The sympathies which had been awakened by this unexpected scene forbade any enjoyment of the party in the cabin, and at the earliest moment practicable I excused myself from the table and returned to the poor fellow, not to leave him again till he should be out of danger. He was much in the state in which I had left him: had, if any thing, a stronger pulse and more natural state of the general surface. I again conversed tenderly with him and encouraged him to look in penitence and faith to Him from whom alone help cometh in time of trouble. I never witnessed greater submission and patience, and the tones of his voice and whole manner were as gentle as a lamb. In seeming apology for the irresistible depression he felt, though he considered himself to be relieved and better, he said to me with a look and accent I cannot soon forget—“Oh! Mr. S——, I was never sick before, and it makes me too down-hearted—too down-hearted!” Poor fellow! who under the same circumstances would not have been down-hearted—stricken down, in an hour as it were, from the very fulness of health and strength, and in the bloom and buoyancy of early manhood, to the feebleness of the merest infant, and to the very borders of the grave!
The surgeons had told me that every thing in his case depended upon the fidelity of those in attendance upon him to the directions given; and that there should be no failure here, I at once took the place of nurse in administering the prescriptions, and gave myself entirely to him. As the night wore away I could not discover the change for the better I wished, though I was not conscious of any for the worse. Dr. Howell, the assistant surgeon, who visited him every two hours, encouraged me to continued vigilance and hope. One, among other injunctions from the surgeons, was on no account to give any water to the patient, and only occasionally a mouthful of a tea prepared for the purpose. But he longed for water, and at one time well-nigh overcame my purpose of rigid obedience to the orders given. He had been almost covered with cataplasms, and had on him besides two or three large blisters; and the tenderness of his entreaty in gentle Scotch dialect, after having been once refused—as he looked up with pleading eyes and said, “Oh! Mr. S——, one wee drop, for I am all on fire!” touched my very heart. Poor fellow! from the best of motives and in the hope of soon seeing him better I reasoned with him and persuaded him to submission: but now lament it. The indulgence would have given him temporary comfort and could have done him no harm: for in a short time afterwards a return of cramps threw him into convulsions, and I saw that the stroke of death had been given. Unwilling unavailingly to watch the rapid changes which betokened too surely the flight of the soul, with the hand which so often during the day and the night by its warm pressure had given assurance of the comfort imparted by my presence still clasping mine, I kneeled by his cot, now surrounded by the surgeons and many of his messmates, and in tears and in strong though silent supplication plead with Him who alone is mighty to save, to spare the immortal spirit of the dying man from the sorrows of the second death. I do not recollect ever to have been sensible of a nearer access by faith to the only Hearer of prayer, and never saw more clearly how it is possible for Him, in the sovereignty and boundless riches of his grace, in the eleventh hour even to have “mercy on whom he will have mercy.” At four o’clock this morning, he gently breathed his last without a struggle or a groan.
Such is the first of death’s doings among us, and such was the last on earth of this poor sailor boy. I am devoutly thankful that though he died in a foreign land far from his home, I have it in my power to assure those who most loved him, that while all was done that the highest professional skill could devise to save him, but in vain, he did not die uncomforted, unprayed for or unwept.
His funeral took place this afternoon. Captain McIntosh, with the Christian kindness of heart characteristic of him, led the procession in his gig—the flag of the Congress, as well as those of the boats leaving the ship, being at half mast. The body was buried in the beautiful cemetery of Gamboa,
“where palm and cypress wave
On high, o’er many a stranger’s grave,
To canopy the dead; nor wanting there
Flowers to the turf, nor fragrance to the air.”