Chapter IX: Conclusion (4)

Two hours passed, and every moment made it more apparent that my husband was posting to death. There was no sound heard throughout the ship except the dull tread of the watch; and, at intervals, the whispers of Crawley, as he communed stealthily with Buist, who went out of the cabin repeatedly, to carry intelligence of the state of the sufferer. For about three quarters of an hour he had been raving wildly. The detached words he uttered raised, by their electric power, the working of my fancy which filled up, by a train of thoughts scarcely more within the province of reason, the chain of his wandering ideas. No connected discourse on the subject of his illness, though mixed up with all the reminiscences of an affection that had lasted since the period of infancy, or the prospects that awaited me in the unprecedented position in which I was about to be thrown, could have distracted me in the manner effected by these insulated vocables, wrung by madness from expiring life and reason. They ring in my ears even yet, when the beams of the moon shine through the casements; and, even now, I think I see that dimly lighted cabin, and my husband lying before me in the agonies of death. I became, as if by some secret sympathy, as much deranged as himself. As I watched him, I cast rapid looks around me--out upon the still deep, in the direction of the fearful island--upon the articles of domestic use lying in confusion, and exhibiting dimly-illuminated sides and dark shades. It seemed to me some frightful dream; and, when I turned my eyes again on the pale face which had been the object of my excited fancy for so many years, saw the struggles of expiring nature, and heard the wild accents that still came from his parched lips, I screamed, and tore my hair in handfuls from my head. In that condition, I saw him die; and the increase of my frenzy, produced by that consummation of all evils, made me rush out, and forward to the side of the ship. I felt all the stinging madness of the resolution to die--to fly from the man who, I feared, had murdered him--to escape from that island of cannibals, where I thought I would be left by my relentless foes, by plunging into the deep, when Crawley, who had heard of his demise, seized me, and dragged me back.

This paroxysm was succeeded by a kind of stupor that seized my whole mind and body. I sat down on a cot in the side of the cabin, and saw Kreutz bring in a light. The glare of it startled me; but it was only as a vision that could not awake the sleeper. They proceeded to lay out my husband on a table. They undressed him--for his clothes were still on; and I saw them take a large sheet, wrap it round him, and pin it firmly at all the folds. When their labours were finished, they took each a large portion of brandy, and Crawley came forward and offered me a portion. I had no power to push it from me. He held it to my mouth; but my lips were motionless; and, tossing it off himself, he and the others went out of the cabin. No precaution was taken to keep me within; but the frenzy that had previously impelled me to self-destruction had subsided, and I shuddered at what a few moments before appeared to me to be a source of relief. I sat for hours in the position in which they left me, gazing upon the dead body before me, but without the energy to rise and look at the features of him who had formed the object of my earliest devotions, the subject of all my fondest dreams of early youth and matured womanhood, now lying there lifeless. I had scarcely, during that period, consciousness of any object, but of a long, white figure extended on the table, with the moonlight reflected from it. The stupor left me--I cannot tell at what hour; and the first movement of living energy in my brain was a stinging impulse to rush forward and seize the body. I obeyed it, without a power to resist; and, tearing off the folds, laid bare the face, which was as placid as I had ever seen it, when, watching over him, I used to steal a look of him, during the hours of night, as he slept by my side, in the moonlight that stole through the cabin-window. In my agony, I clung to him--kissed the cold lips--called out 'George! George!'--threw the folds of the sheet over the face--again looked round me for some one to comfort me--felt the consciousness of my perilous position--and, as a kind of refuge from the despair that met me on every hand, withdrew again the folds, and acted over again the frenzied parts of a madness that mocked the miseries of the inmates of an asylum.

I must have exhausted myself by the excitement into which I was thrown; for, some time afterwards, I found myself lying upon the cot, and wakening again to a consciousness of all the ills that surrounded me. The light of the moon had given place to the dull beams of earliest dawn, which were only sufficient to shew me the extended figure on the table, and the confusion into which the furniture of the cabin was thrown. I heard the sounds of several footsteps in the cuddy. Sounds of voices struck my ear; and, rising up, I crawled forward to a situation where I could hear the communings from which my fate might be known.

'When the wind starts,' said Crawley--'it will be from the north--we should turn and make all speed for Rio, where we may dispose of the cargo, and then run the vessel to the West Indies. How do the men feel disposed, Kreutz--all braced and steady?'

'All but Wingate and Ryder, who are watched by the others,' replied the German. 'These dogs would mutiny, ha! ha!--mein gut friend Buist is against their valking the plank; but they must either come in or go out. Teufel! no mutineers aboard the Griffin.'

'Right, Hans,' said Crawley. 'Get Murdoch to knock together the boards--we will bury him to-morrow; but the wife, man, what is to be done with her?'

'Put her ashore, to be sure,' responded Kreutz. 'There is not von difficulty there. The natives will be glad of her, and we want her not. If this calm were gone, all would be gut and recht. That is the von thing only that troubles me.'

'If there is no wind,' said Crawley, 'to carry us out of the channel, there is none to bring any one to us.'

At this moment, I thought they heard some movements, produced by a nervous trembling that came over me, and forced me to hold by a chair. Some whisperings followed. Kreutz went away, and Crawley entered. I had just time to retreat to the other side of the body of my husband. His manner was now that which was natural to him--harsh and repulsive. He ordered me peremptorily to the lower cabin. I had no power to resist, or even to speak; but I saw, in the order, the eternal separation of me and George; and, rushing forward, I withdrew the covering from his face, to take the last look--to imprint the last kiss on his cold lips. The act operated like the stirrings of conscience on the cowardly man of blood. His averted eye glanced for an instant on the body, and, seizing the coverlet, he wrapped up the countenance, and, taking me by the arm, hurried me down to the apartment set apart for passengers. This cabin was darker than the captain's, from some of the windows having been changed into dead lights; and I considered myself pent up in a dungeon. Hitherto my feelings had been, in a great measure, the result of existing moving circumstances; but now I was left to reflection, in so far as that act of the mind could be concerned in the attempt to picture the extremities of a fate that seemed as unavoidable as unparalleled. The diseased visions that had distracted me before any real evil occurred, were changed, from their dreamy, shadowy character, to realities. The lengthened trains of images that were required to satisfy the cravings of hypochondria, fled; and, in their place, there was one general, overwhelming fear, that seemed to engross all my thinking energies, and left no power to particularize the visions of danger that awaited me among the savages. There was only one presiding, prevailing idea that served as the rallying point of my terrors; and that was the dead body of George, with the white sheet in which he was swathed, and the peculiarly-formed oaken table on which he was placed, and at which we used to dine upon all the dainties to be found on board an Indiaman. It was the steadfastness of this idea that excluded the images of the fearful deep recesses--the Bacchanalian orgies of the savages--their anthropophagous rites, their midnight revels; but retained, as it were, hanging round it, the fear they had engendered, as a more complex feeling. After Crawley had left me, I had thrown myself down on a couch--an act of which I retained no consciousness; for afterwards, when daylight began to break in through the only window that was not closed up, I started to my feet, and did not know, for some time, that I was separated from the corpse; the vision of which had, during the interval, been so vivid, that it combined the conditions of figure and locality as perfectly as if the object had been before me.

On the deck I now heard the sound of several loud voices, and afterwards a scuffle, accompanied with the tramping of feet. There was then silence for a time; but my ears were stung, on a sudden, by a scream, succeeded by a plash, as if some one had been precipitated into the sea. A gurgling noise, as if the individual were drowning, followed; and the suspicion rushed into my mind, that they had made an example (to terrify the others) of one of the men who had rebelled against the authority of the mutineers. A silence, as deep as that of death, succeeded, which lasted about an hour, at the end of which period the sound of the saw and hammer were distinctly heard. I recollected the orders of Crawley, for Murdoch, the carpenter, to prepare George's coffin. The knocking continued for a considerable time, and produced such an effect upon me that the ideas, which had been, as it were, chained up by the freezing influence of the prevailing vision of the extended and rolled-up body, broke away and careered through my mind with the velocity, unconnectedness, and intensity, that belong to certain states of excited mania. Images of the past and the future were mixed up in confusion; and every succeeding thought stung me with increased pain, till the idea of suicide again suggested itself, bringing in its train that which destroyed it--the terror of an avenging God, who will pass judgment on the takers of their own lives. I started, and sought forgiveness; and, for the first time under this agony, felt the soft action of the balm of a confided trust in Him who has mercy in endless stores for the good, but who poured his fury even upon the house of Israel, for the blood they shed upon the land. But, must I confess it, the relief I felt from this high source was immediately again lost in the cold shiverings of instinctive fear, as I heard the knocking cease, knew the coffin was finished, and perceived, from the sounds in the cabin off the cuddy, that they were putting the body into the rudely constructed box, with a view of burying him in the deep sea.

Some indescribable emotion, at this time, forced me towards the cabin window, although the sight of the water was frightful to me. It was still and calm as ever, and the light was already sufficient to enable me to see far down in its green recesses. I could not take my eye from it. There were numerous creatures swimming about in it, some of which I had got described to me, but many of them I had never seen before. They seemed more hideous to me now than they had ever appeared when, on former occasions, I sat and watched their motions. The large bull-mouthed shark was there, rolling his huge body in apparent lethargy, and turning up his white belly in grim playfulness, as if in mockery of my misery. It had a charm about its truculent savageness that riveted my attention, while it shook my frame. It was connected in my mind with the fate of George's body, which, every moment, I expected to hear plash in the sea, in the midst of that shoal of creatures with strange forms and ravenous maws. An exacerbation of these sickly feelings made me lift my eyes; but it was only to fix them on the not less fearful island that lay before in the far distance, and now, in the fogs of the morning, through which the red sun struggled to send his beams, appeared a huge mass of inspissated vapour lying motionless on the surface of the sea. The very indistinctness of this hazy vision stimulated my fancy to its former morbid activity, and I saw again the mystic wooded ravines, sacred to the rights of cannibalism, of which I myself was doomed to be the object.

From this dream I was roused by the loud tread of men's feet over my head, as if the individuals were bearing a load that increased the heaviness of their steps. I was at no loss for the cause--they were carrying the coffin with the body in it to midship, where it was to be let down into its watery grave. In a short time afterwards, a gurgling of the waters met my ear, and, struggling to the foot of the companion ladder, I would have rushed upon deck if my strength would have permitted; but I fell upon the steps, and, lying there, heard a cry from some of them. I gathered, from the detached words I heard, that the bottom of the coffin had given way, from its insufficiency and the weight that had been put in it to make it sink; and that the body had gone down, while the chest swam on the surface. Several feet were now heard rapidly in motion, and the voice of Kreutz, who was running aft, fell on my ear.

'Teufel!' I heard him say, 'we shall have that grim corpse when the gallenblase--ha!--ha!--the gall bladder has burst, rising like von geist from the bottom of the deep sea, and staring at us. Hell take the stumper, Murdoch!'

These words, uttered by the German, were followed by some expression from Crawley, no part of which I could make out, except the oaths directed against the carpenter. The sounds died away; but I heard enough to satisfy me of the fact that George's body had been consigned to the deep with only the shroud to defend it against the attacks of the ravenous creatures I had been contemplating. My mind was again forced, and with increased energy, into the train of gloomy meditations suggested by what I had heard; and so vivid were the visions that obeyed the excited powers of my imagination, that I forgot, as I lay brooding over them on the sofa to which I had staggered, the danger that next awaited myself. I could not now look at the sea, for I feared to meet the fact which would add probation to my imaginations--that the animals I had seen there had disappeared to crowd round the prey that had been given to them. Yet the actual vision of that dear form, mutilated, torn, and devoured, could not, I am satisfied, have produced more insufferable agony, than accompanied and resulted from the diseased imaginings in which my fancy was engaged. The process that I pictured going on in the bottom of the sea, was coloured by hues so sickly, and attended by circumstances so distorted and grim, that all natural appearances, however harrowing, must have fallen short of the power they exercised over me. The positions in which I imagined him to be placed, were varied in a greater degree than ever I had seen the human body; the expressions of the countenance, though fixed by death, and not likely to be changed, became as Protean as the changing postures of the limbs; and the marine monsters that gambolled or fought around him for the prize, were invested with forms, colours, and attributes, of a kind not limited to what I had ever seen in the deep. The only idea that seemed to remain stationary, and not liable to the mutations into which all the others were every moment gliding, was the colour of the body, which was that of the green medium in which he lay. That sickly hue pervaded all parts; and even the dark or light colours of the inhabitants of the deep, partook, more or less, of the prevailing tint. It seemed to be the universal of all particulars, as time or space is the medium or condition of existence of all thought and matter; I felt the impossibility of any idea being true that did not partake of it; and, so strongly was the feeling of the ex-natural that accompanied it, that even now I cannot look at anything green without shuddering.

I cannot tell how long I was under the dominion of this train of thought. I was, in a manner, torn from it by the entrance of Kreutz with some food for me. He growled out a few words of mixed German and English, and left it on the table. It is needless to say that I could eat nothing. Even before these misfortunes overtook me, my appetite had left me; but now I loathed all edibles. After having been roused from the train of morbid imaginings in which I had been engaged, and which I clung to as if they imparted to me some unnatural satisfaction, I felt (and it is a curious fact) a recoiling disinclination to resume the grim subject, and even resorted to some imbecile and despairing efforts to avoid it. It was not that I expected any relief from forbearing: every other subject that could be suggested by my position was equally fraught with tears and pains; but that having, as I now suppose, exhausted, for the time, the diseased workings, the view of an effort to call up again the thoughts that had been as it were supplied by disease, penetrated me with a sensation beyond the powers of endurance. For two or three hours afterwards, my attention was directed to the proceedings upon deck; but I could hear little beyond indistinct mutterings, and occasional sounds of the treading of feet over me. The calm, which had lasted for many days, still continued; and, until a wind sprung up, no effort could be made by the mutineers to retrace their progress through the channel, and proceed to their projected destination. At last the shades of night began to fall; exhausted nature claimed some relief from her sufferings; but the drowsiness that overcame me, was only a medium of a new series of imaginings still more grotesque and unnatural than those that had haunted me during the day.

When the morning dawned, I expected every moment the execution of the purpose I had heard declared by Crawley, to put me ashore on the island; and, during moments of more rational reflection, I could not account for my not having been disposed of in this way on the previous day. The terrors of that destiny were as strong upon me as ever; but, I must confess, that the view of real evil, almost unprecedented, as it seemed, in its extent and peculiarity, produced feelings entirely different from what resulted from the prior musings of my hypochondriac fancy: I would not be believed were I to say that the expected reality was not much more painful than the sickly vision. The miseries were of different kinds, proceeding from different causes, operating upon a mind in two different states. There was something in my own power. I was not justified in committing suicide as a mode of escape from an affliction that God might have seen meet to put upon me; but all my reasonings on this subject fled before the view of this next calamity that awaited me. An extraordinary thought seized me, that I was not bound to hold life, when, through my own body and sensibilities, God's laws were to be overturned, and my sufferings were to be made a shame in the face of heaven. I secreted a knife in my bosom, and sat in silent expectation of the issue. I was again supplied with meat; but, on this occasion, Crawley brought it to me--and here began a new evil. He resumed, partially, his former dastardly sneaking manner; made love to me; offered me the honour of being still a captain's wife, and accompanied the offer with, obliquely-hinted threats of a due consequence of my rejection of his suit. I spurned him; but I cannot dwell on the details of this proceeding. His suit was persisted in for two or three days, when, roused to madness, he told me, that next day, if I consented not, I would be wedded to the natives of Madagascar. I traced the outline of the knife through the covering of my bosom, and defied him.

The next night was clear, and somewhat chill--indications of a cessation of the calm. The rudeness of Crawley had had the effect of keeping my mind from falling into the grasp of the demon of diseased fantasy; but, now my fate was fixed, I had no more to fear from him; and towards midnight, I fell again into the train of imaginings that had formerly haunted me. I had opened the cabin window for air--having felt a suffocating oppression of the chest during the day, proceeding from the extreme heat and the confined apartment. My eyes were again fixed in the direction of the island. I could see the dark shade of the land lying upon the gilded waters. All was still; my thoughts sought again the deep--the grave of George, the fancied condition of his body; and, as my ideas diverged to the calm scene around, it appeared to me as if all nature were dead, and that my own pulsations were the only living movements on earth. Lights now began to move along the shore, and then a fire blazed up into the firmament. The bodies of the savages flitted before it; I had seen the same appearances before; but I was now connected with these orgies in a more _real_ manner than formerly. They ceased, and my mind again sought the recesses of the green deep, where all I loved on earth lay engulfed. My eye at times wandered over the surface of the waters; but I feared to look downwards into their bosom. My attention was suddenly fixed by an object in the sea. I put up my hands and rubbed my eyes. Was I deceived by a fancy? No! a dead body was there, not four yards distant from where I sat. It was that of my husband, rolled up in the same white sheet in which I had seen him extended on the oak table, and with his head raised somewhat above the surface, by the weights placed in the shroud having, as I afterwards thought, descended to the feet. A part of the sewing had been torn off the head, which was bare--the face was openly exposed to me, the moon shone upon it; I could perceive the very features, and even the lustreless eyes, that seemed fixed on the ship. There was not a breath of wind to ruffle the surface of the sea, which shone with a blue lustre in the light of the moon; and the body was as motionless as if it had been fixed on the earth. I have described, hitherto, what actually befell me, with the various states of my mind under extraordinary circumstances of pain and depression. My fancies belonged as much to nature as the facts which excited and nourished them, and must be believed by those who have studied the workings of the mind, even unconnected with the principles and facts of pathology. This was, however, no vision of the fancy, but a reality resulting from well-known physical laws. I sat, fixed immovably, at the window, and felt no more power of receding from it, than I formerly had of resigning my musings. My eyes were fixed upon that countenance which had been the _beau ideal_ of love's idolatry--the fairest thing on earth, and the archetype of my dreams of heaven. I could not fly from it, horrible as it seemed in its blue glare and ghastly expression. I loved it while it shocked me; and all my powers of thinking were bound up in freezing terror. I felt the hair on my head move as the shrivelling skin became corrugated over my temples. That, and the occasional throbbings of my heart, were the only motions of any part of my being; but the body I gazed at seemed to be as immovable, and its eyes seemed not less steadfastly fixed on me than mine were on it.

How long I sat in this position I know not. There was no internal impulse that moved me to desist. I could, I thought, have looked for ever. Certain fearful objects possess a charm over the mind--and this was one of them; but I have sometimes thought that the power lay in producing the negative state of mental paralysis; for the instant my attention was called to a strange noise upon the deck, I was suddenly recalled to a natural sense of the fear it inspired. The sounds I heard were a mixture of exclamations and objections, pronounced in tones of fear and anger. I turned away my face from the dead body, with a strong feeling of repugnance to contemplate it again; and, groping my way to the companion-ladder, listened to what was going on above. Kreutz and Crawley were in communication.

'There is more than chance in that frightful appearance,' I heard Crawley say. 'And this calm too--it will never end. God have mercy on us! Is there no man that will undertake to sink the body? I cannot stand the gaze of these white balls. See! the face is directed towards me; and yet I did not do the deed, though I authorized it. Will no one save me from the glare of the grim avenger? I will give twenty gold pieces to the man who will remove it to the deep. Go forward, Kreutz, and try if you can prevail upon a bold heart to undertake the task!'

'Pho, man!' responded the German--'all von phantasy--anybody would have risen in the same way--Teufel! I heed it not von peterpfenning. But the men are alarmed, and begin to say that the captain has not got fair play. Hush! seize your degen. There is von commotion before the mast.'

I now heard a tumult in the fore part of the vessel and began to suspect that the crew had been led to believe that George had died a natural death, and had been by some means prevailed upon to work the vessel, when the wind rose in another direction, under the command of Crawley. The noise increased, and with it the fears of the cowardly villain whose conscience had been awakened by such strange means. Kreutz had left him to try to pacify the men; and the tones of his terror-struck voice continued to murmur around.

'There it still is,' he groaned, as his attention seemed to be divided between the sight he contemplated and the tumult, 'gazing steadfastly with these lack-lustre eyes for revenge. It is on me they are fixed--immovably fixed--as a victim which the spirit that floats over the body in that dead light of the moon demands, and will get. There is a God above in that blue firmament, who sees all things. I am lost. These men obey the call of a power that chooses that grim apparition as its instrument to call down destruction on my head. Ha! Kreutz has no influence here; the avengers are prepared.'

A step now came rapidly forward, and Kreutz's voice was again heard.

'If you will not try to quell them,' said he, 'all is lost. They swear the captain has been murdered, and that verdamt traitor Buist heads them on. Donner! shall Hans Kreutz die like one muzzled dog? On with degen in hand, and it may not be too late! We have friends among the caitiffs; strike down the first man; his blut will terrify them more than that staring geist, which is, after all, only von natural body, with no more spirit in it than the bones of my grandmutter. Frisch! frisch! auf, man! come, come, dash in and strike the first mutineer!'

The cowardly spirit of Crawley was acted upon by the stern German; for I heard him cry out--

'Hold there, men! what means this tumult--'sdeath?'

The rest of his words were drowned by the noise; but I heard the sounds of his and Kreutz's feet as they rushed forward. In an instant, the sound like that of a man falling prostrate on the deck, met my ear; and then there rose a yell that rung through every cranny of the ship. All seemed engaged in a desperate struggle. The words 'Revenge for our captain!' often rose high above all the other sounds. The clanging of many daggers followed; several bodies fell with a crash upon the deck, and loud groans, as if from persons in the agonies of death, were mixed with the cries of those who were struggling for victory. The tramping and confusion increased, till all distinct sound seemed lost in a general uproar. I got alarmed, and left my station at the foot of the companion-ladder; but I knew not whither to fly. I took again my seat at the window, as if I felt that there was an opening for me from which I might fly from the fearful scene. My agitation had banished from my mind for an instant the vision of the body; and I started again with increased fear as my eyes fell upon the corpse that had apparently been the cause of the uproar. It was still there, as motionless as before; yet, I thought, still nearer to me. I saw the features still more distinctly than ever, and found my mind again chained down by the charm it threw over me. The sounds for a time seemed to come upon my ear from a far, far distance, or like those heard in a dream; and like a dreamer, too, I struggled to get away from a vision that I at once loved and trembled at. The noises on deck seemed as those of the world, and the object before me the creation of the fancy that bound my soul, but left the sense of hearing open to living sounds. While in this state, I was suddenly roused by a rush of several men into the cabin; they held daggers in their hands and their countenances were besmeared with blood. I looked at them, under the impression that they were my enemies, and that the cause of Crawley had triumphed; but I was soon undeceived--they told me that both he and Kreutz lay dead upon the deck, and that the victorious party were determined to complete the voyage and take the ship to Madras. The removal of one evil from a mind borne down by the weight of many, only leaves a greater power of susceptibility of the pain of what remains. The moment I heard of my own personal safety, I recurred again to the subject that affected me more deeply than even the fears of being consigned to the natives of the island--the dead body of George was still in the waters. The men understood and appreciated my sufferings. I again went to the cabin window, and, pointing to the corpse, implored Buist, who was present, to get it taken up and buried. He replied, that that had already been agreed upon, and orders were given to that effect. Several of the men volunteered of themselves to assist. A boat was put out, and I watched the solemn process. I saw them drag up the body from the sea, and would have flown to the deck to embrace once more the dearest object of my earthly affections; but I was restrained from motives of humanity. I had reason to suppose that it had been dreadfully mutilated, and that was the reason why I was saved the pain of the sad sight. That same evening it was consigned again to the deep; and with it sunk the bodies of his murderers, Crawley and Kreutz.

Next day, a breeze sprang up, and bore us away from that fatal place. My eyes were fixed on it till I could see no longer any traces of that island which had caused me so many fears. In a short time, we arrived in India, where I remained about two months, and returned again with the Griffin to Britain.

"Now, sir," she continued, "all these things are in the course of man's doings in this strange world. It is also very natural that I should think of him. But a more dreadful effect has followed. I shudder when I think of it."

She stopped and looked at me, as if she were afraid to touch upon the subject of the visual illusion. I told her that I understood the cause of her fears; and having questioned her, I satisfied myself from her answers that I had at last discovered a case of true _monomania_, in which the patient conceived that she saw, with the same distinctness as when she looked from the cabin window of the _Griffin_ the corpse of her husband swimming in the sea, with the head and chest above the waters, surrounded with the same blue moonlight, and every minute circumstance attending the real presence.

I meditated a cure; but I frankly confess that it was my anxious wish to witness her under the influence of the fit; and, with that view, I purposed waiting upon her repeatedly in the evenings, when, under the shaded light of the candle, it generally came over her. I was baffled in this for several weeks, chiefly, I presume, from the circumstance of my presence operating as an engagement of her mind; but one evening when I was sitting with her mother in another room, the sister came suddenly, and beckoned me into that occupied by my patient. The door was opened quietly and, on looking in, I saw, for the first time, a vision-struck victim of this extraordinary disease. She sat as if under a spell, her arms extended, her eyes fixed on the imaginary object, and every sense bound up in that which contemplated the spectre vision. The fit ended with a loud scream; she fell back in her chair, crying wildly--"George!--George!" and lay, for a minute or two, apparently insensible.

I continued my study of this extraordinary case for a considerable period; and, while I administered to her relief, I got her to explain to me some things which may be of use to our profession. I need not say that I was able to penetrate the dark secret of the seat of either the pathology or the metaphysique of the disease. That it was connected with the irritability of her nerves, and the affection of the eyes, there can be little doubt; because, as she mended in health, the fits diminished in number, and latterly went off. I may, however, state that, from all I could learn from her, the fit was something of the nature of a dream--all the objects around her, at the time, being as much unnoticed as if they existed not; and although she was possessed with an absolute conviction that the body of her husband was actually at the time present, it was precisely that kind of conviction that we feel in a vivid dream.

[Footnote 2: HIBBERT'S _Philosophy of Apparitions_; BREWSTER'S _Letters on Natural Magic_; SCOTT'S _Letters on Witchcraft_, _&c._]

THE FOUNDLING AT SEA.

About the year 1708 or 1710, the good ship _Isabella_, Captain Hardy, sailed from the port of Greenock for Bombay, being chartered by the East India Company to carry out a quantity of arms and ammunition for the use of the Company's forces.

The _Isabella_ carried out with her several passengers; amongst whom were a lady, her child--a girl about three years of age--and a servant-maid. This lady, whose name was Elderslie, was the wife of a lieutenant in the British army, who was then with his regiment at Calcutta, whither she was about to follow him; he having written home that, as he had been fortunate enough to obtain some semi-civil appointments in addition to his military services, he would, in all probability, be a residenter there for many years. The lieutenant added that, under these circumstances, he wished his "dear Betsy, and their darling little Julia, to join him as soon as possible." And this, he said, he had the less hesitation in requiring, that the appointments he alluded to would render their situation easy and comfortable. It was then in obedience to this invitation that Mrs Elderslie and her child were now passengers on board the _Isabella_.

For about six weeks the gallant ship pursued her way prosperously--that whole period being marked only by alternatives of temporary calms and fair winds. The vessel was now off the coast of Guinea; and here an inscrutable Providence had decreed that her ill-fated voyage--for it was destined to be so, flattering as had been its outset--should terminate. A storm arose--a dreadful storm--one of those wild bursts of elemental fury which mock the might of man, and hoarsely laugh at his puny and feeble efforts to resist their destructive powers. For two days and nights the vessel, stript of every inch of canvass, drove wildly before the wind; and, on the morning of the third day, struck furiously on a reef of rocks, at about half a mile's distance from the shore. On the ship striking, the crew--not doubting that she would immediately go to pieces, for a dreadful sea was beating over her, and she was, besides, every now and then, surging heavily against the rock on which she now lay--instantly took to their boats, accompanied by the passengers. All the passengers? No, not all. There was one amissing. It was Mrs Elderslie. About ten minutes before the ship struck, that unfortunate lady, together with two men and a boy, were swept from the deck by a huge sea that broke over the stern; sending, with irresistible fury, a rushing deluge of water, of many feet in depth, over the entire length of the ship. Neither Mrs Elderslie nor any of the unhappy participators in her dismal fate were seen again.

In the hurry and confusion of taking to the boats, none recollected that there was still a child on board--the child of the unfortunate lady who had just perished; or, if any did recollect this, none chose to run the risk of missing the opportunity of escape presented by the boats, by going in search of the hapless child, who was at that moment below in the cabin. In the meantime, the overloaded boats--for they were much too small to carry the numbers who were now crowded into them, especially in such a sea as was then raging--had pushed off, and were labouring to gain the shore. It was a destination they were doomed never to reach. Before they had got half-way, both boats were swamped--the one immediately after the other--and all on board perished, after a brief struggle with the roaring and tumbling waves that were bellowing around them.

From this moment, the storm, as if now satisfied with the mischief it had wrought, began to abate. In half an hour it had altogether subsided; and the waves, though still rolling heavily, had lost the violence and energy of their former motion. They seemed worn out and exhausted by their late fury.

The crew of the unfortunate vessel had left her, as we have said, in the expectation that she would shortly go to pieces; but it would have been better for them had they had more confidence in her strength, and remained by her; for, strange to tell, she withstood the fury of the elements, and, though sorely battered and shaken, her dark hull still rested securely on the rock on which she had struck. The wreck of the _Isabella_ had been witnessed from the shore by a crowd of the natives, who had assembled directly opposite the fatal reef on which she had struck. They would fain have gone out in their canoes to the unfortunate vessel when she first struck, as was made evident by some unsuccessful attempts they made to paddle towards her; but whether with a friendly or hostile purpose, cannot be known. On the storm subsiding, however, they renewed their attempts. A score of canoes started for the wreck, reached it, and, in an instant after, the deck of the unfortunate vessel was covered with wild Indians. Whooping and yelling in the savage excitement occasioned by the novelty of everything around, they flew madly about the deck, scrambled down into the hold, tore open bales and packages, and possessed themselves of whatever most attracted their whimsical and capricious fancies. While some were thus occupied in the hold, others were ransacking the cabin. It was here, and at this moment, that a scene of extraordinary interest took place. A huge savage, who was peering curiously into one of the cabin beds, suddenly uttered a yell, so piercing and unusual, that it attracted the notice of all his wild companions; then, plunging his hand into the bed, drew forth, and held up to the wondering gaze of the latter, a beautiful little girl of about three years old. It was the daughter of the unfortunate Mrs Elderslie. The unconscious child had slept during the whole of the catastrophe, which had deprived her, first of her parent, and subsequently of her protectors, and had only awoke with the shout of the savage who now held her in his powerful, but not unfriendly grasp; for he seemed delighted with his prize. He hugged the infant in his bosom, looked at it, laughed over it, and performed a thousand antics expressive of his admiration and affection for the fair and blooming child of which he had thus strangely become possessed. The child, for some time, expressed great terror of her new protector and his sable companions, calling loudly on her mother; but the anxious and eager endearments of the former gradually calmed her fears and quieted her cries.

In the meantime, the plunder of the vessel was going on vigorously in all directions--above and below, in the cabin and forecastle, till, at length, as much was collected as the savages thought their canoes would safely carry. These, therefore, were now loaded with the booty; and the whole fleet, shortly after, made for the shore.

In one of these canoes was little Julia Elderslie and her new protector, who, by still maintaining his friendly charge over her, shewed that he meant to appropriate her as a part of his share of the plunder.

On reaching the shore, the kind-hearted savage, as his whole conduct in the affair shewed him to be, consigned his little protegee to the care of a female--one of the group of women who were on the beach awaiting the arrival of the canoes, and who appeared to be his wife.

The woman received the child with similar expressions of surprise and delight with those which had marked her husband's conduct on his first finding her. She turned her gently round and round, examined her with a delighted curiosity, patted her cheeks, felt her legs and arms, and, in short, handled her as if she had been some strange toy, or as if she wished to be assured that she was really a thing of flesh and blood.

For two days the natives continued their plunder of the wreck. By the third, the vessel had been cleared of every article of any value that could be carried away; and on this being ascertained, a general division of the spoil, accumulated on the shore, took place.

It was a scene of dreadful confusion and uproar, and more than once threatened to terminate in bloodshed; but it eventually closed without any such catastrophe. The partition was effected, the encampment was broken up, and the whole band--men, women, and children, all loaded with plunder--commenced their march into the interior; the little Julia forming part of the burden of the man who had first appropriated her; a labour in which he was from time to time relieved by his wife.

From three to four years after the occurrence of the events just related, a Scotch merchant ship, the _Dolphin_ of Ayr, Captain Clydesdale, bound for the Cape of Good Hope, while prosecuting her voyage, unexpectedly run short of water, in consequence of the bursting of a tank, when off the Gold Coast of Africa.

On being informed of the accident, the captain determined on running for the land for the purpose of endeavouring to procure a further supply of the indispensable necessary of which he had just sustained so serious a loss.

The vessel was, accordingly, directed towards the coast, which she neared in a few hours; and, finally, entered a small bay, which seemed likely to afford at once the article wanted, and a safe anchorage for the ship while she waited for its reception.

By a curious chance, the bay which the _Dolphin_ now entered was the same in which the _Isabella_ had been wrecked upwards of three years before. But of that ill-fated vessel there was now no trace; a succession of storms, similar to that which had first hurled her on the rocks, had at length accomplished her entire destruction: she had, in time, been beaten to pieces, and had now wholly disappeared.

There was then no appearance of any kind, no memorial nor vestige by which those on board the _Dolphin_ might learn, or at all suspect that the locality they were now in had been the scene of so deep a tragedy as that recorded in the early part of our tale.

All unconscious of this, the _Dolphin_ came to within pistol-shot not only of the reef, but of the identical spot on which the _Isabella_ had been wrecked.

Having come to anchor, a boat, filled with empty watercasks, was despatched from the ship for the shore. In this boat was the captain, first mate, and a pretty numerous party of men, all well armed, in case of any interruption from the natives.

On landing, Captain Clydesdale, the mate, and two men, leaving the others in the boat, set out in quest of water. The search was not a tedious one. When they had walked about a quarter of a mile inland, the gratifying noise of a waterfall struck upon their ears. Following the delightful sound, they quickly reached a rocky dell into which a crystal sheet of water, of considerable breadth, was falling from a height of about fifteen feet; and, after sportively circling about for a moment in a deep but clear pool below, sought the channel which conducted to the sea, found it, and glided noiselessly away.

Delighted with this opportune discovery, Captain Clydesdale despatched one of the men who was along with him to the boat, to order the others up with the water casks.

Having seen the people commence the task of filling the latter, the captain and mate, each armed with a musket, cutlass, and brace of pistols, started for a walk a little farther inland, in order to obtain a view of the country. For nearly an hour they wandered on, now scaling heights, and now forcing their way through patches of tangled brushwood, without meeting with any adventure, or seeing anything at all extraordinary. They had now gained the banks of the stream which, lower down, formed the cascade at which the water casks were filling; and this they proposed to trace downwards, as its banks presented a clear and open route, till they should reach the point whence they had started.

While jogging leisurely along this route, the adventurers, by turning a projecting rock, suddenly opened a small bight or hollow, sheltered on all sides, except towards the river, by the high grounds around it. In the centre of this little glen was an Indian encampment! Alarmed at this unexpected sight, the captain and mate abruptly halted, and would have again retreated behind the projecting rock or knoll which had first concealed them, and taken another route, but they perceived they were seen by a group of male natives who were lolling on the grass in front of the wigwams. On seeing the white men--who now stood fast, aware that it was useless to attempt to retreat--the Indians sprang to their feet with a loud yell, and rushed towards them. The captain and mate instinctively brought down their muskets; for reason would have shown them that resistance was equally useless with flight. The hostile attitude, however, which they had assumed, had the effect of checking the advance of the natives, who suddenly halted, and, to the great relief of the captain and mate, made friendly signs of welcome to them.

Confiding in and returning these signs, the latter raised their muskets and advanced towards the party, who now also resumed their march towards the strangers. They met, when, after some attempts at conversation, conducted on the part of the natives with great good-humour, but, on both sides, altogether in vain, one of the former suddenly ran off at full speed towards the wigwams, into one of which he plunged, and instantly reappeared, leading a female child of six or seven years of age by the hand. As he advanced towards the captain and mate, he kept pointing to the child's face, then to his own, then towards those of the strangers, and laughing loudly the while.

With an amazement which they would have found it difficult to express, Clydesdale and his companion perceived that the child, now produced, was fair, of regular features, smooth hair, and without any trace of African origin. Exposure to a tropical sun had deeply embrowned her little cheeks; but enough of bloom still remained, as, when coupled with other characteristics, left no doubt on the minds of the captain and his mate that the child, however it had come into its present situation, was of European parentage.

His curiosity greatly excited by this extraordinary circumstance, Mr Clydesdale now endeavoured to obtain some account of the child from the natives; but he could make little or nothing of the attempted conference on this subject. From what, however, he did gather, he came to the conclusion--a very accurate one, as the reader may guess--that a shipwreck had taken place on the coast, and that the child had been saved by the natives.

Believing this to be the case, Captain Clydesdale now became anxious to know whether any others had escaped; but could not make himself understood. At length one of the savages, of more apt comprehension than the others, seemed to have obtained a glimmering of the import of the captain's queries, and fell upon an ingenious mode of replying to them. Grasping Mr Clydesdale by the arm, he conducted him to a small pool of water that was hard by. He then took a piece of bark that was lying on the ground, placed about a dozen small pebbles on it, and launched it into the pool. Then stooping down, he edged it over, till the stones slid, one after the other, into the water, until one only remained. Allowing the piece of bark now to right itself, and to float on the water, he pointed to the single stone it carried, and then to the child; thus intimating, as Mr Clydesdale understood it, and as it was evidently meant to signify, that all had perished excepting the little girl.