The lost man gave a shriek of joy; so prone are we to interpret things hopefully.

Misery!  The next time he saw that little light, that solitary spark of hope, it was not quite so near as before.  A mortal sickness fell on his heart.  The ship had recalled the boats by rocket.

He shrieked, he cried, he screamed, he raved.  “Oh, Rosa!  Rosa! for her sake, men, men, do not leave me.  I am here! here!”

In vain.  The miserable man saw the boat’s little light retire, recede, and melt into the ship’s larger light, and that light glided away.

Then, a cold, deadly stupor fell on him.  Then, death’s icy claw seized his heart, and seemed to run from it to every part of him.  He was a dead man.  Only a question of time.  Nothing to gain by floating.

But the despairing mind could not quit the world in peace, and even here in the cold, cruel sea, the quivering body clung to this fragment of life, and winced at death’s touch, though more merciful.

He despised this weakness; he raged at it; he could not overcome it.

Unable to live or to die, condemned to float slowly, hour by hour, down into death’s jaws.

To a long, death-like stupor succeeded frenzy.  Fury seized this great and long-suffering mind.  It rose against the cruelty and injustice of his fate.  He cursed the world, whose stupidity had driven him to sea, he cursed remorseless nature; and at last he railed on the God who made him, and made the cruel water, that was waiting for his body.  “God’s justice!  God’s mercy!  God’s power! they are all lies,” he shouted, “dreams, chimeras, like Him the all-powerful and good, men babble of by the fire.  If there was a God more powerful than the sea, and only half as good as men are, he would pity my poor Rosa and me, and send a hurricane to drive those caitiffs back to the wretch they have abandoned.  Nature alone is mighty.  Oh, if I could have her on my side, and only God against me!  But she is as deaf to prayer as He is:  as mechanical and remorseless.  I am a bubble melting into the sea.  Soul I have none; my body will soon be nothing, nothing.  So ends an honest, loving life.  I always tried to love my fellow-creatures.  Curse them! curse them!  Curse the earth!  Curse the sea!  Curse all nature:  there is no other God for me to curse.”

The moon came out.

He raised his head and staring eyeballs, and cursed her.

The wind began to whistle, and flung spray in his face.

He raised his fallen head and staring eyeballs, and cursed the wind.

While he was thus raving, he became sensible of a black object to windward.

It looked like a rail, and a man leaning on it.

He stared, he cleared the wet hair from his eyes, and stared again.

The thing, being larger than himself and partly out of water, was drifting to leeward faster than himself.

He stared and trembled, and at last it came nearly abreast, black, black.