"After Having Wished Each Other A Happy New Year, And Success In Our Enterprise, We Went To Prayers, To Disburthen Our Hearts Before God." On The 25th Of February (The Very Day On Which Wallenstein Was Murdered) The Sun Reappeared.

By the 22nd of March scurvy had already declared itself:

"For want of refreshments we began to be very heartless, and so afflicted that our legs are scarce able to bear us." On the 3rd of April, "there being no more than two of us in health, we killed for them the only two pullets we had left; and they fed pretty heartily upon them, in hopes it might prove a means to recover part of their strength. We were sorry we had not a dozen more for their sake." On Easter Day, Adrian Carman, of Schiedam, their clerk, dies. "The Lord have mercy upon his soul, and upon us all, we being very sick." During the next few days they seem all to have got rapidly worse; one only is strong enough to move about. He has learnt writing from his comrades since coming to the island; and it is he who concludes the melancholy story. "The 23rd (April), the wind blew from the same corner, with small rain. We were by this time reduced to a very deplorable state, there being none of them all, except myself, that were able to help themselves, much less one another, so that the whole burden lay upon my shoulders, - and I perform my duty as well as I am able, as long as God pleases to give me strength. I am just now a-going to help our commander out of his cabin, at his request, because he imagined by this change to ease his pain, he then struggling with death." For seven days this gallant fellow goes on "striving to do his duty;" that is to say, making entries in the journal as to the state of the weather, that being the principal object their employers had in view when they left them on the island; but on the 30th of April his strength too gave way, and his failing hand could do no more than trace an incompleted sentence on the page.

[Figure: fig-p090.gif]

Meanwhile succour and reward are on their way toward the forlorn garrison. On the 4th of June, up again above the horizon rise the sails of the Zealand fleet; but no glad faces come forth to greet the boats as they pull towards the shore; and when their comrades search for those they had hoped to find alive and well, - lo! each lies dead in his own hut, - one with an open Prayer-book by his side; another with his hand stretched out towards the ointment he had used for his stiffened joints; and the last survivor, with the unfinished journal still lying by his side.

The most recent recorded landing on the island was effected twenty-two years ago, by the brave and pious Captain, now Dr. Scoresby,[Footnote:

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