k in, and
absorbed my feeble voice, replying with pitiless roar. I climbed a near
tree: the level sands bounded by a pine forest, and the sea clipped round
by the horizon, was all that I could discern. In vain I extended my
researches along the beach; the mast we had thrown overboard, with tangled
cordage, and remnants of a sail, was the sole relic land received of our
wreck. Sometimes I stood still, and wrung my hands. I accused earth and sky
--the universal machine and the Almighty power that misdirected it. Again
I threw myself on the sands, and then the sighing wind, mimicking a human
cry, roused me to bitter, fallacious hope. Assuredly if any little bark or
smallest canoe had been near, I should have sought the savage plains of
ocean, found the dear remains of my lost ones, and clinging round them,
have shared their grave.

The day passed thus; each moment contained eternity; although when hour
after hour had gone by, I wondered at the quick flight of time. Yet even
now I had not drunk the bitter potion to the dregs; I was not yet persuaded
of my loss; I did not yet feel in every pulsation, in every nerve, in every
thought, that I remained alone of my race,--that I was the LAST MAN.

The day had clouded over, and a drizzling rain set in at sunset. Even the
eternal skies weep, I thought; is there any shame then, that mortal man
should spend himself in tears? I remembered the ancient fables, in which
human beings are described as dissolving away through weeping into
ever-gushing fountains. Ah! that so it were; and then my destiny would be
in some sort akin to the watery death of Adrian and Clara. Oh! grief is
fantastic; it weaves a web on which to trace the history of its woe from
every form and change around; it incorporates itself with all living
nature; it finds sustenance in every object; as light, it fills all things,
and, like light, it gives its own colours to all.

I had wandered in my search to some distance from the spot on which I had
been cast, and came to one of those watch-towers, which at stated distances
line the Italian shore. I was glad of shelter, glad to find a work of human
hands, after I had gazed so long on nature's drear barrenness; so I
entered, and ascended the rough winding staircase into the guard-room. So
far was fate kind, that no harrowing vestige remained of its former
inhabitants; a few planks laid across two iron tressels, and strewed with
the dried leaves of Indian corn, was the be