Sleep would no longer allow him to forget that he was shut out from all human society, for he lost consciousness of his lonesome position only to find himself struggling in some nightmare ocean, where there was no eye to see his distress. Then he would be awakened by the dog rubbing his nose against his face, and knew he had groaned aloud in his troubled slumber, and Caspar had crawled closer, as if to comfort his unhappy master. Sometimes the tempter whispered escape—escape from this Crib, which had been so correctly named, for it had, indeed, become a dismal cage. He felt himself strong to combat the waves in flying from the horrible solitude; he could swim twice the distance in his eagerness to be once again among his fellow beings; but his high principles shrank in horror from the thought of violating a promise. He had solemnly given his word that he would remain upon the place, and it bound him stronger than chains of iron. He cast the thought, which had dared to arise in his mind, from him with a sense of shame that it had been a moment entertained.
Early on one bitter cold night, when his house was thick-ribbed with ice, Stahlmann noticed a great light, which increased until it illumined all the western sky. He saw the city spires as plainly as though bathed in the rays of the setting sun, and the lurid glare lit up the waters, making the surrounding blackness along the lake shore appear more terrible. The fire brightened and waned, brightened and waned again. He watched it far into the night, and thought of the thousands of anxious faces that were turned toward the same light, until he fell into a troubled sleep, yearning for the sight of a single countenance. This fire which he witnessed must have been the great conflagration on Lake Street that occurred in February, 1868.
He was sitting one dull, cloudy afternoon, looking out over the dreary waves, when his attention was attracted by the strange behavior of Caspar. The dog was greatly excited; it would jump about him, whining and howling, then run to the door, which stood partly open, and look down into the water, at the same time giving a short, quick yelp. This was repeated so frequently that Stahlmann was aroused from his gloomy reverie. He followed it to the threshold, and saw for an instant some black object that the waves threw up against the Crib. A second time it arose, and Stahlmann plunged into the water with the quick instinct that prompts a brave man to peril his own life in attempting to save another from drowning. In one moment more he had grasped the body, and fastened it to the rope ladder that hung down the western side of the Crib. Then mounting it himself, he drew it up after him on to the floor.
It was the form of a young man, and Stahlmann eagerly kneeled over it, hoping yet to find a faint spark of vitality. A glance showed him that the body must have been in the water several hours, for it was already somewhat bloated; but even then, in his mad desire to restore life, he rubbed the stiffened limbs; but the rigid muscles did not relax. He wrung the water from the black hair, which in places was short and crisp, looking as if it might have been singed by fire. The features were not irregular, but the open eyes had a stony, death-glaze on them, and the broad forehead was cut across in gashes which had evidently been made by the waves beating it against the walls of the Crib. The hands were clenched and slightly blistered.
Stahlmann’s frenzied exertions could not call back the departed spirit, and he sat gazing wildly upon it in his bitter disappointment. Then a startling thought broke suddenly into his mind—What, out in his desolate and watery home, could he do with the dead? Where could he put the stiffened corpse? But as the night came on, he arose to light the beacon; then descended again immediately, taking up his former position by the lifeless form, for it appeared to exert a peculiar fascination over him; he felt a strange kind of pleasure in the presence of the form of a human being, even though it were dead. He seemed to have found a companion, and the thought, which had startled him at first died from his memory.
Hour after hour as he sat beside the corpse; its strange influence increased, until it gradually filled up in his troubled heart the aching void which had so yearned for society. He left it only as necessity called him away to attend to his duties, each time returning with increasing haste. Day by day the spell continued, and he grew to regard the dead body with all the tenderness he would have manifested toward a living brother. He did not shrink from the cold, clammy skin when he raised the head to place it on a stool, but sat and talked to it. He asked why it looked at him with that stony glare, and why its face had turned that dark and ugly color; but when no answer came, he said he realized that it was dead and could not speak. Then the terrible truth flashed upon him. With a groan he saw that he could keep the corpse no longer, and the thought which had startled him once before crept in again with increased significance. Where could he bury it? In the bottom of the lake, where nothing would disturb its peace. He gently let it down into the water, and, as he saw it disappear, he awoke to wild grief at losing it, and would have plunged in to rescue it the second time, but it was gone from sight forever.
Might not this body have been one of the lost from the ill-fated Sea Bird, which burned in the beginning of April, 1868, a few miles north of the city? Stahlmann must have found it about this time.
His grief for the loss of his dead companion grew upon him each day, and rendered the solitude more unendurable. Solitude? It was no longer solitude, for the place was peopled by the phantom creations of his inflamed imagination. Here a part of the diary is altogether incoherent, showing into what utter confusion his intellect had been thrown.
The waves roared at him in anger, and the winds joined them in their rage. Fiendish spirits seemed to rise up before him that were fierce to clutch him and gloat over his terror. The lights in the west danced together and glared at him in mockery, and his own beacon threw its cold white rays over the familiar aperture where the iron rods of the water-gates rose; but that opening had suddenly become an undefined horror to him. The very terror with which he regarded it drew him to its verge. He cast his eyes into its depths, down upon the troubled but black and silent water, and glared at the vision which met his strained sight, for the ghostly face of the man who had been murdered in the tunnel peered at him through the uncertain light.
There was only the dog that he could fly to in his agony, but it, too, had a strange appearance and answered his call by low plaintive howls that sent a shiver through his frame. He repeated its name aloud, and Caspar crawled closer to his master, still at times making moans that sounded sorrowful—almost like the pleading of a human voice in distress, and he thought its eyes had a strange reproachful gaze. While he spoke to it, the dog uttered a prolonged wail. Stahlmann shivered, and a cold chill crept through his blood; all his superstition was roused afresh. The wind lost its rage and died down to funeral-sobs. The sound of the waves fell into a dirge-like cadence, and that melancholy wail which had chilled his blood rang in his ears—it rang with the awful significance of an evil omen long after it had died upon the air. The dog lay perfectly motionless; he stooped to stroke it, but it did not move. He stared at it with a bewildered gaze, when suddenly the horrible reality with the fearful explanation, broke upon his half-crazed brain, and he staggered back with a wild shriek. In the utter misery of his solitude, in his strange grief for the loss of the drowned corpse, and his terror from the hallucinations of a disordered intellect, he had neglected to feed his faithful dog, and had starved to death the only living creature that existed for him in the world. Caspar was dead.