The next day was Sunday. We worked as usual, washing decks, until
breakfast-time. After breakfast, we pulled the captain etc., ashore,
and finding some hides there which had been brought down the night
before, he ordered me to stay ashore and watch them, saying that the
boat would come again before night. They left me, and I spent a
quiet day on the hill, eating dinner with the three men at the
little house. Unfortunately, they had no books, and after talking with
them and walking about, I began to grow tired of doing nothing. The
little brig, the home of so much hardship and suffering, lay in the
offing, almost as far as one could see; and the only other thing which
broke the surface of the great bay was a small, desolate-looking
island, steep and conical, of a clayey soil, and without the sign of
vegetable life upon it; yet which had a peculiar and melancholy
interest to me, for on the top of it were buried the remains of an
Englishman, the commander of a small merchant brig, who died while
lying in this port. It was always a solemn and interesting spot to me.
There it stood, desolate, and in the midst of desolation; and there
were the remains of one who died and was buried alone and
friendless.
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