep so bitterly, my Adam," exclaimed his companion. "True, we are miserable, but all is not yet lost; we have forfeited the smiles of Heaven, but we may yet regain our lost place in its affections. Let us learn from our misfortunes the anguish of guilt, but let us learn also the mercy of redemption. We may yet be happy."

"Oh, talk not of happiness now," interrupted Adam; "that nymph who once wailed at our side, attentive to the beck, has disappeared, and fled from the companions.h.i.+p of such guilty, fallen beings as ourselves, forever."

"Not forever, Adam," kindly rejoined Eve; "she may yet be lurking among these groves, or lie hid behind yon hills."

"Then let us find her," quickly responded Adam; "you follow the sun, sweet Eve, to his resting-place, whilst I will trace these sparkling waters to their bourn. Let us ramble this whole creation o'er; and when we have found her, let us meet again on this very spot, and cling to her side, until the doom of death shall overtake us."

And the eye of Adam beamed with hope, then kindled for the first time on earth in the bosom of man; and he bade Eve his first farewell, and started eastward in his search.

Eve turned her face to the west, and set out on her allotted journey.

The sun had shone a hundred times in midsummer splendor, and a hundred times had hid himself in the clouds of winter, and yet no human foot had trod the spot where the garden of Eden once bloomed. Adam had in vain traced the Euphrates to the sea, and climbed the Himalaya Mountains. In vain had he endured the tropical heats on the Ganges, and the winter's cold in Siberia. He stood at last upon the borders of that narrow sea which separates Asia from America, and casting a wistful glance to the far-off continent, exclaimed: "In yon land, so deeply blue in the distance, that it looks like heaven, Happiness may have taken refuge.

Alas! I cannot pursue her there. I will return to Eden, and learn if Eve, too, has been unsuccessful."

And then he took one more look at the distant land, sighed his adieu, and set out on his return.

Poor Eve! First child of misery, first daughter of despair! Poor Eve, with the blue of heaven in her eye, and the crimson of shame upon her lip! Poor Eve, arrayed in beauty, but hastening to decay--she, too, was unsuccessful.

Wandering in her westward way, the azure waters of the Mediterranean soon gleamed upon her sight. She stood at length upon the pebbly sh.o.r.e, and the glad waves, silent as death before, when they kissed her naked feet, commenced that song still heard in their eternal roar. A mermaid seemed to rise from the waters at her feet, and to imitate her every motion. Her long dark tresses, her deep blue eyes, her rosy cheek, her sorrowful look, all were reflected in the mermaid before her.

"Sweet spirit," said Eve, "canst thou inform me where the nymph Happiness lies concealed? She always stood beside us in the garden of Eden; but when we were driven from Paradise we beheld her no more."

The lips of the mermaid moved, but Eve could hear no reply.