One Press Or Case I Saw, Full Of Accursed Instruments Of Torture
Horribly Contrived To Cramp, And Pinch, And Grind And Crush Men's
Bones, And Tear And Twist Them With The Torment Of A Thousand
Deaths.
Before it, were two iron helmets, with breast-pieces:
made to close up tight and smooth upon the heads
Of living
sufferers; and fastened on to each, was a small knob or anvil,
where the directing devil could repose his elbow at his ease, and
listen, near the walled-up ear, to the lamentations and confessions
of the wretch within. There was that grim resemblance in them to
the human shape--they were such moulds of sweating faces, pained
and cramped--that it was difficult to think them empty; and
terrible distortions lingering within them, seemed to follow me,
when, taking to my boat again, I rowed off to a kind of garden or
public walk in the sea, where there were grass and trees. But I
forgot them when I stood upon its farthest brink--I stood there, in
my dream--and looked, along the ripple, to the setting sun; before
me, in the sky and on the deep, a crimson flush; and behind me the
whole city resolving into streaks of red and purple, on the water.
In the luxurious wonder of so rare a dream, I took but little heed
of time, and had but little understanding of its flight. But there
were days and nights in it; and when the sun was high, and when the
rays of lamps were crooked in the running water, I was still
afloat, I thought:
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