recorded the facts in a later diary, many of the pages of which Poe
never saw. But if Pym and Peters had analyzed more closely the
indentures, they might have gained at least the shadow of an idea of the
meaning of these representations. Pym made a copy of them, as you know,
and Poe here gives us a fac-simile of that copy in his Narrative. Peters
now knows in a general way of what these indentures were significant,
and I will in a moment explain to you their general meaning; but first
look at this fac-simile."

I drew up my chair to the side of Doctor Bainbridge, and together we
looked at the representation of these indentures which Poe has furnished
us. Bainbridge continued:

"Now look at this first figure, which Pym says 'might have been taken
for the intentional, though rude, representation of a human figure
standing erect, with outstretched arm.' The arm, observe, is here--the
arm and forearm, to my mind, separated; and directly above and parallel
with the arm is an arrow; and if we trace out the points of the compass
as described in the diary, we find that the arm is pointing to the
south, the arrow is pointing to the north; or in other words, the arm
points to Hili-li; the arrow, by inference, back to the island on which
the indentures exist. Now among most savages the arrow, as a symbol,
represents war--a fight--individual or even tribal death.

"Many centuries preceding the time at which Pym and Peters stood
examining the indentures in the black marl, and at least five centuries
after the foundation of Hili-li, the natives of that zone of islands
almost surrounding the South Pole at a distance of from three hundred to
seven hundred miles, were affected by one of those waves of feeling
which perhaps once in a thousand or several thousand years sweeps aside