Democratic Sentinel, Volume 8, Number 9, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 28 March 1884 — The LAST MAN. [ARTICLE]

The LAST MAN.

BY A SEAFARER

A small iron, full-rigged ship was in latitude 10 degreed north of the equator, outward bound for a New Zealand port. The sun would be setting in an hour; already his disk was rayless and of a dark and angry gold, and his reflection * lay in a broad and waving dazzle upon the western swell. A pleasant dr Aught of air, blowing softly over the port quarter, had kept the lighter canvss sleeping all the afternoon, but the lower sails hung up and down, and, as the ship leaned upon the gentle undulations, the tender swinging of their folds wafted cool currents over the fevered decks, as though some gigantic punkah-wallah, perched aloft; were fanning the ship. The deep blue of the sea, scarcely wrinkled by the breeze, stretched around, and the water-line was like an azure cincture clasped, where the glory of the sun hung, by a plate of gold; but over the side the water was of an exquisite transparent green, in which you could see the metal hull of the vessel wavering till a bend hid it, and it was enough to possess a man, half-blinded with tho heat that came oft'the brassy glare under the sun, with a calenture to look into the glass-like emerald profound, and to think of the coolness and sweetness to be got by a lazy flouting in the serene surface of that fathomless depth. All the aiternoon it had been blowing a soft air , with now and again a stronger fold that came out of the northeast with a parching taste in it that might have made it pass for the expiring breath of a rush of atmospheric heat lrom some blast furnace hidden behind the sea: but one felt that the draughts could not long outlast the sinking of the sun, whose ardency was slowly sucking out all life from the air. Already in the south the water-line ruled the deep violet of the sky with a burnished surface, betwixt which and the heavens there was a trembling of heat in which the blue swam to a height of four or five degrees. Just where that tremulous appearance was you saw a shining speck, the topmast sails of a ship disconnected by refractions from the rest of the fabric; they looked through the glass like kites flying in the air; and if there was anything in this world to emphasize the vast expanse of the ocean, it was those tiny points of canvas, when one came to think how small a handful of miles was needful to “sink the big vessel out of sight, to render invisible a hull full of people, perhaps, and loaded with a cargo of a value sufficient to render a thousand poor families happy and independent for life ashore. Still the breeze continued blowing softly a 3 tho sun s%nk. There were wrinkles round the stem of the little iron clipper, and the surface of the green clearness over the side was strewn with bubbles that gleamed like emeralds and diamonds and rubies between the shadow of the ship and the light off the sea a» they veered slowly astern into the languid, iridescent wake. It was a pretty sight to peer from under the short awning to up aloft, and mark the stunsails spreading further and further as they descended, .till the reflection of the "great white squares of cloth stretched by the Bwinging-boom shone like a sheet of silver under the black spars; and whenever the , ship lifted to the swell, there would come from aloft a sound of pattering reef-points, and the quiet beating of buntlines, and the low clatter of rope against rope, which, with the aid of the brook-like murmur of the rippling water at the bows, might have passeAfor a stirring of fallen leaves disturbed in their shady place by a sudden passage of winds betwixt the dark trunks of trees and over the cool turf. It was the second dog-watch. No work was doing, and the heat was too great for any kind of diversion.* One saw a number of oj>en-breasted, mossybosomed seamen overhanging the, forecastle rail, pipe in mouth, with drowsy eyes sleepily looking away into the blue dietance, while a low, throaty murmur of voices floated aft from forward, where the black cook, standing in the galley door, was arguing with a Dutch sailor. There was a farm-yard noise, too, of muttering hens, mixed with the rooting, grubbing grunt of a pig or two, and a strange Eastern bird, secured by the leg, was clawing with beak and talons up and down a fathom or two of forestay, while in a hoarse sea-note he’d sing out now and again: “gail ho! bless my eyes! boar ahahd! sail ho!” Eight aft on the quarter deck, visible from the weather side of the forecastle under the lifted clew of the mainsail, stood the helmsman gripping the wheel, and gnawing,upon a quid in his cheek, with many a roll of his gleaming eyes aloft and then into the compass-bowl and then upon the sea; the brightness came off the water in a scarlet tremble upon his figure, and often he would tip his Scotch cap on the back of his head to pass the length of his arm from the wrist to the elbow over his streaming brow. The captain, a red-faced man in a straw hat, with a Manilla cheroot fn his mouth, paced the deck from the mizzen-rigging to the taffrail; the chief mate, who had charge of the watch, walked in the gangway, and the second

mate, seated on the main hatch, was emptying his third and last sooty pipe. Slowly the sun sank, brightening out the heavens to far beyond the zenith into an amazing glory of scarlet and red and orange r melting into a sulphurous tinge that died out into a delicate green sky, which, in its turn deepened into blue and violet and indigo where the ocean met it in the east, with a Btar or two glistening where the lovely hue was deepest. A tropical evening, indeed; and you saw the silver speck of the hidden ship’s sails trembling above the horizon and catching the farewell ray of the setting luminary, whose light went slipjnng level to it from the brow of one swell to another, until it was like a drop of blood in color, and hung like the red lamp of a distant light-house, though the ashen eastern shadow closed down upon it swiftly, and melted it into thin, gray air, while the loftiest of our own clipper’s sails were still on fire with the rich hectic of the west, and the ropes, like gold wire, and the greased topgallant and royal masts, and whatever else showed a polished surface up aloft, twinkling with ruby stars. Darkness swiftly follows the descent of the sun in these parallels; there was no twilight, and the night lay in a dusky, spangled fold in the east ere the sun had fairly trailed the skirts of his golden robe off the low-down western sky. The moon would not rise for another two hours; but the darkness and the coolness were wonderfully sweet after the long spell of roasting daylight. The dew fell till the stars made pearly flakes of it upon the rails and skylights; and the gentle breeze still blew, though with an ever-waning breath. The ripples now ran in lines of fire from the ship’s bow, and strange green shadows, like the vapor rising from melted tin, brightened and dimmed in cloudy puffs in the slants of the inky swells, and you saw tendrils and stalks and leaves of phosphorio radiahee eddying in the holes of the ship’s wake, and glimmering along tho lines which marked the breadth of the ebony path she was sailing along. Then, in armies, the stars overran the velvetblack heavens, with planets shining in blues and greens, and dropping points of quicksilver into the dark waters, while above them the glittering dust of countless worlds lay thick as sand, and often a narrow space of the vast dome would flash out in radiance to the bursting of a meteor, whose momentary bright shining would seem to find an echo, so to speak, in a dim violet glare of lightning down in the southeast. Two bells—9 o’clock—were struck; one beard the ringing chimes hollowly thrown downward out of the sails. A dead calm had fallen, the ship lay in a deep slumber upon the gently breathing bosom of the ocean, and nothing seemed awake but the throbbing stars. Not above four miles had been measured since the darkness came down, and now that the night was breathless, with a threat of cat’s-paw—on no account to be neglected—on either bow and all around, the captain gave instructions for the sternsails to be take-in and stowed away out of the road *of such boxhauling of the yards as might be necessary. This made the ship lively for awhile with the running about and the racing aloft of naked-footed mariners; but presently all was silence again, the captain below taking a glass of grog, the second mate pacing the deck aft, the watch coiled up anywhere for a snooze, a single figure erect on the forecastle, and the sea like a mirror full of starlight,' yet so dark that it was like looking through a haze at the luminaries over the water-line. Three bells were struck, and scarcely had the last vibration died when the second mate hailed the forecastle: “Forward there! is there anybody singing below?” “Nobody singing here, sir,” came back the answer promptly. “Nonsense, man! There’s some one singing somewhere below forward, I tell you. Put your head into the scuttle and listen.” There was a pause, and presently back came the reply: “All’s still in the forecastle, sir. There’s no singing in this part of the ship.” The second mate walked up to the fellow at the wheel: “Did you hear a man’s voice singing just now, before the bell was struck?” “Yes, sir.” “Didn’t the sound come from forward?” “It seemed like it,” answered the helihsman. “Hush! there it is again,” cried the second mate, raising his hand and stretching his head with his ear bent toward the forecastle. The sound was distinct enough—it was that of a husky voice singing—but at a distance that made the notes as thin and vibratory as the twanging of a jew’s-harp heard from afar. It ceased, and was followed by a faint, unearthly laugh, that died out at the moment, when a sudden shivering flap of the canvas up in the darkness seemed like a shudder passing through the ship. “There’s some one singing and laughing away out ahead here, sir!” shouted the man on the forecastle, in a voice that made one suspect he felt his loneliness at that moment. “What the dickens can it be, and where does it come from?” exclaimed the second mate, stepping to the rail and looking over. He peered and peered, but the night lay dark upon the water, spite of the starlight, and no deeper shadow stood, anywhere upon the gloomy surface to indicate the presence of a vessel in the neighborhood. “Forward there!” he shouted; “do you see anything?” “Nothing, sir.” The watch on deck, aroused by this hailing, and gathering its import, clambered on the bulwarks to look around, and the captain, hearing the second mate’s voice, came up from the cabin. “What’s the matter?” he asked. “There’s been a sound of singing and a kind of laughing following—coming from somewhere ahead, sir,” responded the second mate. The captain went to the side and took a long look. “Pooh! pooh 1” he exclaimed, “it must have been your fancy, sir. Singing and laughing? Why, were any vessel near enough for us to hear, such noise, we should be bound to see her.” He was walking over to the compares. “There, sir, you have it now!” cried the second mate. Once again the same thin, wailing, singing, borrowing a supernatural character from the darkness, came faint but clear to the ship, followed as before, by the same reedy, croaking [ laugh. “By heaven, Mr. Burton, it’s

,no fancy I” exclaimed the captain, | wheeling swiftly around. “But it is a | human voice, think you ? If so, where in mercy’s name can it come from ? I say, my lads,” calling to the men star- | ing over the ’bulwarks, “d’ye see anything?” “Nothing at all, sir, though • the sonnds plain enough,” was the an- ; swer, delivered in a tone of awe. SudI denly a dim, luminous gray haze floatled up into the eastern sky; it bright- | ened into yellow and then into a kind of a sullen red; and in a few moments the j upper limb of the moon jutted up, a pale crimson, with a light that made an indigo line of the horjzon under her, and as she soared one saw the wake she left trembling in dull gold along the withering ebony of the swell, till, shooting clear of the deep, with a broadening luster around her that quenched the stars there, she shot her level crimson beam at the ship, whose sails took the tinge of feverish radiance, and stood out in phantasmal spaces of mystical light against the darkness and the stars. But speedily transmuting her oopper into silver, the luminary threw out a fairy radiance that, flowing to the westermost sea-line, showed the circle dark and clear all round, and scarcely was her bland and beautiful illumination fairly kindled when a dozen voices shouted: “There’s a boat out there on the starboard bow!” “Hush!” cried the captain; and amid the silence there stole down yet again to the awed and astonished listeners the wild, mysterious singing of a man’s voioe, followed by a peal of laughter. “Well, whatever it may prove, it must be overhauled,” said the captain. “Mr. Burton, call some hands aft to lower away one of the quarter boats, and go you and see who it is that is singing and laughing away out h&*e in the middle of the ocean.” In a few minutes the boat was pulling away for the dark object to the left of the moon’s reflection. The watch below had turned out and a crowd of seamen awaited with burning curiosity the issue of this singular encounter. “It’ll be no man’s voice as raised that there chantey,” said one of the oldest, and presumably one of the most ignorant among them, as they overhung the rail. “If I’d been in the old man’s place ye might lia’ turned to and boiled me afore you’d ha’ got me to send a boat to it. ” “Why, what d’ye think it is, Bill?” inquired another. “Think! fdon’t think at all. ’Taint my business to think. But d’ye s’pose,” replied the old man, “that any mortal being with hintellects inside him, such as you and me’s got, ’ud tarn to and sing songs—and I dessay comic songs, for what should set him larfin’?—in a hopen boat at this jbere hour of the night, 2,000 or 3,000 miles away from land ? You bet old Bill knows what he’s a talkin’ about when he says that if what’s come aAross ih that there boat turns out mortal he’ll swaller the biggest pair o’ sea-boots that’s knockin’ about the forecastle.” Awed by the old sailor’s prophetic'croaking, to which years of rum and hard weather had communicated a forbidding, sepulchral note, the others fell into deep silence, straining their eyes in the direction of the boats. A half-hour passed before they approached the ship, during which the seamen had been startled by many hoarse and dreadful cries proceeding from the advancing boats, intermixed with shrill and savage laughter, and wild shouts delivered in accents the mariners could not make head or tail of. “Well,” cried the captain, wh en the boats were within hail, “what is it you have come across, Mr. Burton?” “A raving lunatic, sir,” answered the mate. He’s a Spaniard, I think. There’s a dead boy in the bottom of his boat that I reckon to be his son. He’s been shipwrecked apparently, and there’s nothing to eat or drink along with him that we can find. ” It was now seen that two of the crew were on the madman’s boat holding him. As they drew alongside the wretched maniac began to rave fearfully, sometimes breaking off to sing some weird, tuneless song, then bursting into accents full of heartbreaking entreaty, and afterward wrestling furiously with the two nem who had hold of him, making the boat sway to her gunwales, and uttering shriek after shriek. It was as terrible a scene as ever the mooon shone down upon. They had to bind him turn upon turn with ropes in order to drag him aboard, and mad as he was, yet it was evident he knew he was to be separated from the dead boy under the thwarts of his boat, for his struggles were frantic when he saw what they meant to do, every posture was a passionate, delirious yearning toward the corpse, and when finally he was lifted over the rails, his screams and ravings in Spanish sent the hardest among those who had no hand in getting him inboard recoiling with horror. Ho was little more than a skeleton. When they brought a lantern and examined him, they found the remains of what had clearly been a tall, handsome man. but famine had done its work—famine and thirst. A boy might hhve lifted the emaciated frame, though madness furnished it yet with a horrible vitality, and a degree of life, fearful to behold in so shrunken a conformation, blazed in his dark eyes, cruelly sunk, and showing like flames in the hollows, whose shocking depth was accentuated by his bushy brows. The corpse of the lad was reverently dropped over the side, and the boat sent adrift, after the ship’s name she carried painted on her stern had been duly noted. There was no doctor on board, but what the kindness of English sailors could do for the poor Spaniard was done. He died on the following afternoon, having ceased his raving and fallen into a pathetic silence soon after hte had been taken below.f It could not certainly be known that the boy had been his son. “But I don’t think there could be a doubt of it,” said the captain and Mr. Burton, as they stood looking at the dead man, “for, mere skeleton as the poor fallow is, there seems to me by the appearance of his face that there was more of a broken heart in his death than the want of food and water.” The man’s clothes and belongings, besides the vessel’s name, served to identify him. He was master of a Spanish ship .’’that had sailed from Cartagena three months previous to the discovery of the boat by the English iron clipper. With him

had gone his only son. The vessel was never heard of after having been spoken in twenty degrees north latitude., and there could be no doubt that of the numerous crew who were in her, the poor captain, when encountered raving in an open boat amid the frightful solitude ol the great Atlantic, was the last man.— London Telegraph.