The Argosy . ce to face with death. At any moment you may be overtaken bythe most horrible of fates. Your grave, like that of Moses, shall heunknown. But you are fascinated, and you gaze and gaze into thefiery furnace, the yawning gulf, the black pit of destruction. Instinc-tively a terrible verse rings in your ears, and you pray to escape thedoom : Where the worm dieth not, and the fire is not quenched. I You find that it is a greater ordeal to go down again than it was?to come up. If you walk, you grope and stumble, and your footingseems uncertain. You cannot divest yourself of a sensation t
The Argosy . ce to face with death. At any moment you may be overtaken bythe most horrible of fates. Your grave, like that of Moses, shall heunknown. But you are fascinated, and you gaze and gaze into thefiery furnace, the yawning gulf, the black pit of destruction. Instinc-tively a terrible verse rings in your ears, and you pray to escape thedoom : Where the worm dieth not, and the fire is not quenched. I You find that it is a greater ordeal to go down again than it was?to come up. If you walk, you grope and stumble, and your footingseems uncertain. You cannot divest yourself of a sensation that theavenging mountain has only delayed your fate with a refined cruelty/With every step it seems about to open and swallow you up. Imaginesuch a moment: far worse even than that moment when at sea youbehold your vessel sinking and the waters closing around you. In Sunny Climes. 241 If, on the other hand, you are still on horseback, the sensation isalmost more uncomfortable and much more tiring. The patient. Looking into the Crater. beast puts on an action very much like that of a camel labouringunder a burden. In the darkness, you seem everlastingly about tooitchpole over a precipice. The sea stretched out before you is an VOL. XLVII. Q 242 In Sunny Climes. illimitable space given over to chaos. A few lights twinkling uporfit here and there look like lamps of another world waiting to lightyou on your journey from this. At length you reach the bottom. A nervous and devout Italianwould ejaculate a fervent Paternoster, and you utter a no less earnestthanksgiving. The excursion is over, the danger is past. You donot like deeds of darkness, and you are glad. It had to be done, itought to be done; but it really required a little courage. All this,no doubt, adds zest to the recollection, charm to the afterthought. By day the excursion is very different. It is not half so thrillingThe sense of mystery is lost. The fascination of the horrible andthe terrible and the portentous has ev
Size: 1323px × 1888px
Photo credit: © The Reading Room / Alamy / Afripics
License: Licensed
Model Released: No
Keywords: ., bookauthorwoodhenr, bookcentury1800, bookdecade1860, bookyear1865
