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Updated: June 6, 2025
In ports and dead-lights appeared faces; and those on deck, officers and men, crowded to the rail, some to cross themselves, some to sink on their knees, others to grip the rail tightly, while they stared in silence at the torso and livid face in the moonlight on the sea the ghastly face of the man they had marooned to die alone, who had been seen later dead on the beach.
The peril of an open window was startling to those on deck, and the captain, hearing that I refused to relinquish my post, sent the mate to put up the dead-lights; so I sat down on the floor, buried my face in my hands, and strove to realize the magnificence thus rent from my sight. Yes, God's works in the great deep are indeed wonders.
The drum then beat to quarters earlier than usual; the guns were doubly secured; the dead-lights shipped abaft; the number of inches of water in the well made known by the carpenter; the sobriety of the men ascertained by the officers stationed at their respective guns; and everything that was ordered to be executed, or to be held in readiness, in the several departments, reported to the captain.
The altar-like transom, surmounted by the closed dead-lights in the stem, together with the dim little sky- light overhead, and the somber aspect of every thing around, gave the place the air of some subterranean oratory, say a Prayer Room of Peter the Hermit. But coils of rigging, bolts of canvas, articles of clothing, and disorderly heaps of rubbish, harmonized not with this impression.
Thick glass windows, only about eighteen inches square, had been set in on each side, and protected with dead-lights to fasten tight in case a heavy surf should dash up so high, and the entire hold where on many and many long voyages there had been stored, in darkness, spices, coffee, sugar, and perhaps gold and jewels was now transformed to a schoolroom.
There were also the dead-lights of the stern-cabins glimmering dully in the deck far aft, catching his eye when he turned to walk that way. The brasses of the wheel glittered too, with the dimly lit figure of the man detached, as if phosphorescent, against the black and spangled background of the horizon.
I thought I wouldn't mind doin' my share of the work a bit, thought 'twould be kind of fun to swab decks and all that. Well, 'twas for a spell, but 'tain't now. I'm so sick of it that I don't know what to do. And I'm sick of livin' in a pigpen, too. Look at them dead-lights!
I was this day under the necessity of closing in my stern dead-lights, and fixing cork shutters between the double window-frames of my cabin, the temperature having lately fallen rather low at night; in consequence of which, one of the chronometers had stopped on the 26th of November.
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