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- 3698
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- 2026-01-30T03:55:03.879Z
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- 3653
- text
- and though it were adamant they would wear it. In his retirement the
superannuated giant begins to mellow down into a sort of animal decay.
In hard, rude natures, especially such as have passed their lives among
the elements, farmers or sailors, this animal decay mostly affects the
memory by casting a haze over it; not seldom, it softens the heart as
well, besides more or less, perhaps, drowsing the conscience, innocent
or otherwise.
But let us come to the close of a sketch necessarily imperfect. One fine
Easter Day, following a spell of rheumatic weather, Orme was discovered
alone and dead on a height overlooking the seaward sweep of the great
haven to whose shore, in his retirement from sea, he had moored. It was
an evened terrace, destined for use in war, but in peace neglected and
offering a sanctuary for anybody. Mounted on it was an obsolete battery
of rusty guns. Against one of these he was found leaning, his legs
stretched out before him; his clay pipe broken in twain, the vacant bowl
and no spillings from it, attesting that his pipe had been smoked out to
the last of its contents. He faced the outlet to the ocean. The eyes
were open, still continuing in death the vital glance fixed on the hazy
waters and the dim-seen sails coming and going or at anchor near by.
What had been his last thoughts? If aught of reality lurked in the
rumours concerning him, had remorse, had penitence any place in those
thoughts? Or was there just nothing of either? After all, were his
moodiness and mutterings, his strange freaks, starts, eccentric shrugs
and grimaces, were these but the grotesque additions like the wens and
knobs and distortions of the trunk of an old chance apple-tree in an
inclement upland, not only beaten by many storms, but also obstructed in
its natural development by the chance of its having first sprouted among
hard-packed rock? In short, that fatality, no more encrusting him, made
him what he came to be? Even admitting that there was something dark
that he chose to keep to himself, what then? Such reticence may
sometimes be more for the sake of others than one’s self. No, let us
believe that that animal decay before mentioned still befriended him to
the close, and that he fell asleep recalling through the haze of memory
many a far-off scene of the wide world’s beauty dreamily suggested by
the hazy waters before him.
He lies buried among other sailors, for whom also strangers performed
one last rite in a lonely plot overgrown with wild eglantine uncared for
by man.
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