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all but five or six of the foremastmen deliberately deserted among

the palms; eventually, as it turned out, seizing a large double

war-canoe of the savages, and setting sail for some other harbor.



"The ship's company being reduced to but a handful, the captain called

upon the Islanders to assist him in the laborious business of heaving

down the ship to stop the leak.  But to such unresting vigilance over

their dangerous allies was this small band of whites necessitated,

both by night and by day, and so extreme was the hard work they underwent,

that upon the vessel being ready again for sea, they were in such

a weakened condition that the captain durst not put off with them

in so heavy a vessel.  After taking counsel with his officers,

he anchored the ship as far off shore as possible; loaded and ran

out his two cannon from the bows; stacked his muskets on the poop;

and warning the Islanders not to approach the ship at their peril,

took one man with him, and setting the sail of his best whale-boat,

steered straight before the wind for Tahiti, five hundred miles distant,

to procure a reinforcement to his crew.



"On the fourth day of the sail, a large canoe was descried,

which seemed to have touched at a low isle of corals.

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he caught a terrible chill which lapsed into a fever;

and at last, after some days' suffering, laid him in his hammock,

close to the very sill of the door of death.  How he wasted

and wasted away in those few long-lingering days, till there

seemed but little left of him but his frame and tattooing.

But as all else in him thinned, and his cheek-bones grew sharper,

his eyes, nevertheless, seemed growing fuller and fuller;

they became of a strange softness of lustre; and mildly but

deeply looked out at you there from his sickness, a wondrous

testimony to that immortal health in him which could not die,

or be weakened.  And like circles on the water, which, as they

grow fainter, expand; so his eyes seemed rounding and rounding,

like the rings of Eternity.  An awe that cannot be named would

steal over you as you sat by the side of this waning savage,

and saw as strange things in his face, as any beheld who were

bystanders when Zoroaster died.  For whatever is truly wondrous

and fearful in man, never yet was put into words or books.

And the drawing near of Death, which alike levels all,

alike impresses all with a last revelation, which only an author

from the dead could adequately tell.  So that--let us say it again--

no dying Chaldee or Greek had higher and holier thoughts