CHAPTER XXVII.

THE HERMIT.

The western sun streamed into the humble hut through the open door, in a broad and yellow flake of light, that seemed to pierce like a solid body the almost palpable obscurity within; and where that flake of sunlight fell full in its glory, there lay, stretched on a bed of moss and dry leaves, an old man, who was too evidently in the last throes of death.

He was clad in a species of long brown weed, which was fashioned like a friar's gown, but had a hood or tippet, formed of grass matting, and both were worn, torn, patched, and mended thriftily.

A cord--a piece of common rope--girt his waist, and thereat hung a little wooden cross, formed, apparently, by himself, of twigs of the myrtle tied cruciform.

His feet were bare, and, like his hands, they were shrivelled and attenuated, till every bone and muscle was painfully visible. His head was bald by age; his features seemed to have been noble and commanding, and a beard, bushy but dignified, and white as snow, flowed over his breast, and reached to his girdle.

He was dying, whether of age, of illness, want of nourishment, or all these three combined, those who looked on him knew not.

Livid hues were spreading over his face rapidly; his nose, which was fine and aquiline, became pinched and white at the point.

As the visitors stooped over him, his eyes dilated, as if he were still partially sensible to external objects; but it was evident that sight had left him, and that the darkness of death was there.

The hardships incident to a life of seclusion and mortification, such as his must have been on that lonely island, together with his wretched attire and venerable white beard, all served to make him seem a patriarch in years; but Bartelot supposed that he was not much over sixty.

"He is sinking--dying' fast," said he, in a whisper, as he took off his hat, while an irresistible emotion of reverence and awe stole over him.

"Outward bound, heaven help him! Goin' forren, and no mistake," said Noah Gawthrop, doffing his straw hat. "I've seen some poor cretturs like this, when I was in the Naval Brigade at Sebastypool. One was always a crossing ov hisself from stem to starn, and from port to starboard. Another was wot they calls a darvish--he was always a spinning of hisself like a peg-top, and shouting, 'Allar--Allar!' Now, I reckons this here's been a darvish o' some kind."

"Had we come ashore this morning at the time I proposed, we might have saved him, Tom," said Morley, in a low tone, to Bartelot. The latter shook his head, and again the pupils of the glazing eyes dilated, as if the sufferer's ear had caught a passing sound.

"Well," resumed Noah Gawthrop, hissing a kind of sigh through his clenched teeth; "it is a darned hard thing for a poor old fellow like this to slip his cable without knowing what port he may have to steer for."

"He'll be brought up in heaven with a round turn, old boy; at least, I hope so," said Bartelot, as he knelt down and applied to the sufferer's lips a little water from a gourd or calabash that lay near.

Another vessel of the same primitive kind contained some _yerba_, leaves of an evergreen common in Paraguay, and in the isles of the south, which, when diluted with water, yields a species of tea. A smaller calabash contained some goat's milk; such were the equipage and last repast of this poor old recluse.

"See, Captain Bartelot, here is summut wrote on this bit o' plank," said Noah; "it's in some forren lingo, as I takes it."

On the board which formed the head of the truckle-bed, whereon the hermit lay, appeared a cross, carved as if with a knife, and the following inscription or request:

"Hermano[*] Pedro Zuares Miguel de Barradas, "1863. "Rueguen a Dios por el."

[*] Brother.

About five minutes after they entered, a heavy sigh, with a gurgling sound, escaped the hermit, his head turned over a little on one side, the lower jaw fell, quivered, became still, and all was over, and the three strangers remained mute, hat in hand, and gazing with emotions of solemnity and awe on this piteous spectacle.

What was his story? What were the crimes he had committed, the wrongs he had endured at the hands of man, of woman, of the world, that he had been driven to seek a life of such wild and savage seclusion?

Was it the result of eccentric choice, or an inevitable necessity? Who was he, and whence came he? How long had his dreary lot been cast in that voiceless and solitary isle. Had he been the last, or sole survivor, of some ill-fated crew, whose ship had never been heard of since she left her port in old Spain, to be cast away amid the lonely waters of the southern sea?

All these questions must remain unanswered now, and be committed to oblivion with him in his solitary island grave.

That he was a Spaniard was evident from the name, if, as they had no reason to doubt, that name was his which was carved upon the plank that formed a portion of his humble couch, and also from the language of the request, "Pray to God for him," which was written underneath.

Deeply impressed by what they had witnessed, Morley Ashton, Tom Bartelot, and Noah quitted the hut, and under the bright sunshine stepped towards the little garden, where the few herbs the hermit's hand would never cull were ripening in the warm glow.

After a pause, Bartelot said:

"We must give the old man a Christian burial, for we can't shove off to the ship, and leave him lying there like a dead gull."

He looked at his watch, and then at the sun, and added:

"We have two hours yet before sunset; the calm still holds--not a breath of air on land or sea--and the ship is lying yonder like a log. Run to the boat, Noah, shove off to her, and bid the men stretch well on their oars, as we have no time to lose. Bring Ben Plank, the carpenter, ashore, with some boards to make a coffin; bring a shovel, and my prayer-book, for the English burial service. He wouldn't have believed in it much, perhaps, poor man! but 'twill serve his turn now, as well as another, I hope. Look sharp, old fellow."

"Aye, aye, sir," said Tom, twitching his forelock, and hastening to the creek where the boat lay, with its occupants smoking listlessly in the sunshine, and wondering "what the deuce the skipper was up to in that 'ere island," till Noah enlightened them by a yarn of his own, about the "ould darvish or anchor-right they had found a-drifting from his moorings, and dying all his self," information that made them lay out on their oars, which flashed brightly as the sharp gig shot over the sunlit sea.

Some time elapsed, however, before she came off again; for, though the ship, influenced by a gentle undercurrent, had drifted nearer the shore, she was still three miles distant.

When the gig's head was turned to the island, the _Princess_ had her ensign half hoisted at the gaff peak by Morrison's order, in honour of the funeral ceremony that was to be performed on shore, and the crew were all clustered in the tops and on the cross-trees, with their faces turned in that direction.

The gig soon steered into the wooded creek again, bringing the carpenter, with two large packing boxes, his hammer, saw, and nails; Noah brought a shovel, and while the former proceeded to make a rude coffin, the latter, with Morley, working by turns with their jackets off, dug a grave for the hermit, in a place chosen by Bartelot, under a magnificent myrtle.

In an hour all the preparations were completed; he was coffined, and lowered by some of the boat tackle into his last resting-place.

With that reverence of which seamen are seldom devoid, Tom Bartelot stood bare-headed at the head of the humble grave, and read the burial services of the Church of England, Morley making the responses.

On one side stood the ship's carpenter, a squat, sturdy sailor; on the other, old, hard-visaged, weather-beaten Noah, hat in hand, his grizzled hair glistening in the sunshine.

At the words--

"Ashes to ashes--dust to dust," Tom, with his straw hat under his left arm, dropped a handful of earth on the coffin-lid; a little rapid shovelling followed; a few sods were batted down, and the funeral party prepared to leave the spot.

Ere doing so, Morley and Bartelot examined the hut very carefully; but found only a few nuts and dried fruits, which formed the larder of the deceased, an old and well-worn knife, like a seaman's, and two or three drinking-cups, formed of cocoanut shells, on which were carved crosses and other religious emblems. These were brought away as relics of their visit.

Just as they were retiring, Noah chanced to cast a glance at the couch of leaves, from which they had so recently removed the body, and near the plank whereon the name and request were written, he found a book, a Spanish missal, as the title-page bore, "_Madrid,_ 1840, _Imprenta de Don Pedro Sanz, se hallara en su liberia calle de Carretas,_" which he handed to the captain upside down, for any way was all the same to poor Noah's eye.

It contained a piece of folded ribbon, with a cross of red enamelled on gold, shaped like a sword, placed between the masses for the dead; and these relics he and Morley examined as they shoved off for the ship, giving a farewell glance at the lonely grave, at the head of which--as a humble monument to mark that a Christian lay below--Ben Plank had erected two barrel staves, nailed together in the form of a cross.

There was a great deal of manuscript, written small and closely, in Spanish, on the fly-leaves at each end of the missal, with implements that had been apparently pens torn from sea-fowls' wings, and ink furnished by leaves of the wild tobacco, dried in the sunshine, and diluted with water. Thus, from its reddish-brown tint, the writing had all the hue or appearance of that presented by a MS. of the Middle Ages, rather than of a document which, by its date, seemed to have been written only last year.

"Stretch out, lads, and let us get soon on board. Morrison knows Spanish well, and he'll read all this for us," said Bartelot. "I am curious to know what it is, though, perhaps, it may only be prayers and pious meditations, after all."

The blood-red sun had now set behind the high rock of the Hermit's Isle, and the rude seat, which he never more would occupy, could be distinctly seen, defined in outline against the sky. With tropical rapidity purple dusk was stealing over the red and golden sky. The calm was passing away; the chill night wind, chill alike from sea and land, was now blowing across the long rollers, that urged the swift gig from this unknown shore towards the ship.

They were soon alongside.

"Stand by the fall tackles, watch on deck! Hoist in the boat!" ordered Bartelot, as he sprang up the man-ropes and proceeded aft. "Douse the ensign, Morrison. All is over; we've laid the old man in his last home--and it has been a queer business this. Set the courses; let fall and sheet home, for here comes the breeze; but first look at these things."

"The enamelled sword--a knight's cross of the Spanish Order of Santiago de Compostello," said Morrison.

"And this writing?"

"On the fly-leaves of the prayer-book or missal?"

"Yes," replied Bartelot, impatiently.

"It begins:--'_The confession of Don Pedro Zuares Miguel de Barradas, Knight Commander of the Order of St. James of Spain, Captain and Governor of the Castle of San Juan de Ulloa, for the Federal Government of the Free States of Mexico._'"

"Barradas again? It seems to me most strange; but I seem to have heard that name before," said Morley, searching in his memory, as they descended to the cabin, while the yard-heads were filled, and the ship, standing to her course before the freshening breeze, began to leave astern the island where the old hermit lay.

END OF VOL. I.

CHARLES DICKENS AND EVANS, CRYSTAL PALACE PRESS.

End of Project Gutenberg's Morley Ashton, Volume 1 (of 3), by James Grant