Chapter 14 manuscript in a bottle

The manuscript in the bottle has no secrets to hide when it is dying. ——Kino "Artis" I have almost nothing to say about my homeland and my family.The years have passed, and everything has changed beyond recognition.I left my homeland and alienated my loved ones.The hereditary family property has given me an extraordinary education; the habit of being good at meditation has made my early hard-earned knowledge clear.Of all knowledge, the writings of the German ethicists have given me great joy. This is not because I worship their crazy eloquence blindly, but because I can easily see through their hypocrisy by virtue of rigorous habits of thought.I was often reproached with want of talent, my insufficiency of imagination was my perpetual crime, and skepticism of ideas has always made me notorious.In fact, what worries me is that my intense interest in physics has filled my head with the wrong ideas of the age—I mean, people nowadays are used to attributing accidents to this science. principles, even things that have nothing to do with it.Generally speaking, everyone is as prone to disconnection from the real world as I am, and is prone to superstitious nonsense fantasies.I thought I had to write this introduction first, lest the unbelievable story to be told should not be seen as an incoherent and clumsy imagination instead of a real experience without fanciful elements.

I have been wandering in foreign lands for many years. In 18 XX, I boarded a ship sailing from the port of Batavia to the Sunda Islands.Batavia is located on the island of Java, which is rich in resources and has a large population.I am a passenger on this ship—for no other reason than my haunted mind. The boat was beautiful, about four hundred tons, inlaid with brass, and built in Bombay out of Malabar teak.The ship was loaded with cotton and oil from Laccadive.There was also coconut husk, coconut sugar, ghee, cocoa beans, and boxes of opium.The cargo was poorly packed, so the ship was always rocking.

There was a slight breeze blowing as we set out.For the next few days, the boat sailed along the east coast of Java, and along the way, there was nothing attractive except for a few small boats from our destination, the Sunda Islands.The itinerary was monotonous. One evening, I leaned on the stern rail and watched that unique cloud in the northwest drifting alone.It was the first time we had seen a cloud since we left Batavia, and its color was also special, so it was eye-catching.I stared at it until the sun went down.At that moment, the clouds suddenly spread to the east and west, forming a narrow haze at the junction of sky and water, shaped like a long shoal.Soon, my attention was attracted by the dark red moon and the rare seascape.

The sea is changing rapidly, but the sea water seems to be more transparent than usual.Although I could see the bottom of the sea clearly, I dropped the lead to measure it, and found that the boat was fifteen fathoms deep. The air became very hot now, and the heat rose up in a curl, as if rising from a hot iron block.Night came, there was no wind, and there was an unimaginable silence all around.On the poop-deck the candles did not flicker even for a moment; nor could a long hair flutter if one pinched it between the fingers.The captain, however, said that he saw no danger, and gave orders to furl the sails and let down the anchor as soon as we drifted towards the shore.No one was on duty to watch the night. Most of the sailors were Malays, and they all spread out wantonly on the deck and fell asleep.I went back to the cabin—with a premonition of impending misfortune.Seriously, all signs point to a simon - a type of desert heat storm.I shared my fears with the captain.But he was indifferent to my words, and walked away without even condescending to answer me.I was so restless that I couldn't sleep at all.

About midnight, I climbed onto the deck.As soon as I stepped onto the top step of the quarter-deck ladder, I was petrified when there was a loud humming sound like the wheels of a water wheel whizzing by.Before I figured out what was going on, I felt the hull shake and move away.Immediately afterwards, a huge wave hit the end of the beam, sweeping wave after wave from bow to stern, and swept across the whole deck. To a large extent, it was the raging waves that saved our ship.Although the whole ship was flooded with water, but because the mast was broken by the huge waves and fell into the sea, the ship soon surfaced with difficulty, and after shaking for a while in the storm, it finally regained its stability.

By what miracle I was spared, I cannot tell.I was knocked out by the big wave, and when I awoke I found myself stuck between the stern post and the rudder.It took me a lot of effort to stand up.I looked around dizzily, and suddenly realized that the ship had encountered rolling waves, but what I didn't expect was that it was also involved in an overwhelming vortex-it was a terrible vortex that swallowed us all.After a while, I heard the voice of an old Swedish man.He came up when the ship was about to leave port.I yelled to him with all my might, and he staggered to the stern at once.We soon found out that the two of us were the only survivors of the accident.Everyone on deck was swept overboard except me and him.The captain and his mates must have died in their sleep, for the cabin was filled with water.No one to aid.We can't get the ship out of danger at all.

We didn't do anything at first because we thought the ship might sink at any moment.Of course, our hawse had been snapped in pieces like the strings of a parcel by the first gust of hurricane, or the ship would have capsized at once.The boat went with the waves at a terrifying speed.The water splashed against the planks of the boat.The skeleton of the stern is broken.In fact, it is already riddled with holes.To our ecstasy, the pumps did not fail and the ballast did not move much.The furiest part of the storm was over, and we felt little danger from the wind, but we were still depressed and hoped that it would subside once and for all.The boat was in a dilapidated state, and we were fully convinced that the ensuing wave would surely kill us.However, such a reasonable inference does not seem to be realized immediately.Because for five days and five nights, the hulk was driven by the strong wind, and drifted at an incalculable speed.The wind wasn't as strong as the first heat storm, but it was still more terrifying than anything I'd seen before.For five days and nights we subsisted on a morsel of coconut sugar, which we had painstakingly procured from the forecastle below the forecastle.Of course, in the first four days, our heading basically remained the same, only wandering in the southeast and due south.We must be drifting along the coast of New Holland.On the fifth day, the wind direction gradually changed and turned more northerly, but it also became colder.The sun rose a little over the horizon, a sickly yellow color—no light radiating from it.There were no clouds in the sky, but the wind was fickle, blowing harder and harder in fits and starts.Around noon - the timing is only our guess - the sun once again grabbed our attention.It gave off no light in the usual sense, but a hazy halo, but without radiant heat, as if all the light had melted away.Before sinking into the tumultuous sea, the middle part of the halo suddenly disappeared, as if hastily extinguished by an inexplicable force, leaving only a frame—a silver frame, plunged headlong into the unfathomable sea.

We waited in vain for the sixth day—for me, that day had not yet come; for the old Swedish man, the sixth day had never come.We were afterwards plunged into deep darkness, and could see nothing more than twenty paces from the ship.The night is dense and dense around us, without end, and the familiar tropical phosphorous fire has never illuminated the sea.We also found that, while the storm continued to rage unabated, the rough seas that had been battering us were gone.Surrounded by a dark desert, terrifying and eerie.The fear born of superstition crept into the heart and soul of the old Swedish man.I was also secretly surprised.We no longer cared about this almost scrapped ship, but hugged the remaining mizzenmast as much as possible to save ourselves, while looking painfully at the vast sea.We cannot tell the time, nor can we guess where we are, but we know very well that we have drifted too far south, where no navigator has ever been.To our surprise, though, we didn't hit an iceberg, which is very common.Now, we are threatened at any moment, every mountain-like wave may engulf us, every moment may be the end of life.The waves rose and fell more violently than I could have imagined.It's a wonder we didn't die at the bottom of the ocean right away.My partner said the cargo was light, and he reminded me that the ship was of good quality.But I can't stop my feelings.I feel that hope has been completely wiped out, and that death is not long to come.I was disheartened and ready to die, because with every mile the boat drifted, the dark sea became more horrific and darker.Sometimes we were thrown out of breath on high waves, higher than the albatrosses, and sometimes we were thrown dizzy by rapids into hellish depths.The air there was stagnant, and there was not a single sound to disturb the sea monster's dream.

The moment we fell into the abyss, the exclamation of the old Swedish man broke the silence of the night. "Look! Look!" he cried, screaming into his eardrums, "God Almighty! Look! Look!" As he exclaimed, I saw, along the great abyss into which we fell, A line of hazy and gloomy red light spilled down from the edge of the pit, and was intermittently reflected onto the deck.I raised my eyes and saw a spectacle looming.My blood froze.Not far above us, on the steep edge of a breaking swell, was a gigantic ship of about four thousand tons spinning.Standing proudly on the crest of a wave more than a hundred times the height of the ship, she looked much larger than any warship or existing East India Company merchant ship.The hull was a dull black, and not even any of the usual patterns carved on it would lighten its dark hue.A row of brass cannons protruded from the open gun port, and the golden surface was splashed with the light of battle lamps.The war lantern under the lantern rope swayed eastward and westward.The ship sailed as usual to leeward amid supernatural waves and unruly hurricanes.It was so frightening that when we first spotted it we saw only the prow, for the waves were slowly lifting it out of the eerie eddies.What's more frightening is that it stayed on the dizzying wave for a while, as if immersed in the majesty high above, and then swayed and fell down.

At this moment, for some reason, my mind suddenly gained peace.I staggered as far as I could to the rear of the boat, pointlessly waiting for the moment of destruction.Our boat finally stopped struggling and the bow sank into the sea.Then, the oscillating and descending giant ship hit the bow of the ship that had already sunk into the water.The inevitable result occurred: an irresistible force suddenly threw me to the rigging of the strange ship. The ship was turning to windward, away from that abyss, when I fell.In the confusion, the sailors did not see me.Without much trouble, I slipped unnoticed to the middle hatch.The hatch was ajar, and I took advantage of the opportunity to duck in.I don't know why I do this.The chief reason for my hiding was, perhaps, the indescribable awe I felt at first sight of the sailors of this ship.I don't want to trust this group, because at a glance, they make me vaguely curious, suspicious, and apprehensive.Therefore, I thought it would be better to find a hiding place in this cabin.I removed a small movable deck, and just like that, I found myself a place to hide at any time among the huge bones of the ship.

As soon as I opened the movable deck, I heard footsteps in the cabin.I had to hide in immediately.A man walked past where I was hiding.His gait was unsteady and he was weak.I couldn't see his face, but I had a chance to take a look at his general appearance. I could see, roughly, that he was old and feeble.The vicissitudes of the years make people old, his knees began to shake, and his whole body was trembling.He muttered a few words in a low voice intermittently, and I couldn't understand which language he was speaking.He fumbled through the odd-looking pile of instruments and rotting nautical charts in the corner.In his expression, there is both the irascibility of an old man and a child, and the majesty of a god. Finally, he went on deck.I never saw him again after that. There was an inexplicable feeling in my heart—this feeling cannot be analyzed, the lessons I have learned in the past years are not enough to analyze it, and I am afraid that I will not be able to analyze it in the future.It's unfortunate for a brain like mine to think about the future. I will never—I know I will never—believe in my own ideas again.These ideas are vague, which is not surprising, since their origins are inherently novel.New feelings—new things sprouted in my heart again. I have been long on this dreadful ship, and I think that the direction of my fate is already in sight.They are unreasonable people!I was immersed in some kind of thought when I walked past me, and no one paid attention to me.Can't guess what they were thinking.How stupid of me to hide like this, because they can't see.Just now I was passing under the eyes of the mate; I broke into the captain's cabin not long ago, and took a pen, ink and paper to record what I saw and felt, and I have written it down.I'm going to keep the sailing diary.Yes, I may not get the chance to reveal it to the world, but I'll try to figure it out.At the last minute, I seal the manuscript in a bottle and throw it into the sea. There are new things appearing, which gave me new room for imagination.Is it God's will?I had ventured earlier to go up on deck, and, unnoticed, I lay down among the pile of rope ladders and old canvas at the bottom of the yacht, and fell into contemplation of my strange fate.He accidentally picked up the tar brush and daubed it on the side of the neatly folded auxiliary sail on the big bucket beside him.Now, with the auxiliary sail spread across the boat, the brush had inadvertently daubed the word DISCOVER. I have lately made a careful observation of the construction of the great ship.Although well armed, I don't think it's a battleship.The rigging, construction, and general disposition of the ship would disprove this assumption.One can tell at a glance that it is not a battleship, but what kind of ship it is, I am afraid it will be difficult to tell.I carefully looked at its strange shape, peculiar mast, huge head, outrageously large sails, unpretentious bow, and antique stern. Occasionally, flashing thoughts flashed in my mind, and they seemed to be familiar, mixed with memories of the past. Vague memories, somehow, some foreign history briefs and long-term events in my memory, all the way... I have been looking at the keel.It's made of wood I've never seen before.The characteristics of this wood make people think that it is not suitable for shipbuilding.It is extremely soft, and apart from moth-eaten, for sailing in these seas is bound to be moth-eaten, and the fact that the wood rots with age, perhaps that would seem nitpicking.I would say that if Spanish wood had been inflated by any unnatural means, this shipwood had all the hallmarks of it. I was reading the above sentence when a strange maxim of a weather-beaten old Dutch navigator came to mind.Whenever anyone suspected him of dishonesty and made fun of him, he often said: "It is true that a boat will bubble and grow in the sea like a sailor's body. About an hour ago, I ventured to squeeze my way into a group of crew.They paid no attention to me, and although I was standing in the middle of them, they seemed completely unaware of my existence.Like the people I saw in the cabin, they were all gray and old.Their knees trembled weakly, their backs bowed with old age; their wrinkled skins rustled in the wind; Her hair fluttering in the storm was terrifying.Around them the deck was littered here and there with curious and obsolete cartographic instruments. I mentioned a while back that the auxiliary sails were out.Since that time the ship had been sailing with the wind, continuing her fearful journey southward.From the wooden crown at the top of the mast to the boom of the sail, everything is taut, and the whole sail is full everywhere.Every moment the yard-ends were swept into the monstrous waters, and the waters were terrific.I had just left the deck, and although the crew continued to go about their own way without seeing any inconvenience, I could not stand firmly on it.It is the greatest miracle in the world that this giant ship did not capsize on the bottom of the sea.We are destined not to be buried in the abyss, but to continue to hover on the brink of death.Our boat glides on the most turbulent waters I have ever seen, flying with the lightness of an arrow like a seagull.The monstrous waves are like unpredictable water demons, with their heads held high, but they are just to frighten people, and they will not really destroy everything.I can't help attributing my escape from catastrophe and disaster to natural causes, which alone can explain what happened—what strong currents or undercurrents the ship was subjected to should be assumed. I finally came face to face with the captain, in the captain's cabin, but, as expected, he ignored me.When I meet him by chance, I don't think his appearance is any different from ordinary people, but when I look at him, he still has an uncontrollable sense of awe, mixed with surprise at the same time.He was about my height, five point eight feet.He was well built and compact, neither stout nor slender. The expression on his face was strange—the traces of old age were so strong, so startling, so hideous, so old, too old to be old.An indescribable emotion suddenly appeared in my heart.Although there are few wrinkles on his forehead, it seems to have been engraved with marks of thousands of years - the gray hair records the past, and the cloudy eyes herald the future.On the floor of the cabin, there is a thick layer of strange iron clasp folio books, molded scientific instruments, and outdated nautical charts that have been forgotten for a long time.The captain held his bowed head in both hands, and gazed, with fiery eyes and uneasiness, at a piece of paper which seemed to me to be a military commission, and at any rate signed by the sovereign.Just like the first crew member I saw in the cabin, he was also muttering alone, and he whispered a few foreign words angrily, although he was by my side, his voice was like never before. From a mile away. The ship and everything on board is soaked in the atmosphere of antiquity.The crew walked around quietly, like ghosts who had been buried for thousands of years. Their eyes radiated longing and uneasiness.Under the dazzling light of the battle light, as long as their fingertips sweep over the place I pass, I will have an unprecedented feeling. Although I have been dealing with people and things from the ages all my life, I have also engraved Balbec, Thailand and others in my heart. Temo, the shadows of the collapsed columns of Persepolis, until his own soul became a ruin. I looked around and felt ashamed of my fear just now.If I shiver at the sight of the wind blowing against us, shall I not be dumbfounded at the sight of the wind fighting the sea?You know, if you want to convey the battle between the strong wind and the ocean, using the tornado and the Simon wind to describe it is too flat and weak.Near the ship the world was dark, like a long night, and the tumult of the sea unseen; , which seems to be the wall of the universe. Just as I guessed, the ship was indeed slid by the current, and if the current could be called a current, then the current was screaming and roaring in the white ice, galloping towards the south with great thunder, as if lying flat The Great Falls, the ocean is unrestrained. It is impossible to express the fear in my heart.However, even in my despair, my curiosity did not disappear. I must see through the secrets of this terrible area, and I will be content with this terrible death.Obviously, the ship rushed forward just to reveal an exciting secret—a secret that no one will ever know, and the ending is clearly destruction.Maybe this current is taking us to the South Pole.Needless to say, this speculation, which seems absurd, may actually be true. The crew paced up and down the deck with trembling steps, but the expressions on their faces were more eager than hopeless indifference. The wind was still blowing astern, and now and then, with the sails high, the boat would be brought out of the sea—oh, the danger, the terror!Suddenly the right side of the ice cracked, suddenly the left side, and we were dizzy, spinning around in huge concentric circles, as if we were circling endlessly around a huge amphitheater, and the walls of the theater wall But it is hidden in the darkness, and it is so high that it cannot be seen by the eyes.Before I had time to think about my own destiny, the concentric circles shrank rapidly, and we suddenly fell into the vortex, unable to struggle.The sea and the wind howled and roared like thunder.The ship trembled, oh God! It sank. Author's note: "Manuscript in a Bottle" was originally published in 1831, and it was not until many years later that I became aware of the map drawn by Mercator (1512-1594, Flemish geographer-translator's note).The map illustrates the oceans flowing into the arctic bays from four inlets, all sucked into the belly of the earth.The symbol of the North Pole is a black stone pillar towering into the sky. (1833)