must be ignorant; and yet here, before my eyes, was proof indubitable of

the fact. Here was a grave; and I had to ask myself, with a chill, what

manner of man lay there in his last sleep, awaiting the signal of the

Lord in that solitary, sea-beat resting-place? My mind supplied no

answer but what I feared to entertain. Shipwrecked, at least, he must

have been; perhaps, like the old Armada mariners, from some far and rich

land over-sea; or perhaps one of my own race, perishing within eyesight

of the smoke of home. I stood awhile uncovered by his side, and I could

have desired that it had lain in our religion to put up some prayer for

that unhappy stranger, or, in the old classic way, outwardly to honour

his misfortune. I knew, although his bones lay there, a part of Aros,

till the trumpet sounded, his imperishable soul was forth and far away,

among the raptures of the everlasting Sabbath or the pangs of hell; and

yet my mind misgave me even with a fear, that perhaps he was near me

where I stood, guarding his sepulchre, and lingering on the scene of his

unhappy fate.

Certainly it was with a spirit somewhat over-shadowed that I turned away

from the grave to the hardly less melancholy spectacle of the wreck. Her

stem was above the first arc of the flood; she was broken in two a little

abaft the foremast--though indeed she had none, both masts having broken

short in her disaster; and as the pitch of the beach was very sharp and

sudden, and the bows lay many feet below the stern, the fracture gaped

widely open, and you could see right through her poor hull upon the

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