140 The Lonely Man of the Ocean. [FEB. 



clustered at his heart. Loeffler saw himself lost. Again he cast a lan- 

 guid and fevered glance toward the sullen waters which rolled onward 

 to the Portuguese shore, and once more murmured, " Farewell ! fare- 

 well ! we meet not till the morning which wakes us to eternal doom/' 

 He next earnestly called for the surgeon. With difficulty that half-worn- 

 out functionary was summoned to the prostrate German. " Know 

 you/' said Loe'ffler, as soon as he saw him, " know you what fearful foe 

 now stalks in this doomed vessel ?" He opened his breast, and said 

 solemnly, " The Plague is amongst us ! warn your captain !" The pro- 

 fessional man stooped towards his pestilential patient, and whispered 

 softly, " We know all have known all from the beginning. Think 

 you that all this fumigation this smoking of pipes this separation, as 

 far as might be, of the whole from the sick, were remedies to arrest the 

 spread of mortality from poisoned viands ? But breathe not, for Heaven's 

 sake, your suspicions among this hapless crew. Fear is, in these cases, 

 destruction. I have still hopes that the infection may be arrested."* But 

 the surgeon's words were wasted on air. His patient's senses, roused 

 only for an instant, had again wandered into the regions of delirious 

 fancy, and the torture of his swollen members rendered that delirium 

 almost frantic. The benevolent surgeon administered a nostrum, looked 

 with compassion on a fellow-being whom he considered doomed to 

 destruction., and secure (despite his superior's fate) in what he had ever 

 deemed professional exemption from infection, prepared to descend to 

 the second-deck. He never reached it. A shivering fit was succeeded 

 by deathly sickness. All the powers of nature seemed to be totally and 

 instantaneously broken up ; the poison had reached the vitals, as in a 

 moment and the last hope of the fast-sickening crew was no more ! 

 Those on deck rushed in overpowering consternation to the cabin of the 

 captain. Death had been there, too ! He was extended, not onlv life- 

 less, but in a state of actual putrescence ! 



The scenes that followed are of a nature almost too appalling, and even 

 revolting, for description. Let the reader conceive (if he can without hav- 

 ing witnessed such a spectacle) the condition of a set of wretched beings, 

 pent within a scorched prison-house, without commander, without 

 medical assistance ; daily falling faster and faster, until there were not 

 whole enough to tend the sick, nor living enough to bury the dead ; 

 while the malady became every hour more baleful and virulent, from 

 the increasing heat of the atmosphere, the number of living without 

 attendance, and dead without a grave. 



It was about five days after the portentous deaths of the surgeon and 

 commander, that Loe'ffler awoke from a deep and lengthened, and, as all 

 might well have deemed, a last slumber, which had succeeded the wild 

 delirium of fever. He awoke like one returning to a world which he had 

 for some time quitted. It was many minutes ere he could recollect his 

 situation. He found himself still above deck, but "placed on a mattress, 

 and in a hammock. A portion of a cordial was near him. He drank it 

 with the avidity, yet the difficulty, of exhaustion, and slightly partook 

 of a sea-mess, which, from its appearance, might have been laid on his 

 couch some days previously to the sleeper's awakening. Life and sense 

 now rapidly revived in the naturally strong constitution of our young 



* In foreign climates I have often heard the livid spots about the heart, above described, 

 cited as the tokens of the plague. 



