[Footnote 54:  One of the best female writers of South Carolina, who has of late years laid aside her pen.]

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=_Richard H. Dana, Jr., 1815-._= (Manual, p. 504.)

From “Two years before the Mast.”

=_228._= LOSS OF A MAN AT SEA.

Death is at all tunes solemn, but never so much so as at sea.  A man dies on shore; his body remains with his friends, and “the mourners go about the streets;” but when a man falls overboard at sea and is lost, there is a suddenness in the event, and a difficulty in realizing it, which give to it an air of awful mystery.  A man dies on shore—­you follow his body to the grave, and a stone marks the spot.  You are often prepared for the event.  There is always something which helps you to realize it when it happens, and to recall it when it has passed.  A man is shot down by your side in battle, and the mangled body remains an object, and a real evidence; but at sea, the man is near you—­at your side—­you hear his voice, and in an instant he is gone, and nothing but a vacancy shows his loss.  Then too, at sea—­to use a homely but expressive phrase—­you miss a man so much.  A dozen men are shut up together in a little bark, upon the wide, wide sea, and for months and months see no forms and hear no voices but their own, and one is taken suddenly from among them, and they miss him at every turn.  It is like losing a limb.  There are no new faces or new scenes to fill up the gap.  There is always an empty berth in the forecastle, and one man wanting when the small night watch is mustered.  There is one less to take the wheel, and one less to lay out with you upon the yard.  You miss his form, and the sound of his voice, for habit had made them almost necessary to you, and each of your senses feels the loss.

All these things make such a death peculiarly solemn, and the effect of it remains upon the crew for some time.  There is more kindness shown by the officers to the crew, and by the crew to one another.  There is more quietness and seriousness.  The oath and the loud laugh are gone.  The officers are more watchful, and the crew go more carefully aloft.  The lost man is seldom mentioned, or is dismissed with a sailor’s rude eulogy, “Well, poor George is gone.  His cruise is up soon.  He knew his work, and did his duty, and was a good shipmate.”  Then usually follows some allusion to another world, for sailors are almost all believers; but their notions and opinions are unfixed, and at loose ends.  They say,—­“God won’t be hard upon the poor fellow,” and seldom get beyond the common phrase which seems to imply that their sufferings and hard treatment here, will excuse them hereafter. To work hard, live hard, die hard, and go to hell after all, would be hard indeed.

Yet a sailor’s life is at best but a mixture of a little good with much evil, and a little pleasure with much pain.  The beautiful is linked with the revolting, the sublime with the common-place, and the solemn with the ludicrous.