At all events, the palace of Vauvert, which had never labored under any imputation against its character until they became its neighbors, began almost immediately afterwards to acquire a bad name. Frightful shrieks were heard to proceed thence at night. Blue, red, and green lights were seen to glimmer from its casements, and then suddenly disappear. The clanking of chains succeeded, together with the howlings of persons as in great pain. Then a ghastly spectre, in pea-green, with long, white beard and serpent's tail, appeared at the principal windows, shaking his fist at the passers-by. This went on for months.
The King, to whom all these wonders were duly reported, deplored the scandal, and sent commissioners to look into the affair. To these the six monks of Chantilly, indignant that the Devil should play such pranks before their very faces, suggested, that, if they could but have the palace as a residence, they would undertake speedily to cure it of all ghostly intrusion. A deed, with the royal sign-manual, conveyed Vauvert to the monks of St Bruno. It bears the date of 1259. From that time all disturbances ceased,the green ghost, according to the creed of the pious, being laid to rest forever under the waters of the Red Sea.2
Some will surmise that the story of the castle of Putkammer is but a modified version of that of the palace of Vauvert. It may be so. One who was not on the spot, to witness the phenomena and personally to verify all the details, cannot rationally deny the possibility of such an hypothesis. Yet I find little parallel between the cases, and difficulties, apparently insuperable, in the way of accepting such a solution of the mystery.
The French palace was deserted, and nothing was easier than to play off there, unchallenged, such commonplace tricks as the showing of colored lights, the clanking of chains, shrieks, groans, and a howling spectre with beard and tail,all in accordance with the prejudices of that age; nor do we read that any one was bold enough to penetrate, during the night, into the scene of the disturbance; nor had the King's commissioners any personal motive to urge a thorough research; nor had a pious sovereign, the owner of a dozen palaces, any strong inducement to refuse the cession of one of these, already untenanted and useless, to certain holy men, the objects of his veneration.
Very different, in every respect, is the affair of the Pomeranian castle. It is a narrative of the skeptical nineteenth century, that sets down all ghost-stories as nursery-tales. The owner, and his son, the future possessor, each at separate times and for weeks, reside in the castle, and occupy themselves in repeated attempts to discover whether they have been imposed on. The selfsame trick, if trick it was, is repeated night after night, without variation. The roll of the approaching carriage-wheels, first along the gravelled avenue, then over the paved court-yard, while no carriage was visible,how were such sounds to be imitated? The fall of footsteps, unaccompanied by aught in bodily form, up the lighted stairway, and past the very side of the bold youth who stepped down to meet them,what human device could successfully simulate these? The sound of the opening gallery-door and the noises of the midnight orgies, with full opportunity to examine every nook and corner of the scene whence, to every ear, the same identical indications came,how, in producing and reproducing these, could trickery, time after time, escape detection? Both father and son, it is evident, had their suspicions aroused; and both, as evidently, were men of courage, not to be blinded by superstitious panic. Is it a probable thing that they would destroy an old and valued family mansion, without having exhausted every conceivable expedient to detect imposture?
Nor was this imposture, if as such we are to regard it, conducted in approved form, after the orthodox fashion. It assumed a shape contrary to all usually received ideas. No spectre clanking its chains; no lights burning blue; no groans of the tormented; no ordinary getting-up of a ghostly disturbance. But a mere succession of sounds, indicating, if we are to receive and interpret them literally, the periodical return from the world of spirits of some of its tenants, restless and unblest. Was this the machinery a mystifier was likely to select?
Such are the difficulties which attend the hypothesis of a concerted plan of deception. They will be overlooked by those who have made up their minds that communications between this world and the next are impossible, and who will content themselves with pronouncing, that, though they cannot detect the mode of the imposture, yet imposture of some kind or other it plainly must have been.
And such skeptics will very properly remind us of other difficulties in the way of accepting as a reality the alleged phenomena. What have the spirits of the departed to do with conveyances resembling those of earthly structure? Are there incorporeal carriages and horses? Can grave men admit such fancies as these?3 Or is all this, even if genuine, only symbolical,sounds without objective counterpart? Then what becomes of the positive character of this narrative, as a lesson, as a warning to us? The whole degenerates into an acted parable. It fades into the idle pageantry of a dream. Thus we lose ourselves in shadowy conjecture.
But, none the less, the facts, if facts they be, remain to be dealt with. And if at last we concede the ultramundane origin of these manifestations, whether as objective reality or only as truth-teaching allegory, what a field is opened to our speculations regarding the realms of spirit and the possible punishments there in store for those who, by degrading their natures in this world, may have rendered themselves unfit for happiness in the next,and who, perhaps, still attracted to earth by the debasing excesses they once mistook for pleasure, may be doomed, in the phantom repetition of their sins, to detect their naked reality, to have stamped on their consciousness the vileness of these without the brutal gratifications that veiled it, the essence of vice shorn of its sensual halo, the grossness without the glitter: if so, a terrible expiation!
I beg it may not be imagined, that, because I see grave difficulties in the way of regarding this case as one of imposture, I therefore set it up as proof of a novel theory regarding future punishments. A structure so great cannot be erected on foundation so slender. I but furnish it as a chance contribution towards the probabilities of ultramundane intercourse,as material for thought,as one of those hints which future facts may render valueless, but which, on the other hand, other observed phenomena may possibly serve to work out and corroborate and explain.
THE RHYME OF THE MASTER'S MATE
FORT HENRY
None who saw it can forget
How they went into the fight,
Four abreast,
Thereby was the foe perplexed,
With the Essex on the right,
That is nearest to the Fort,
And the Cincinnati next,
The St. Louis on her left,
All so gallant and so deft,
And the brave Carondelet.
Boom, boom, from every bow!
(They'll have to answer that!)
From the Rebel bastions, now,
There's a flash.
Cool, keep cool, boys, don't be rash!
Mind your eyes, as the old Boss said;
Keep together and go ahead,
Not too high and not too low,
Fire slow!
Paff!
Now we have it from the Fort,
And the Rebels all a-crowing;
While the devils'-echoes laugh,
With a loonish thunder-lowing,
After every gun's report:
'Tisn't bird-shot they are throwing,
'Tisn't chaff!
Ping! Ping!
If you've ever seen the thing
That can fly without a wing
Swifter than the Thunder's bird,
Lightning-clenching, lightning-spurred,
If you've ever heard it sing,
You will understand the word,
And look out;
For, beyond a mortal doubt,
It can sting!
Thump!
'D y' ever hear anything like it?
Sounded very much like a ten-strike,it
Appears they're after a spare!
Bet it made the old Boss jump,
Or at any rate awfully screw up his brows,
Hit the pilot-house,
And he's up there,
Must 'a' been a hundred-pounder,
Had the twang of a conical ball,
Would 'a' gone plumb through a ten-foot wall.
Isn't the old Cinc. a trump?
They meant that for a damper!
Square it off with an eighty shell
And a fifteen-second fuse,
(With all the latest news!)
Pretty well done, boys, pretty well!
Guess that'll be apt to tell
'Em all about where it came from,
And where it's a-going to,
What it took its name from,
And all it's a-knowing to!
See 'em scamper!
The Conestoga, the Tyler,
And the Lexington, you know,
Are in line a half a mile, or
A little less, below,
Just this side of the Panther
(Little woody island),
They've their ordersOh,
But, after all, how can their
Wooden-heads keep silent?
Wonder 'f it don't make 'em feel bad,
Even if they ain't all steel-clad,
At being slighted so!
'Tisn't so bad a day,
Although it's a little cloudy,
Or rather, as one might say,
Smoky, perhaps,
A little hazy, a little dubious,
A little too sulphury to be salubrious.
D' ye mind those thunder-claps?
Do you feel now and then the least little bit
Of an incipient earthquake fit,
Accompanied with awful raps?
But give 'em gowdy, give 'em gowdy,
And it'll soon clear away!
Old Boss ain't to be balked.
All this, you know,
Was only the way (or nearly so)
The boys talked,
And felt and thought,
(And acted, too,)
The harder they fought
And the hotter it grew.
But there was a Hand at the reel
That nobody saw,
Old Hickory there at every keel,
In every timber, from stem to stern,
A something in every crank and wheel,
That made 'em answer their turn;
And everywhere,
On earth and water, in fire and air,
As it were to see it all well done,
The Wraith of the murdered Law,
Old John Brown at every gun!
But the Fort was all in a roar:
No use to talk, they had the range,
Which wasn't strange,
Guess they'd tried it before,
And the pounding was not soft,
But might well appall
The boldest heart.
Cool and calm,
Trumpet in hand,
Up in the cock-loft,
Where 'twas the hottest of all,
Our brave old Commodore
Took his stand,
And played his part,
Humming over some old psalm!
Tut! did ye hear the hiss and scream
Of that hot steam?
It's the Essex that's struck,
She never had any luck:
Ah, 'twas a wicked shot,
And, whether they know it or not,
It doesn't give us joy!
Thorough an open port it flew,
As with some special permit to destroy;
And first, for sport,
Struck the soul from that beautiful boy;
Then through the bulkhead lunged,
And into the boiler plunged,
Scalding the whole crew!
We know that the brave must fall,
But that was a sight to see:
Twenty-three,
All in an instant scalded and scathed,
All at once in the white shroud swathed!
A low moan came from the deck
Of the drifting wreck,
And that was all.
How the traitors'll boast,
As soon as they come to see her
All adrift and aghast!
Hark! d' ye hear? d' ye hear?
D' ye hear 'em shout?
They see it already, no doubt.
We shall have to count her out,
That white breath was her last,
She has given up the ghost!
What does the old Boss think?
Will he shrink?
Will he waver or falter now?
A little shadow flits over his brow,
For the sharp pang in his heart,
Flits overand is gone,
And a light looms up in his old gray eye,
Whether you see it or not,
That is like a sudden dawn
In a stormy sky!
What does he think?
What will he do?
Well! he don't say!
But I'll tell you what,
You can bet your life,
As you would your knife,
And your wife, too,
He'll do
(And put 'em up at once!)
He'll run these boats right up to their guns,
And take that Fort, or sink!
But, ohoh, it was hot!
So thick and fast the solid shot
Upon our iron armor played,
It kept, like thunder, a kind of time
Devil's tattoo or gallopade
That, like an awful, awful rhyme,
Rang in the ear;
And they sent us cheer after cheer.
But the boys had been to school,
And their guns were not cool;
For they knew what Cause they served,
And not a man of 'em swerved!
But on, right on, they swept,
And from every grim bow-port
Their nutmegs and shell-barks leaped
Into the jaws of the Fort!
And (to give her, perhaps, a chance to breathe)
Knocked out some of her big, black teeth!
And (to raise a better crop, no doubt,
Than was ever raised there before)
Ploughed her up into awful creases,
Inside and out!
For now they were up and doing the chore
At only four hundred yards,
And the death-dealing shreds and shards
Of our shell were tearing 'em all to pieces!
Hurrah for the brave old Flag!
To triumph see her ride!
Ha, ha! they dodge and duck,
The Snake's expiring!
Their gunners run and hide,
By heaven, they've struck!
Down comes the rattlesnake rag
By the run,
Stop the firing!
The work is done!
Anyhow, she'll do for batter!
You see now, Butternuts, you were plucky;
But that ain't "what's the matter,"
Not by a long shot!
No, no,no! I'll tell you what
And you mustn't take it at all amiss
I'll tell you what the matter is:
'Tain't because you were born unlucky,
(Bear in mind,)
Nor that you've good eyes and we are blind,
Nothing of the kind,
But it's something else, if it isn't more:
The reasonpardon!you had to cotton
Was simply this: Your Cause was rotten,
Rotten to the very core:
That's what's the matter!
But you ought to 'a' heard our water-dogs yelp!
Just an hour and fifteen minutes!
(Twitter away, you English linnets!)
Horizontal and perpendicular,
Fair and square, without any help,
That is, any in particular,
The old ferry wash-tubs of the West,
With some new-fashioned hoops, for a little test,
And a few old pounders fromKingdom Come,
And nothing for suds but the "Nawth'n scum,"
Made these "gen'l'men" turn as white
As a head o' hair in a single night!
Cleaned their army completely out,
(We're going to give that another wipe!)
On the double-quick, by the shortest route,
Wrung their stronghold from their gripe,
Brought their garrison right to taw,
And made 'em get down to the "higher law"!
So that when Grant and his boys came up,
(There's places enough for a man to die!)
Swearing that we had "spoiled" their "sport,"
With a quiet twinkle in his eye,
Old Boss asked 'em to come in and sup,
And set 'em to house-keeping in the Fort!
But all the old fellow could say or do,
They'd still keep a-going it: "Bully for you!"
"Bully" for Grant and for Foote!
E'en if the voice must tremble,
And "bully" for all who helped 'em to do 't!
Bully for Porter and Stemble!
For Paulding and for Walke,
For Phelps, for Gwin, and for Shirk!
But what's the use to talk?
They were all of 'em up to the work!
Bully for each brave tub
That bore the Union Blue!
And for every mother's son
Of every gallant crew,
Whatever his color or name,
Who, when it came to the rub,
Shall be found to have been game!
Such was the Rhyme of the Master's Mate,
Just as they found it in the locker,
With this at the foot:
"It's getting late,
And I hear a pretty loud Knock at the knocker!
Captain, if I should chance to fall,
Try to send me home. Good bye!" That's all,
Excepting the date, the name, and rank:
"Feb. 12th, '62, ,
Master's Mate."
All next day a great black Cloud
Hung over the land from coast to coast;
And the next, the Knocking was "pretty loud,"
With a sudden Eclipse, as it were, of the sun,
And the earth, all day, quaked"Donelson!"
But the next was the deadliest day of all,
And the Master's Mate was not at Call!
Yet nobody seemed to wonder why,
There was something, perhaps, the Master knew
Far better than we, for his Mate to do,
And the Day went down with a bloody sky!
But when the long, long Night was past,
And our Eagle, sweeping the traitor's crag,
Circled to victory up the dome,
The great Reveille was heard at last!
They wrapped the Mate in his country's flag,
And sent him in glory home!