n. I had separated a little from my
companions. I called to him, and I thought I heard him answer, "Halloa,
who calls?" His face was turned away from me, and he did not move. I
called again, and at that moment Newman broke through the brushwood, and
joined me. Together we climbed the hill, both equally surprised that
the man we saw did not get up to meet us. In another minute we were by
his side. The straw-hat, stained and in tatters, covered a skull; the
clothes, decayed and discoloured, hung loosely on a fleshless skeleton.
A book was by his side. It was a copy of a Latin poet--Horace, Newman
told me. Before him was another book of manuscript; and, as we looked
about, we picked up the remains of pencil, which had dropped from the
dead man's fingers. Newman opened the manuscript, and though it was
rotten, and the characters much defaced, he could still decipher them.
He glanced his eye rapidly over them.

"Ah! poor fellow, his appears to have been a sad fate," he remarked,
with a voice full of sadness. "Compelled by a strong necessity to leave
England--to wrench asunder all the ties which held him there, and embark
on board a South-sea-man as surgeon--he seems to have had a hard life of
it with a drunken, brutal captain, and ignorant--not a human being with
whom he could sympathise. Unable to return home, after three years'
service he exchanged into another ship. His master and officers, with
all the boats, were away in chase of whales, which had appeared about
them in great numbers, when a gale arose. The crew, already too much
weakened by that scourge of the ocean, the scurvy, and the loss of
several men, were unable to shorten sail. The boats were far out of
sight, as they believed, to windward. In vain they endeavoured to beat
up to them. The main and mizzen-masts went by the board; and the gale
still further increasing, they were compelled to run before it, without
a prospect of picking up their shipmates in the boats.

"Away they drove for several days before the wind, till one night all
who were below were thrown out of their berths by a violent concussion.
Again and again the ship struck--the sea beat in her stern. They rushed
on deck. It was to find nearly all those who had been there washed
away. The next instant, the ship again lifting, was carried into smooth
water, and finally jammed fast in the position we had found her.

"Five only of all the crew then survived, and they were the mos