{"id":"01KG8AKVMZBZRHTSAR8NVZWC47","cid":"bafkreiee2cqfknu45t5p3mcetkv5zefn3vdhosc4nzqjjnaf53gg65vmca","type":"chunk","properties":{"end_line":13057,"extracted_at":"2026-01-30T20:48:09.931Z","extracted_by":"structure-extraction-lambda","label":"Chunk 1","source_file":"01KG89J1954N2G0NAERBNJXEX9","start_line":12973,"text":"CHAPTER XCI.\r\nMardi Behind: An Ocean Before\r\n\r\n\r\nReturned from the cave, Hautia reclined in her clematis bower,\r\ninvisible hands flinging fennel around her. And nearer, and nearer,\r\nstole dulcet sounds dissolving my woes, as warm beams, snow. Strange\r\nlanguors made me droop; once more within my inmost vault, side by side,\r\nthe Past and Yillah lay:—two bodies tranced;—while like a rounding sun,\r\nbefore me Hautia magnified magnificence; and through her fixed eyes,\r\nslowly drank up my soul.\r\n\r\nThus we stood:—snake and victim: life ebbing out from me, to her.\r\n\r\nBut from that spell, I burst again, as all the Past smote all the\r\nPresent in me.\r\n\r\n“Oh Hautia! thou knowest the mystery I die to fathom. I see it\r\ncrouching in thine eye:—Reveal!”\r\n\r\n“Weal or woe?”\r\n\r\n“Life or death!”\r\n\r\n“See, see!” and Yillah’s rose-pearl danced before me.\r\n\r\nI snatched it from her hand:—“Yillah! Yillah!”\r\n\r\n“Rave on: she lies too deep to answer; stranger voices than thine she\r\nhears:—bubbles are bursting round her.”\r\n\r\n“Drowned! drowned then, even as she dreamed:—I come, I come!—Ha, what\r\nform is this?—hast mosses? sea-thyme? pearls?—Help, help! I sink!—Back,\r\nshining monster!—-What, Hautia,—is it thou?—Oh vipress, I could slay\r\nthee!”\r\n\r\n“Go, go,—and slay thyself: I may not make thee mine;—go,—dead to\r\ndead!—There is another cavern in the hill.” Swift I fled along the\r\nvalley-side; passed Hautia’s cave of pearls; and gained a twilight\r\narch; within, a lake transparent shone. Conflicting currents met, and\r\nwrestled; and one dark arch led to channels, seaward tending.\r\n\r\nRound and round, a gleaming form slow circled in the deepest eddies:—\r\nwhite, and vaguely Yillah.\r\n\r\nStraight I plunged; but the currents were as fierce headwinds off\r\ncapes, that beat back ships.\r\n\r\nThen, as I frenzied gazed; gaining the one dark arch, the revolving\r\nshade darted out of sight, and the eddies whirled as before.\r\n\r\n“Stay, stay! let me go with thee, though thou glidest to gulfs of\r\nblackness;—naught can exceed the hell of this despair!—Why beat longer\r\nin this corpse oh, my heart!”\r\n\r\nAs somnambulists fast-frozen in some horrid dream, ghost-like glide\r\nabroad, and fright the wakeful world; so that night, with death-glazed\r\neyes, to and fro I flitted on the damp and weedy beach.\r\n\r\n“Is this specter, Taji?”—and Mohi and the minstrel stood before me.\r\n\r\n“Taji lives no more. So dead, he has no ghost. I am his spirit’s\r\nphantom’s phantom.”\r\n\r\n“Nay, then, phantom! the time has come to flee.”\r\n\r\nThey dragged me to the water’s brink, where a prow was beached. Soon—\r\nMohi at the helm—we shot beneath the far-flung shadow of a cliff; when,\r\nas in a dream, I hearkened to a voice.\r\n\r\nArrived at Odo, Media had been met with yells. Sedition was in arms,\r\nand to his beard defied him. Vain all concessions then. Foremost stood\r\nthe three pale sons of him, whom I had slain, to gain the maiden lost.\r\nAvengers, from the first hour we had parted on the sea, they had\r\ndrifted on my track survived starvation; and lived to hunt me round all\r\nMardi’s reef; and now at Odo, that last threshold, waited to destroy;\r\nor there, missing the revenge they sought, still swore to hunt me round\r\nEternity.\r\n\r\nBehind the avengers, raged a stormy mob, invoking Media to renounce his\r\nrule. But one hand waving like a pennant above the smoke of some\r\nsea-fight, straight through that tumult Media sailed serene: the\r\nrioters parting from before him, as wild waves before a prow\r\ninflexible.\r\n\r","title":"Chunk 1"},"relationships":[{"peer":"01KG8AJX7KAQXHQ0EY0GM8A4HN","peer_type":"chapter","predicate":"in"},{"peer":"01KG89J1954N2G0NAERBNJXEX9","peer_type":"file","predicate":"extractedFrom"},{"peer":"01KG89HMDZKNY753EZE1CJ8HZW","peer_type":"collection","predicate":"collection"},{"peer":"01KG8AKVMZ9T240H62YXYTXJXM","peer_type":"chunk","predicate":"next"}],"ver":2,"created_at":"2026-01-30T20:48:18.079Z","ts":"2026-01-30T20:48:29.934Z","edited_by":{"method":"manual","user_id":"01KFF0H3YRP9ZSM033AM0QJ47H"}}