The weird of the wanderer Being the papyrus records of some incidents in one of the previous lives of Mr. Nicholas Crabbe
symmetry; and that is the statue of the Athlete with the Strigil, by
Lysippos, in the Vatican collection. There is absolutely no trace of
decay about it; and it looks as fresh and feels as soft (though of
course it’s cold) as the body of a young sleeper. Another curious
thing about it is that it does not appear to have been eviscerated, or
treated internally in any way. Luke and Lombard and I have been over
every inch of the skin with magnifiers; and have quite failed to find
anything like a likely incision. Nor are there any indications of the
actual cause of death. The lad evidently had been in the wars, for
his body has twenty-one frightful scars: but, though four of them at
least ought to have been mortal wounds, they are perfectly cicatrized
and healthily healed. The four scars, to which I specially allude, are
as follows: a thrust through the inside of the right thigh from front
to back which might very well have tapped the femoral artery: another
through the left armpit upward, with emergence inside the collar-bone:
two clean round punctures through the neck from front to back, one on
each side of the throat. There are also seventeen cuts, none less than
four inches long and all deepish, on the face and the muscles of the
arms and the front of the thighs. But they are not at all disfiguring:
for, as I have said, the skin is supple, very fine and smooth and young
in texture, and also exquisitely sunburnt throughout. Whoever he was,
any man might be proud of being his father. As for the skull, it is
small and of a very perfect facial angle of the best Greek type. The
eyes are closed; and I frankly say that we’ve none of us had the heart
to open them. As for that dear soft-hearted Luke, he declared that he’d
never speak to me again if I attempted it. The mouth is a bold firm
one--a little large perhaps: but splendidly shaped. I don’t as a rule
care for a Cupid’s bow in one of my own sex: but this one is that,
and as noble as one could wish, as well. The lips are as red as beef;
and the teeth are perfect, quite white and rather large. The hair is
short, and of a pale flaxen colour, almost white: though the man was
obviously under twenty years of age. Now for measurements. The height
is sixty-eight inches: leg inside fork, thirty-five inches (singularly
long, according to modern proportions): chest, thirty-six-and-a-quarter
inches: weight, hundred-and-thirty-seven pounds ten ounces. All the
above are taken naked. On the third finger of the right hand is a
silver signet, very massive indeed, the device being a crucified Love
(the cross is the peculiar tau-shaped cross-potent noted above) with
the legend ΨΥΧΗϹ ΑΚΟΝΗ which Luke poetically renders _The Whetstone of
the Soul_. On the shoulders of this ring are two eye-chalcedonyxes set
in the sign of the Crab; and on front and back there is the sign of the
Moon in blue moonstone and rock-crystal respectively. Under the linen
shroud, which (mark you) was a large sheet and nothing at all like the
ordinary mummy-bandage, the body was clothed in a short linen tunic
under a shirt of silver mail reaching to the middle.
“Among the usual spices which formed a bed at the bottom of the basalt
chest, we found four English sovereigns, dated 1884, 1889, 1890, 1897.
The two first are much worn: the 1890 piece is in fair condition: while
the 1897 one has been pierced and has a small ring through it of very
red gold.
“Professor Monteagle of Cambridge, who has been staying here, gives
it as his opinion that the mummy is not more than two thousand and
certainly not less than nineteen hundred years old. He was, however,
frightfully disturbed about the sovereigns: while the revolver and
the watch, which we discovered without his help, appear to have
disconcerted him most seriously. I am, indeed, convinced that he will
go back to Cambridge and tell everybody that we have been trying to
pull his leg: which in fact is not the case.
“However, the whole affair bristles with incomprehensibilities, to my
mind; and I only hope that you, my dear Howley, may be able to find
some solution of them when you decypher the papyri. Of course I will
gladly furnish any further information which you may require and I
may be able to offer. And I hope you won’t mind my saying that it
will perhaps be better for both of us if you will kindly have your
translation of the papyri type-written at my charges. There is a most
satisfactory little person at 7 Broad.
“Believe me,
“Very sincerely yours,
[Illustration: saltire cross] “ARRICUS: _Magnus Magister_.”
_A Letter from the Reverend Adam Howley, Professor of Hivite
Literature in Saint George’s College, Oxford, and Honorary
Consultor to Cardinal Bensington’s Institute of Archives and
Inscriptions, to The Splendour of Arry, Grandmaster of the
Order of Sanctissima Sophia, Plas Hoel, Hoel, South Wales._
Dear Arry:
“These papyri are written on in Greek of the first century Ante
Christum, by several different hands (three at least). A few words in
late-Victorian English are by another hand. I am sending type-written
translations herewith. Don’t you remember what a fuss there was about
Nicholas Crabbe’s mysterious disappearance from Cyprus just after
the Dilimile’s hysterical howls for ten thousand flying machines?
The Eminency of Cardinal Bensington desires me to thank you for your
offer; and proposes, if agreeable, to pay you a visit at Plas Hoel,
after Pentecost, for the purpose of restoring the papyri to their
proper place, and of closing up the rock-tomb with all its contents
in your chapel with Christian Rites. Now then! His Eminency, however,
intends to name you to our Most Holy Lord the Pontiff for the gold
research-medal called the “Lesser Wisdom” for this year. I hope that
this will suit your plans.
“Personally I must beg you not to take me as expressing any opinion on
this, or on any other, matter.
“They say that dear old Parke wants to give up his living and come back
here as archivist.
“Billy Buffell’s got a baby.
“The weather is fine, but cold.
“Yours truly,
“A. H.
“_P.S._--The following chronology is the best I can compile:
“1. Mr. Crabbe seems to have disappeared from civilization _circa_
A.D. 1899.
“2. He then, apparently, engaged in experiments in Egypt. The result
was that he took an unintentional toss backward through Time to the
reign of Ptolemaios Ayletes, _i.e._ _circa_ B.C. 80-51. (_Cf._
Papyri IIII.-XII.)
“3. We now learn for a fact (what must have struck a good many
earnest thinkers who had the privilege of knowing him here and
elsewhere), that he actually is Odysseys reincarnate; and of course
Odysseys originally flourished _circa_ B.C. 1180.
(_Cf._ Papyrus XII.)
“4. However, Mr. Crabbe (as Odysseys reincarnate) enjoys infernal and
olympian experiences (_cf._ Papyri XIII.-XXIII.), obviously _circa_
B.C. 51-44. This date can be fixed, with comparative conclusiveness,
from the allusion to Caesar’s murder (_cf._ Papyrus XXXI.), which,
we know, took place in the latter year.
“5. I fancy that a fair case might be made out for the theory that
the Papyri themselves could very well have been written between
_circa_ B.C. 44 and the Christian Era. There can be little mistake
about the “Star” (_cf._ its prediction, Papyrus VII.; and its
occurrence, Papyrus XXXIIII.).
“6. I am almost inclined to permit myself the use of the epithet
“annoying” in reference to the twenty-one additional papyri (giving
an account of the very imperfectly known state of Moxoene _circa_
B.C. 44 and A.D. projected in Papyrus XXXIII.), which are, I might
almost say, as it were inaccessible, at least for the present.
“A. H.
“_P.P.S._--I fear that my translation is perhaps a little loose: but
then the style of the original by no means errs in the direction of
concise regularity--as one, considering all the circumstances, might
reasonably expect.
“A. H.
“_P.P.P.S._--His Eminency says that you may publish these naïve and
almost Dantesque and sometimes quite Homeresque fragments, if you care
to and have nothing more serious to occupy yourself with. If you do,
it will be positively fascinating to observe which, of the apparent
inconsistencies, will be selected for execration by smart sciolists of
our own hysterical age.
“A. H.
_P.P.P.P.S._--Before you do publish, if you determine on that course,
I think you ought to peruse Mr. Rider Haggard’s brilliant treatise on
Helen of Troy. I believe it is called _The World’s Desire_: and of
course you can get it from the T.B.C.
“A. H.
“_P.P.P.P.P.S._--On the whole, I really think I would, you know, if I
were you. Upon more mature consideration, I am inclined to fancy that
it might turn out to be (what we used to call) rather a ‘Lark.’
“A. H.
“_P.P.P.P.P.P.S._--Publish, I mean.
“A. H.”
THE FIRST PAPYRUS
I, who have been, or will be, Nicholas Crabbe of Crabs Herborough in
the duchy of Kent--and who am Odysseys son of Laertes, an immortal
and sometime inhabitant of olympian palaces--but now known as King
Balthazar of Moxoene which will be called (or which was once called) in
the time whence I came (or in the time to which I yet shall come) Van
in Armenia--I swear, by my honour and by my faith as a king who never
has built altars to Roma and Julius (like the Ephesians and Nikaians)
or to Rome and Augustus (like Bithynia and Asia), that the things which
I here cause to be written, and write, are true.
May Osiris, and Zeys, and Mithra, and all great gods of the past and
the present and the future, masters of wisdom, blast me--and may The
One Signified scorn me, if these written words do not agree with the
facts which befell me, who am fallen backward through the rolling
wheels of time. Thus, I, an immortal and a king, swear. And may he
who belies me rot and wither and evanesce in the uttermost depths of
Tartaros whither I have been thrice, or of Amentet, whither I have
been once, or of that Hell to which I will not go. I have sworn.[1]
Now I, King Balthazar of Moxoene in Naïri or Armenia, the Viceroy of
Victory queen of the stalwart stately Anglicans, say thus to Empedokles
my scribe, in my royal palace on the shore of my Thospitian Sea, within
my kingdom, which I do not hold from Rome, having taken it myself by
favour of Great Zeys.
Let it be known that I, King Balthazar, was called, in an age which is
to come, Nicholas Crabbe the Impossible. I lived peacefully as might
be. I have nothing to say of my origin in that life, or of my early
years: for, in good sooth, most of the things which then happened to
me were so incredibly cruel and so unspeakably hideous that I wish to
forget most of them, and the rest have been smudged (mercifully) on
the tablets of my memory. It shall be enough to tell that, as a scope
for my energy, I forced myself (in default of all other interests) to
become a seeker after wisdom, a client of the Muses and of far-darting
Phoibos Apollon, an ardent student of all branches of music and
gymnastic,[2] and chiefly of those branches which taught my subtile
adept mind to do what all other men never even dreamed of doing, and
my strong nimble body to do what all other men dare not do. For I