I could no longer see the sun, but felt the vivid, piercing rays I could
not evade. I do not know whether I walked or rolled along; I only know
that I struggled to escape those deadly rays. Then I prayed for death,
and in the same breath begged the powers that had transferred me to
surface earth to carry me back again to the caverns below. The
recollection of their cool, refreshing atmosphere was as the thought of
heaven must be to a lost spirit. I experienced the agony of a damned
soul, and now, in contradistinction to former times, considered as my
idea of perfect happiness the dismal earth caverns of other days. I
thought of the day I had stood at the mouth of the Kentucky cave, and
waded into the water with my guide; I recalled the refreshing coolness
of the stream in the darkness of that cavern when the last ray of
sunshine disappeared, and I cursed myself for longing then for sunshine,
and the surface earth. Fool that man is, I mentally cried, not to be
contented with that which is, however he may be situated, and wherever
he may be placed. This is but a retribution, I am being cursed for my
discontented mind, this is hell, and in comparison with this hell all
else on or in earth is happiness. Then I damned the sun, the earth, the
very God of all, and in my frenzy cursed everything that existed. I felt
my puffed limbs, and prayed that I might become lean again. I asked to
shrink to a skeleton, for seemingly my misery came with my expanded
form; but I prayed and cursed in vain. So I struggled on in agony, every
moment seemingly covering a multitude of years; struggled along like a
lost soul plodding in an endless expanse of ever-increasing,
ever-concentrating hell. At last, however, the day declined, the heat
decreased, and as it did so my distorted body gradually regained its
normal size, my eyesight returned, and finally I stood in that
wilderness of sand watching the great red sun sink into the earth, as in
the morning I had watched it rise. But between the sunrise and the
sunset there had been an eternity of suffering, and then, as if released
from a spell, I dropped exhausted upon the sand, and seemed to sleep. I
dreamed of the sun, and that an angel stood before me, and asked why I
was miserable, and in reply I pointed to the sun. "See," I said, "the
author of the misery of man."
Said the angel: "Were there no sun there would be no men, but were there
no men there would still be misery."
"Misery of what?" I asked.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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