A Message From the Sea | Page 8

as the island was ready for me. I made it out myself from the
masthead, and I got enough way upon her in good time to keep her off.
I ordered a boat to be lowered and manned, and went in that boat
myself to explore the island. There was a reef outside it, and, floating in
a corner of the smooth water within the reef, was a heap of sea-weed,
and entangled in that sea-weed was this bottle."
Here the captain took his hand from the bottle for a moment, that the
young fisherman might direct a wondering glance at it; and then
replaced his band and went on:-
"If ever you come--or even if ever you don't come--to a desert place,
use you your eyes and your spy-glass well; for the smallest thing you
see may prove of use to you; and may have some information or some
warning in it. That's the principle on which I came to see this bottle. I
picked up the bottle and ran the boat alongside the island, and made

fast and went ashore armed, with a part of my boat's crew. We found
that every scrap of vegetation on the island (I give it you as my opinion,
but scant and scrubby at the best of times) had been consumed by fire.
As we were making our way, cautiously and toilsomely, over the
pulverised embers, one of my people sank into the earth breast-high. He
turned pale, and 'Haul me out smart, shipmates,' says he, 'for my feet
are among bones.' We soon got him on his legs again, and then we dug
up the spot, and we found that the man was right, and that his feet had
been among bones. More than that, they were human bones; though
whether the remains of one man, or of two or three men, what with
calcination and ashes, and what with a poor practical knowledge of
anatomy, I can't undertake to say. We examined the whole island and
made out nothing else, save and except that, from its opposite side, I
sighted a considerable tract of land, which land I was able to identify,
and according to the bearings of which (not to trouble you with my log)
I took a fresh departure. When I got aboard again I opened the bottle,
which was oilskin-covered as you see, and glass- stoppered as you see.
Inside of it," pursued the captain, suiting his action to his words, "I
found this little crumpled, folded paper, just as you see. Outside of it
was written, as you see, these words: 'Whoever finds this, is solemnly
entreated by the dead to convey it unread to Alfred Raybrock,
Steepways, North Devon, England.' A sacred charge," said the captain,
concluding his narrative, "and, Alfred Raybrock, there it is!"
"This is my poor brother's writing!"
"I suppose so," said Captain Jorgan. "I'll take a look out of this little
window while you read it."
"Pray no, sir! I should be hurt. My brother couldn't know it would fall
into such hands as yours."
The captain sat down again on the foot of the bed, and the young man
opened the folded paper with a trembling hand, and spread it on the
table. The ragged paper, evidently creased and torn both before and
after being written on, was much blotted and stained, and the ink had
faded and run, and many words were wanting. What the captain and the
young fisherman made out together, after much re-reading and much
humouring of the folds of the paper, is given on the next page.
The young fisherman had become more and more agitated, as the
writing had become clearer to him. He now left it lying before the

captain, over whose shoulder he had been reading it, and dropping into
his former seat, leaned forward on the table and laid his face in his
hands.
"What, man," urged the captain, "don't give in! Be up and doing like a
man!"
"It is selfish, I know,--but doing what, doing what?" cried the young
fisherman, in complete despair, and stamping his sea-boot on the
ground.
"Doing what?" returned the captain. "Something! I'd go down to the
little breakwater below yonder, and take a wrench at one of the
salt-rusted iron rings there, and either wrench it up by the roots or
wrench my teeth out of my head, sooner than I'd do nothing. Nothing!"
ejaculated the captain. "Any fool or fainting heart can do that, and
nothing can come of nothing,--which was pretended to be found out, I
believe, by one of them Latin critters," said the captain with the deepest
disdain; "as if Adam hadn't found it out, afore ever he so much as
named the beasts!"
Yet the captain saw, in spite of his