or, Enchanted Isles
By Herman Melville
SKETCH SECOND.
TWO SIDES TO A TORTOISE.
“Most ugly shapes and horrible aspects, Such as Dame Nature selfe mote feare to see, Or shame, that ever should so fowle defects From her most cunning hand escaped bee; All dreadfull pourtraicts of deformitee. No wonder if these do a man appall; For all that here at home we dreadfull hold Be but as bugs to fearen babes withall Compared to the creatures in these isles’ entrall
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“Fear naught, then said the palmer, well avized, For these same monsters are not there indeed, But are into these fearful shapes disguized.
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“And lifting up his vertuous staffe on high, Then all that dreadful armie fast gan flye Into great Zethy’s bosom, where they hidden lye.”
In view of the description given, may one be gay upon the Encantadas?Yes: that is, find one the gayety, and he will be gay. And, indeed,sackcloth and ashes as they are, the isles are not perhaps unmitigatedgloom. For while no spectator can deny their claims to a most solemn andsuperstitious consideration, no more than my firmest resolutions candecline to behold the spectre-tortoise when emerging from its shadowyrecess; yet even the tortoise, dark and melancholy as it is upon theback, still possesses a bright side; its calipee or breast-plate beingsometimes of a faint yellowish or golden tinge. Moreover, every oneknows that tortoises as well as turtle are of such a make, that if youbut put them on their backs you thereby expose their bright sideswithout the possibility of their recovering themselves, and turning intoview the other. But after you have done this, and because you have donethis, you should not swear that the tortoise has no dark side. Enjoy thebright, keep it turned up perpetually if you can, but be honest, anddon’t deny the black. Neither should he, who cannot turn the tortoisefrom its natural position so as to hide the darker and expose hislivelier aspect, like a great October pumpkin in the sun, for that causedeclare the creature to be one total inky blot. The tortoise is bothblack and bright. But let us to particulars.
Some months before my first stepping ashore upon the group, my ship wascruising in its close vicinity. One noon we found ourselves off theSouth Head of Albemarle, and not very far from the land. Partly by wayof freak, and partly by way of spying out so strange a country, a boat’screw was sent ashore, with orders to see all they could, and besides,bring back whatever tortoises they could conveniently transport.
It was after sunset, when the adventurers returned. I looked down overthe ship’s high side as if looking down over the curb of a well, anddimly saw the damp boat, deep in the sea with some unwonted weight.Ropes were dropt over, and presently three huge antediluvian-lookingtortoises, after much straining, were landed on deck. They seemed hardlyof the seed of earth. We had been broad upon the waters for five longmonths, a period amply sufficient to make all things of the land wear afabulous hue to the dreamy mind. Had three Spanish custom-house officersboarded us then, it is not unlikely that I should have curiously staredat them, felt of them, and stroked them much as savages serve civilizedguests. But instead of three custom-house officers, behold these reallywondrous tortoises–none of your schoolboy mud-turtles–but black aswidower’s weeds, heavy as chests of plate, with vast shells medallionedand orbed like shields, and dented and blistered like shields that havebreasted a battle, shaggy, too, here and there, with dark green moss,and slimy with the spray of the sea. These mystic creatures, suddenlytranslated by night from unutterable solitudes to our peopled deck,affected me in a manner not easy to unfold. They seemed newly crawledforth from beneath the foundations of the world. Yea, they seemed theidentical tortoises whereon the Hindoo plants this total sphere. With alantern I inspected them more closely. Such worshipful venerableness ofaspect! Such furry greenness mantling the rude peelings and healing thefissures of their shattered shells. I no more saw three tortoises. Theyexpanded–became transfigured. I seemed to see three Roman Coliseums inmagnificent decay.
Ye oldest inhabitants of this, or any other isle, said I, pray, give methe freedom of your three-walled towns.
The great feeling inspired by these creatures was that ofage:–dateless, indefinite endurance. And in fact that any othercreature can live and breathe as long as the tortoise of the Encantadas,I will not readily believe. Not to hint of their known capacity ofsustaining life, while going without food for an entire year, considerthat impregnable armor of their living mail. What other bodily beingpossesses such a citadel wherein to resist the assaults of Time?
As, lantern in hand, I scraped among the moss and beheld the ancientscars of bruises received in many a sullen fall among the marlymountains of the isle–scars strangely widened, swollen, halfobliterate, and yet distorted like those sometimes found in the bark ofvery hoary trees, I seemed an antiquary of a geologist, studying thebird-tracks and ciphers upon the exhumed slates trod by incrediblecreatures whose very ghosts are now defunct.
As I lay in my hammock that night, overhead I heard the slow wearydraggings of the three ponderous strangers along the encumbered deck.Their stupidity or their resolution was so great, that they never wentaside for any impediment. One ceased his movements altogether justbefore the mid-watch. At sunrise I found him butted like a battering-ramagainst the immovable foot of the foremast, and still striving, toothand nail, to force the impossible passage. That these tortoises are thevictims of a penal, or malignant, or perhaps a downright diabolicalenchanter, seems in nothing more likely than in that strange infatuationof hopeless toil which so often possesses them. I have known them intheir journeyings ram themselves heroically against rocks, and longabide there, nudging, wriggling, wedging, in order to displace them, andso hold on their inflexible path. Their crowning curse is their drudgingimpulse to straightforwardness in a belittered world.
Meeting with no such hinderance as their companion did, the othertortoises merely fell foul of small stumbling-blocks–buckets, blocks,and coils of rigging–and at times in the act of crawling over themwould slip with an astounding rattle to the deck. Listening to thesedraggings and concussions, I thought me of the haunt from which theycame; an isle full of metallic ravines and gulches, sunk bottomlesslyinto the hearts of splintered mountains, and covered for many mileswith inextricable thickets. I then pictured these three straight-forwardmonsters, century after century, writhing through the shades, grim asblacksmiths; crawling so slowly and ponderously, that not only didtoad-stools and all fungus things grow beneath their feet, but a sootymoss sprouted upon their backs. With them I lost myself in volcanicmazes; brushed away endless boughs of rotting thickets; till finally ina dream I found myself sitting crosslegged upon the foremost, a Brahminsimilarly mounted upon either side, forming a tripod of foreheads whichupheld the universal cope.
Such was the wild nightmare begot by my first impression of theEncantadas tortoise. But next evening, strange to say, I sat down withmy shipmates, and made a merry repast from tortoise steaks, and tortoisestews; and supper over, out knife, and helped convert the three mightyconcave shells into three fanciful soup-tureens, and polished the threeflat yellowish calipees into three gorgeous salvers.
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