That night I dreamt a monstrous dream; and it seemed to me that a ship anchored off the island on a dark midnight.

Then rose up the dreadful figure on the shore, and stretched forth an arm of stone, and with a stone hand laid hold on the ship, and lifted her aloft, and dropt her all shattered into the crater of the volcan. Whereupon, with a blast of sulphurous fire, the ship was blown an appalling great height into the air.

With that, I awoke; but, though the phantasy of my dream passed away, I knew, as by an instinct, that something monstrous had, indeed, happened on the island. I felt along the wall for the little brass knob; and, having found and pressed it, I looked round in the lighted cell. One of the walls was rent in a long fissure!

Scarce I had seen the thing, but the door was thrown violently open, and Ambrose came dashing in.

“Clayton!” cried he, terror in his staring eyes, “Clayton!”

“An earthquake!” cried I, “Was’t an earthquake?”

“Ay,” answered he. “Haste! Come on! If there come another, we shall be entombed!”

I put on a great cloak, and we hasted out. The passage was full of men scantly dressed, making towards the door. They cursed and swore, as they shoved one another along helter-skelter.

Ambrose and I reached the great door, and in a trice stood without in the darkness of the night. ’Twas dark indeed! There was no moon nor stars. The air was hot and heavy, and seemed to throb in our ears.

Suddenly there came a jag of lightning that rent the black heaven like a scroll; and the thunder scarce had ceased to roll, but, flash upon flash, and jag upon jag, the lightning came continuously, as if it would seam and scar and melt the firmament! The earth did crack and crack as it came to ground.

There came a sudden, mighty flaw of wind; and then fell the rain!

It fell in flows and cataracts, crashing upon the trees of the wood like an avalanche, driving the fugitives back into the passage.

Yet the outrageous tempest held not long, ceasing as suddenly as it had begun. Hereupon some were for returning to their beds; but all trembled, wavering in their minds. Ambrose and I made towards the wood, which was all shattered and tumbled together, and the path quite gone. With much ado, however, we contrived to get through it, or rather over it; for often we were obliged to climb.

“I am apt to think,” said I as we emerged upon the cliff, “that ’twas no earthquake; the lightning struck the place.”

“Nay, you are in the wrong,” replied Ambrose. “The earth shook. ’Twas certainly an earthquake.”

“It was neither one nor the other,” came the voice of Doctor Copicus, who stepped suddenly into our path.

“I say that it was neither one nor the other,” said he again; but there was no anger in his voice—nay, he smiled on us, as he added:

“Hearken, my children! Come, walk with me and hearken, for there’s somewhat I’d have you to know.”

So, wondering greatly, we began to walk with him alongst the cliff.

For a while, we went without speech. Then the Doctor spoke again; but his voice was strange and remote, as if he spoke to himself.

“Much injustice,” said he, “much contumely, much wrong, I suffered at their hands. I, a scholar such as cometh not in many generations, a thinker compared with whom their subtlest heads were as wooden blocks; I whose insight was piercing to the soul! They despised me! rejected me! cast me out!

“To destroy the nation, to destroy it root and branch, to rase the populous cities, to blast the countrysides; to find out a combustible, an explosive searching as lightning, mighty that blasting gunpowder would be, compared to it, but a puny breath—such motives, such intents, became henceforth the poles and axle of my transported mind.

“This night, my children” (turning to us) “was that mighty thing discovered, and the combustion of but a grain of it wrought the convulsion that shook this island.... A cock-boat’s burden would shake me a greater island!

“Thus the power is given—and the will is taken away!

“How is my hatred broken? dissolved and broken? like a bubble broken? My firm purpose, tempered in the fires of hell, is no more! no more! It went from me, Ambrose, when I pardoned you on the hill!”

He fell silent; but we continued to pace along in the sombre night.

“But hearken! mark me well! Ambrose, you have the keeping of my parchments, what be they?”

“The Book of Science, the Book of Poesy, the Book of Life,” answered Ambrose.

“So. Therein is my wisdom stored; therein is laid up the efficacy of my genius; therein is traced and pencilled out my orbit and circling arcs....”

He broke off; for there came a dreadful, subterraneous rumbling sound. The ground did heave beneath our feet. I was thrown staggering down.

The dread portent ceased. The earth fell quiet. But, from a point in the interior of the island, a blast of flame belched forth into the night![F]