He had food and drink. As long as the rainy season lasted, and for some time after, life was secure. Life becomes doubly sweet after being purchased by such efforts as those which Brandon had put forth, and the thought that for the present, at least, he was safe did not fail to fill him with the most buoyant hope. To him, indeed, it seemed just then as if nothing more could be desired. He had food and drink in abundance. In that climate shelter was scarcely needed. What more could he wish?
The first day was passed in exploring the rock to see if there was any place which he might select for his abode. There were several fissures in the rock at the eastern end, and one of these he selected. He then went back for his clothes, and brought them to this place. So the first day went.
All the time his eyes wandered round the horizon to see if a sail might be in sight. After two or three days, in which nothing appeared, he ceased his constant watch, though still from time to time, by a natural impulse, he continued to look. After all he thought that rescue might come. He was somewhat out of the track of the China ships, but still not very much so. An adverse wind might bring a ship close by. The hope of this sustained him.
But day succeeded to day and week to week with no appearance of any thing whatever on the wide ocean.
During these long days he passed the greater part of his time either under the shelter of the rock, where he could best avoid the hot sun, or when the sea-breeze blew on its summit. The frightful solitude offered to him absolutely nothing which could distract his thoughts, or prevent him from brooding upon the hopelessness of his situation.
Brooding thus, it became his chief occupation to read over and over his father’s letter and the inclosure, and conjecture what might be his course of action if he ever escaped from this place. His father’s voice seemed now to sound to him more imploringly than ever; and the winds at night, as they moaned round the rock, seemed to modulate themselves, to form their sounds to something like a wild cry, and wail forth, “Come home!” Yet that home was now surely farther removed than ever, and the winds seemed only to mock him. More sad and more despairing than Ulysses on the Ogygian shore, he too wasted away with home-sickness.
{Greek: kateibeto se glukus aion noston oduromeno.}
Fate thus far had been against him, and the melancholy recollections of his past life could yield nothing but despondency. Driven from home when but a boy, he had become an exile, had wandered to the other side of the world, and was just beginning to attain some prospect of a fortune when this letter came. Rising up from the prostration of that blow, he had struggled against fate, but only to encounter a more over-mastering force, and this last stroke had been the worst of all. Could he rally after this? Could he now hope to escape?
Fate had been against him; but yet, perhaps, here, on this lonely island, he might find a turning-point. Here he might find that turning in the long lane which the proverb speaks of. “The day is darkest before the morn,” and perhaps he would yet have Fate on his side.
But the sternest and most courageous spirit can hardly maintain its fortitude in an utter and unmitigated solitude. St. Simeon Stylites could do so, but he felt that on the top of that pillar there rested the eyes of the heavenly hosts and of admiring mankind. It is when the consciousness of utter solitude comes that the soul sinks. When the prisoner thinks that he is forgotten by the outside world, then he loses that strength which sustained him while he believed himself remembered.