The oven, too, was gone. I
searched for its site, and found, where I thought it should be, a
few broken bricks and bits of mortar. I alone was left of all, and
how strangely was I here! What changes to me! Where were they all?
Why should I care for them,-- poor Kanakas and sailors, the refuse
of civilization, the outlaws and beach-combers of the Pacific!
Time and death seemed to transfigure them. Doubtless nearly all
were dead; but how had they died, and where? In hospitals, in
fever-climes, in dens of vice, or falling from the mast, or
dropping exhausted from the wreck,--
``When for a moment, like a drop of rain,
He sinks into thy depths with bubbling groan,
Without a grave, unknelled, uncoffined, and unknown.''
The light-hearted boys are now hardened middle-aged men, if the
seas, rocks, fevers, and the deadlier enemies that beset a
sailor's life on shore have spared them; and the then strong men
have bowed themselves, and the earth or sea has covered them.
Even the animals are gone,-- the colony of dogs, the broods of
poultry, the useful horses; but the coyotes bark still in the
woods, for they belong not to man, and are not touched by his
changes.
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