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more dead than alive; and after this meal (which lasted a considerable time), he found himself so much the better, that he reached the tree where he always put up for the night, when he composed himself to rest, and slept without disturbance. The next morning, he finished the remains of the turpin, and he then mustered up resolution to enter the forest, in order to keep a lookout from the mountain from whence he had beheld the American ship prepare for sailing. He succeeded in gaining the summit without much difficulty, as he could perceive it from the beach; here he remained all this day viewing the distant horizon, but no sail appeared, and the night passed heavily. About the middle of the next day, he was obliged by hunger to return to the beach, the island being destitute of berries or fruits.

In this manner he subsisted till the morning of the twentyfirst day, which found him on the top of the mountain, reduced to the greatest extremity, and more like an apparition than a human being; sharp misery had worn him to the bone,' and he expected to die very shortly. As his eye wandered round the glittering expanse, he thought he distinguished in the extreme distance a dark speck, which he took to be a sail. He gazed at it most intensely, but it did not seem to move, and he concluded it was a rock; in order

to be convinced, he lay down, and brought the stem of a small tree to bear upon the distant object, which he now perceived moved along the level horizon. It must be a ship; but she was passing the island, and he kept anxiously looking, in the expectation of her fading from his view. In a short time she loomed larger, and he could now perceive her to be a vessel of some size; but his heart sank within him when he observed soon afterwards that she hauled her wind, and stood away upon a different tack. In about half an hour she tacked again, and it now became evident that she was making for the island, as she stood directly in for the bay. The extreme joy of the poor sufferer at this welcome sight broke out in sundry raptures and transports.

He rushed

down the mountain with such little caution, that he stumbled over the broken rocks, and pitched headlong down the broken and rugged descent. This fall almost rendered him helpless; he received a severe cut above the ankle, besides other bad contusions; but the idea of losing this only chance inspired him with fresh energy, and he made his way down, after many painful efforts, staggering from the woods upon the sea-shore; and when he beheld the ship come fairly into the bay and anchor, a boat hoisted out, and pull with long and rapid strokes towards him, he fell overpowered upon the sand.

On the boat reaching the the surgeon succeeded in disshore, the poor fellow appeared lodging from his stomach) in at his last gasp, and all he his miserable and emaciated could articulate was, 'Water, state, the medical gentleman, water !' One of the sailors when he first saw him, had but brought some in a can, and faint hopes of his surviving; suffered him to drink his fill. indeed, this gentleman declared Soon afterwards he again that he could not have lived swooned away, and in this state upon the island many hours they carried him alongside, longer. In a short time he was where he became sensible, but well enough to leave his cot, unable either to speak or move. when he was informed by CapHis helpless condition rendered tain Cook, that about a week's it necessary to hoist him on sail from the Galapagos he had board. Nothing could exceed luckily fallen in with the ship the kind and humane treatment by which Lord had been left, which he received from Captain when the master told him that Cook and the surgeon of the a youth had been missed, and ship, to whose skill and atten- was left upon the island; this tion may be attributed his ulti-induced the captain to bear mate recovery, as from the up for the place; otherwise quantity of water the sailor had he had no intention of making suffered him to drink (which it.

CHAPTER XVI.

THE FEVER SHIP.

'I SAILED from Liverpool for Jamaica, and after a pleasant voyage, arrived at my destination, and discharged my cargo. My vessel was called the Lively Charlotte, a tight brig, well found for trading, and navigated by thirteen hands. I reloaded with sugar and rum for Halifax, intending to freight from that place for England, before the setting in of winter. This object I could only achieve by using double diligence, allowing a reasonable time for accidental obstacles. My brig was built

sharp, for sailing fast, and I did not trouble myself about convoy (it was during war), as I could run a fair race with a common privateer; and we trusted to manoeuvring, four heavy carronades, and a formidable show of painted ports and quakers,1 for escaping capture by any enemy, not possessing such an overwhelming superiority of force as would give him confidence to run boldly close alongside, and find out what

1 Wooden guns: so called by seamen because they will not fight.

were really our means of de- in much less time than we had fence.

'I speedily shipped what provisions and necessaries I wanted, and set sail. A breeze scarcely sufficient to fill the canvas carried us out of Port Royal harbour. The weather was insufferably hot; the air seemed full of fire, and the redness of the atmosphere, not long before sunset, glared as intensely as the flame of a burning city. Jamaica was very sickly; the yellow fever had destroyed numbers of the inhabitants, and three-fourths of all new-comers speedily became its victims. I had been fortunate enough to lose only two men during my stay of three or four weeks (Jack Wilson and Tom Waring), but they were the two most sturdy and healthy seamen in the brig; the first died in thirty-nine hours after he was attacked, and the second on the fourth day. Two hands besides were ill when we left, which reduced to nine the number capable of performing duty. I imagined that putting to sea was the best plan I could adopt to afford the sick a chance of recovery, and retard the spreading of the disorder among such as remained in health; but I was deceived. I carried the contagion with me, and on the evening of the day on which we lost sight of land, another hand died, and three more were taken ill. Still I congratulated myself I was no worse off, since other vessels had lost half their crews while in Port Royal, and some

remained there. We sailed prosperously through the windward passage, so close to Cuba that we could plainly distinguish the trees and shrubs growing upon it, and then shaped our course north-easterly, to clear the Bahamas and gain the great ocean.

'We had seen and lost sight of Crooked Island three days, when it became all at once a dead calm; even the undulation of the sea, commonly called the ground swell, subsided; the sails hung slackened from the yards; the vessel slept like a turtle on the ocean, which became as smooth as a summer mill-pond. The atmosphere could not have sustained a feather: cloudless and clear, the blue serene above and the water below were alike spotless, shadowless, and stagnant. Disappointment and impatience were exhibited by us all, while the sun, flaring from the burning sky, melted the pitch in the rigging till it ran down on the decks, and a beefsteak might have been broiled on the anchorfluke. We could not pace the planks without blistering our feet, until I ordered an awning over the deck for our protection; but still the languor we experienced was overpowering.

A dead calm is always viewed with an uneasy sensation by seamen, but in the present case it was more than usually unwelcome. To the sick it denied the freshness of the breeze, that would have mitigated in some degree

hours in every second. A day's space must then be an age of misery. There was still no appearance of a breeze springing up; the horrible calm appeared as if it would endure for ever. A storm would have been welcome. The irritating indolence, the frightful loneliness and tranquillity that reigned around, united with the frequent presence of human dissolution thinning our scanty number, was more than the firmest nerves could sustain without yielding to despair. Sleep fled far from me; I paced the deck at night, gazing upon the remnant of my crew in silence, and they upon me, hopeless and speechless. I looked at the brilliant stars, that shone in tropical glory, with feverish and impatient feelings, wishing I were among them, or bereft of con

their agonies; and it gave a predisposition to the healthy to imbibe the contagion, lassitude and despondency being its powerful auxiliaries. Assisted by the great heat, the fever appeared to decompose the very substance of the blood; and its progress was so rapid, that no medicine could operate before death closed the scene of suffering. I had no surgeon on board, and from a medicine chest I in vain administered the common remedies. But what remedies could be expected to act with efficacy, where the disease destroyed life almost as quickly as the current of life circulated? I had now but five men able to do duty, and never can I forget my feelings when three of these were taken ill on the fourth day of our unhappy inactivity. One of the sick expired, as I stood by his cot, in horrible convul-sciousness, or were anything but sions. His skin was of a deep saffron hue; watery blood oozed from every pore, and from the corners of his eyes; he seemed dissolving into blood, liquifying into death. Another man rushed upon deck in a fit of delirium, and sprang over the ship's side, into the very jaws of the sharks, that hovered ravenous around us, and seemed to be aware of the terrible havoc death was making.

'I had now the dreadful prospect of seeing all that remained perish, and prayed to God I might not be the last; for I should then become an ocean solitary, dragging on a life of

a man. A heavy presentiment of increasing evil bore down my spirits. I regarded the unruffled sea, dark and glassy, and the reflection of the heavens in it, as a sinner would have contemplated the mouth of hell. The scene, so beautiful at any other time, was terrible under my circumstances. I was overwhelmed with present and anticipated misery. Thirty years I had been accustomed to a sea life, but I had never contemplated that so horrible a situation as mine was possible; I had never imagined that any state half so frightful could exist, though storms had often placed my

life in jeopardy, and I had been twice shipwrecked. In the last misfortune, mind and body were actively employed, and I had no leisure to brood over the future. To be passive, as I now was, with destruction creeping towards me inch by inch; to perceive the most horrible fate advancing slowly upon me, and be obliged to await its approach, pinioned, fixed to the spot, powerless, unable to keep the hope of deliverance alive by exertion: such a situation was the extreme of mortal suffering, a pain of mind language is inadequate to describe; and I endured in silence the full weight of its infliction.

during sleep, in its loneliness of horror, and I fancy I am again in the ship. These mournful entombments were viewed by us at last with that unconcern which is shown by men rendered desperate from circumstances. Disease and dissolution were become every-day matters to us, and the fear of death had lost its power; nay,

we rather trembled at the thought of surviving; thus does habitude fit us for the most terrible situations.

'The last precaution I took was to remove the sick to the deck, under the shelter of a wet sail, to afford them coolness. The next that died was my old townsman, Job Watson. Just after I had seen him expire, about ten o'clock in the evening, when all around was like the stillness of a dead world, I was leaning over the taffrail, and looking upon the ocean's face, that from its placidity and attraction to the eye, was to me and mine like an angel of de

'My mate and cabin boy were now taken with the disease; and on the evening of the fifth day, Will Stokes, the oldest seaman on board, breathed his last, just at the going down of the sun. At midnight another died. By the light of the stars we committed them to the ocean, though, while wrapping the hammock round the body of the last, the effluvia from the rapid putrefac-struction clothed in beauty, when tion was so overpowering and nauseous, that it was with difficulty got upon deck and flung into its unfathomable grave. The dull plash of the carcase, as it plunged, I shall never forget, raising lucid circles on the dark unruffled water, and breaking the obstinate silence of the time; it struck my heart with a thrilling chillness; a rush of indescribable feeling came over me. Even now this 'sepulchral sound strikes at times on my ear

on a sudden I became free from anxiety, obdurate, reckless of everything. I imagined I had taken leave of hope for ever, and an apathy came upon me little removed from despair. I was ready for my destiny, come when it might. I got rid of a load of anxiety that I could not have carried much longer; so that, even when the rising moon showed me the body of the mate, which we had thrown into the water, floating on its back,

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