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"I suppose," said I, "you missed the spot, in the first attempt at
digging, through Jupiter's stupidity in letting the bug fall through
the right instead of through the left eye of the skull."

"Precisely. This mistake made a difference of about two inches and a
half in the 'shot'--that is to say, in the position of the peg nearest
the tree--and had the treasure been _beneath_ the 'shot,' the error
would have been of little moment; but the 'shot,' together with the
nearest point of the tree, were merely two points for the
establishment of a line of direction; of course the error, however
trivial in the beginning, increased as we proceeded with the line, and
by the time we had gone fifty feet, threw us quite off the scent. But
for my deep-seated convictions that treasure was here somewhere
actually buried, we might have had all our labor in vain."

"I presume the fancy of _the skull_--of letting fall a bullet through
the skull's eye--was suggested to Kidd by the piratical flag. No doubt
he felt a kind of poetical consistency in recovering his money through
this ominous insignium[24]."

"Perhaps so; still, I cannot help thinking that common-sense had quite
as much to do with the matter as poetical consistency. To be visible
from the Devil's seat, it was necessary that the object, if small,
should be _white_: and there is nothing like your human skull for
retaining and even increasing its whiteness under exposure to all
vicissitudes of weather."

"But your grandiloquence, and your conduct in swinging the beetle--how
excessively odd! I was sure you were mad. And why did you insist on
letting fall the bug, instead of a bullet, from the skull?"

"Why, to be frank, I felt somewhat annoyed by your evident suspicions
touching my sanity, and so resolved to punish you quietly, in my own
way, by a little bit of sober mystification. For this reason I swung
the beetle, and for this reason I let it fall from the tree. An
observation of yours about its great weight suggested the latter
idea."

"Yes, I perceive; and now there is only one point which puzzles me.
What are we to make of the skeletons found in the hole?"

"That is a question I am no more able to answer than yourself. There
seems, however, only one plausible way of accounting for them--and yet
it is dreadful to believe in such atrocity as my suggestion would
imply. It is clear that Kidd--if Kidd indeed secreted this treasure,
which I doubt not--it is clear that he must have had assistance in the
labor. But this labor concluded, he may have thought it expedient to
remove all participants in his secret. Perhaps a couple of blows with
a mattock were sufficient, while his coadjutors were busy in the pit;
perhaps it required a dozen--who shall tell?"


NOTES

[1] _The Gold-Bug_ was first published in _The Dollar Magazine_ in
1843. The story won a prize of one hundred dollars.

[2] 100:3 All in the Wrong. The title of an amusing comedy by Arthur
Murphy (1730-1805).

[3] 100:4 Huguenot. French Protestants, many of whom settled in South
Carolina.

[4] 100: 18 Fort Moultrie. Erected in. 1776. Defended against the
British by Colonel William Moultrie.

[5] 101:23 Swammerdam. A famous Dutch naturalist (1637-1680).

[6] 101:25 manumitted. Freed from slavery.

[7] 102:27 scarabaeus. The Latin for beetle.

[8] 103:15 antennae. The feelers.

[9] 105:8 scarabaeus caput hominis. Man's-head beetle.

[10] 107:20 noovers. Manoeuvres.

[11] 109:10 brusquerie. Lack of cordiality.

[12] 110:26 empressement. Demonstrativeness.

[13] 123:20 curvets and caracoles. Leaping and prancing of a horse.

[14] 128:9 counters. Various coins.

[15] 128:28 Bacchanalian. Revelling like the worshippers of Bacchus,
the god of wine.

[16] 134:28 Zaffre. An oxide of cobalt. See dictionary.

[17] 134:28 aqua regia. Royal water--a mixture of nitric and
hydrochloric acids.

[18] 134:30 regulus. An old chemical term.

[19] 135: 28 Captain Kidd. A Scottish sea captain who lived in New
York in the seventeenth century.

[20] 138:19 Golconda. A town in India noted for its diamond market.

[21] 138:28 cryptographs. Secret forms of writing.

[22] 139:27 Spanish main. The northeastern portion of South America,
the Caribbean Sea, and the coast of North America to the Carolinas
were harassed by the Spaniards.

[23] 144:6 rationale. Reasonable basis.

[24] 149:19 insignium. Sign.


COLLATERAL READINGS

_The Murders in the Rue Morgue_, Edgar Allan Poe.

_The Mystery of Marie Roget_, Edgar Allan Poe.

_The Purloined Letter_, Edgar Allan Poe.

_The Sign of the Four_, A. Conan Doyle.

_A Scandal in Bohemia_, A. Conan Doyle.

_The Chronicles of Addington_, B. Fletcher Robinson.

_The Mystery of the Steel Disk_, Broughton Brandenburg.

_The Rajah's Diamond_, R.L. Stevenson.

_The Doctor, his Wife, and the Clock_, Anna Katharine Green.

_The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes_, A. Conan Doyle.

_The Hound of the Baskervilles_, A. Conan Doyle.

_A Double-Barrelled Detective Story_, Mark Twain.

_Gallegher_, Richard Harding Davis.



THE BIRTHMARK[1]

_By Nathaniel Hawthorne (1804-1862)_.


In the latter part of the last century there lived a man of science,
an eminent proficient in every branch of natural philosophy, who not
long before our story opens had made experience of a spiritual
affinity more attractive than any chemical one. He had left his
laboratory to the care of an assistant, cleared his fine countenance
from the furnace-smoke, washed the stain of acids from his fingers,
and persuaded a beautiful woman to become his wife. In those days,
when the comparatively recent discovery of electricity and other
kindred mysteries of Nature seemed to open paths into the region of
miracle, it was not unusual for the love of science to rival the love
of woman in its depth and absorbing energy. The higher intellect, the
imagination, the spirit, and even the heart might all find their
congenial aliment in pursuits which, as some of their ardent votaries
believed, would ascend from one step of powerful intelligence to
another, until the philosopher should lay his hand on the secret of
creative force and perhaps make new worlds for himself. We know not
whether Aylmer possessed this degree of faith in man's ultimate
control over nature. He had devoted himself, however, too unreservedly
to scientific studies ever to be weakened from them by any second
passion. His love for his young wife might prove the stronger of the
two; but it could only be by intertwining itself with his love of
science and uniting the strength of the latter to his own.

Such a union accordingly took place, and was attended with truly
remarkable consequences and a deeply impressive moral. One day, very
soon after their marriage, Aylmer sat gazing at his wife with a
trouble in his countenance that grew stronger until he spoke.

"Georgiana," said he, "has it never occurred to you that the mark upon
your cheek might be removed?"

"No, indeed," said she, smiling; but, perceiving the seriousness of
his manner, she blushed deeply. "To tell you the truth, it has been so
often called a charm, that I was simple enough to imagine it might be
so."

"Ah, upon another face perhaps it might," replied her husband; "but
never on yours. No, dearest Georgiana, you came so nearly perfect from
the hand of Nature that this slightest possible defect, which we
hesitate whether to term a defect or a beauty, shocks me, as being the
visible mark of earthly imperfection."

"Shocks you, my husband!" cried Georgiana, deeply hurt; at first
reddening with momentary anger, but then bursting into tears. "Then
why did you take me from my mother's side? You cannot love what shocks
you!"

To explain this conversation, it must be mentioned that in the centre
of Georgiana's left cheek there was a singular mark, deeply
interwoven, as it were, with the texture and substance of her face. In
the usual state of her complexion--a healthy though delicate
bloom--the mark wore a tint of deeper crimson, which imperfectly
defined its shape amid the surrounding rosiness. When she blushed it
gradually became more indistinct, and finally vanished amid the
triumphant rush of blood that bathed the whole cheek with its
brilliant glow. But if any shifting emotion caused her to turn pale,
there was the mark again, a crimson stain upon the snow, in what
Aylmer sometimes deemed an almost fearful distinctness. Its shape bore
not a little similarity to the human hand, though of the smallest
pygmy size. Georgiana's lovers were wont to say that some fairy at her
birth-hour had laid her tiny hand upon the infant's cheek, and left
this impress there in token of the magic endowments that were to give
her such sway over all hearts. Many a desperate swain would have
risked life for the privilege of pressing his lips to the mysterious
hand. It must not be concealed, however, that the impression wrought
by this fairy sign-manual varied exceedingly according to the
difference of temperament in the beholders. Some fastidious
persons--but they were exclusively of her own sex--affirmed that the
bloody hand, as they chose to call it, quite destroyed the effect of
Georgiana's beauty and rendered her countenance even hideous. But it
would be as reasonable to say that one of those small blue stains
which sometimes occur in the purest statuary marble would convert the
Eve of Powers[2] to a monster. Masculine observers, if the birthmark
did not heighten their admiration, contented themselves with wishing
it away, that the world might possess one living specimen of ideal
loveliness without the semblance of a flaw. After his marriage,--for
he thought little or nothing of the matter before,--Aylmer discovered
that this was the case with himself.

Had she been less beautiful,--if Envy's self could have found aught
else to sneer at,--he might have felt his affection heightened by the
prettiness of this mimic hand, now vaguely portrayed, now lost, now
stealing forth again and glimmering to and fro with every pulse of
emotion that throbbed within her heart; but, seeing her otherwise so
perfect, he found this one defect grow more and more intolerable with
every moment of their united lives. It was the fatal flaw of humanity
which Nature, in one shape or another, stamps ineffaceably on all her
productions, either to imply that they are temporary and finite, or
that their perfection must be wrought by toil and pain. The crimson
hand expressed the ineludible gripe in which mortality clutches the
highest and purest of earthly mould, degrading them into kindred with
the lowest, and even with the very brutes, like whom their visible
frames return to dust. In this manner, selecting it as the symbol of
his wife's liability to sin, sorrow, decay, and death, Aylmer's sombre
imagination was not long in rendering the birthmark a frightful
object, causing him more trouble and horror than ever Georgiana's
beauty, whether of soul or sense, had given him delight.

At all the seasons which should have been their happiest he
invariably, and without intending it, nay, in spite of a purpose to
the contrary, reverted to this one disastrous topic. Trifling as it at
first appeared, it so connected itself with innumerable trains of
thought and modes of feeling that it became the central point of all.
With the morning twilight Aylmer opened his eyes upon his wife's face
and recognized the symbol of imperfection, and when they sat together
at the evening hearth his eyes wandered stealthily to her cheek, and
beheld, flickering with the blaze of the wood-fire, the spectral hand
that wrote mortality where he would fain have worshipped, Georgiana
soon learned to shudder at his gaze. It needed but a glance with the
peculiar expression that his face often wore to change the roses of
her cheek into a deathlike paleness, amid which the crimson hand was
brought strongly out, like a bas-relief of ruby on the whitest marble.

Late one night, when the lights were growing dim so as hardly to
betray the stain on the poor wife's cheek, she herself, for the first
time, voluntarily took up the subject.

"Do you remember, my dear Aylmer," said she, with a feeble attempt at
a smile, "have you any recollection of a dream last night about this
odious hand?"

"None! none whatever!" replied Aylmer, starting: but then he added, in
a dry, cold tone, affected for the sake of concealing the real depth
of his emotion, "I might well dream of it; for, before I fell asleep,
it had taken a pretty firm hold of my fancy."

"And you did dream of it?" continued Georgiana, hastily; for she
dreaded lest a gush of tears should interrupt what she had to say. "A
terrible dream! I wonder that you can forget it. Is it possible to
forget this one expression?--'It is in her heart now; we must have it
out!' Reflect, my husband; for by all means I would have you recall
that dream."

The mind is in a sad state when Sleep, the all-involving, cannot
confine her spectres within the dim region of her sway, but suffers
them to break forth, affrighting this actual life with secrets that
perchance belong to a deeper one. Aylmer now remembered his dream. He
had fancied himself with his servant Aminadab attempting an operation
for the removal of the birthmark; but the deeper went the knife, the
deeper sank the hand, until at length its tiny grasp appeared to have
caught hold of Georgiana's heart; whence, however, her husband was
inexorably resolved to cut or wrench it away.

When the dream had shaped itself perfectly in his memory, Aylmer sat
in his wife's presence with a guilty feeling. Truth often finds its
way to the mind close muffled in robes of sleep, and then speaks with
uncompromising directness of matters in regard to which we practice an
unconscious self-deception during our waking moments. Until now he had
not been aware of the tyrannizing influence acquired by one idea over
his mind, and of the lengths which he might find in his heart to go
for the sake of giving himself peace.

"Aylmer," resumed Georgiana, solemnly, "I know not what may be the
cost to both of us to rid me of this fatal birthmark. Perhaps its
removal may cause cureless deformity; or it may be the stain goes as
deep as life itself. Again; do we know that there is a possibility, on
any terms, of unclasping the firm gripe of this little hand which was
laid upon me before I came into the world?"

"Dearest Georgiana, I have spent much thought upon the subject,"
hastily interrupted Aylmer. "I am convinced of the perfect
practicability of its removal."

"If there be the remotest possibility of it," continued Georgiana,
"let the attempt be made, at whatever risk. Danger is nothing to rue;
for life, while this hateful mark makes me the object of your horror
and disgust,--life is a burden which I would fling down with joy.
Either remove this dreadful hand, or take my wretched life! You have
deep science. All the world bears witness of it. You have achieved
great wonders. Cannot you remove this little, little mark, which I
cover with the tips of two small fingers? Is this beyond your power,
for the sake of your own peace, and to save your poor wife from
madness?"

"Noblest, dearest, tenderest wife," cried Aylmer, rapturously, "doubt
not my power. I have already given this matter the deepest
thought,--thought which might almost have enlightened me to create a
being less perfect than yourself. Georgiana, you have led me deeper
than ever into the heart of science. I feel myself fully competent to
render this dear cheek as faultless as its fellow; and then, most
beloved, what will be my triumph when I shall have corrected what
Nature left imperfect in her fairest work! Even Pygmalion[3], when his
sculptured woman assumed life, felt not greater ecstasy than mine will
be."

"It is resolved, then," said Georgiana, faintly smiling. "And, Aylmer,
spare me not, though you should find the birthmark take refuge in my
heart at last."

Her husband tenderly kissed her cheek,--her right cheek,--not that
which bore the impress of the crimson hand.

The next day Aylmer apprised his wife of a plan that he had formed
whereby he might have opportunity for the intense thought and constant
watchfulness which the proposed operation would require, while
Georgiana, likewise, would enjoy the perfect repose essential to its
success. They were to seclude themselves in the extensive apartments
occupied by Aylmer as a laboratory, and where, during his toilsome
youth, he had made discoveries in the elemental powers of nature that
had roused the admiration of all the learned societies in Europe.
Seated calmly in this laboratory, the pale philosopher had
investigated the secrets of the highest cloud-region and of the
profoundest mines; he had satisfied himself of the causes that kindled
and kept alive the fires of the volcano; and had explained the mystery
of fountains, and how it is that they gush forth, some so bright and
pure, and others with such rich medicinal virtues, from the dark bosom
of the earth. Here, too, at an earlier period, he had studied the
wonders of the human frame, and attempted to fathom the very process
by which Nature assimilates all her precious influences from earth and
air, and from the spiritual world, to create and foster man, her
masterpiece. The latter pursuit, however, Aylmer had long laid aside
in unwilling recognition of the truth--against which all seekers
sooner or later stumble--that our great creative Mother, while she
amuses us with apparently working in the broadest sunshine, is yet
severely careful to keep her own secrets, and, in spite of her
pretended openness, shows us nothing but results. She permits us,
indeed, to mar, but seldom to mend, and, like a jealous patentee, on
no account to make. Now, however, Aylmer resumed these half-forgotten
investigations; not, of course, with such hopes or wishes as first
suggested them; but because they involved much physiological truth and
lay in the path of his proposed scheme for the treatment of Georgiana.

As he led her over the threshold of the laboratory Georgiana was cold
and tremulous. Aylmer looked cheerfully into her face, with intent to
reassure her, but was so startled with the intense glow of the
birthmark upon the whiteness of her cheek that he could not restrain a
strong convulsive shudder. His wife fainted.

"Aminadab! Aminadab!" shouted Aylmer, stamping violently on the floor.

Forthwith there issued from an inner apartment a man of low stature,
but bulky frame, with shaggy hair hanging about his visage, which was
grimed with the vapors of the furnace. This personage had been
Aylmer's under-worker during his whole scientific career, and was
admirably fitted for that office by his great mechanical readiness,
and the skill with which, while incapable of comprehending a single
principle, he executed all the details of his master's experiments.
With his vast strength, his shaggy hair, his smoky aspect, and the
indescribable earthiness that incrusted him, he seemed to represent
man's physical nature; while Aylmer's slender figure, and pale,
intellectual face, were no less apt a type of the spiritual element.

"Throw open the door of the boudoir, Aminadab," said Aylmer, "and burn
a pastil."

"Yes, master," answered Aminadab, looking intently at the lifeless
form of Georgiana; and then he muttered to himself, "If she were my
wife, I'd never part with that birthmark."

When Georgiana recovered consciousness she found herself breathing an
atmosphere of penetrating fragrance, the gentle potency of which had
recalled her from her deathlike faintness. The scene around her looked
like enchantment. Aylmer had converted those smoky, dingy, sombre
rooms, where he had spent his brightest years in recondite[4]
pursuits, into a series of beautiful apartments not unfit to be the
secluded abode of a lovely woman. The walls were hung with gorgeous
curtains, which imparted the combination of grandeur and grace that no
other species of adornment can achieve; and, as they fell from the
ceiling to the floor, their rich and ponderous folds, concealing all
angles and straight lines, appeared to shut in the scene from infinite
space. For aught Georgiana knew, it might be a pavilion among the
clouds. And Alymer, excluding the sunshine, which would have
interfered with his chemical processes, had supplied its place with
perfumed lamps, emitting flames of various hue, but all uniting in a
soft, impurpled radiance. He now knelt by his wife's side, watching
her earnestly, but without alarm; for he was confident in his science,
and felt that he could draw a magic circle round her within which no
evil might intrude.

"Where am I? Ah, I remember," said Georgiana, faintly; and she placed
her hand over her cheek to hide the terrible mark from her husband's
eyes.

"Fear not, dearest!" exclaimed he. "Do not shrink from me! Believe me,
Georgiana, I even rejoice in this single imperfection, since it will
be such a rapture to remove it."

"O, spare me!" sadly replied his wife. "Pray do not look at it again.
I never can forget that convulsive shudder."

In order to soothe Georgiana, and, as it were, to release her mind
from the burden of actual things, Aylmer now put in practice some of
the light and playful secrets which science had taught him among its
profounder lore. Airy figures, absolutely bodiless ideas, and forms of
unsubstantial beauty came and danced before her, imprinting their
momentary footsteps on beams of light. Though she had some indistinct
idea of the method of these optical phenomena, still the illusion was
almost perfect enough to warrant the belief that her husband possessed
sway over the spiritual world. Then again, when she felt a wish to
look forth from her seclusion, immediately, as if her thoughts were
answered, the procession of external existence flitted across a
screen. The scenery and the figures of actual life were perfectly
represented, but with that bewitching yet indescribable difference
which always makes a picture, an image, or a shadow so much more
attractive than the original. When wearied of this, Aylmer bade her
cast her eyes upon a vessel containing a quantity of earth. She did so
with little interest at first; but was soon startled to perceive the
germ of a plant shooting upward from the soil: Then came the slender
stalk; the leaves gradually unfolded themselves; and amid them was a
perfect and lovely flower.

"It is magical!" cried Georgiana. "I dare not touch it."

"Nay, pluck it," answered Aylmer,--"pluck it, and inhale its brief
perfume while you may. The flower will wither in a few moments and
leave nothing save its brown seed-vessels; but thence may be
perpetuated a race as ephemeral as itself."

But Georgiana had no sooner touched the flower than the whole plant
suffered a blight, its leaves turning coal black as if by the agency
of fire.

"There was too powerful a stimulus," said Aylmer, thoughtfully.

To make up for this abortive experiment, he proposed to take her
portrait by a scientific process of his own invention. It was to be
effected by rays of light striking upon a polished plate of metal.
Georgiana assented; but, on looking at the result, was affrighted to
find the features of the portrait blurred and indefinable; while the
minute figure of a hand appeared where the cheek should have been.
Alymer snatched the metallic plate and threw it into a jar of
corrosive[5] acid.

Soon, however, he forgot these mortifying failures. In the intervals
of study and chemical experiment he came to her flushed and exhausted,
but seemed invigorated by her presence, and spoke in glowing language
of the resources of his art. He gave a history of the long dynasty of
the alchemists, who spent so many ages in quest of the universal
solvent by which the golden principle might be elicited from all
things vile and base, Aylmer appeared to believe that, by the plainest
scientific logic, it was altogether within the limits of possibility
to discover this long-sought medium. "But," he added, "a philosopher
who should go deep enough to acquire the power would attain too lofty
a wisdom to stoop to the exercise of it." Not less singular were his
opinions in regard to the elixir vitae[6]. He more than intimated that
it was at his option to concoct a liquid that should prolong life for
years, perhaps interminably; but that it would produce a discord in
nature which all the world, and chiefly the quaffer of the immortal
nostrum, would find cause to curse.

"Aylmer, are you in earnest?" asked Georgiana, looking at him with
amazement and fear. "It is terrible to possess such power, or even to
dream of possessing it."

"O, do not tremble, my love," said her husband. "I would not wrong
either you or myself by working such inharmonious effects upon our
lives; but I would have you consider how trifling, in comparison, is
the skill requisite to remove this little hand."

At the mention of the birthmark, Georgiana, as usual, shrank as if a
red-hot iron had touched her cheek.

Again Aylmer applied himself to his labors. She could hear his voice
in the distant furnace-room giving directions to Aminadab, whose
harsh, uncouth, misshapen tones were audible in response, more like
the grunt or growl of a brute than human speech. After hours of
absence, Aylmer reappeared and proposed that she should now examine
his cabinet of chemical products and natural treasures of the earth.
Among the former he showed her a small vial, in which, he remarked,
was contained a gentle yet most powerful fragrance, capable of
impregnating all the breezes that blow across a kingdom. They were of
inestimable value, the contents of that little vial; and, as he said
so, he threw some of the perfume into the air and filled the room with
piercing and invigorating delight.

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