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| Harry Clarke |
Contents:
- MS. FOUND IN A BOTTLE (1833)
- BERENICE (1835)
- MORELLA (1835)
- SOME PASSAGES IN THE LIFE OF A LION (LIONIZING) (1835)
- THE ASSIGNATION (1834)
- BON-BON (1832)
- KING PEST (1835)
- METZENGERSTEIN (1832)
- SILENCE—A FABLE (1838)
- A DESCENT INTO THE MAELSTRÖM (1845)
- LIGEIA (1838)
- THE FALL OF THE HOUSE OF USHER (1839)
- WILLIAM WILSON (1842)
- THE CONVERSATION OF EIROS AND CHARMION (1839)
- THE MAN OF THE CROWD (1845)
- THE MURDERS IN THE RUE MORGUE (1841)
- THE MYSTERY OF MARIE ROGET (1845)
- THE COLLOQUY OF MONOS AND UNA (1841)
- THE MASQUE OF THE RED DEATH (1850)
- THE PIT AND THE PENDULUM (1850)
- THE TELL-TALE HEART (1843)
- THE GOLD-BUG (1843)
- THE BLACK CAT (1845)
- THE SPECTACLES (1844)
- THE PREMATURE BURIAL (1850)
- THE FACTS IN THE CASE OF M. VALDEMAR (1845)
- THE OBLONG BOX (1844)
- THE CASK OF AMONTILLADO (1846)
- LANDOR'S COTTAGE (1849)
Also detailed on this page:
- THE PURLOINED LETTER (1844)
- THE RAVEN (1845)
- THE NARRATIVE OF ARTHUR GORDON PYM OF NANTUCKET (1838)
MS. FOUND IN A BOTTLE (1833)
When the narrator’s ship is struck by a massive storm swell,
all of the crew except himself and one other are swept off or drowned. After
the other survivor dies from exposure, the narrator sees a massive warship
riding a giant wave. When the wave crashes down, the narrator is thrown from
his own ship to the deck of the other vessel. This mysterious ship seems to be
made of some kind of undersea material and its crew appears old and decrepit.
For some reason the narrator is unable to make any of the crew react to his
presence. Heading south towards Antarctica, the ghost ship is eventually caught
in a whirlpool (possibly leading to the secret territories of the Hollow
Earth which are only accessible at the Poles). The narrator ejects this
manuscript in a bottle before his end.
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| The narrator is stuck aboard a ship whose strange occupants do not seem to detect his presence |
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| The narrator’s ghost ship is caught in several strong storms, but the ship always escapes destruction |
BERENICE (1835)
The narrator describes himself as an obsessive person who
fixates on trivial objects. He falls in love with his cousin Berenice, who
sometimes has bouts of catalepsy. He is also fixated on Berenice’s perfect teeth.
Eventually Berenice dies. Some time later the narrator wakes and notices a
small box in the room. His servant enters in a panic and tells him that
Berenice’s grave has been dug up and she is still somehow still breathing, but
disfigured. The narrator opens his small box to discover dental tools as well
as a full set of teeth.
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| The narrator wakens from a dream state and feels that he has done something wrong, and possibly horrible. |
MORELLA (1835)
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| After naming Morella’s daughter with her mother’s name, the narrator continues to be obsessed over his dead wife. |
SOME PASSAGES IN THE LIFE OF A LION (LIONIZING) (1835)
A young man becomes an expert on “nosology”
(study of the nose). Upon arriving in the city, his nose becomes a source of
fame. However he ends up in a duel and shoots off the Elector’s nose. He is disappointed
to learn that a man without a nose is more popular than a man with a nose.
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| An artist is impressed by the narrator’s nose and asks if a portrait of it has ever been painted. |
THE ASSIGNATION (1834)
The narrator steers a gondola through a Venice waterway. He
hears a scream and sees that the Marchesa Aphrodite’s child has fallen into
the water and is drowning. A handsome young man appears from the water bearing
the child. Blushing, the Marchesa says to him, “Thou hast conquered—one hour
after sunrise—we shall meet—so let it be!” The next day, the narrator visits the
young man at his home. The man casually drinks poison and dies right before the
narrator’s eyes. A servant arrives with the news that the Marchesa has died as
well.
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| The narrator sees the Marchesa from his gondola. The Marchesa’s infant falls into the water, but the narrator feels helpless to aid the rescue effort. |
BON-BON (1832)
A famous philosopher/metaphysician/cook is visited by the
Devil. They discuss the tastiness of souls (in particular the more famouse philosophers
the Devil has eaten in the past, including Aristotle, Plato, etc…). After
enjoying the conversation with several bottles of wine, Bon-bon claims his soul
would make for a nice stew. However, the Devil then claims that he is no longer
interested in Bon-Bon’s soul in its current degenerate (drunken) state. The
Devil departs as Bon-bon tries to hurl a wine bottle at him.
KING PEST (1835)
Two barflys named Legs (very tall) and Hugh Tarpaulin (very
short) flee from an angry mob after they vandalize an inn. Entering a
plague-zone, they eventually stumble upon “King Pest” and his bizarre family
and friends, who are playing a game of cards in the basement of a funeral home.
Legs and Hugh exchange insults with the “Pest” family and get into a brawl.
King Pest tries to drown Hugh in a punch bowl, after which Legs uses a nearby
skeleton to batter King Pest and his family. Ultimately, Legs and Hugh escape
with two of the Pest women in tow, after having beaten up and drowned the
others.
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| Legs and Hugh address King Pest and his strange coterie. |
METZENGERSTEIN (1835)
Frederick, a young and immoral Baron of Metzengerstein
stares at a tapestry holding the figure of a great horse, and imagines himself
killing the horse’s owner. A stable catches fire in the neighboring rival town
of Berlifitzing. The king of Berlifitzing is killed in the fire, which is
blamed on Frederick. The young Baron takes possession of a strange-looking horse
which has survived the Berlifitzing fire. The youth becomes obsessed with the
horse. Eventually Metzengerstein’s own castle bursts into flames. The strange
horse takes a dazed and powerless Frederick into the castle despite the danger.
After the castle is destroyed (with Frederick and the horse inside) a cloud
forms above the burning castle in the shape of a horse.
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| Baron Frederick becomes more and more attached to his strange new charger. |
SILENCE—A FABLE (1838)
In a stagnant, foreboding garden by a river, the narrator (a
demon) sees a robed figure standing on a high rock platform under a red moon.
The demon becomes angry and tries to scare away the man on the rock. Finally he
utters a curse of “silence”. The sounds of the garden become still, causing the
man on the rock to flee in terror at the unnatural silence.
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| The visitor on the high rock is disturbed to suddenly hear only silence in the garden. |
A DESCENT INTO THE MAELSTRÖM (1845)
On Mount Helseggen
above the whirlpool of the Maelström, a white-haired sailor tells his young
fearful companion of his experience with the whirlpool below. 3 years in the
past he and his brother had become caught in the whirlpool after a storm
(partly due to misread readings on a stopped timepiece). The sailor escapes the whirlpool by tying himself to a barrel, knowing that cylindrical objects are
slower to be sucked down into a whirlpool. His brother remains with the ship
and goes down with it. The sailor escapes to safety, but his hair, originally
jet black, has become white.
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| The narrator, strapped to a barrel, sees his ship (and stranded brother) on the opposite wall of the whirlpool. |
LIGEIA (1838)
The narrator’s
beloved wife Ligeia (a scholar of obscure knowledge) becomes terminally ill and
has the narrator read to her her own poem describing the inevitability of death
(“its hero the Conqueror Worm”). She eventually dies and the narrator moves to
a new house. He eventually marries another woman, Lady Rowena, but he still
obsesses over his lost Ligeia. Eventually Rowena also becomes ill. 3 drops of a
red liquid appear out of thin air and land in Rowena’s glass (which she then
unwittingly drinks from). In the following night, Rowena apparently dies, but
somehow has recurrent periods of “reanimation”. Each instance of her return to
life leaves the body more drained and death-like. Finally, the bandaged figure
stands up, and when the fabric fall away the narrator sees that his lost Ligeia
has returned in place of Rowena.
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| Although now remarried to Rowena, the narrator still cries out his dead wife's name (Ligeia) in his dreams. |
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| Rowena’s bandages fall off to reveal Ligeia’s resurrected form underneath. |
THE FALL OF THE HOUSE OF USHER (1839)
The narrator visits
the foreboding ancestral mansion of Roderick Usher, a childhood friend, who is
apparently under a great deal of stress. The house has a large crack in it. His
twin sister Madeline is dying (falling into bouts of catalepsy) and he believes
that the house may be haunted. Eventually Madeline dies and Usher has her
corpse placed inside a vault. A week later, during a violent storm, the
narrator thinks he hears strange noises. Ushers enters the narrator’s room in a
state of distress. The narrator tries to calm him by reading a story (The
Mad Trist) about a knight defeating a dragon and obtaining a magic shield.
As the narrator reads from the story, he thinks he hears sounds which reflect
the events of the story (shrieking, grating, clanging). Usher finally admits
that he has been hearing noises from Madeline’s vault for the last week and
believes that they have entombed her while she was still alive. The door bursts
open and a bloody Madeline enters. She attacks and kills Usher with her last
breath. The narrator flees the house as the crack in the house widens, causing
it to collapse behind him.
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| Usher admits that he has been aware of noises coming from Madeline’s coffin, and now hears her escaping it. |
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| After escaping her coffin, Madeline breaks into the room to confront her brother. |
WILLIAM WILSON (1842)
A boy named William Wilson meets another boy at his school
with the same name and appearance as himself – however no other students seem
to react to this rival. After leaving the school, Wilson becomes a card-shark
and gambler, but his criminal ways are always exposed by the arrival of this
“other” Wilson. Eventually Wilson corners this double and challenges the figure
to a duel. He kills his double in front of a large mirror, but the double tells
Wilson that he has killed himself in the process.
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Wilson’s double
claims that by killing him, Wilson has taken his own life as well.
|
THE CONVERSATION OF EIROS AND CHARMION (1839)
In the Afterlife, Charmion asks a new arrival, Eiros, what
had caused his death. Eiros tells Charmion that a comet had been spotted heading
on a collision course towards the Earth. It’s approach causes varying degrees
of apprehension. Eventually it hits the Earth and everyone dies in a giant
fireball (caused by the comet’s removal of nitrogen in the air).
THE MAN OF THE CROWD (1845)
The narrator, recovering from a period of sickness, enjoys
watching the various men and women of the crowds which pass by his London café
table. When he sees a decrepit, somewhat sinister-looking old man, he decides to
follow on a whim. The old man leads the narrator through many areas of the
city, sometimes in a frenzy and sometimes in a daze. The next day the strange
man is still wandering around and saying nothing to anyone. When the narrator
tries to confront the strange man, the he does not react in any way. The
narrator realizes that some books "er lasst sich nicht lesen" (do not permit themselves to be read).
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| The narrator follows the strange man through some notorious neighborhoods. |
THE MURDERS IN THE RUE MORGUE (1841)
In Paris, the narrator begins a friendship with the young and clever
Monsieur C. Auguste Dupin, and both develop a fascination for the weird and
macabre. One day, they read reports of a horrible murder in the Rue Morgue. A mother (Madame L'Espanaye) and her daughter have been slaughtered,
and the police cannot determine the nature of the perpetrator, as all of the
exits are still locked from the inside. Dupin investigates and tells the
narrator that he has figured out what the police have been unable to. The
murderer had escaped through the window, which had appeared locked due to a
faulty mechanism. Dupin decides that based on the height of the apartment and
the brutality of the murders, the perpetrator must have been an escaped
orangutan. Dupin lures the orangutan’s owner to his apartment with a false ad
claiming that the orangutan has been captured. When a sailor arrives, he admits
that he had brought over the orangutan from an overseas trip planning to sell
it. It had seen him shaving and tried to imitate him with the sailor’s own
shaving knife. When the sailor had threatened the beast with a whip, it escaped
and eventually made its way to the Rue Morgue where it climbed into the mother
and daughter’s room. Inside, it accidentally kills the mother while trying to
“shave” her with the sailor’s straight razor. The release of the woman’s blood
had driven the orangutan into a frenzy, after which it had strangled the daughter. Meanwhile the
sailor had fled in horror. With the sailor’s confession in hand, the police
eventually track down and recapture the orangutan.
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| After bursting into the room, the orangutan kills the women inside with a straight razor. |
THE MYSTERY OF MARIE ROGÊT (1845)
A girl named Marie Rogêt disappears. Eventually her corpse
is discovered floating in the river. After the police fail to turn up the
murderer, they turn to Chevalier Dupin once again. After examining several
newspaper clippings supporting a theory that he girl had been a victim of a
group of young, drunken “blackguards”, Dupin reasons that Marie had been killed
by a former lover. The murderer’s boat is later discovered and the murderer
caught.
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| Marie Rogêt’s beauty attracts customers at the perfumerie where she works. |
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| Marie’s murderer drags her body to the river so that he can dispose of it from his boat. |
THE COLLOQUY OF MONOS AND UNA (1841)
In the afterlife, Monos describes to his recently-arrived
lover Una what he had experienced after he had died. He explains that his
senses increased in pleasure and that he had been conscious of the care being
put into the care of his remains. When Una’s coffin had been placed next to his
he had sensed it.
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| Una asks Monos what he experienced just before he died. |
THE MASQUE OF THE RED DEATH (1850)
When a plague strikes, Prince Prospero gathers his friends
into his private abbey and blocks all the exits. Inside, he and his friends
engage in dissolute, costumed pleasures, intending to outlast the plague
outside. The gaiety only pauses intermittently at the tolling of a clock located in the 7th chamber, a
red-lit room with black drapes. One day a figure appears, dressed in the
garments of the mummified deceased, and its face is designed to give the
impression of the signs of the “Red Death” (the plague). This breach of good
taste causes Prospero to challenge the figure to reveal himself. The figure
approaches Prospero and passes him by, continuing towards the red-black room.
Prospero, outraged, follows and threatens to kill the mysterious figure with a
dagger, but when the figure turns to face him (just outside the red-black room),
Prospero drops dead. The other party-goers take hold of the figure, but inside
the costume no one is inside. Each member of the party then dies one by one, as
they realize that they are trapped with the embodiment of the Red Death.
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| Prospero drops dead after accosting the macabre figure. |
THE PIT AND THE PENDULUM (1850)
A prisoner is
sentenced to death by the cruel Spanish Inquisition. He wakes in a light-less
room and searches around by touch. He trips and falls and then realizes that he
has just avoided falling into a pit. He drinks some liquid and then passes out.
He then wakes up strapped to a board, above which a pendulum swings with a
bladed object at its bottom. The pendulum begins to descend towards the
prisoner’s chest. The man rubs food and blood on his bonds so that the rats
will chew at them. As the pendulum blade begins to saw at his clothing the rats
weaken his bonds enough that he is able to free himself. Next, after the walls
begin to become very hot they begin to close in on him, forcing him to back
closer and closer towards the pit. He is about to fall into the pit when
trumpets sound, signalling the arrival of the French army. He is saved by
General Lasalle before he falls to his death.
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| The narrator is interrogated by the Spanish Inquisition. |
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| The narrator lures the rats onto his body so that they will gnaw at his bonds. |
THE TELL-TALE HEART (1843)
The narrator describes how he had been obsessed with an old
boarder’s “filmy eye” and eventually murdered him in his bed one night. He had
then dismembered the body and hidden the remains under his floorboards. When
police inspectors arrive to investigate the source of a scream, the narrator
shows them that there is no one else there and they sit down for a chat. During
the chat, the narrator begins to hear the thumping of his victim’s heartbeat,
coming up from the floorboards. He believes that the police must also be able
to hear the heartbeats and are pretending not to notice in order to toy with
him. Finally in outrage he admits to his murderous deed.
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| The narrator kills the old man. |
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| Although the narrator believes that the old man must be dead, he still hears his heartbeat. |
THE GOLD-BUG (1843)
The narrator
visits Legrand, an eccentric friend who has discovered a strange-looking
beetle. His assistant, Jupiter, describes the beetle as having a golden
carapace, and being so heavy that it might as well be made of gold. Having just
lent out the beetle to a friend, Legrand takes out a bit of paper picked up
near the location of the beetle’s discovery to draw a picture of it for his visitor. The narrator only sees a Death’s head (skull) drawn there, which
puzzles Legrand. Weeks later, Legrand asks the narrator to visit so that he can
be witness to a strange project. Legrand leads them into the woods where they find
a tree where an elevated skull points out a spot on the ground. After a night
of digging they eventually discover a treasure chest filled with riches.
Legrand explains that the parchment on which he had drawn the picture of the
beetle (and which the narrator had taken to be a skull) was later revealed to
be an encrypted riddle which pointed out the location of Captain Kidd’s buried
treasure.
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| Legrand and his friends open the treasure chest of Captain Kidd. |
THE BLACK CAT (1845)
In day, in a
drunken rage, the narrator gouges out one of the eyes of his black cat Pluto.
Eventually his mania drives him to hang the cat in his backyard. The next day
his house burns to the ground, but the image of a large cat can be seen in the
remains. The narrator reasons that this must be due to some kind of chemical
reaction left by the body of the cat. After moving to a new house, he adopts
another black cat, also one-eyed, except this one has white markings on its
breast. The narrator grows to fear the new cat and notices that the white mark
on its breast begins to resemble the shape of a gallows. One night he tries to
kill the cat with an axe, but when his wife tries to restrain him, he kills her
instead. He walls up his wife’s body in the cellar. He is also relieved when he
no longer sees signs of the black cat. Days later investigators arrive, but the
narrator is confident of his subterfuge. He raps against the false wall in an
act of bravado, which causes a scream to erupt from behind the wall. The
narrator realizes that the cat had been walled up inside when he had hidden his
wife’s corpse. The wall is dis-assembled and the cat is found to be sitting
atop the victim’s head. The narrator is subsequently imprisoned and sentenced
to be hanged.
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| The narrator sees the trapped black cat sitting atop the bloody corpse of his dead wife. |
THE SPECTACLES (1844)
A vain young
American man prefers not to wear spectacles despite his weak vision. One day he
sees a woman at an opera performance and instantly falls in love with her. He
eventually romances her into marrying him, but she makes him promise that he
will wear spectacles after they are married. When he finally puts on the
spectacles he sees for the first time that his wife is very advanced in age. In
fact, she reveals that she is actually his long-lost great-grandmother, who had
come to America in search of her descendant. She had played a harmless trick on
the young man in order to play on his aversion to spectacles. The narrator
eventually marries a woman of appropriate age and retains no hard feelings from
the prank, but no longer goes anywhere without his glasses.
THE PREMATURE BURIAL (1850)
The narrator
describes several instances of premature burial, in some cases ending in death
and in some others rescue. The narrator himself suffers from bouts of
“catalepsy” and is constantly in dread of the possibility of being taken for
dead and buried while alive. He prepares his personal vault with precautions so
that he can easily exit the chamber if he is placed there while still alive.
One day he wakes in a dark enclosed space and believes that he has been buried
alive. He does not recognize the coffin and believes that he must have had a
cataleptic fit while abroad and then buried by ignorant peasants. After he
screams, voices answer him and he remembers that he is on a sloop and sleeping
in one of the lower berths. From that point on he decides to stop obsessing
about death and his cataleptic fits go away.
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| The narrator believes that he has been buried alive by peasants. |
THE FACTS IN THE CASE OF M. VALDEMAR (1845)
M. Valdemar knows
that he is to die soon, and agrees to allow the narrator, a mesmerist, to try
to mesmerize him before he dies in order to see if such a procedure could
prolong his life. When Valdemar is only hours away from death, the narrator
puts him into a trance. At first, the mesmerized subject weakly claims that he
is sleeping, but dying. At a certain point Valdemar seems to actually die (his
pallor changes to white and he stops breathing). However, a voice from deep
inside his body still seems to be able to respond to the narrator’s questions,
and claims that he is dead. 7 months pass and the body refuses to decompose.
The narrator finally decides to try to wake the
seemingly-deceased-but-mesmerized Valdemar, as there is nothing else to do. The
gestures are carried out, and upon awakening from the trance Valdemar’s body
immediately dissolves into a puddle of putrid goo.
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| Valdemar’s dead body immediately deteriorates into goo after it is brought out of its trance. |
THE OBLONG BOX (1844)
The narrator
boards a ship bound for New York. Among the passengers are his artist friend
Mr. Wyatt and his wife. Wyatt also brings aboard a large oblong box, whose
contents is a complete mystery to everyone aboard. The narrator suspects that
the box contains some art acquisitions which Wyatt plans to unveil in New York.
Upon meeting Wyatt’s wife for the first time, he is surprised to see that she
is not nearly as beautiful as reputed. Wyatt himself is secretive, and laughs
hysterically when the narrator makes known his theory about the contents of the
box. One day, the ship is caught in a storm and the crew and passengers are
forced to take to the lifeboats. Wyatt refuses to leave the oblong box behind,
despite the captain’s entreaties. Wyatt goes down with the box (and the ship).
Weeks later, the narrator runs into the ship’s captain and learns that the box
had contained the body of Wyatt’s dead wife. The woman had suddenly died just
before the ship launched, but it was imperative that her body be brought to New
York for her relatives. Her death was kept secret so that the other passengers would
not feel uncomfortable about having a corpse on the ship. The woman posing as Wyatt’s
wife had been merely his maid servant. The narrator is later haunted by the
memory of Wyatt’s deranged laughter.
THE CASK OF AMONTILLADO (1846)
The narrator (Montresor)
vows revenge on a wine connoisseur named Fortunato for an undisclosed previous
offense. In the meantime he pretends to maintain friendly relations with
Fortunato. One day he informs Fortunato that he has obtained a casket of the
famed Amontillado wine, but is not sure if it is genuine. He considers asking a
rival to help him confirm that the wine is truly Amontillado, but Fortunato
insists on verifying the wine himself. Montresor brings Fortunato down into his
catacombs where he keeps his wine. Just in front of a mound of bones, he chains
Fortunato to the wall and begins to wall him up inside the makeshift tomb.
Fortunato struggles and screams, and at the very end beseeches Montresor to
halt this “joke” as their friends will soon be asking for them. Montresor
places the last brick needed to wall up his enemy and Fortunato remains undiscovered
for the next 50 years.
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| Fortunato panics as Montresor walls him up in the cellar. Montresor mocks him from the remaining aperture. |
LANDOR'S COTTAGE (1849)
On a walk through river country in New York, the narrator
discovers a beautifully-curated road cutting through the land. He eventually
comes across a splendid cottage where Mr. Landor and is wife (presumably) live.
The narrator explains that he may someday add more to this scenario, but that this
story’s purpose is only to describe Landor’s cottage.
Some Extra Stories
THE PURLOINED LETTER (1844)
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THE RAVEN (1845)
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| "Dreams No Mortal Ever Dared to Dream Before" (Art: Gustave Doré) |
THE NARRATIVE OF ARTHUR GORDON PYM OF NANTUCKET (1838)
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| "There arose in our pathway a shrouded human figure..." (A. D. McCormick, 1898) |
- Pym relates a tale in which he and a drunken classmate named Augustus take a boat out for a joyride, but then become lost. Their boat is destroyed in a collision with a whaling ship, but the two boys are fortunately found and brought back to shore, with the school completely unaware of their misadventure.
- When Augustus has the opportunity to journey on his father’s whaling ship, Pym decides to join him, although he must do so secretly. Augustus helps set up a small hiding chamber where Pym can stay until the ship is well underway. Days later, Pym tries to come out of his hidden chamber but finds that the trap door is locked. He finds that his dog Tiger is with him, and has a note attached to his body.
- Because of the lack of light he falsely believes that the paper is blank. However he soon learns that the other side has a bit of writing which warns him to “stay close”. As time passes, the dog becomes hostile and Pym is forced to confine it in a passageway. Eventually, Augustus appears with a bit of life-giving water and food.
- Augustus relates that a few days after the ship had set sail, a mutiny had occurred. Eventually all of the loyal crew had been either killed or set adrift, and only Augustus had been allowed to remain on the ship thanks to one of the more kindly mutineers, a short American Indian hybrid named Dirk Peters.
- Augustus is at first imprisoned, but eventually uses guile to sneak to Pym’s hiding place. When time runs short, he sends Pym’s dog into the underhold with a note, hoping that Pym will stay hidden for the time being. He eventually finds enough time to reunite with Pym.
- Augustus continues to keep Pym’s existence on the ship a secret, but is able to provide his friend with food and water. Peters later tells Augustus that there is a division among the mutineers, and asks for his help if an opportunity presents itself. Augustus has no choice but to promise his assistance.
- Peters’ main enemy, the ship’s mate, takes measures to surreptitiously kill off or poison Peters’ allies. Peters is delighted when Augustus decides to reveal Pym’s existence and include him on their team. They decide on a plan to disguise Pym as the ghost of one of the mate’s poisoned victims.
- After Peters and Augustus build up some superstitious tension with the mutineers, Pym appears in his macabre disguise. The stunned sailors are distracted and Peters’ group (including Tiger the dog) is able to kill all of the opposing party except for a man named Parker. During all this time a storm has been raging, and the boat is about to be flooded.
- The four men barely survive the storm by lashing themselves down. When the weather finally clears, they try to find food and water but diving expeditions into the flooded ship come up empty.
- The men rejoice when a Dutch brig is sighted approaching them, although its course seems drunken and out of control. As they get closer, they are horrified to see that the deck is strewn with rotting corpses, apparently victims to some kind of sudden mysterious disaster or disease.
- The men continue to deteriorate from lack of water and food. A ship is sighted, but it sails away without rescuing them. Parker hints that one of them should die to save the others.
- The men draw short straws and Parker draws the shortest. Peters kills him with a stab in the back. The other three drink his blood and eat his flesh in order to survive a few more days. Eventually Pym remembers the location of a nearby axe. They use this axe to cut their way into the storeroom below without having to dive into the flooded ship. Inside the storerom they find wine and a giant tortoise which they drink and eat.
- Augustus’s wounds eventually cause him to die, leaving only Pym and Peters. Sharks follow the boat and continuously threaten them. Eventually the boat flips over, but Pym and Peters are able to swim to the other side and survive on the barnacles stuck to the bottom of the ship. Finally, a British trading schooner sights them and the two survivors are brought on board the Jane Guy.
- Pym and Peters recover their strength aboard the schooner. Despite a bad storm, the ship continues south where they sight pengiuns and albatrosses. Captain Guy explores an island while the rest of the crew do some seal hunting, but neither have much luck.
- The schooner further explores the South Seas and tries to find confirm the existence of some legendary islands. Nothing is sighted however.
- Pym describes several earlier partial attempts at reaching the South Pole (starting from Captain Cook’s voyage). Captain Guy is determined to make a try himself.
- On a hunting mission, a giant polar bear attacks. Despite being shot several times, it manages to reach Pym’s longboat. Peters eventually leaps onto the bear’s back and stabs it in the neck, killing it instantly. Captain Guy considers turning back north, but Pym urges him on, as they have already gone farther south than anyone else on record.
- They sight a strange creature with red teeth and claws, a cat’s head and dog’s ears (Captain Guy kills and captures it so that it can be brought back as a specimen). Continuing south, they discover an island populated by savages. They give their leader “Too-wit” and the other savages a tour of the ship and afterwards are invited to visit the inland regions of the island (named Tsalal). On the way they discover a strange purple-colored water which has a very thick viscosity, but which the savages enjoy drinking.
- Pym, Captain Guy and a few others are brought to the savages rudimentary village (Klock-klock) which is made up mostly of cave-dwellings. Although worried from being greatly outnumbered by the natives, Captain Guy tries to instigate trade with the savages. Too-wit shows him where many sea cucumbers are located (which can be exported as trade). Too-wit promises to help resupply the ship.
- Captain Guy and his crew arrange to conduct trade with the savages for several days on the shore. They eventually decide to have three volunteers remain on the island while the schooner continues south on its explorations. Before they depart, Too-wit invites the crew to visit Klock-klock one more time. While passing through a gorge on the way to the village, Pym and Peters climb into a cave fissure to investigate some interesting herbs. While heading back out, Pym is knocked down by a mass of falling earth.
- Pym and Peters realize that the cave has collapsed, sealing them inside. Fortunately, the cave-in has also opened a path to the surface through another route. When Pym and Peters eventually climb out to the summit above the gorge, they see that Captain Guy and the rest of their party have been buried under a man-made landslide. The treacherous savages had ambushed and killed their guests by driving stakes into the soft gorge-walls and leveraging out the side of the gorge.
- Pym and Peters are unable to do anything as swarms of savages in out-riggers and canoes from Tsalal and the neighboring islands convene on the Jane Guy and kill the remaining crew onboard. The tribes then loot the ship and set it on fire. Eventually the ship explodes, killing all of the savages in its blast radius. The savages begin shouting "Tekeli-li! Tekeli-li!" The carcass of Captain Guy’s red-clawed, red-toothed animal is thrown on shore by the force of the explosion. After marking a boundary circle around the corpse, the savages flee from the site screaming "Tekeli-li! Tekeli-li!"
- Pym and Peters try to descend from their hiding spot above the gorge but find that the savages’ landslide has sunken all of the land around their area, making a descent impossible. They further explore some cave fissures (mapped out in strangely-shaped passageways) and find unknown writing chiselled on one wall. However, no exit to lower ground is found.
- The two men carve pegs into a cliff wall so that they can climb down using them as steps. While sneaking towards the shore, they are detected and attacked by five savages. They kill four and take one (Nu-nu) hostage. The other savages try to pursue them but they reach a canoe, destroy the remaining canoe, and escape the island.
- In order to avoid the colder waters which they had passed through on their way south, Pym, Peters and their hostage Nu-nu head further southwards. The water becomes milky and hot. White ash begins falling and in the next two weeks they navigate towards a strange gray cloud which seems to be pouring white gas from the heavens. Eventually they reach the center of the phenomenon, where they hear pallid white birds cry out "Tekeli-li!" Nu-nu apparently dies of fright. As the canoe heads further into the white cataract, a giant, snow-white humanoid figure appears.
Note: The
appendix states that the last 2 or 3 chapters of Pym's narrative are missing,
and that Pym has died from an unspecified accident. Poe has read the chapters
but is skeptical of their truthfulness and refuses to write what he remembers
of them. Peters still lives in Illinois. The writer also notes that the script
in the tunnels found on Tsalal spell out "to be shady" in Ethiopian.
The alphabetic script they had found in the cave apparently points out
"whiteness" to the south.
(The appearance
of the strange red-clawed creature both on the glacier and swimming in the
boiling waters near the cascading ash suggest that it is part of the fauna of
the tropical “Hollow Earth”, a hidden land reached by entrances at the Poles.
The large white figure at the end of Pym’s account is probably either a natives
of the Hollow Earth territories or a statue built by them.)
“Figure 1, then, figure 2, figure 3, and figure 5, when conjoined with one another in the precise order which the chasms themselves presented…constitute an Ethiopian verbal root—the root:
"To be shady"—whence all the inflections of shadow or darkness.
“In regard to the "left or most northwardly" of the indentures in figure 4:
it is more than probable that the opinion of Peters was correct, and that the hieroglyphical appearance was really the work of art, and intended as the representation of a human form... The upper range is evidently the Arabic verbal root:
"To be white," whence all the inflections of brilliancy and whiteness. The lower range is not so immediately perspicuous. The characters are somewhat broken and disjointed; nevertheless, it cannot be doubted that, in their perfect state, they formed the full Egyptian word:
"The region of the south." It should be observed that these interpretations confirm the opinion of Peters in regard to the "most northwardly" of the figures. The arm is outstretched towards the south.”
“Tekeli-li! was the cry of the affrighted natives of Tsalal upon discovering the carcass of the white animal picked up at sea. This also was the shuddering exclamation of the captive Tsalalian upon encountering the white materials in possession of Mr. Pym. This also was the shriek of the swift-flying, white, and gigantic birds which issued from the vapoury white curtain of the South. Nothing white was to be found at Tsalal, and nothing otherwise in the subsequent voyage to the region beyond.”
