He was dying, whether of age, of illness, want of nourishment, or all these three combined, those who looked on him knew not.
Livid hues were spreading over his face rapidly; his nose, which was fine and aquiline, became pinched and white at the point.
As the visitors stooped over him, his eyes dilated, as if he were still partially sensible to external objects; but it was evident that sight had left him, and that the darkness of death was there.
The hardships incident to a life of seclusion and mortification, such as his must have been on that lonely island, together with his wretched attire and venerable white beard, all served to make him seem a patriarch in years; but Bartelot supposed that he was not much over sixty.
"He is sinking—dying' fast," said he, in a whisper, as he took off his hat, while an irresistible emotion of reverence and awe stole over him.
"Outward bound, heaven help him! Goin' forren, and no mistake," said Noah Gawthrop, doffing his straw hat. "I've seen some poor cretturs like this, when I was in the Naval Brigade at Sebastypool. One was always a crossing ov hisself from stem to starn, and from port to starboard. Another was wot they calls a darvish—he was always a spinning of hisself like a peg-top, and shouting, 'Allar—Allar!' Now, I reckons this here's been a darvish o' some kind."
"Had we come ashore this morning at the time I proposed, we might have saved him, Tom," said Morley, in a low tone, to Bartelot. The latter shook his head, and again the pupils of the glazing eyes dilated, as if the sufferer's ear had caught a passing sound.
"Well," resumed Noah Gawthrop, hissing a kind of sigh through his clenched teeth; "it is a darned hard thing for a poor old fellow like this to slip his cable without knowing what port he may have to steer for."
"He'll be brought up in heaven with a round turn, old boy; at least, I hope so," said Bartelot, as he knelt down and applied to the sufferer's lips a little water from a gourd or calabash that lay near.
Another vessel of the same primitive kind contained some yerba, leaves of an evergreen common in Paraguay, and in the isles of the south, which, when diluted with water, yields a species of tea. A smaller calabash contained some goat's milk; such were the equipage and last repast of this poor old recluse.