TEE LAST MAN.

Lyttelton Times, Volume LXI, Issue 7228, 30 April 1884, Page 6

TEE LAST MAN.

[By W. Glabk Russell.] A small iron, full-rigged ship was in latitude ton degrees north of the Equator, outward bound for a New Zealand port. The sun would be setting in an hour; already his disc was rayless and of a dark and angry gold, and his reflection lay in a broad aud waving dazzle upon the western swell. A pleasant draught of air, blowing softly over the port quarter, had kept the lighter canvas 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 punkahwniu.Ji, 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 exquisits 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 the heat that came off 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 floating in the serene surface of that fathomless depth. Right 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’d tip his Scotch cap on the back of his head to pass the length of bis arm from the wrist to the elbow over his streaming brow. The captain, a red-faced man in a straw hat, and with a Manilla cheroot in 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, melting into a sulphurous tinge that died out into delicate green sky, which in its turn deepened into blue and violet and indigo where the ocean met it in the east, with a star or two glistening where the lovely hue was deepest.

Two bells—nine o’clock—were struck ; one beard the ringing chimes hollowly thrown downwards 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 catspaws—on no account to be neglected—on either bow and all around, the captain gave instructions for the sternsails to be taken in and stowed away ont 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 silent again, the captain below taking a glass of grog, the second mate quietly 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 star-light, 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 hack 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 wan struck ?” “ Yes, sir.” “ Didn’t the sound come from forward ?” “It seemed like it,” answered the helmsman. “ Hush! there it is again,” cried the second mate, raising his hand and stretching his head forward, with his ear bent towards the forecastle. The sound was distinct enough —it was that of a husky voice singing—bur, at a distance that made the notes as thin and vibratory as the twanging of a jewsharp 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 in the darkness seemed like a shudder passing through the ship. “There’s some ore 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 neighbourhood. “ Forward there! ” he shouted; “do you see anythingP” “Nothing, sir.” The watch on deck, aroused by this hailing, and gathering its import, clambered on the bulwarks to look around, and the captain, bearing 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 loot. “ Pooh, pooh! ” he exclaimed; “it must have been your fancy, sir. Singing and laughing ? Why, were any vessel near enough for us to hear such noises we should be bound to see ber.” He was walking over to the compass. “ 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 !” exclaimed the captain, wheeling swiftly round. “ But is it a human voice, think you ? If so, where in mercy’s name can it come from ? I say, my lads,” calling to the men staring over the bulwarks, “ d’ye see anything ?” “ Nothing at all, sir, though the sound’s plain enough,” was the answer, delivered in a tone full of awe. Suddenly a dim, luminous, grey haze floated up into the Eastern sky; it brightened into yellow, and then into a kind of sullen faded red; and in a few moments the upper limb of th e moon jutted up, a pale crimson, with a light that made an indigo line of the horizon 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 of delicate lustre 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 copper into silver, the luminary threw out a fairy radiance that, flowing to the westernmost sea-line, showed the circle dark ' and clear all round, and scarcely was her bland

ml beautiful illumination fairly kindwhen a dozen voices shouted, ‘•There’s a boat out there on the starboard bow! ” “ Hush ! ” cried the caplin- and amid the silence there stole down yet again to the awed and astonished listeners the wild, mysterious singing of a man’s voice, followed by a peal of laughter. •• Well, whatever it may prove, it must bo 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’s singing and laughing away out here in the middle of the ocean.” In a few minutes the boat was pulling awav for the dark object to the loft 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 then 1 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 oM man’s place ye might ha’ turned to and boiled me afore vou’d ha’ got me to send a boat to it.” Why, what d’ye think it is, Hill ? ” inquired another. “ Think ! I don't think stall. "Taint my business to think. But d’ye s'pose,” replied the old sailor, “ that anv mortal being with hintellocts inside him, such as you and mo’s got, ’ud tarn to and sin'’- songs—and I dessay comic songs, for what should set himlarlin’ ?—inahopen boat at this here hour of the night, two or three thousand miles away from land: You bet old Bill knows what he’s a talkin’ about when he says that if what’s come across iu that there boat turns out mortal, beTl swaller the biggest pair ’o sea. boots that's knockin’ about the forecastle.” Awed bv the old sailor’s prophetic croaking, to which rears of rum and hard weather had communicated a forbidding, sepulchral note, the others fell into deep silence, straining their eyes iu 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 erics proceeding from the advancing boats, intermixed with shrill and savage laughter, and wild shouts delivered in accents the mariners could not make head nor tail off. "Well,” cried the captain. when the boats were within hail, “ what is it you have come across, Mr Burton r ” “A* raving lunatic, sir,” answered the second 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 in the madman's boat holding him. As they drew alongside the wretched maniac began to rave 3 fearfully, sometimes breaking off to sing some weird, tuneless song, then bursting into accents full of heartbreaking entreaty, and afterwards wrestling furiously with the two men 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 moon shone down upon. They had to bind him turn upon turn with ropes in order to drag bim abroad, 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 bis struggles were frantic when he saw what they meant to do, every posture was a passionate, delirious yearning towards the corpse, and when finally he was lifted over the rails, his screams and ravings in Spanish sent the hardiest amongst those ■who had no hand in getting him inboard recoiling with horror. He 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 have lifted the emaciated frame, though madness furnished it yet witha 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 stem 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 he had been taken below. 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 fellow 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 Carthagena 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 mad in an open boat amid the frightful solitude of the great Atlantic, was the'last man.