Page:The Ladies' Cabinet of Fashion, Music & Romance 1832.pdf/53

 

Gouts and dried puddles of blood almost covered it, and lay festering and putrefying in the sun and wind, sending forth a most intolerable odour. A death-like chill came over me, as I gazed around with horror ; and I thought the very fountains of life would have curdled within me, as my mind glanced hastily at the retrospect. Hair, matted in gore, were sticking to many places, and fragments of torn garments, some of them female, fluttered here and there. The hatches were all off, while broken boxes, torn and opened letters , and pieces of rich goods, thickly scattered around, certified, that the vessel had been thoroughly ransacked, and plundered of everything valuable. " As the dog, by his motions, seemed to beckon us toward the hurricane-house, we entered together, while some of the boat's crew descended into the hold, to see if any one was concealed there. As I stepped in, I perceived a man seated in a chair, with his face partially turned from me, leaning over a cot which swung from the beams over head, and which appeared to contain a human form. Before advancing farther in, I called to him, but received no answer. I called again, yet louder ; still no reply, nor was any motion of any kind elicited. Thinking that he might be dead, although his position did not warrant the conclusion, I advanced to the opposite side of the cot, and faced him. As I approached, he raised his head, and gazing wildly in my face, cried : " Ay ! ay ! murder me now, and I will thank you for the blow!' “ I come not to murder, but to save you, my friend,' said I: 'but who have you here ?' " I glanced my eye toward the figure in the cot. It was the form of a fair and delicate girl, apparently scarce out of her teens ; but the eyes were sealed in death, and gleamed from the unclosed lids with a glazed and waxy glare. The face was not strikingly handsome, for the lower lip pouted, and would have given a cross expression to the countenance, had not the defect been redeemed by a milder turn in the rest of the features, which wore that earnest, endearing look, which alone renders some women attractive. Her chestnut tresses were tangled about her face, and fell in loose ringlets over her snowy shoulders and bosom, and stains of blood were on the pillow. She seemed wasted, like one far gone in a consumption ; and when I became cooler, and my senses more acute, I perceived that 66 decay's effacing fingers" were already at work upon her. 666 My friend,' said I , addressing her companion, who had