Azolta feebly called to me, and when I stooped over her I saw that I should soon be truly alone. She put her arms around my neck, and as I pressed my lips to hers, her soul went out to join Zolca’s in the great Silent Country.
How long I remained stupefied with grief I know not. I was roused by the noise of rushing water, and saw that the flood was now falling rapidly. I looked languidly on; I felt no interest in it. I only wanted to die, and be with my people again. I was weak and exhausted, without enough energy to take my own life; so I sat on in stupid semi-consciousness through the gloomy evening and the gloomier night, until at last the morning broke, bright, sunny, and beautiful—a morning that mocked the desolation it revealed.
Strange to say, Zolca had still the old cutlass in his belt, and taking this I went a little way up the ridge, and commenced the weary task of digging two graves. I need not recount my labour. I dug them side by side, east and west, and when I had placed my dear ones in their last home, I covered them in, and heaped stones above them, forming two mounds. Some of the rocks I carried from a distance, as there were none sufficiently large in the neighbourhood to secure my dead from being disturbed by the Papoos.
When I had finished my grievous labour I went to look at the valley. The river had returned to the confinement of its banks, but the whole of the town had as completely disappeared as if it had never existed. The mud houses, soaked through by being under water so long, had melted away with the backward rush of the flood, and the mighty torrent had carried everything out to sea, save what it had left buried under two feet of mud. Mud covered everything in the valley, and I did not descend into it.
I was faint from hunger, and remembered that at the cannon mounted on the elevation commanding the bay, and at the one on the headland, provisions had been safely stored in case of a surprise. There I turned my steps, and found that the one on the elevation had escaped the fury of the flood, but the great wave had swept over the headland and destroyed our little battery. It mattered not—there was nothing now to defend.
I found an ample supply of provisions of one sort or another—smoked fish, and cocoa-nuts, and other things,—and some of these I conveyed to the overhanging rock where my wife and brother died.
I determined to rest here for a while, until I had recovered from the shock. I used to visit the graves daily, and occupy myself with adding stones to the mounds, and making them square and level.
The idea of suicide had deserted me, and a kind of apathy had set in. Perhaps Hoogstraaten might revisit the coast, and take me away.
I never went into the valley, even when the sun had hardened the mud. I got the little food I wanted from the store at the cannon, and my companions were the two graves, where I used to sit and talk to the dead for many hours during the day.
One day, when sitting thus, it suddenly occurred to me that I was the only European in this great mysterious land of the south, of which even such a bold and experienced navigator as Hoogstraaten knew not the limits. With the thought a great horror of loneliness came upon me, and I shrieked aloud, calling on God to kill me at once and end my sufferings. Then I knelt by Azolta’s grave, and whispered to her to come out and keep me company in this awful solitude; and then—I knew no more!