The Confessions of a BeachcomberBanfield, E. J. (Edmund James)
History
The Confessions of a Beachcomber
Banfield, E. J. (Edmund James)
Dunk Island (Qld.); Natural history -- Australia -- Queensland
The mate had found his port after stormy seas. His heart--worn out with
stress and strain--had failed within him, and all day long his companion
thought tenderly of him, making but little noise, thinking that his
sleep was the sleep of a day, not the sleep of eternity that no earthly
din may disturb.
The weather was still boisterous, but it was essential to take the body
to Bowen, to render unto the authorities there conclusive evidence that
death had been the result of natural causes. My visitor's nerves were
then virile. But the time of stress and strain was at hand. He found
himself alone on a remote Island. A grim responsibility forced upon him.
Awful as the duty was, it had to be courageously faced, and performed as
tenderly as might be. Instead of the enjoyment of comfort and rest, and
days of busy companionship and revivifying hopes, there was the shock
that sudden death inflicts, dramatic loneliness, dry-eyed grief, forced
exertion, and the abandonment of brightening prospects.
With pain and infinite labour he succeeded in dragging and rolling the
corpse to the beach. Thence he pushed it up a plank on to the deck of
the cutter, and leaving his possessions to chance and fate, he, the
wearied and bereaved one-armed man, set sail in violent weather across
the open sea to the nearest port. At midnight the "great cry" of a
hurricane arose. Lightning flashed over the stricken yeasty sea. A
lonesome and grim quest this--full of peril. Did not Nature in the
trumpet tones of a furious and vengeful spirit decree the destruction of
the little boat as she bounced and floundered among the crests of those
awful waves? Here was booty belonging to the ocean--prey escaping from
the talons of the fiercest and most remorseless of harpies. So they
shrieked and swarmed about the boat, howling for what was theirs. The
strife was great, but not too great for the lonely man's seamanship. All
the fiends of the sea might do their worst, but until the actual finale
came, he would sail the boat--lifting her on the swell, eluding the white
hissing bulk of the following sea.
When at last the boat ran into port, the sea had gained a moral victory,
but the man gave to the authorities the mortal remains of his mate to be
buried decently on land.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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