The works of Edgar Allan Poe; newly collected and edited, with a memoir, critical introductions, and notes, by Edmund Clarence Stedman and George Edward Woodberry; the illustrations by Albert Edward Sterner.

TALES OF PSEUDO-SCIENCE

and seemed to have moved but little from their
original station.
" I no longer hesitated what to do. I resolved to
lash myself securely to the water cask upon which I
now held, to cut it loose from the counter, and to
throw myself with it into the water. I attracted my
brother's attention by signs, pointed to the floating
barrels that came near us, and did everything in my
power to make him understand what I was about to
do. I thought at length that he comprehended my
design - but, whether this was the case or not, he
shook his head despairingly, and refused to move
from his station by the ring-bolt. It was impossible
to reach him; the emergency admitted of no delay;
and so, with a bitter struggle, I resigned him to his
fate, fastened myself to the cask by means of the
lashings which secured it to the counter, and precipitated myself with it into the sea, without another
moment's hesitation.
"The result was precisely what I had hoped it
might be. As it is myself who now tell you this tale
- as you see that I did escape —and as you are
already in possession of the mode in which this
escape was effected, and must therefore anticipate
all that I have farther to say - I will bring my story
quickly to conclusion. It might have been an hour,
or thereabout, after my quitting the smack, when,
having descended to a vast distance beneath me, it
made three or four wild gyrations in rapid succession,
and, bearing my loved brother with it, plunged head'
long, at once and foreva, into the chaos of foam
below. The barrel to which I was attached sunk
very little farther than half the distance between the
bottom of the gulf and the spot at which I leaped
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