Alone in a wilderness of waters. Alone, without compass or rudder, borne on by relentless winds into the lonesome, dreary, shoreless ocean of despair, within whose blank and forbidding sphere no voyager ventures; across whose desolate waste dawn sends no signal and night brings no reprieve; but whose sun is cold, and whose moon is clouded, and whose stars withdraw into space, and where the insufferable silence of vacancy shall not be broken for all time.
O pitiless Nature! thy irrevocable laws argue sore sacrifice in the waste places of God's universe!
The "Petrel" gave a tremendous lurch, that sent two or three of us into the lee corners of the cabin; a sea broke over us, bursting in the companion-hatch, and half filling our small and insecure retreat. The swinging lamp was thrown from its socket and extinguished; we were enveloped in pitch darkness, up to our knees in salt water. There was a moment of awful silence; we could not tell whether the light of day would ever visit us again; we thought perhaps it wouldn't. But the "Petrel" rose once more upon the watery hill-tops, and shook herself free of the cumbrous deluge; and at that point, when she seemed to be riding more easily than usual, some one broke the silence: "Well, did the captain of the 'Mouette' live to tell the tale?"
Yes, he did. God sent a messenger into the lonesome deep, where the miserable man was found insensible, with his eyes wide open against the sunlight, and lips shrunken apart,--a hideous, breathing corpse. When he was lifted into the arms of the brave fellows who had gone to his rescue, he said, "Great God! am I saved?" as though he couldn't believe it when it was true; then he fainted, and was nursed through a long delirium, and was at last restored to health and home and happiness.
Our cabin boy managed to fish up the lamp, and after a little we were illuminated; the agile swab soon sponged out the cabin, and we resumed our tedious watch for dawn and fair weather.
Somehow, my mind brooded over the solitary wreck that was drifting about the sea. I could fancy the rotten timbers of the "Mouette" clinging together, by a miracle, until the "Ancient Mariner" was taken away from her, and then, when she was alone again, with nothing whatever in sight but blank blue sea and blank blue sky, she lay for an hour or so, bearded with shaggy sea-moss and looking about a thousand years old. Suddenly it occurred to her that her time had come,--that she had outlived her usefulness, and might as well go to pieces at once. So she yawned in all her timbers, and the sea reached up over her, and laid hold of her masts, and seemed to be slowly drawing her down into its bosom. There was not an audible sound, and scarcely a ripple upon the water; but when the waves had climbed into the foretop, there was a clamour of affrighted birds, and a myriad bubbles shot up to the surface, where a few waifs floated and whirled about for a moment. It was all that marked the spot where the "Mouette" went down to her eternal rest.