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The Pit And The Pendulum By Edgar Allan Poe
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THE PIT AND THE PENDULUM

Impia tortorum longos hic turba furores
Sanguinis innocui, non satiata, aluit.
Sospite nunc patria, fracto nunc funeris antro,
Mors ubi dira fuit vita salusque patent.

[_Quatrain composed for the gates of a market to be erected upon the
site of the Jacobin Club House at Paris_.]

I WAS sick -- sick unto death with that long agony; and when they at
length unbound me, and I was permitted to sit, I felt that my senses
were leaving me. The sentence -- the dread sentence of death -- was
the last of distinct accentuation which reached my ears. After that,
the sound of the inquisitorial voices seemed merged in one dreamy
indeterminate hum. It conveyed to my soul the idea of revolution --
perhaps from its association in fancy with the burr of a mill wheel.
This only for a brief period; for presently I heard no more. Yet, for
a while, I saw; but with how terrible an exaggeration! I saw the lips
of the black-robed judges. They appeared to me white -- whiter than
the sheet upon which I trace these words -- and thin even to
grotesqueness; thin with the intensity of their expression of
firmness -- of immoveable resolution -- of stern contempt of human
torture. I saw that the decrees of what to me was Fate, were still
issuing from those lips. I saw them writhe with a deadly locution. I
saw them fashion the syllables of my name; and I shuddered because no
sound succeeded. I saw, too, for a few moments of delirious horror,
the soft and nearly imperceptible waving of the sable draperies which
enwrapped the walls of the apartment. And then my vision fell upon
the seven tall candles upon the table. At first they wore the aspect
of charity, and seemed white and slender angels who would save me;
but then, all at once, there came a most deadly nausea over my
spirit, and I felt every fibre in my frame thrill as if I had touched
the wire of a galvanic battery, while the angel forms became
meaningless spectres, with heads of flame, and I saw that from them
there would be no help. And then there stole into my fancy, like a
rich musical note, the thought of what sweet rest there must be in
the grave. The thought came gently and stealthily, and it seemed long
before it attained full appreciation; but just as my spirit came at
length properly to feel and entertain it, the figures of the judges
vanished, as if magically, from before me; the tall candles sank into
nothingness; their flames went out utterly; the blackness of darkness
supervened; all sensations appeared swallowed up in a mad rushing
descent as of the soul into Hades. Then silence, and stillness, night
were the universe.

I had swooned; but still will not say that all of consciousness was
lost. What of it there remained I will not attempt to define, or even
to describe; yet all was not lost. In the deepest slumber -- no! In
delirium -- no! In a swoon -- no! In death -- no! even in the grave
all is not lost. Else there is no immortality for man. Arousing from
the most profound of slumbers, we break the gossamer web of some
dream. Yet in a second afterward, (so frail may that web have been)
we remember not that we have dreamed. In the return to life from the
swoon there are two stages; first, that of the sense of mental or
spiritual; secondly, that of the sense of physical, existence. It
seems probable that if, upon reaching the second stage, we could
recall the impressions of the first, we should find these impressions
eloquent in memories of the gulf beyond. And that gulf is -- what?
How at least shall we distinguish its shadows from those of the tomb?
But if the impressions of what I have termed the first stage, are
not, at will, recalled, yet, after long interval, do they not come
unbidden, while we marvel whence they come? He who has never swooned,
is not he who finds strange palaces and wildly familiar faces in
coals that glow; is not he who beholds floating in mid-air the sad
visions that the many may not view; is not he who ponders over the
perfume of some novel flower -- is not he whose brain grows
bewildered with the meaning of some musical cadence which has never
before arrested his attention.

Amid frequent and thoughtful endeavors to remember; amid earnest
struggles to regather some token of the state of seeming nothingness
into which my soul had lapsed, there have been moments when I have
dreamed of success; there have been brief, very brief periods when I
have conjured up remembrances which the lucid reason of a later epoch
assures me could have had reference only to that condition of seeming
unconsciousness. These shadows of memory tell, indistinctly, of tall
figures that lifted and bore me in silence down -- down -- still down
-- till a hideous dizziness oppressed me at the mere idea of the
interminableness of the descent. They tell also of a vague horror at
my heart, on account of that heart's unnatural stillness. Then comes
a sense of sudden motionlessness throughout all things; as if those
who bore me (a ghastly train!) had outrun, in their descent, the
limits of the limitless, and paused from the wearisomeness of their
toil. After this I call to mind flatness and dampness; and then all
is madness -- the madness of a memory which busies itself among
forbidden things.

Very suddenly there came back to my soul motion and sound -- the
tumultuous motion of the heart, and, in my ears, the sound of its
beating. Then a pause in which all is blank. Then again sound, and
motion, and touch -- a tingling sensation pervading my frame. Then
the mere consciousness of existence, without thought -- a condition
which lasted long. Then, very suddenly, thought, and shuddering
terror, and earnest endeavor to comprehend my true state. Then a
strong desire to lapse into insensibility. Then a rushing revival of
soul and a successful effort to move. And now a full memory of the
trial, of the judges, of the sable draperies, of the sentence, of the
sickness, of the swoon. Then entire forgetfulness of all that
followed; of all that a later day and much earnestness of endeavor
have enabled me vaguely to recall.

So far, I had not opened my eyes. I felt that I lay upon my back,
unbound. I reached out my hand, and it fell heavily upon something
damp and hard. There I suffered it to remain for many minutes, while
I strove to imagine where and what I could be. I longed, yet dared
not to employ my vision. I dreaded the first glance at objects around
me. It was not that I feared to look upon things horrible, but that I
grew aghast lest there should be nothing to see. At length, with a
wild desperation at heart, I quickly unclosed my eyes. My worst
thoughts, then, were confirmed. The blackness of eternal night
encompassed me. I struggled for breath. The intensity of the darkness
seemed to oppress and stifle me. The atmosphere was intolerably
close. I still lay quietly, and made effort to exercise my reason. I
brought to mind the inquisitorial proceedings, and attempted from
that point to deduce my real condition. The sentence had passed; and
it appeared to me that a very long interval of time had since
elapsed. Yet not for a moment did I suppose myself actually dead.
Such a supposition, notwithstanding what we read in fiction, is
altogether inconsistent with real existence; -- but where and in what
state was I? The condemned to death, I knew, perished usually at the
autos-da-fe, and one of these had been held on the very night of the
day of my trial. Had I been remanded to my dungeon, to await the next
sacrifice, which would not take place for many months? This I at once
saw could not be. Victims had been in immediate demand. Moreover, my
dungeon, as well as all the condemned cells at Toledo, had stone
floors, and light was not altogether excluded.

A fearful idea now suddenly drove the blood in torrents upon my
heart, and for a brief period, I once more relapsed into
insensibility. Upon recovering, I at once started to my feet,
trembling convulsively in every fibre. I thrust my arms wildly above
and around me in all directions. I felt nothing; yet dreaded to move
a step, lest I should be impeded by the walls of a tomb. Perspiration
burst from every pore, and stood in cold big beads upon my forehead.
The agony of suspense grew at length intolerable, and I cautiously
moved forward, with my arms extended, and my eyes straining from
their sockets, in the hope of catching some faint ray of light. I
proceeded for many paces; but still all was blackness and vacancy. I
breathed more freely. It seemed evident that mine was not, at least,
the most hideous of fates.

And now, as I still continued to step cautiously onward, there came
thronging upon my recollection a thousand vague rumors of the horrors
of Toledo. Of the dungeons there had been strange things narrated --
fables I had always deemed them -- but yet strange, and too ghastly
to repeat, save in a whisper. Was I left to perish of starvation in
this subterranean world of darkness; or what fate, perhaps even more
fearful, awaited me? That the result would be death, and a death of
more than customary bitterness, I knew too well the character of my
judges to doubt. The mode and the hour were all that occupied or
distracted me.

My outstretched hands at length encountered some solid obstruction.
It was a wall, seemingly of stone masonry -- very smooth, slimy, and
cold. I followed it up; stepping with all the careful distrust with
which certain antique narratives had inspired me. This process,
however, afforded me no means of ascertaining the dimensions of my
dungeon; as I might make its circuit, and return to the point whence
I set out, without being aware of the fact; so perfectly uniform
seemed the wall. I therefore sought the knife which had been in my
pocket, when led into the inquisitorial chamber; but it was gone; my
clothes had been exchanged for a wrapper of coarse serge. I had
thought of forcing the blade in some minute crevice of the masonry,
so as to identify my point of departure. The difficulty,
nevertheless, was but trivial; although, in the disorder of my fancy,
it seemed at first insuperable. I tore a part of the hem from the
robe and placed the fragment at full length, and at right angles to
the wall. In groping my way around the prison, I could not fail to
encounter this rag upon completing the circuit. So, at least I
thought: but I had not counted upon the extent of the dungeon, or
upon my own weakness. The ground was moist and slippery. I staggered
onward for some time, when I stumbled and fell. My excessive fatigue
induced me to remain prostrate; and sleep soon overtook me as I lay.

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