and rivers brackish with tears for departed man. Farewell to desolate towns

-to fields with their savage intermixture of corn and weeds--to ever

multiplying relics of our lost species. Ocean, we commit ourselves to thee

-even as the patriarch of old floated above the drowned world, let us be

saved, as thus we betake ourselves to thy perennial flood.

Adrian sat at the helm; I attended to the rigging, the breeze right aft

filled our swelling canvas, and we ran before it over the untroubled deep.

The wind died away at noon; its idle breath just permitted us to hold our

course. As lazy, fair-weather sailors, careless of the coming hour, we

talked gaily of our coasting voyage, of our arrival at Athens. We would

make our home of one of the Cyclades, and there in myrtle-groves, amidst

perpetual spring, fanned by the wholesome sea-breezes--we would live long

years in beatific union--Was there such a thing as death in the world?--

The sun passed its zenith, and lingered down the stainless floor of heaven.

Lying in the boat, my face turned up to the sky, I thought I saw on its

blue white, marbled streaks, so slight, so immaterial, that now I said--

They are there--and now, It is a mere imagination. A sudden fear stung me

while I gazed; and, starting up, and running to the prow,--as I stood, my

hair was gently lifted on my brow--a dark line of ripples appeared to the

east, gaining rapidly on us--my breathless remark to Adrian, was followed

by the flapping of the canvas, as the adverse wind struck it, and our boat

lurched--swift as speech, the web of the storm thickened over head, the

sun went down red, the dark sea was strewed with foam, and our skiff rose

577

The Last Man