Gigantic white birds fly from beyond the white curtain, screaming
the eternal "Teke-li-li, tekeli-li"--a syllabication that dies away on
the lips of the islander as his soul finally, on that last terrible day,
leaves his body.
The last words of the last of Pym's entries in his journal are as
follows:
"And now we rushed into the embraces of the cataract, where a chasm
threw itself open to receive us. But there arose in our pathway a
shrouded human figure, very far larger in its proportions than any
dweller among men. And the hue of the skin of the figure was of the
perfect whiteness of the snow."
The following description of Dirk Peters as he appeared in the year
1827, or just fifty years before I saw him, apparently a man of
seventy-five years (though we finally concluded that he was nearer
eighty), is Pym's, quoted from Poe's narrative:
"This man was the son of an Indian woman of the tribe of Upsarokas, who
live among fastnesses of the Black Hills, near the source of the
Missouri. His father was a fur-trader, I believe, or at least connected
in some manner with the Indian trading-posts on Lewis River. Peters
himself was one of the most ferocious looking men I ever beheld.
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