As Spirit Franchezzo wanders on, in search of fresh fields of usefulness, he draws near spirits, lying moaning on the ground.
These spirits are more like savage beasts than men—
Even their bodies are bent like a beast's—
The arms long like an ape's—
The hands hard—
The fingers and nails like claws.
They half-walk and half-crawl on all-fours, snarling and showing their teeth like wolves.
Their faces can scarcely be called human—
Their very features have become bestial.
Spirit Franchezzo thinks of the strange wild tales he had read of men changing into animals, and almost believes these were such creatures.
In their horrible, glaring eyes, there is an expression of calculation and cunning, which is certainly human, and the motions of their hands are unlike those of an animal.
Moreover, they have speech, and are mingling their howls and groans, with oaths and curses, and foul language.
Spirit Franchezzo asks—
Are there souls even here?
The answer comes—
Yes; even here.
Lost, degraded, dragged down, and smothered, until almost all trace is lost—
Yet, even here, there are the germs of souls.
These men have so brutalised themselves that almost all trace of the human is merged in the wild animal.
Their instincts were those of savage beasts—
Now they live like beasts and fight like them.
And is there still hope for them? asks Spirit Franchezzo.
Even for these, there is hope—
Though many will not avail themselves of it for ages yet to come.
Yet here—and there—are others who even now can be helped.
Spirit Franchezzo turns, and at his feet lies a man who has dragged himself to him with great difficulty, and is now too exhausted for further effort.
He was less horrible to look on than the others—
And, in his distorted face, there are yet traces of better things.
Spirit Franchezzo bends over him and hears his lips murmur—
Water! Water, for any sake! Give me water, for I am consumed with a living fire.
Franchezzo has no water to give him, but he gives him a few drops of the essence he has brought from the Land of Dawn for himself.
The effect on him is like magic.
It is an elixir.
He sits up, and stares at him, and says—
You must be a magician.
That has cooled me and put out the fire that has burned within me for years.
I have been filled with a living fire of thirst ever since I came to this hell.
Spirit Franchezzo had now drawn him away from the others, and had begun to make passes over his body.
As he does so, the spirit-pirate's sufferings cease, and he grows quiet and restful.
Franchezzo is standing by him, wondering what to do next, whether to speak, or go away, and leave him to himself, when the spirit-pirate catches his hand and kisses it passionately—
Friend; how am I to thank you?
What shall I call you who have come to give me relief after all these years of suffering?
If you are grateful to me, would you not wish to earn the gratitude of others by helping them?
Shall I show you how you could?
Yes! Yes; most gladly, if only you will take me with you, good friend.
Well, then, let me help you up, and if you are able, we had better leave this spot, as soon as we can, and together, they set forth to see what they could do.
Spirit Franchezzo's companion tells him he had been a pirate, and in the slave trade.
He had been mate of a ship, and was killed in a fight, and had awakened to find himself, and others of the crew, in this dark place.
How long he had been there, he had no idea, but it seemed like eternity.
He—and other spirits like him—went about in bands—and were always fighting.
When they did not meet another party to fight, they fought amongst themselves—
The thirst for fighting was the only excitement they could get in this place, where there was never any drink to be got, which could quench the awful burning thirst, which consumed them all—
What they drank only seemed to make them a thousand times worse and was like pouring living fire down their throats.
You could never die—
No matter what you suffered—
That was the awful curse of the thing—
You had got beyond death—
And it was no use trying to kill yourself—
Or get others to kill you—
There was no such escape from suffering.
We fall on each other, and fight until we are exhausted, and then we lie moaning and suffering, until we recover enough to go on again, and attack someone else.
I have been longing for any means of escape.
I have almost got to praying for it at last.
I feel I would do anything if God would only forgive me and let me have another chance; and when I saw you standing near me, I thought perhaps you were an angel sent down to me after all.
Only you have got no wings, nor anything of that sort, as they paint them in pictures.
But then pictures do not give you much idea of this place, and if they are wrong about one place, why not about the other?
Spirit Franchezzo laughs at him—
Even in that place of sorrow, he laughs, and feels so much lightened to find himself of so much use.
And then he tells him who he is and how he came to be there, and his companion tells him that if he wants to help people, there are some dismal swamps near where a great many unhappy spirits are imprisoned, and he could take Spirit Franchezzo to them and help a bit himself.
He seems afraid to let Spirit Franchezzo go out of his sight lest he should disappear and leave him alone again.
Spirit Franchezzo feels quite attracted to this man because he seems so very grateful, and he is also glad of companionship of any sort, for he feels lonely, and somewhat desolate in this far-off dismal country.
The intense darkness and the horrible atmosphere of thick fog make it almost impossible to see far in any direction, so that they reach the land of swamps before Spirit Franchezzo is aware of it, except for feeling a cold, damp, offensive air, which blows in their faces.
Then he sees, looming before him, a great sea of liquid mud—
Black, fetid and stagnant—
A thick slime of oily blackness floating on the top.
Here there are monstrous reptiles with huge inflated bodies and projecting eyes.
Great bats—with almost human faces—like vampires, hover over it, while black and grey smoke wreaths of noisome vapour rise from its decaying surface and hang over it in weird fantastic phantom-shapes that shift and change into fresh forms of ugliness, and then melt into mist again to form into some new creature of repulsive horror.
On the shores of this great foul sea are innumerable crawling slimy creatures of hideous shape and gigantic size that lie sprawling on their backs or plunge into that horrid sea.
Spirit Franchezzo shudders, as he looks on it, and is about to ask if there could indeed be lost souls struggling in that filthy slime, when his ears hear a chorus of wailing cries and calls for help coming from the darkness before him that touch his heart with their mournful hopelessness, and his eyes, growing more accustomed to the mist, distinguish here and there struggling human forms, wading up to their armpits in the mud.
Spirit Franchezzo calls to them and tells them to try and walk towards him, for he is on the shore, but they neither see, nor hear him, for they take no notice.
They are both deaf and blind to everything, but their immediate surroundings.
Most are unable to struggle out of that sea of foul mud, without the help from another, and some go on stumbling about it for years.
Again, Spirit Franchezzo hears those pitiful cries, and one sounds so near them that he thinks of plunging in himself and dragging the wretched spirit out, but it is too horrible, too disgusting, and he recoils in horror at the thought.
Again, Spirit Franchezzo hears those pitiful cries, and one sounds so near them that he thinks of plunging in himself and dragging the wretched spirit out, but it is too horrible, too disgusting, and he recoils in horror at the thought.
And then again that despairing cry smites on his ears and makes him feel he must venture it.
So, in he went, trying his best to stifle his sense of disgust, and guided by the cries, soon reaches the man, the great phantoms of the mist, wavering and swooping and rushing overhead, as he does so.
He is up to his neck in the mud, and sinking lower, when Spirit Franchezzo finds him, and it seems impossible for him alone to draw him out, and so he calls to the spirit-pirate to come and help him, but he is nowhere to be seen.
He is up to his neck in the mud, and sinking lower, when Spirit Franchezzo finds him, and it seems impossible for him alone to draw him out, and so he calls to the spirit-pirate to come and help him, but he is nowhere to be seen.
Thinking, he has only led him into a trap, and deserted him, Spirit Franchezzo is about to turn and struggle out again, when the unfortunate spirit beseeches him so pitifully not to abandon him that he makes another great effort, and succeeds in dragging him a few yards, and drawing his feet out of a trap of weeds at the bottom in which they appear to be caught.
Spirit Franchezzo looks round for his pirate-friend and sees him wallowing about in the sea at some distance, and evidently, bringing out someone along with him.
Even in the midst of his awful surroundings, Spirit Franchezzo cannot help feeling a certain sense of amusement in looking at him—
He makes such frantic and exaggerated efforts to haul along the unlucky spirit that he does not wonder to hear the poor spirit almost imploring him not to be so energetic—
To take it a little slower, and to give him time to follow.
Spirit Franchezzo goes over to them, and the rescued spirit-being, now near the shore, Spirit Franchezzo helps him out and lets him rest beside the other one.
They make a strange group on the shores of that slimy sea, which Franchezzo learns afterwards is the spiritual creation of all the disgusting thoughts—
All the impure desires of the lives of individuals on earth—
Attracted and collected into this great swamp of foulness.
Those spirits who were wallowing in it had revelled in such low abominations in their earth lives, and had continued to enjoy such pleasures after death, through the mediumship of living beings, until even the earth plane had become too high for them by reason of their own exceeding vileness, and they had been drawn down by the force of attraction into this horrible sink of corruption to wander in it until their very disgust should work a cure.
