“The vision--the Vision of Patmos. The heavens rolled together like
a scroll--blackness at first--no mind o' man ever conceived of such
blackness--the plague of Egypt was snow-white to compare. And then 'twas
all flame--flame--flame. The smith's furnace hath but a single red eye
of fire, but its sharp brightness stings like a wasp. But this--oh,
millions upon millions of furnace eyes, and every eye accusing the world
beneath. Who can live with everlasting burning?--that was what the Voice
cried--I know not if it was the strong angel, or him that rode upon the
White Horse, but I heard it, and all the world heard it, and the most
dreadful and most unusuallest thing of all was the sight of that White
Horse, plunging and pawing with all the fiery flames around it and
above and below! And the Voice said, 'There shall be no more sea,' and
forthwith all the tide that had been flowing in hillocks into Porthawn
and teasing the pebbles where the shallows be, and lapping the Dog's
Teeth reef, wimpling around the spikes--all that tide of water, I say,
began to move out so that every eye could see it move, and the spikes
o' the reef began to grow as the water fell, till the bases of the rocks
appeared with monstrous weeds, thick as coiled snakes, and crawling
shells, monstrous mighty that a man might live in; and then I saw the
slime of the deep, thick as pitch and boiling and bubbling with the heat
below, even as pitch boils over the brazier when the boats lie bottom
up on the beach. And then I saw a mighty ship lying in the ooze--a ship
that had become a wreck, maybe a hundred years agone, half the timbers
rotted from the bends so that she was like some monster o' the deep with
its long ridges of ribs showing fleshless as a skeleton. And then
the Voice cried, 'The Sea gave up its Dead.'... You shall see it for
yourselves on Monday--ay, all that came before mine eyes.'Twas Mr.
Wesley preached on the great moving among the dry bones--they were dry
in that valley, but in the dread secret depths where the sea had been
these were damp with the slime of ages, and they crawled together, bone
unto bone, throwing off the bright green seaweeds that overlaid them
like shrouds of thin silk. They stood up together all in the flesh, and
I noted that their skin was the yellow pale skin of the drowned, like
the cheeks of a female who holds a candle in her hands and shades the
flame with one of her palms. Flame--I saw them all by the light of the
flaming sky, and some of them put up their saffron hands between their
faces and the flame, but the light shone through their flesh as you have
seen the sun shine through a sere leaf of chestnut in the autumn.”
He stopped suddenly and drew a long breath. For some moments he breathed
heavily. No one in the room spoke. A boy went past the door outside
whistling.
When the man spoke again it was in a whisper. He turned to Wesley.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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