Essential Tales and Poems of Edgar Allan Poe (Barnes & Noble Classics Series) (112 page)

In the clutches of death (Latin).

Sharpness or clear-sightedness; perceptiveness; in context the word suggests an ability to see through to life on the other side of the grave.

Tuberculosis of the lungs; consumption.

Spitting or coughing to rid the lungs of matter.

Notebook, in Poe’s day.

That is, hard deposits had built up in the lungs.

Pus-filled.

Widening and weakening of the heart’s aorta or great artery wall, a painful condition.

Word for word (Latin).

Or stertorous; gasping, labored.

Thin, watery, or blood-tinged discharge.

Rottenness.

Misprint for
cottage orné;
villa in rustic manner, with a rough-timbered, thatched roof.

Paralyzing.

Shape, appearance.

Ship of the line
refers to a full-size battleship;
seventy-fours
are warships with seventy-four guns.

Snout, nose.

Emotional derangement causing excitement in mind and body.

Delusory appearance.

Manibles
is a misprint of mandibles, or jaws;
palpi
are segmented mouthparts;
prismatic
means “highly colored” or “brilliant.”

Along with the cap and bells, this multicolored costume resembles that of long-ago European court jesters.

Immense cask holding well over 100 gallons.

Or
roquelaure;
a knee-length cloak worn in France in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Added to the mask, this garb marks Montresor out as a stereotypical villain in Gothic fiction and stage melodrama.

Torches (French). The ensuing descent of the stairs may assist in dizzying Fortunato, who is already intoxicated and thus probably unsteady in physical and emotional balance.

Watery discharge, especially from the eyes or nose.

A large golden foot in a blue background; the foot crushes a creeping snake whose fangs are sunken into the heel.

Nobody insults me with impunity (Latin).

flagon [flaçon]
is a large pottery or metal vessel with a handle, spout, and, often, a lid, or a large bulging, short-necked bottle.
Graves
is a region in the Bordeaux district of France, well known for its gravelly soil and its wines; Poe may intend this name to be a pun on “the grave.”

That is, in a mixed, disorderly manner.

Rare bird in the world (Latin); the quotation comes from
Satires
6.165, by the Roman poet Juvenal (A.D. 60-127).

Shadowy traces.

Festivity (French).

Brightness, magnificence (French). The former meaning is perhaps recalled in the king’s words, spoken soon afterward, that the wine he forces Hop-Frog to drink “will ‡brighten your wits” and, more so, in Hop-Frog’s final jest.

Parts (French).

Hop-Frog’s performing “with spirit” may be wordplay on alcohol, but with far more grim purpose than that in the Folio Club hilarity.

Hall, ballroom.

Caryatides are pillars shaped like female prisoners, which reinforces the king’s antifeminism.

Island in the Marianas, in the South Pacific.

Pym’s sailboat may derive its name from the ill-fated craft of the English Romantic poet Percy Bysshe Shelley (1792-1822), who could not swim and therefore drowned when a storm tossed the vessel.

Ship’s pantry or kitchen. One wonders why Pym chose this particular spot; perhaps he hoped to provide some shelter for Augustus.

Close-hauled:
with sails set against the wind;
beating:
making way with great difficulty.

Hard to the lee! The
lee
is the side of a ship away from the wind.

Ship’s small boat used for crude, rough work. In this case, “jolly” may have ironic implications, as does so much else in this work.

Sheathed with copper and having copper rivets, nails, and other “fastenings.”

It is unclear whether Poe had in mind Long Tom in American novelist James Fenimore Cooper’s novel
The Pilot
(1823) or used this term as a colloquialism for a sailor of low rank.

Other editions read “squaw” for “woman,” a change that Poe perhaps had made and that was used in the 1856 edition of his works prepared by Rufus W. Griswold.

Whaling vessels are usually fitted with iron oil-tanks-why the Grampus was not I have never been able to ascertain (Poe’s note).

The case of the brig Polly, of Boston, is one so much in point, and her fate, in many respects, so remarkably similar to our own, that I cannot forbear alluding to it here. This vessel, of one hundred and thirty tons burden, sailed from Boston, with a cargo of lumber and provisions, for Santa Croix, on the 12th of December, 1811, under the command of Captain Casneau. There were eight souls on board besides the captain—the mate, four seamen, and the cook, together with a Mr. Hunt, and a negro girl belonging to him. On the fifteenth, having cleared the shoal of Georges, she sprung a leak in a gale of wind from the southeast, and was finally capsized; but, the masts going by the board, she afterward righted. They remained in this situation, without fire, and with very little provision, for the period of
one hundred and ninety-one days
(from December the fifteenth to June the twentieth), when Captain Casneau and Samuel Badger, the only survivors, were taken off the wreck by the Fame, of Hull, Captain Featherstone, bound home from Rio Janeiro. When picked up, they were in latitude 28° N., longitude 13° W.,
having drifted above two thousand miles!
On the ninth of July the Fame fell in with the brig Dromeo, Captain Perkins, who landed the two sufferers in Kennebeck. The narrative from which we gather these details ends in the following words: “It is natural to inquire how they could float such a vast distance, upon the most frequented part of the Atlantic, and not be discovered all this time.
They were passed by more than a dozen sail, one of which came so nigh them that they could distinctly see the people on deck and on the rigging looking at them; but, to the inexpressible disappointment of the starving and freezing men, they stifled the dictates of compassion, hoisted sail, and cruelly abandoned them to their fate”
(Poe’s note).

Among the vessels which at various times have professed to meet with the Auroras may be mentioned the ship San Miguel, in 1769; the ship Aurora, in 1774; the brig Pearl, in 1779; and the ship Dolores, in 1790. They all agree in giving the mean latitude fifty-three degrees south (Poe’s note).

The terms
morning
and
evening,
which I have made use of to avoid confusion in my narrative, as far as possible must not, of course, be taken in their ordinary sense. For a long time past we had had no night at all, the daylight being continual. The dates throughout are according to nautical time, and the bearings must be understood as per compass. I would also remark, in this place, that I cannot, in the first portion of what is here written, pretend to strict accuracy in respect to dates, or latitudes and longitudes, having kept no regular journal until after the period of which this first portion treats. In many instances I have relied altogether upon memory (Poe’s note).

Breakfast (French). Pym is careful to distinguish his civilized habits from the is-l anders’ crudities, although his experiences on the sea brought him close to greater savagery than has, so far, been evinced by the islanders.

Sea slug; see note 34.

Variety of cress, supposedly effective in preventing scurvy, a disease caused by insufficient vitamin C.

This day was rendered remarkable by our observing in the south several huge wreaths of the grayish vapor I have before spoken of (Poe’s note).

Biblical destroyed and desolate city, comparable with that in Poe’s poem “The City in the Sea.”

Artincial mounds over graves; ancient graves.

Rough volcanic rocks.

The marl was also black; indeed, we noticed no light-colored substances of any kind upon the island (Poe’s note).

For obvious reasons I cannot pretend to strict accuracy in these dates. They are given principally with a view to perspicuity of narration, and as set down in my pencil memorandum (Poe’s note).