Chapter Ten.

Chapter Ten.On a Lee-Shore.It was useless to think of heaving the ship to, or otherwise attempting to save the lives of the unfortunate Malays whose craft we had just destroyed; the thing was an absolute impossibility, and any such attempt would only have resulted in our own destruction; we had no option but to continue our headlong flight to leeward, leaving our enemies to save themselves, if they could, by clinging to the wreckage.Immediately after the collision the carpenter came aft, and, without waiting for orders, carefully sounded the pumps. The result was a report that the hold was dry; we had therefore apparently sustained no serious damage to our hull; while, so far as spars and rigging were concerned, we did not appear to have parted a rope-yarn.For fully half an hour the squall raged as madly as at the moment when it first burst upon us; all this while the ship was scudding helplessly before it, drawing nearer every moment to that deadly lee-shore that I knew must be close at hand, and which I every instant expected would bring us up all standing. At length, however, to my intense relief, the gale slightly but perceptibly moderated its headlong fury; and determining to at once avail myself of this opportunity, I called the hands to the braces, and prepared to bring the ship to the wind on the starboard tack. The moment that everything was ready I signed to the man at the wheel to put the helm gently over; when, as I was turning away again to give my orders to the men at the braces, one of them startled me with the cry of—“Land ho! ahead and on the port bow!” I caught sight of it at the same instant, the air having momentarily cleared somewhat of the spindrift and scud-water that had hitherto circumscribed our horizon and obscured our view. Yes, there it was, a low, dark shadow against the now clear, starlit sky right ahead and stretching away to port and starboard on either bow. It could not be more than three miles distant from us—if so much—for the air, though somewhat clearer than it had been, was still thick, yet the loom of the land through it was clear enough; altogether too much so, indeed, for my liking. What it was like to the eastward I could not distinguish, for in that direction it faded quickly into the thick atmosphere that lay that way; but westward it terminated in a low point that already bore well out upon our larboard beam—a sight that caused me to most heartily congratulate myself that I had determined upon rounding-to on the starboard tack; for had I done so with the ship’s head to the westward, without seeing this point, we could not possibly have weathered it, and must have taken our choice—when wediddiscover it—of going ashore upon it, or upon the land to leeward, should we attempt to wear the ship; for she would never have tacked in such a sea as was now running, with such a small amount of canvas as we were showing.As the ship came to the wind we, for the first time since the outburst of the gale, gained something like a just idea of its tremendous strength and violence. With nothing on her but the two close-reefed topsails and the fore-topmast staysail, the poor littleEsmeraldabowed beneath the fury of the blast until her lee rail was awash and her lee scuppers more than waist-deep in water. The howling and hooting of the gale aloft, as it tore furiously through the maze of spars and rigging opposed to it, produced a wild medley of sound that utterly baffles all attempt at description; while the savage plunges of the ship into the short, steep sea and the horrible way in which she careened during her lee rolls almost sickened me with anxiety lest the masts should go over the side and leave us to drive ashore, a helpless hulk. True, in such a case we might have attempted to anchor, but I had very grave doubts whether our ground-tackle, good though it was, would have brought us up in such weather. The masts stood well, however—they were magnificent sticks, both of them, while our standing rigging was of wire throughout—and, as to our canvas, had I not seen it, I could not have believed that any fabric woven by mortal hands would have withstood such a terrific strain. It did, however, and moreover dragged the ship along at a speed of which I should never have believed the little craft capable, under such very short canvas, and close-hauled, had I not been present to witness her performance. With her steeply heeling decks, her taunt masts and their intricacy of standing and running rigging taut and rigid as iron bars to windward, while to leeward they streamed away in deep, symmetrical curving bights, her braced-up yards, and the straining canvas of the close-reefed topsails and fore-topmast staysail all swaying wildly aslant athwart the blue-black expanse of star-spangled sky; with her lee rail awash; her decks a tumultuous sea in miniature with the water that came pouring in whole cataracts over her upturned weather-bow as her keen stem plunged headlong into and clove irresistibly through the heart of wave after wave, flinging a blinding deluge of spray right aft as far as the poop, and ploughing up a whole acre of boiling, luminous foam, to pour, hissing and roaring, far out from under her lee bow and flash glancing past in a bewildering swirl of buzzing, gleaming froth, while the din of the wild gale raved aloft, and its furious buffeting almost distracted one’s senses, the gallant little barque thus fighting for her life would have presented an exhilarating spectacle to any one; while a seaman’s appreciative heart would have thrilled with exultation at her bearing in the strife. But though travelling fast through the water, the poor little ship was at the same time sagging most frightfully to leeward, the staysail seeming to drag her head two or three points off the wind at every send, and bringing her almost broadside-on to the sea. And although we were heading fairly well out toward the open water, I could not conceal from myself the awkward truth that our excessive leeway was reducing our course to one practically parallel with the trend of the coast; and sometimes I even thought that we were slowly but surely setting in toward the land. The fact was that the ship needed more after-sail to enable her to hold a good luff; yet it seemed to me that it would be impossible for her to bear any more. She was indeed rather over-pressed than otherwise, as it was, and had I had plenty of sea-room I would have endeavoured to relieve her of the fore-topsail at once, even at the risk of losing the sail in the attempt to hand it. But with that relentless lee-shore in plain view I dared not do it; it was imperative that she should carry every thread we were then showing, and more if possible. While I was still inwardly debating the question it was settled by the lookout reporting land ahead! I staggered over to windward at the cry, and at the expense of a thorough drenching, despite the oilskins I had donned some time before, made it out, a bold lofty headland, jutting far out to seaward, and lying dead ahead of us. The ship was embayed! The land ahead was certainly not more than three miles distant, and the ship was setting bodily down toward it at every plunge. The time for hesitation was past; something had to be done, and done promptly, too, or another half-hour would see the last of the poor littleEsmeralda. Our main trysail happened to be a nearly new sail, bent for the first time when starting on this voyage; it was made of good stout canvas, and was beautifully cut. I therefore determined to attempt the experiment of setting it, though I scarcely hoped it would endure the tremendous strain to which it would be exposed long enough to drag us clear of that terrible point. Mustering the hands, therefore, we got the sheet aft and the block hooked on to the eye-bolt; then, all hands tailing on to the fall, the lower brails were eased gently away, the sheet being dragged upon at the same time; and in this way we managed to get the foot of the sail extended without splitting it. The hauling out of the head was a much simpler matter; and in less than five minutes I had the satisfaction of seeing the entire sail extended without having parted a thread. The effect of this added canvas was tremendous; the lee rail was completely buried, and the deck was now so steeply inclined that during the lee rolls it was impossible to maintain one’s footing without holding on to something. But we no longer sagged to leeward as before; the ship now held her luff, and the threatening headland was brought to bear nearly three points on our lee bow; if the trysail would only hold out long enough we might yet hope to scrape clear. But would it? Involuntarily I held my breath every time that the ship rolled to windward; for then the strain on canvas and spar and rigging was at its heaviest, and it really seemed to me as though nothing made by mortal hands could withstand it. Minute after minute passed, however, and still the good sail stood, while hope every moment grew stronger within my breast.We had reached to within half a mile of the point, and I was already congratulating myself upon the certainty that we should clear it, when I happened to catch a momentary glimpse, through the driving spray, of something peculiar in the appearance of the water just off the point. Surely it could not be—fate would not be so cruel—and yet—“Breakers on the lee bow!” simultaneously reported the two men on the lookout.Then I wasnotmistaken; itwasbroken water I had seen. Yes; there could not be a doubt about it, for while I strained my gaze in an effort to pierce the darkness a ghostly white gleam shot into the air, such as is caused by the water breaking heavily upon rocks.“Ay, ay; I see them,” I answered; then, to the man at the wheel—“Watch your helm carefully, now, my man. Keep her clean full, and let her go through the water; but do not let her go off a hair’s breadth more than is necessary. You must weather that reef if you have any wish to see to-morrow’s sun rise.”“I’ll do my best, sir,” answered the fellow, earnestly; and I saw him brace himself afresh as he fixed his eye more intently upon the weather leach of the main-topsail.We wereflyingthrough the water—it could scarcely be called sailing—for the poor little ship was being so bitterly pressed that she scarcely rose at all to the seas now; she simply drove her sharp bows straight into the body of every sea as it came at her and ploughed her way through it, shipping at every plunge tons of water that poured in a continuous cataract over her forecastle and down into the seething swirl to leeward under which her lee rail was buried. She must have been travelling very fast, or she would not have behaved in this fashion; yet in the agony of my suspense she scarcely seemed to move at all. Despite this feeling it was sufficiently apparent that we were nearing that awful reef at headlong speed; and with every desperate forward plunge of the ship the frightful amount of lee drift we were making became also more unmistakable, momentarily increasing the doubt as to the possibility of our escape. We were now, and had been for some time, so close to the land that any attempt to wear the ship round must have inevitably resulted in her destruction; and, as to staying, that was equally out of the question under such short canvas in such a heavy sea—for the outer line of breakers was now close aboard of us; we dared not attempt to anchor in the face of that wild fury of wind and wave; and we had therefore absolutely no alternative but to keep on as we were going.Our situation, in short, had become so critical that I felt it my duty to acquaint Sir Edgar with it forthwith; and I was on my way toward the companion in search of him when he emerged from it and joined me, the two seamen who had conveyed the inanimate body of the mate below following him and making their way forward, dodging the seas as best they might during the journey.“I have been all this time in the mate’s cabin,” said the baronet, “using my utmost endeavours to restore animation, but, I keenly regret to say, without success. Captain, the poor fellow is dead!”“I never thought otherwise from the first,” said I, with a keen pang at this confirmation of my worst forebodings. “It is more than kind of you, Sir Edgar, to have taken so much trouble in the matter, and I am deeply grateful to you, the more so that it has been impossible for me to do anything for the poor fellow myself, the ship having demanded my whole attention from the moment when the squall first struck us. Well, he is at rest; his troubles are over; I believe he was a true and devout Christian, though he never made any ostentatious parade of his religion; and God will surely be gracious to him and accept his service of faithfully discharged duty and gentleness and blamelessness of life.”“Yes,” said Sir Edgar, “assuredly He will. After the story you told me of his trouble in the earlier hours of this eventful night I cannot help thinking that the very manner of the poor fellow’s death was an evidence of God’s mercy. It was His hand that struck him down; and I feel sure that the stroke was dealt in pity rather than in anger. One has only to look upon the dead man’s face and observe the perfect tranquillity of its expression to be convinced that death was absolutely painless; he must have passed the dread portal without knowing it. Meanwhile, how are we faring, captain? It seems to be blowing more furiously than ever; and are we not dangerously near the land?”“I was seeking you to speak to you on the matter when you came on deck,” said I. “It is my painful duty to inform you, Sir Edgar, that the ship is in a situation of extreme peril, and the time has arrived for us to prepare for the worst. I must ask you, therefore, to go below, arouse your family, bid them don a life-belt each—which they will find on a shelf at the head of their berths—wrap themselves in whatever they can lay hands on as a protection from the weather, and come on deck without delay. There is a formidable reef ahead of us; and, unless we can contrive to weather it, the ship will be on it and breaking-up within the next quarter of an hour!”With an ejaculation of dismay Sir Edgar darted from my side and rushed to the cabin; and as he did so I gave the order to call the watch below. The outer extremity of the reef—so far as we could trace it—now bore barely a point on our lee bow; and every sea that met us seemed to be sending us a good two fathoms to leeward. The hoarse voice of the seaman forward who was calling the watch reached me brokenly through the deep bellowing of the gale and the loud seething of the boiling sea; and presently I could see, by the increased bulk of the group of crouching figures under the lee of the deck-house, that everybody was now out of the forecastle. The saloon party were scarcely less expeditious; for in a few minutes they, too, appeared on deck, wrapped in rugs and blankets snatched hastily from the beds upon which they had been sleeping; and I at once disposed them as comfortably as I could on the deck, under the lee of the companion and skylight, where they would be in a measure sheltered from the flying spray.Then, calling Mr Forbes, I bade him take two hands below to collect and bring on deck all the life-belts we could muster, and serve one out to each man. This was soon done; the life-buoys were cut loose and piled in a safe and convenient position on the poop; and we were ready for any emergency. Nor were we any too soon; for we were now close upon the reef, while we had settled so far to leeward that it had become apparent to everybody that nothing short of a miracle could save us.It was a bitter thought to me that, having brought the ship so far on her voyage, safely and prosperously, I was now about to lose her through what appeared to be nothing less than a cruel and malicious stroke of fortune. For if the gale had broken upon us during the hours of daylight, instead of in the darkness of night, we should undoubtedly have discovered the hazard of our position in time to have avoided running, as we had, blindly into this horrible death-trap. And not only should I lose the ship—a loss, it is true, that was to a great extent covered by insurance—but every scrap of property that any of us possessed on board her would also undoubtedly become the prey of the devouring sea—for there was no hope of saving anything out of the ship if she once touched that reef—and, worst of all, there was only too great a probability that many precious lives would be lost; it seemed, indeed, very questionable whetheranyof us could hope to escape the fury of that raging surf.It was, however, no time for repining; still less for any yielding on my part to a feeling of despondency. I therefore called the hands under the lee of the long-boat, and in a few brief words stated to them our position, exhorted them with all the earnestness of which I was master to be cool and self-possessed at the critical moment, and to put their trust in the mercy of God; impressing upon them that only by such self-possession, coupled with promptest obedience to orders, could there be any hope of saving their lives; and I wound up by reminding them that there were women and children on board whose only hope of preservation lay in the courage and obedience which I now exhorted them to exercise.As I completed my brief address the deep, thunderous boom of the sea upon the reef broke for the first time upon our ears, as though to warn us that the moment of trial was at hand; and, looking anxiously ahead, I saw that the outer extremity of the white water was already dead ahead of us, and that the ship was doomed!“We shall never weather it, lads,” I shouted; “we cannot possibly do it. Stand by the braces, fore and main, and be ready to square the yards when I give the word to bear up. We shall have to run her in upon the beach, and take our chance of its being softer ground than the reef. As soon as you have squared the yards and caught a turn with the braces, come up on the poop, all of you, and group yourselves well aft; it will be the safest part of the ship when she broaches to, and you will be out of the way of the falling masts. Take a firm grip of the most solid thing you can lay hold of, or the first sea that breaks over us will wash you overboard.”So saying, I sprang aft and stationed myself close to the little group of cowering women and children who were huddled together under the lee of the skylight, in readiness to afford such protection and help to them as might be possible in the impending desperate and almost hopeless struggle for life.The final moment had now arrived; the white water was almost under the bows of the ship; another plunge or two would put the poor little craft plump upon the reef; and with a heavy heart I turned to the helmsman to give him the fatal sign. As I did so, a loud flap overhead and the simultaneous righting of the ship caused me to glance aloft in amazement and wonder as to what was happening. Could it be? By Heaven, yes! The wind had dropped, as if by magic, or a miracle, and for the moment there was a breathless calm, leaving us within fifty fathoms of the reef and, with the momentum of our rapid progress through the water, rushing straight at it. Instinctively I bounded with one mad spring to the wheel, and, shouting to the bewildered man who held it, “Hard down, for your life!” I grasped the spokes, throwing the momentary strength of ten men into a frantic effort that sent the wheel whirling over at lightning speed. The noble little ship quickly and gallantly answered to the impulse, and, though pitching so desperately that she completely smothered herself as far aft as the foremast, her bows gradually swept round until they pointed straight out to seaward and away from the boiling surf that actually swirled and seethed about her cutwater, as though the poor little overdriven craft had suddenly realised her awful peril and had swerved from it like a sentient thing.“Man the braces, fore and main!” I shouted with frenzied eagerness. “Round-in upon the starboard main and topsail braces, for your lives, men; shift over the trysail-sheet like lightning! Hurrah, lads! over with it before the gale strikes us again! Well there with the starboard main-braces; haul taut and make fast to port; swing your head-yards; and get the starboard staysail sheet aft. Here comes the wind again; but, thank God,we are saved!”No one but a sailor—and probably no sailor but he who has passed through such an unique experience as I have just been endeavouring to describe—can possibly understand the startling suddenness and the astounding rapidity with which such an utterly unhoped-for and unexpected change had been wrought in our situation. The whole thing had happened with the breathless rapidity characteristic of the headlong rush of succeeding events in a dream. At the very moment when I was about to give the order which would have sent the ship flying before wind and sea towards the beach, and insured her destruction, there had occurred one of those sudden and unaccountable “breaks,” or total cessations of wind, that occasionally, though very rarely, occur for a few brief moments in the midst of a raging tempest, and which are sometimes succeeded by a total change in the direction of the wind when it recommences to blow. These “breaks” are very similar in their character and duration to the passage of “the eye” of a cyclone, with which phenomenon, indeed, they are often confounded; and it was during that brief lull that the helm had been put down, and the ship, by God’s mercy—though plunging so wildly in the seas that met her that I fully expected to see her masts go over the bows—had been got round on the other tack, with her head pointing to seaward before the recurrence of the gale.In the ecstasy of my delight and gratitude at such a sudden and unlooked-for change in our situation I had cried aloud that we were saved; without waiting to see from what point the gale would come when it again struck us. Had it happened to have veered two or three points we should, as a matter of fact, have been just as badly off as before, for in that case the other headland or horn of the bay would soon have brought us up. Fortunately, however, the wind came away a trifle more free for us than it had hitherto been, so that when it again struck us the ship headed fairly well for the open sea. That sudden break, however, proved to be the beginning of the end; for though for perhaps a quarter of an hour it blew as furiously as ever, it then began to moderate rapidly; and the glorious, unclouded sun rose upon us as we were once more mast-heading our topsail-yards after loosing and setting the courses.The safety of the ship once assured, I went below and entered the chief mate’s cabin, to view the body and assure myself, beyond all possibility of doubt, of the fact of dissolution. A single look sufficed for this; for although only some six hours had elapsed since the poor fellow had been alive and hearty, there was already a distinct discolouration of the skin, to say nothing of other unmistakable signs that death had really taken place. Sailors are not, as a rule, given to much sentimentalism; they are so constantly being brought face to face with death that in a comparatively short time it loses much of that impressiveness with which it affects the landsman; but this man had been a true friend and comrade as well as a faithful servant to me, and I am not ashamed to acknowledge that the tears sprang to my eyes as I knelt by the side of the body and offered up a short prayer ere I looked my last upon him. This done, I returned to the deck and gave the necessary orders to have the body sewn in a hammock, and made ready for burial with all expedition.I was by this time feeling somewhat fagged, having been on deck for fully twenty-four hours, one-third of which time had been passed in a state of great anxiety; having therefore answered for the present every call upon my attention, and satisfied myself that I could very well be spared for a few hours, I retired to my cabin, giving the steward orders to call me at four bells, at which hour I had arranged for the burial of poor Roberts having long before acquired the sailor’s habit of falling asleep at a moment’s notice, my head no sooner pressed the pillow than I sank into a sound and dreamless slumber.At the appointed hour the steward awoke me; and on reaching the deck I was much moved and gratified to observe that not only were all hands on deck, “cleaned and shifted” in anticipation of the mournful ceremony that lay before us, but also that Sir Edgar and his whole family intended to pay the last tribute of respect to the dead man, they having mustered upon the poop in the nearest approach to mourning attire that their resources permitted. It is not my intention to here enter into a long and detailed description of the solemn and impressive rite that quickly followed; it has been done more than once or twice by far abler pens than mine, and is to be found in books that are read the wide world over. There is therefore no need for me to attempt to inform my readers upon a subject with which they are doubtless already sufficiently well acquainted; suffice it to say that no form or detail was omitted which could in any wise testify to our respect and esteem for our lost comrade and friend, or add to the decency and solemnity with which we consigned his body to its last resting-placeinthe depths of the illimitable ocean. This done, I promoted Forbes to the position of chief mate; raised the boatswain to the dignity of “second officer;” and so brought the incident of poor Roberts’s tragic fate to a close.

It was useless to think of heaving the ship to, or otherwise attempting to save the lives of the unfortunate Malays whose craft we had just destroyed; the thing was an absolute impossibility, and any such attempt would only have resulted in our own destruction; we had no option but to continue our headlong flight to leeward, leaving our enemies to save themselves, if they could, by clinging to the wreckage.

Immediately after the collision the carpenter came aft, and, without waiting for orders, carefully sounded the pumps. The result was a report that the hold was dry; we had therefore apparently sustained no serious damage to our hull; while, so far as spars and rigging were concerned, we did not appear to have parted a rope-yarn.

For fully half an hour the squall raged as madly as at the moment when it first burst upon us; all this while the ship was scudding helplessly before it, drawing nearer every moment to that deadly lee-shore that I knew must be close at hand, and which I every instant expected would bring us up all standing. At length, however, to my intense relief, the gale slightly but perceptibly moderated its headlong fury; and determining to at once avail myself of this opportunity, I called the hands to the braces, and prepared to bring the ship to the wind on the starboard tack. The moment that everything was ready I signed to the man at the wheel to put the helm gently over; when, as I was turning away again to give my orders to the men at the braces, one of them startled me with the cry of—

“Land ho! ahead and on the port bow!” I caught sight of it at the same instant, the air having momentarily cleared somewhat of the spindrift and scud-water that had hitherto circumscribed our horizon and obscured our view. Yes, there it was, a low, dark shadow against the now clear, starlit sky right ahead and stretching away to port and starboard on either bow. It could not be more than three miles distant from us—if so much—for the air, though somewhat clearer than it had been, was still thick, yet the loom of the land through it was clear enough; altogether too much so, indeed, for my liking. What it was like to the eastward I could not distinguish, for in that direction it faded quickly into the thick atmosphere that lay that way; but westward it terminated in a low point that already bore well out upon our larboard beam—a sight that caused me to most heartily congratulate myself that I had determined upon rounding-to on the starboard tack; for had I done so with the ship’s head to the westward, without seeing this point, we could not possibly have weathered it, and must have taken our choice—when wediddiscover it—of going ashore upon it, or upon the land to leeward, should we attempt to wear the ship; for she would never have tacked in such a sea as was now running, with such a small amount of canvas as we were showing.

As the ship came to the wind we, for the first time since the outburst of the gale, gained something like a just idea of its tremendous strength and violence. With nothing on her but the two close-reefed topsails and the fore-topmast staysail, the poor littleEsmeraldabowed beneath the fury of the blast until her lee rail was awash and her lee scuppers more than waist-deep in water. The howling and hooting of the gale aloft, as it tore furiously through the maze of spars and rigging opposed to it, produced a wild medley of sound that utterly baffles all attempt at description; while the savage plunges of the ship into the short, steep sea and the horrible way in which she careened during her lee rolls almost sickened me with anxiety lest the masts should go over the side and leave us to drive ashore, a helpless hulk. True, in such a case we might have attempted to anchor, but I had very grave doubts whether our ground-tackle, good though it was, would have brought us up in such weather. The masts stood well, however—they were magnificent sticks, both of them, while our standing rigging was of wire throughout—and, as to our canvas, had I not seen it, I could not have believed that any fabric woven by mortal hands would have withstood such a terrific strain. It did, however, and moreover dragged the ship along at a speed of which I should never have believed the little craft capable, under such very short canvas, and close-hauled, had I not been present to witness her performance. With her steeply heeling decks, her taunt masts and their intricacy of standing and running rigging taut and rigid as iron bars to windward, while to leeward they streamed away in deep, symmetrical curving bights, her braced-up yards, and the straining canvas of the close-reefed topsails and fore-topmast staysail all swaying wildly aslant athwart the blue-black expanse of star-spangled sky; with her lee rail awash; her decks a tumultuous sea in miniature with the water that came pouring in whole cataracts over her upturned weather-bow as her keen stem plunged headlong into and clove irresistibly through the heart of wave after wave, flinging a blinding deluge of spray right aft as far as the poop, and ploughing up a whole acre of boiling, luminous foam, to pour, hissing and roaring, far out from under her lee bow and flash glancing past in a bewildering swirl of buzzing, gleaming froth, while the din of the wild gale raved aloft, and its furious buffeting almost distracted one’s senses, the gallant little barque thus fighting for her life would have presented an exhilarating spectacle to any one; while a seaman’s appreciative heart would have thrilled with exultation at her bearing in the strife. But though travelling fast through the water, the poor little ship was at the same time sagging most frightfully to leeward, the staysail seeming to drag her head two or three points off the wind at every send, and bringing her almost broadside-on to the sea. And although we were heading fairly well out toward the open water, I could not conceal from myself the awkward truth that our excessive leeway was reducing our course to one practically parallel with the trend of the coast; and sometimes I even thought that we were slowly but surely setting in toward the land. The fact was that the ship needed more after-sail to enable her to hold a good luff; yet it seemed to me that it would be impossible for her to bear any more. She was indeed rather over-pressed than otherwise, as it was, and had I had plenty of sea-room I would have endeavoured to relieve her of the fore-topsail at once, even at the risk of losing the sail in the attempt to hand it. But with that relentless lee-shore in plain view I dared not do it; it was imperative that she should carry every thread we were then showing, and more if possible. While I was still inwardly debating the question it was settled by the lookout reporting land ahead! I staggered over to windward at the cry, and at the expense of a thorough drenching, despite the oilskins I had donned some time before, made it out, a bold lofty headland, jutting far out to seaward, and lying dead ahead of us. The ship was embayed! The land ahead was certainly not more than three miles distant, and the ship was setting bodily down toward it at every plunge. The time for hesitation was past; something had to be done, and done promptly, too, or another half-hour would see the last of the poor littleEsmeralda. Our main trysail happened to be a nearly new sail, bent for the first time when starting on this voyage; it was made of good stout canvas, and was beautifully cut. I therefore determined to attempt the experiment of setting it, though I scarcely hoped it would endure the tremendous strain to which it would be exposed long enough to drag us clear of that terrible point. Mustering the hands, therefore, we got the sheet aft and the block hooked on to the eye-bolt; then, all hands tailing on to the fall, the lower brails were eased gently away, the sheet being dragged upon at the same time; and in this way we managed to get the foot of the sail extended without splitting it. The hauling out of the head was a much simpler matter; and in less than five minutes I had the satisfaction of seeing the entire sail extended without having parted a thread. The effect of this added canvas was tremendous; the lee rail was completely buried, and the deck was now so steeply inclined that during the lee rolls it was impossible to maintain one’s footing without holding on to something. But we no longer sagged to leeward as before; the ship now held her luff, and the threatening headland was brought to bear nearly three points on our lee bow; if the trysail would only hold out long enough we might yet hope to scrape clear. But would it? Involuntarily I held my breath every time that the ship rolled to windward; for then the strain on canvas and spar and rigging was at its heaviest, and it really seemed to me as though nothing made by mortal hands could withstand it. Minute after minute passed, however, and still the good sail stood, while hope every moment grew stronger within my breast.

We had reached to within half a mile of the point, and I was already congratulating myself upon the certainty that we should clear it, when I happened to catch a momentary glimpse, through the driving spray, of something peculiar in the appearance of the water just off the point. Surely it could not be—fate would not be so cruel—and yet—

“Breakers on the lee bow!” simultaneously reported the two men on the lookout.

Then I wasnotmistaken; itwasbroken water I had seen. Yes; there could not be a doubt about it, for while I strained my gaze in an effort to pierce the darkness a ghostly white gleam shot into the air, such as is caused by the water breaking heavily upon rocks.

“Ay, ay; I see them,” I answered; then, to the man at the wheel—“Watch your helm carefully, now, my man. Keep her clean full, and let her go through the water; but do not let her go off a hair’s breadth more than is necessary. You must weather that reef if you have any wish to see to-morrow’s sun rise.”

“I’ll do my best, sir,” answered the fellow, earnestly; and I saw him brace himself afresh as he fixed his eye more intently upon the weather leach of the main-topsail.

We wereflyingthrough the water—it could scarcely be called sailing—for the poor little ship was being so bitterly pressed that she scarcely rose at all to the seas now; she simply drove her sharp bows straight into the body of every sea as it came at her and ploughed her way through it, shipping at every plunge tons of water that poured in a continuous cataract over her forecastle and down into the seething swirl to leeward under which her lee rail was buried. She must have been travelling very fast, or she would not have behaved in this fashion; yet in the agony of my suspense she scarcely seemed to move at all. Despite this feeling it was sufficiently apparent that we were nearing that awful reef at headlong speed; and with every desperate forward plunge of the ship the frightful amount of lee drift we were making became also more unmistakable, momentarily increasing the doubt as to the possibility of our escape. We were now, and had been for some time, so close to the land that any attempt to wear the ship round must have inevitably resulted in her destruction; and, as to staying, that was equally out of the question under such short canvas in such a heavy sea—for the outer line of breakers was now close aboard of us; we dared not attempt to anchor in the face of that wild fury of wind and wave; and we had therefore absolutely no alternative but to keep on as we were going.

Our situation, in short, had become so critical that I felt it my duty to acquaint Sir Edgar with it forthwith; and I was on my way toward the companion in search of him when he emerged from it and joined me, the two seamen who had conveyed the inanimate body of the mate below following him and making their way forward, dodging the seas as best they might during the journey.

“I have been all this time in the mate’s cabin,” said the baronet, “using my utmost endeavours to restore animation, but, I keenly regret to say, without success. Captain, the poor fellow is dead!”

“I never thought otherwise from the first,” said I, with a keen pang at this confirmation of my worst forebodings. “It is more than kind of you, Sir Edgar, to have taken so much trouble in the matter, and I am deeply grateful to you, the more so that it has been impossible for me to do anything for the poor fellow myself, the ship having demanded my whole attention from the moment when the squall first struck us. Well, he is at rest; his troubles are over; I believe he was a true and devout Christian, though he never made any ostentatious parade of his religion; and God will surely be gracious to him and accept his service of faithfully discharged duty and gentleness and blamelessness of life.”

“Yes,” said Sir Edgar, “assuredly He will. After the story you told me of his trouble in the earlier hours of this eventful night I cannot help thinking that the very manner of the poor fellow’s death was an evidence of God’s mercy. It was His hand that struck him down; and I feel sure that the stroke was dealt in pity rather than in anger. One has only to look upon the dead man’s face and observe the perfect tranquillity of its expression to be convinced that death was absolutely painless; he must have passed the dread portal without knowing it. Meanwhile, how are we faring, captain? It seems to be blowing more furiously than ever; and are we not dangerously near the land?”

“I was seeking you to speak to you on the matter when you came on deck,” said I. “It is my painful duty to inform you, Sir Edgar, that the ship is in a situation of extreme peril, and the time has arrived for us to prepare for the worst. I must ask you, therefore, to go below, arouse your family, bid them don a life-belt each—which they will find on a shelf at the head of their berths—wrap themselves in whatever they can lay hands on as a protection from the weather, and come on deck without delay. There is a formidable reef ahead of us; and, unless we can contrive to weather it, the ship will be on it and breaking-up within the next quarter of an hour!”

With an ejaculation of dismay Sir Edgar darted from my side and rushed to the cabin; and as he did so I gave the order to call the watch below. The outer extremity of the reef—so far as we could trace it—now bore barely a point on our lee bow; and every sea that met us seemed to be sending us a good two fathoms to leeward. The hoarse voice of the seaman forward who was calling the watch reached me brokenly through the deep bellowing of the gale and the loud seething of the boiling sea; and presently I could see, by the increased bulk of the group of crouching figures under the lee of the deck-house, that everybody was now out of the forecastle. The saloon party were scarcely less expeditious; for in a few minutes they, too, appeared on deck, wrapped in rugs and blankets snatched hastily from the beds upon which they had been sleeping; and I at once disposed them as comfortably as I could on the deck, under the lee of the companion and skylight, where they would be in a measure sheltered from the flying spray.

Then, calling Mr Forbes, I bade him take two hands below to collect and bring on deck all the life-belts we could muster, and serve one out to each man. This was soon done; the life-buoys were cut loose and piled in a safe and convenient position on the poop; and we were ready for any emergency. Nor were we any too soon; for we were now close upon the reef, while we had settled so far to leeward that it had become apparent to everybody that nothing short of a miracle could save us.

It was a bitter thought to me that, having brought the ship so far on her voyage, safely and prosperously, I was now about to lose her through what appeared to be nothing less than a cruel and malicious stroke of fortune. For if the gale had broken upon us during the hours of daylight, instead of in the darkness of night, we should undoubtedly have discovered the hazard of our position in time to have avoided running, as we had, blindly into this horrible death-trap. And not only should I lose the ship—a loss, it is true, that was to a great extent covered by insurance—but every scrap of property that any of us possessed on board her would also undoubtedly become the prey of the devouring sea—for there was no hope of saving anything out of the ship if she once touched that reef—and, worst of all, there was only too great a probability that many precious lives would be lost; it seemed, indeed, very questionable whetheranyof us could hope to escape the fury of that raging surf.

It was, however, no time for repining; still less for any yielding on my part to a feeling of despondency. I therefore called the hands under the lee of the long-boat, and in a few brief words stated to them our position, exhorted them with all the earnestness of which I was master to be cool and self-possessed at the critical moment, and to put their trust in the mercy of God; impressing upon them that only by such self-possession, coupled with promptest obedience to orders, could there be any hope of saving their lives; and I wound up by reminding them that there were women and children on board whose only hope of preservation lay in the courage and obedience which I now exhorted them to exercise.

As I completed my brief address the deep, thunderous boom of the sea upon the reef broke for the first time upon our ears, as though to warn us that the moment of trial was at hand; and, looking anxiously ahead, I saw that the outer extremity of the white water was already dead ahead of us, and that the ship was doomed!

“We shall never weather it, lads,” I shouted; “we cannot possibly do it. Stand by the braces, fore and main, and be ready to square the yards when I give the word to bear up. We shall have to run her in upon the beach, and take our chance of its being softer ground than the reef. As soon as you have squared the yards and caught a turn with the braces, come up on the poop, all of you, and group yourselves well aft; it will be the safest part of the ship when she broaches to, and you will be out of the way of the falling masts. Take a firm grip of the most solid thing you can lay hold of, or the first sea that breaks over us will wash you overboard.”

So saying, I sprang aft and stationed myself close to the little group of cowering women and children who were huddled together under the lee of the skylight, in readiness to afford such protection and help to them as might be possible in the impending desperate and almost hopeless struggle for life.

The final moment had now arrived; the white water was almost under the bows of the ship; another plunge or two would put the poor little craft plump upon the reef; and with a heavy heart I turned to the helmsman to give him the fatal sign. As I did so, a loud flap overhead and the simultaneous righting of the ship caused me to glance aloft in amazement and wonder as to what was happening. Could it be? By Heaven, yes! The wind had dropped, as if by magic, or a miracle, and for the moment there was a breathless calm, leaving us within fifty fathoms of the reef and, with the momentum of our rapid progress through the water, rushing straight at it. Instinctively I bounded with one mad spring to the wheel, and, shouting to the bewildered man who held it, “Hard down, for your life!” I grasped the spokes, throwing the momentary strength of ten men into a frantic effort that sent the wheel whirling over at lightning speed. The noble little ship quickly and gallantly answered to the impulse, and, though pitching so desperately that she completely smothered herself as far aft as the foremast, her bows gradually swept round until they pointed straight out to seaward and away from the boiling surf that actually swirled and seethed about her cutwater, as though the poor little overdriven craft had suddenly realised her awful peril and had swerved from it like a sentient thing.

“Man the braces, fore and main!” I shouted with frenzied eagerness. “Round-in upon the starboard main and topsail braces, for your lives, men; shift over the trysail-sheet like lightning! Hurrah, lads! over with it before the gale strikes us again! Well there with the starboard main-braces; haul taut and make fast to port; swing your head-yards; and get the starboard staysail sheet aft. Here comes the wind again; but, thank God,we are saved!”

No one but a sailor—and probably no sailor but he who has passed through such an unique experience as I have just been endeavouring to describe—can possibly understand the startling suddenness and the astounding rapidity with which such an utterly unhoped-for and unexpected change had been wrought in our situation. The whole thing had happened with the breathless rapidity characteristic of the headlong rush of succeeding events in a dream. At the very moment when I was about to give the order which would have sent the ship flying before wind and sea towards the beach, and insured her destruction, there had occurred one of those sudden and unaccountable “breaks,” or total cessations of wind, that occasionally, though very rarely, occur for a few brief moments in the midst of a raging tempest, and which are sometimes succeeded by a total change in the direction of the wind when it recommences to blow. These “breaks” are very similar in their character and duration to the passage of “the eye” of a cyclone, with which phenomenon, indeed, they are often confounded; and it was during that brief lull that the helm had been put down, and the ship, by God’s mercy—though plunging so wildly in the seas that met her that I fully expected to see her masts go over the bows—had been got round on the other tack, with her head pointing to seaward before the recurrence of the gale.

In the ecstasy of my delight and gratitude at such a sudden and unlooked-for change in our situation I had cried aloud that we were saved; without waiting to see from what point the gale would come when it again struck us. Had it happened to have veered two or three points we should, as a matter of fact, have been just as badly off as before, for in that case the other headland or horn of the bay would soon have brought us up. Fortunately, however, the wind came away a trifle more free for us than it had hitherto been, so that when it again struck us the ship headed fairly well for the open sea. That sudden break, however, proved to be the beginning of the end; for though for perhaps a quarter of an hour it blew as furiously as ever, it then began to moderate rapidly; and the glorious, unclouded sun rose upon us as we were once more mast-heading our topsail-yards after loosing and setting the courses.

The safety of the ship once assured, I went below and entered the chief mate’s cabin, to view the body and assure myself, beyond all possibility of doubt, of the fact of dissolution. A single look sufficed for this; for although only some six hours had elapsed since the poor fellow had been alive and hearty, there was already a distinct discolouration of the skin, to say nothing of other unmistakable signs that death had really taken place. Sailors are not, as a rule, given to much sentimentalism; they are so constantly being brought face to face with death that in a comparatively short time it loses much of that impressiveness with which it affects the landsman; but this man had been a true friend and comrade as well as a faithful servant to me, and I am not ashamed to acknowledge that the tears sprang to my eyes as I knelt by the side of the body and offered up a short prayer ere I looked my last upon him. This done, I returned to the deck and gave the necessary orders to have the body sewn in a hammock, and made ready for burial with all expedition.

I was by this time feeling somewhat fagged, having been on deck for fully twenty-four hours, one-third of which time had been passed in a state of great anxiety; having therefore answered for the present every call upon my attention, and satisfied myself that I could very well be spared for a few hours, I retired to my cabin, giving the steward orders to call me at four bells, at which hour I had arranged for the burial of poor Roberts having long before acquired the sailor’s habit of falling asleep at a moment’s notice, my head no sooner pressed the pillow than I sank into a sound and dreamless slumber.

At the appointed hour the steward awoke me; and on reaching the deck I was much moved and gratified to observe that not only were all hands on deck, “cleaned and shifted” in anticipation of the mournful ceremony that lay before us, but also that Sir Edgar and his whole family intended to pay the last tribute of respect to the dead man, they having mustered upon the poop in the nearest approach to mourning attire that their resources permitted. It is not my intention to here enter into a long and detailed description of the solemn and impressive rite that quickly followed; it has been done more than once or twice by far abler pens than mine, and is to be found in books that are read the wide world over. There is therefore no need for me to attempt to inform my readers upon a subject with which they are doubtless already sufficiently well acquainted; suffice it to say that no form or detail was omitted which could in any wise testify to our respect and esteem for our lost comrade and friend, or add to the decency and solemnity with which we consigned his body to its last resting-placeinthe depths of the illimitable ocean. This done, I promoted Forbes to the position of chief mate; raised the boatswain to the dignity of “second officer;” and so brought the incident of poor Roberts’s tragic fate to a close.

Chapter Eleven.A Ghastly Waif of the Sea.Our voyage had, thus far, proved to be an unusually eventful one; yet it was to be made the more notable ere its close by the addition of still one more incident, and that, too, of a sufficiently ghastly character, to the catalogue of those already recorded. It occurred on the tenth day after our brush with the Malays in the Straits of Sunda, and when we were about midway across the China Sea.Since that wild night on which we had so nearly laid the bones of theEsmeralda—and possibly our own as well—to rest on the shores of Sumatra, we had met with uninterrupted bright sunshine and light, favourable breezes. The day on which the incident occurred was no exception to the rule. The weather was gloriously fine, with a rich, softly mottled sky of blue and white overhead, out of the midst of which the afternoon sun blazed fiercely down upon a smooth, sparkling sea, gently ruffling under the faint, warm breeze to a surface of pale, glowing sapphire, along which the barque, wooing the soft zephyr with studding-sails spread on both sides, from the royals down, swam with a sleepy, rhythmical swaying of her taunt spars, at a speed of some five knots in the hour.It was close upon eight bells of the afternoon watch, and the saloon party were all on deck, grouped under the shadow of the awning; the elders lounging in easy, unconventional attitudes in capacious basket-chairs, the women, attired in snowy white, beguiling the time by making a pretence at working at some embroidery, or fancy sewing of some kind, as they fitfully conversed upon such topics as occurred to them; while Sir Edgar, clothed in flannels, with a Panama hat tilted well forward over his eyes, smoked and read with an air of placid enjoyment; the youngsters, apparently less affected than the rest of us by the languorous heat of the weather, meanwhile indulging in a game at hide-and-seek about the decks with the ship’s cat.Of the hands forward, some of the watch were aloft, working at odd jobs about the rigging, while the drowsy clinking of a spunyarn winch somewhere on the forecastle, in the shadow of the head sails, accounted for the remainder. Most of the watch below were invisible; but two or three industrious ones had grouped themselves on the foredeck, in situations which secured at once a sufficiency of shadow and a maximum of breeze, and were smoking and chatting as they washed or repaired their clothing.As for me, I was indulging in a brief spell of perfect bodily idleness, and had established myself in my own particular wicker chair, near the break of the poop, and, with hands crossed behind my head and cigar in mouth, was lazily watching a man on the main-royal yard who was reeving a new set of signal halliards, while my mind was busy upon the apparently insoluble problem of finding the key to the cipher relating to Richard Saint Leger’s buried treasure.The signal halliards had just been successfully rove when eight bells were struck, and the man who had been reeving them—now off duty—was preparing leisurely to descend to the deck, when, as nine out of every ten sailors will, he paused to take a last, long, comprehensive look round the horizon. There was not a sail of any sort in sight from the deck, not even so much as the glancing of a bird’s wing against the warm, tender, grey tones of the horizon to arrest one’s wandering glances; but this was apparently not the case from the superior altitude of the main-royal yard, for presently I observed a change in the attitude of the man up there from that of listless indifference to awakened curiosity and interest. His gaze grew earnest and attentive; then he shaded his eyes with his hand, and his body assumed an attitude and expression of alertness. Long and steadily he maintained his gaze in one fixed direction; then he glanced down on deck, and, catching sight of me with my face upturned toward him, he hailed—“On deck, there! There’s something away out here on the starboard bow, sir, as has the look of a boat adrift.”“How does it bear, and how far off is it?” I inquired.“About two points on the starboard bow, and a matter of eight or ten mile off, I should say, sir,” was the reply.“Mr Forbes,” said I to the mate, who, the watch having just been called, at this moment came on deck from his cabin, “take the glass aloft, and see what you can make of this new wonder, if you please.”Forbes went to the companion, took the telescope out of the beckets, slung it over his shoulders, and leisurely ascended the fore-rigging until he reached the topmast cross-trees, in which he comfortably settled himself preparatory to a careful inspection of the object. Meanwhile, the other man maintained his position on the main-royal yard.“Now then, Joe, where do you say this precious ‘something’ of yours is?” inquired the mate as he unslung the telescope and proceeded to adjust it for use.“There it is, sir,” answered the man, pointing; “about a couple of points on the starboard bow. I don’t know as you’ll be able to see it from down there, Mr Forbes, but it’s plain enough—”“All right; I see it,” interrupted Forbes; and he forthwith raised the telescope to his eye, taking a prolonged and exhaustive look through it. At length, lowering the instrument, he turned in his seat, and, looking down upon me where I now stood, just forward of the mainmast, hailed—“Joe is quite right, sir. There certainlyissomething out there, but it is fully twelve miles away, and it looks uncommonly like a boat with a mast stepped and a sail hoisted, or a signal flying.—I can’t quite make out which—and I even fancy I can catch an occasional glimpse of people moving about in her; but she wavers so much in the glass that I can’t be at all sure about it.”“Very well; just keep your eye on her for a moment,” I answered back, “and let me know when she bears straight ahead. It will not take us much out of our way to give her an overhaul, and it is as well to make quite sure in such cases as this. Man your braces, fore and aft, the starboard watch; larboard watch, go to work and get in the larboard stu’n’sails. Port your helm a trifle,”—to the man at the wheel. “Round-in a foot or two upon the larboard braces!”As these manoeuvres were executed, the barque’s bows slowly inclined to the eastward, and presently Forbes hailed from his lofty perch—“S-o, stead-y! Whatever she may be, she is now dead on end to a hair’s breadth.”“How is her head?” I shouted to the man at the wheel.The fellow peered into the binnacle, and answered—“North-east-and-by-east, three-quarters east.”“Is the boat—or whatever it is—still straight ahead, Mr Forbes?” I inquired.“Straight to a hair, sir,” came the reply.“Then keep her at that,” I called to the helmsman. “Well there with the braces; belay! Overhaul the main clew-garnets and get the sheet aft. Roll up the awning aft here, some of you, and haul out the mizzen; then jump aloft, one hand, and loose the gaff-topsail.”The ship was by this time astir and in a little flutter of excitement, fore and aft, at the prospect of another break in the monotony of our existence. Forecastle Jack is not, as a rule, very demonstrative; it appears to be regarded as “bad form” to exhibit excitement under any circumstances, or undue animation unless when confronted with some great and sudden crisis. Then, indeed, his movements are as active and springy as those of a cat; but, unless there is some pressing necessity for nimbleness, Jack regards it as the correct thing and a duty he owes to his own dignity to be deliberate of action. And, above all, whatever the circumstances, there must be no exhibition of vulgar curiosity, no eagerness, no enthusiasm, no astonishment while one of ocean’s countless mysteries is unfolding itself before his eyes; he must exhibit an air of semi-contemptuous indifference, as who should say, “I am a seasoned hand—a shell-back, and none of your beach-combers. I have long been familiar with all the strange sights and sounds and vicissitudes to be met with upon the broad ocean; for me the tale of them is exhausted; so far as I am concerned there is nothing new under the sun, nothing so strange or unexpected as to be capable of arousing my interest, nothing that can astonish or disconcert me.” The effect of this unspoken tradition was apparent in the studied carelessness of the one or two inquiries that were addressed to the man Joe, when at length he descended from aloft and rejoined his mates on the forecastle-head. But the indifference was only assumed; and as Joe—who, in his character of first discoverer, was entitled to the privilege of unrestrained loquacity—stated not only what he had seen, but also what henow fanciedhe had seen—his imagination rapidly supplying him with fresh details even as he talked—his group of listeners gradually closed in round him; questions were asked, conjecture was indulged in, and every now and then the little conclave temporarily lost control of itself, and, yielding to the sympathy and excitement that was quickening its pulses, began to discuss eagerly the chances for and against some possibility that had been advanced by one of its number. As for my passengers, they were the slaves of no such code as that which influenced the lads forward; they yielded at once and without restraint to the feeling of solicitude and sympathy that was awakened within them at the news of the waif ahead, with its possible freight of physical suffering or still worse torment of mental anxiety, apprehension, and hope deferred “that maketh the heart sick” and breaks down all but the most stubborn courage, and fairly swamped me with eager questions and suggestions that, while they exhibited very effectively the goodness of heart of the speakers, were not of much practical value.I succeeded at length in effecting my escape from these good people, and, arming myself with the ship’s glass, set out for Forbes’ coign of vantage—the fore-topmast cross-trees—to see what news the lapse of an hour might enable me to discover. I found, however, that there was no need for me to travel so far, for before I had mounted halfway up the lower rigging I caught sight of the object of my quest quivering in the hot air, upon the verge of the horizon straight ahead. I therefore settled myself comfortably in the top, from which convenient platform I made a minute and prolonged inspection of her.It needed not a second glance through the powerful instrument I wielded to assure me that the object ahead was indeed a boat, and that she carried a spar of some sort on end with something fluttering from it—whether sail or signal I could not tell, for the rarefied air through which I viewed her so distorted her shape and proportions that it bore as much resemblance to the one as to the other; but, if a sail, it was certainly doing no good, for I could see by the peculiar lift and flap of it that both tack and sheet were adrift. As to whether she had any occupants or not, I could not for the life of me determine; for although I remained aloft there in the top for a good half-hour, with my eye glued to the telescope all the while, only once did I detect what had the appearance of something moving on board her; but the sight was so transitory and unsatisfactory that I might easily have been mistaken. However, we had by this time neared her to within some five miles; so, as another hour would decide the question, I determined to possess my soul in patience until then, and accordingly closed the telescope, slung it over my shoulder, and returned to the deck. As I wended my way down the ratlines I noticed two of the men—who were now supposed to be busily engaged in clearing up the decks after the work of the day—standing halfway up the topgallant forecastle ladder, and staring so intently ahead that they were altogether oblivious of my close proximity, from which I concluded that the boat must be already visible to them. As I swung myself out of the rigging on to the deck I heard one of them exclaim to the other—“There, did ye see that? I swear I saw somebody get up and wave his hand, and then fall back again into the bottom of the boat!”This description answered so accurately to what I thought I also had seen through the glass, that the doubts I had hitherto entertained as to the presence of people on board the boat now began to yield to the belief that there were, especially as the man who had just spoken bore the reputation of being the keenest-sighted man in the ship. I held my peace, however, and made my way aft to the poop, where Sir Edgar and his party—himself and the two ladies armed with binoculars—were still assembled, eagerly scanning the horizon ahead.“Oh, captain,” exclaimed Lady Emily, as I joined the little group, “is it really true that there are shipwrecked people in that little boat? You have been up there watching it for so long through your telescope that you will be able to tell us for certain.”“I am afraid I cannot do anything of the kind,” answered I. “It is true that for a single moment I thought I detected a movement of some kind on board her; but, if so, it was not repeated, and I therefore scarcely know what to think. However, we shall soon know now. Of one thing I feel sure, and that is that, if there are any people in that boat, they must be in the last stage of exhaustion, or a better lookout would have been maintained, our proximity discovered, and some effort made ere now, either to reach us or to attract our attention.”“Do you mean that you think it possible there are people actuallydyingin that boat?”“If she really contains any human beings it would not in the least surprise me were we to find them in that condition; dying, too, one of the most dreadful deaths that man can be called upon to endure, a slow, lingering agony—the indescribable, maddening torment of long-continued hunger and thirst,” said I.“Oh, what an awful possibility to contemplate!” murmured her ladyship, her face blanching at the picture my words had conjured up. “Poor creatures! how frightful to think that—”“By Heaven, thereisat least one living being in that boat!” interrupted Sir Edgar, excitedly, as he lowered his binoculars and turned to me. “See, captain,”—looking again toward the boat—“you can distinguish him with the naked eye.”At the same moment Forbes hailed from the topgallant forecastle—“There’s a man in that boat, sir! Do you see him waving to us?”“Yes,” I answered, as I caught a momentary glimpse of an upright figure that seemed to give a single wave with its arm and then collapse into the bottom of the boat. “Let go your fore-royal halliards, Mr Forbes, and run the ensign up to the royal-masthead. That will give them to understand that we have seen them.”This was done, and after an interval that seemed quite long, but was probably less than half a minute from the hoisting of our signal, I again saw—this time through the telescope—a figure rise up in the boat, wave its arm, and sink down again.“That man is in the very last stage of exhaustion,” said I to the Desmond party generally; “I am sure of it, or he would not act as he does. His sail, you see, is all adrift; yet he makes no effort whatever to secure it and head the boat toward us, nor does he attempt to get out an oar to lessen his distance from us. Unless I am altogether mistaken, the unfortunate creature has been driven clean out of his senses by the tortures of thirst and exposure, and does not know what he is doing; the little strength he has left being due entirely to the raging fever in his veins.”“I am afraid you are right, captain,” agreed Sir Edgar, whose binoculars were again glued to his eyes.Lady Emily audibly sobbed as she clasped her beautiful white hands convulsively together, and pressed them tightly to her breast; the tears sprang to her eyes, and she stamped her foot impatiently on the deck as she exclaimed—“Oh, mercy! shall we never,neverreach them?”Miss Merrivale exhibited her sympathy in a totally different and far more practical way than her sister. Her cheeks glowed, and her eyes flashed with excitement as she laid her hand upon my arm, and said—“Captain, be pleased to understand that you may count upon me to assist you in the treatment of those unfortunate people, as soon as you have got them safely on board here. I know exactly what to do, for, singularly enough, I was reading only this morning an account of a very similar rescue to this, effected by a British man-o’-war, some years ago. The narrative fully describes the measures adopted by the ship’s doctor in the treatment of his patients; I have, therefore, all the information at my fingers’ ends, and you may confidently trust me not to forget anything. I shall go below now, and make my preparations at once.”“Thank you, most heartily,” said I. “Such assistance as you proffer will be of priceless value, and may indeed be the means of saving many lives. I accept it cordially, and with the deepest gratitude.”“I will go with you, Agnes,” exclaimed Lady Emily; “I am sure I, too, can help, if you will only tell me what to do.”And, to my unspeakable relief, the two charming women retired to the saloon, taking the nurses with them.“I am heartily glad that the ladies have left the deck,” said I to Sir Edgar, as his eyes followed his wife’s form to the companion, “and I fervently hope that they will remain below until this business is over; for, to speak plainly, I am beginning to fear that when that boat is brought alongside she will present such a sight as no delicate, susceptible woman could endure to look upon without sustaining a terrible and long-enduring shock.”“Say you so?” ejaculated Sir Edgar. “Then I will go at once and tell them that they are on no account to come on deck until they have your permission. I am greatly obliged to you for the hint, captain.”Every eye in the ship was by this time riveted upon the boat ahead, which was now distinctly visible; but no further movement had been observed on board her, and I began to dread the possibility that, after all, our appearance upon the scene might prove to be too late. So anxious, indeed, did I now feel that, although Forbes several times looked aft at me, and then meaningly aloft at the studding-sails, I would not give the order to start tack or sheet, but held on with everything to the very last moment, feeling pretty confident that, in such light weather, we might safely round-to all standing.At length, after what seemed an interminable interval, we arrived within half a mile of the boat; and now the barque was kept slightly away, in order that we might have room to round-to and shoot up alongside the small craft without giving her occupants the trouble to out oars and pull to us. This brought her out clear of our starboard bow, and afforded us on the poop a better opportunity than we had yet enjoyed of scrutinising her from that position; of which Sir Edgar, who had again joined me, took the fullest advantage, keeping his binoculars levelled upon her without a moment’s intermission. Yet all this time no further movement had been observed on board her, although she was now so close to us that, had such been made, it could not possibly have escaped our notice. She was a ship’s gig, about twenty-four feet long, painted green, and she floated too light in the water to have many people in her. She was rigged with a single short mast, stepped well forward, upon which an old and well-worn lugsail was set—or, rather,hoisted—for the tack had parted, the sheet was adrift, and the yard hung nearly up and down the mast, the foot of the sail hanging over the port side and trailing in the water. Her rudder was shipped, and swayed idly from side to side as the boat rocked gently upon the low swell and the small ripples that followed her in her slow drift before the dying breeze. Her paint looked faded and sea-washed in the ruddy glow of the setting sun; her bottom, along the water-line, showed a grey coating of incipient barnacles, and there were many other indications about her that to a sailor’s eye was proof conclusive of the fact that she had been in the water for several days.As I noted these particulars through the telescope, while we were approaching her, my attention was arrested by a movement and occasional swirl in the water round about her; and, looking more intently, I presently descried the triangular dorsal fin of a shark in close proximity to the boat’s side. Looking more closely still, I saw another, and another, and yet another, and still others; so that, as I looked, the boat seemed to be surrounded by sharks, hemmed in and fairly beset by them. The water all about her was literally alive with them; its surface all a-swirl with their eager, restless movements as they swam to and fro and darted hither and thither, circling round the little craft and away from her, only to turn sharply, with a whisk of the tail that left a white foam-fleck and a miniature whirlpool on the gleaming surface of the water, and force their way back to her side through the jostling crowd of their companions.“Do you see that swarm of sharks crowding round the boat, Sir Edgar?” said I. “Take my word for it, there is a corpse—perhaps several—in her, and I am glad that the ladies are not on deck. Lay aft here, lads, to the main-braces, and back the mainyard. Ease your helm down, and steer up alongside her,”—to the man at the wheel. “Stand by, one hand, to jump down into the boat with a rope’s-end and make fast.”We were now so close to the little craft that, with the small air there was abroad, my voice, as I addressed the men, could have been distinctly heard at a considerable distance beyond her; and there is no doubt that it and the answering cries of the crew reached the ears of the castaway whom we had already seen; for as, in obedience to her helm, the bows of the barque swept slowly round towards the boat, a figure—a ghastly figure, with scarce a semblance of humanity remaining to it—rose up in the stern-sheets and looked at us. I shall never forget the sight, to my dying day. It was a man, clad in the remains of a shirt, and a pair of once blue cloth trousers that had become a dirty, colourless grey by long exposure to the sun and frequent saturation with salt-water. The head was bare, and thatched with a thick shock of grey, matted hair that still retained a streak of brown in it here and there to tell what its originalcolour had been; and the face was shrouded in a dense growth of matted grey beard and whisker; the skin, where exposed, was scorched to a deep purple red by the fierce rays of the sun. All this, however, was as nothing compared with the gauntness and emaciation of the man. The face, or at least that portion of it which was not hidden by the jungle of beard, was that of a death’s head, a fleshless skull with a skin of blistered parchment strained so tightly over it that the cheek-bones seemed to be on the point of breaking through; while the eyes, but for the sparkle of the fever in them, would have been invisible, so deeply were they sunk within their sockets. The rest of his frame was evidently in like condition; his bare arms and exposed shanks seeming literally to be nothing but skin and bone, without a particle of flesh upon them.For a space of, perhaps, ten seconds, this grisly phantom stood motionless in the boat, staring blankly at us; then, when the ship was within some twenty fathoms of him, he threw his gaunt, bony arms above his head, and with a wild, eldritch yell, such as I had never heard before, and hope never to hear again, he half sprang, half tumbled over the side of the boat into the water, and, with a frenzied energy such as few sound, strong men could have exhibited, struck out for the ship.A wild cry of dismay arose from our decks, fore and aft, at this unlooked-for act of madness; and then, with one accord, all hands, myself included, dashed to the starboard quarter-boat and, while the first comers flung the coiled-up falls off the pins and cut the gripes adrift, Forbes and four others scrambled into her and, with wild eagerness, thrust the rowlocks into their sockets, slashed the oars adrift, and made ready to unhook and give way on the instant that she should touch the water.But of what avail was it all? Even while working with the others at the boat I never for an instant lost sight of the maniac swimmer. I noted the splash of his plunge into the water, and saw the white swirl raised by the startled sharks as he precipitated himself into their midst; I saw, too, the vigour with which he swam, and my ears tingled with the wild, horrible cry he uttered at every stroke. For a brief space, perhaps ten or fifteen seconds, not a solitary shark’s fin was to be seen; the surface of the water was unbroken, save by the madman’s long and eager strokes. Then, all round about him the golden sheen was darkened into blue and churned to hissing white by the simultaneous rush of that horde of sea-tigers, and, with a single faint, hoarse, bubbling cry, the swimmer was gone!“Too late! too late! hold on with the boat,” I cried. “The poor wretch is gone; torn to pieces by the sharks! Now let us see if there is anybody else—faugh! What on earth is the meaning of this?”The exclamation was forced from me by an overpowering effluvium that at the moment swept on board us from the drifting boat, which was now on our weather-bow, and close aboard of us. As she dropped alongside, in the wake of the fore chains, all hands crowded to the rail to look down into her; while one smart fellow, with a rope’s-end in his hand, was already over the side, clinging to a channel-iron, with one foot upon its bolt-head, ready to drop into her and make fast. But the odour that arose from the little craft and assailed our nostrils was so unendurable, and the sight that her interior revealed was so dreadful and revolting, that we recoiled as one man, and allowed the boat with her awful freight to scrape slowly along the ship’s side from the fore chains to the taffrail, without an effort to secure her. To do so would indeed have been utterly useless, for that first glance down into her amply sufficed to assure us all that the forms lying prone there were dead and rotting corpses. They were those of two men, a lad of sixteen or seventeen, a woman, and a child of some eight or ten years old; the clothing of the two last mentioned being of so fine a texture and make as to suggest that the wearers must have been people of some consequence.A small breaker, with the bung out, and obviously empty, stood at the foot of the mast, with a tin dipper beside it; while the lower half of a sailor’s sea boot, with the sole only of its fellow, lying in the stern-sheets, in company with a sailor’s sheath-knife, told only too plainly of the terrible straits to which the poor creatures had been driven to quell the craving torments of hunger. The words “La Belle Amelie, Marseille,” deeply carved in the transom, gave us the name and nationality of the ship to which this dreadful waif had once belonged, and completed the details of the entry which I that same evening made in my official log-book.The barque still having way upon her, the boat slowly scraped along our side until she reached our starboard quarter; and there—the halliard of the sail, which served also as a mast shroud, fouling our main-brace bumpkin—she hung, and refused to drag clear. Seeing this, and anxious to rid the ship of such hideous companionship, the mate whipped out his knife and, getting down upon the bumpkin, cut through the halliard, thus releasing the boat and, at the same time, letting the sail down by the run and sending the extremity of the yard crashing through her bottom. She now drifted clear; and, our mainyard being at the same time filled and the helm put hard up, we paid off and began to draw away from her, noting, meanwhile, that she was gradually filling with water. The sharks still stuck pertinaciously to her; and as she settled lower in the water it was horrible to see with what increasing eagerness and determination they crowded round and strove to overturn her. At length, when her gunwale was almost flush with the water’s edge, they apparently succeeded; for we saw her mast begin to rock and sway, and then, while the blue of the water all about her with the surge of their struggling bodies was frothed into creamy white and spurting spray by their fierce plunges, the spar heeled suddenly over and disappeared. Happily we were by this time too far away to note the details in this final scene of the ghastly drama; but, taking a last look through the telescope, a few minutes later, I was able to make out the hull of the boat floating bottom up. The swarm of sharks had vanished.On the fifth day following, we arrived, without further incident, in the Canton river; and Sir Edgar and his party went ashore and took up their quarters in the best hotel in Hong Kong, while we went to work with all expedition to discharge our cargo.

Our voyage had, thus far, proved to be an unusually eventful one; yet it was to be made the more notable ere its close by the addition of still one more incident, and that, too, of a sufficiently ghastly character, to the catalogue of those already recorded. It occurred on the tenth day after our brush with the Malays in the Straits of Sunda, and when we were about midway across the China Sea.

Since that wild night on which we had so nearly laid the bones of theEsmeralda—and possibly our own as well—to rest on the shores of Sumatra, we had met with uninterrupted bright sunshine and light, favourable breezes. The day on which the incident occurred was no exception to the rule. The weather was gloriously fine, with a rich, softly mottled sky of blue and white overhead, out of the midst of which the afternoon sun blazed fiercely down upon a smooth, sparkling sea, gently ruffling under the faint, warm breeze to a surface of pale, glowing sapphire, along which the barque, wooing the soft zephyr with studding-sails spread on both sides, from the royals down, swam with a sleepy, rhythmical swaying of her taunt spars, at a speed of some five knots in the hour.

It was close upon eight bells of the afternoon watch, and the saloon party were all on deck, grouped under the shadow of the awning; the elders lounging in easy, unconventional attitudes in capacious basket-chairs, the women, attired in snowy white, beguiling the time by making a pretence at working at some embroidery, or fancy sewing of some kind, as they fitfully conversed upon such topics as occurred to them; while Sir Edgar, clothed in flannels, with a Panama hat tilted well forward over his eyes, smoked and read with an air of placid enjoyment; the youngsters, apparently less affected than the rest of us by the languorous heat of the weather, meanwhile indulging in a game at hide-and-seek about the decks with the ship’s cat.

Of the hands forward, some of the watch were aloft, working at odd jobs about the rigging, while the drowsy clinking of a spunyarn winch somewhere on the forecastle, in the shadow of the head sails, accounted for the remainder. Most of the watch below were invisible; but two or three industrious ones had grouped themselves on the foredeck, in situations which secured at once a sufficiency of shadow and a maximum of breeze, and were smoking and chatting as they washed or repaired their clothing.

As for me, I was indulging in a brief spell of perfect bodily idleness, and had established myself in my own particular wicker chair, near the break of the poop, and, with hands crossed behind my head and cigar in mouth, was lazily watching a man on the main-royal yard who was reeving a new set of signal halliards, while my mind was busy upon the apparently insoluble problem of finding the key to the cipher relating to Richard Saint Leger’s buried treasure.

The signal halliards had just been successfully rove when eight bells were struck, and the man who had been reeving them—now off duty—was preparing leisurely to descend to the deck, when, as nine out of every ten sailors will, he paused to take a last, long, comprehensive look round the horizon. There was not a sail of any sort in sight from the deck, not even so much as the glancing of a bird’s wing against the warm, tender, grey tones of the horizon to arrest one’s wandering glances; but this was apparently not the case from the superior altitude of the main-royal yard, for presently I observed a change in the attitude of the man up there from that of listless indifference to awakened curiosity and interest. His gaze grew earnest and attentive; then he shaded his eyes with his hand, and his body assumed an attitude and expression of alertness. Long and steadily he maintained his gaze in one fixed direction; then he glanced down on deck, and, catching sight of me with my face upturned toward him, he hailed—

“On deck, there! There’s something away out here on the starboard bow, sir, as has the look of a boat adrift.”

“How does it bear, and how far off is it?” I inquired.

“About two points on the starboard bow, and a matter of eight or ten mile off, I should say, sir,” was the reply.

“Mr Forbes,” said I to the mate, who, the watch having just been called, at this moment came on deck from his cabin, “take the glass aloft, and see what you can make of this new wonder, if you please.”

Forbes went to the companion, took the telescope out of the beckets, slung it over his shoulders, and leisurely ascended the fore-rigging until he reached the topmast cross-trees, in which he comfortably settled himself preparatory to a careful inspection of the object. Meanwhile, the other man maintained his position on the main-royal yard.

“Now then, Joe, where do you say this precious ‘something’ of yours is?” inquired the mate as he unslung the telescope and proceeded to adjust it for use.

“There it is, sir,” answered the man, pointing; “about a couple of points on the starboard bow. I don’t know as you’ll be able to see it from down there, Mr Forbes, but it’s plain enough—”

“All right; I see it,” interrupted Forbes; and he forthwith raised the telescope to his eye, taking a prolonged and exhaustive look through it. At length, lowering the instrument, he turned in his seat, and, looking down upon me where I now stood, just forward of the mainmast, hailed—

“Joe is quite right, sir. There certainlyissomething out there, but it is fully twelve miles away, and it looks uncommonly like a boat with a mast stepped and a sail hoisted, or a signal flying.—I can’t quite make out which—and I even fancy I can catch an occasional glimpse of people moving about in her; but she wavers so much in the glass that I can’t be at all sure about it.”

“Very well; just keep your eye on her for a moment,” I answered back, “and let me know when she bears straight ahead. It will not take us much out of our way to give her an overhaul, and it is as well to make quite sure in such cases as this. Man your braces, fore and aft, the starboard watch; larboard watch, go to work and get in the larboard stu’n’sails. Port your helm a trifle,”—to the man at the wheel. “Round-in a foot or two upon the larboard braces!”

As these manoeuvres were executed, the barque’s bows slowly inclined to the eastward, and presently Forbes hailed from his lofty perch—

“S-o, stead-y! Whatever she may be, she is now dead on end to a hair’s breadth.”

“How is her head?” I shouted to the man at the wheel.

The fellow peered into the binnacle, and answered—

“North-east-and-by-east, three-quarters east.”

“Is the boat—or whatever it is—still straight ahead, Mr Forbes?” I inquired.

“Straight to a hair, sir,” came the reply.

“Then keep her at that,” I called to the helmsman. “Well there with the braces; belay! Overhaul the main clew-garnets and get the sheet aft. Roll up the awning aft here, some of you, and haul out the mizzen; then jump aloft, one hand, and loose the gaff-topsail.”

The ship was by this time astir and in a little flutter of excitement, fore and aft, at the prospect of another break in the monotony of our existence. Forecastle Jack is not, as a rule, very demonstrative; it appears to be regarded as “bad form” to exhibit excitement under any circumstances, or undue animation unless when confronted with some great and sudden crisis. Then, indeed, his movements are as active and springy as those of a cat; but, unless there is some pressing necessity for nimbleness, Jack regards it as the correct thing and a duty he owes to his own dignity to be deliberate of action. And, above all, whatever the circumstances, there must be no exhibition of vulgar curiosity, no eagerness, no enthusiasm, no astonishment while one of ocean’s countless mysteries is unfolding itself before his eyes; he must exhibit an air of semi-contemptuous indifference, as who should say, “I am a seasoned hand—a shell-back, and none of your beach-combers. I have long been familiar with all the strange sights and sounds and vicissitudes to be met with upon the broad ocean; for me the tale of them is exhausted; so far as I am concerned there is nothing new under the sun, nothing so strange or unexpected as to be capable of arousing my interest, nothing that can astonish or disconcert me.” The effect of this unspoken tradition was apparent in the studied carelessness of the one or two inquiries that were addressed to the man Joe, when at length he descended from aloft and rejoined his mates on the forecastle-head. But the indifference was only assumed; and as Joe—who, in his character of first discoverer, was entitled to the privilege of unrestrained loquacity—stated not only what he had seen, but also what henow fanciedhe had seen—his imagination rapidly supplying him with fresh details even as he talked—his group of listeners gradually closed in round him; questions were asked, conjecture was indulged in, and every now and then the little conclave temporarily lost control of itself, and, yielding to the sympathy and excitement that was quickening its pulses, began to discuss eagerly the chances for and against some possibility that had been advanced by one of its number. As for my passengers, they were the slaves of no such code as that which influenced the lads forward; they yielded at once and without restraint to the feeling of solicitude and sympathy that was awakened within them at the news of the waif ahead, with its possible freight of physical suffering or still worse torment of mental anxiety, apprehension, and hope deferred “that maketh the heart sick” and breaks down all but the most stubborn courage, and fairly swamped me with eager questions and suggestions that, while they exhibited very effectively the goodness of heart of the speakers, were not of much practical value.

I succeeded at length in effecting my escape from these good people, and, arming myself with the ship’s glass, set out for Forbes’ coign of vantage—the fore-topmast cross-trees—to see what news the lapse of an hour might enable me to discover. I found, however, that there was no need for me to travel so far, for before I had mounted halfway up the lower rigging I caught sight of the object of my quest quivering in the hot air, upon the verge of the horizon straight ahead. I therefore settled myself comfortably in the top, from which convenient platform I made a minute and prolonged inspection of her.

It needed not a second glance through the powerful instrument I wielded to assure me that the object ahead was indeed a boat, and that she carried a spar of some sort on end with something fluttering from it—whether sail or signal I could not tell, for the rarefied air through which I viewed her so distorted her shape and proportions that it bore as much resemblance to the one as to the other; but, if a sail, it was certainly doing no good, for I could see by the peculiar lift and flap of it that both tack and sheet were adrift. As to whether she had any occupants or not, I could not for the life of me determine; for although I remained aloft there in the top for a good half-hour, with my eye glued to the telescope all the while, only once did I detect what had the appearance of something moving on board her; but the sight was so transitory and unsatisfactory that I might easily have been mistaken. However, we had by this time neared her to within some five miles; so, as another hour would decide the question, I determined to possess my soul in patience until then, and accordingly closed the telescope, slung it over my shoulder, and returned to the deck. As I wended my way down the ratlines I noticed two of the men—who were now supposed to be busily engaged in clearing up the decks after the work of the day—standing halfway up the topgallant forecastle ladder, and staring so intently ahead that they were altogether oblivious of my close proximity, from which I concluded that the boat must be already visible to them. As I swung myself out of the rigging on to the deck I heard one of them exclaim to the other—

“There, did ye see that? I swear I saw somebody get up and wave his hand, and then fall back again into the bottom of the boat!”

This description answered so accurately to what I thought I also had seen through the glass, that the doubts I had hitherto entertained as to the presence of people on board the boat now began to yield to the belief that there were, especially as the man who had just spoken bore the reputation of being the keenest-sighted man in the ship. I held my peace, however, and made my way aft to the poop, where Sir Edgar and his party—himself and the two ladies armed with binoculars—were still assembled, eagerly scanning the horizon ahead.

“Oh, captain,” exclaimed Lady Emily, as I joined the little group, “is it really true that there are shipwrecked people in that little boat? You have been up there watching it for so long through your telescope that you will be able to tell us for certain.”

“I am afraid I cannot do anything of the kind,” answered I. “It is true that for a single moment I thought I detected a movement of some kind on board her; but, if so, it was not repeated, and I therefore scarcely know what to think. However, we shall soon know now. Of one thing I feel sure, and that is that, if there are any people in that boat, they must be in the last stage of exhaustion, or a better lookout would have been maintained, our proximity discovered, and some effort made ere now, either to reach us or to attract our attention.”

“Do you mean that you think it possible there are people actuallydyingin that boat?”

“If she really contains any human beings it would not in the least surprise me were we to find them in that condition; dying, too, one of the most dreadful deaths that man can be called upon to endure, a slow, lingering agony—the indescribable, maddening torment of long-continued hunger and thirst,” said I.

“Oh, what an awful possibility to contemplate!” murmured her ladyship, her face blanching at the picture my words had conjured up. “Poor creatures! how frightful to think that—”

“By Heaven, thereisat least one living being in that boat!” interrupted Sir Edgar, excitedly, as he lowered his binoculars and turned to me. “See, captain,”—looking again toward the boat—“you can distinguish him with the naked eye.”

At the same moment Forbes hailed from the topgallant forecastle—

“There’s a man in that boat, sir! Do you see him waving to us?”

“Yes,” I answered, as I caught a momentary glimpse of an upright figure that seemed to give a single wave with its arm and then collapse into the bottom of the boat. “Let go your fore-royal halliards, Mr Forbes, and run the ensign up to the royal-masthead. That will give them to understand that we have seen them.”

This was done, and after an interval that seemed quite long, but was probably less than half a minute from the hoisting of our signal, I again saw—this time through the telescope—a figure rise up in the boat, wave its arm, and sink down again.

“That man is in the very last stage of exhaustion,” said I to the Desmond party generally; “I am sure of it, or he would not act as he does. His sail, you see, is all adrift; yet he makes no effort whatever to secure it and head the boat toward us, nor does he attempt to get out an oar to lessen his distance from us. Unless I am altogether mistaken, the unfortunate creature has been driven clean out of his senses by the tortures of thirst and exposure, and does not know what he is doing; the little strength he has left being due entirely to the raging fever in his veins.”

“I am afraid you are right, captain,” agreed Sir Edgar, whose binoculars were again glued to his eyes.

Lady Emily audibly sobbed as she clasped her beautiful white hands convulsively together, and pressed them tightly to her breast; the tears sprang to her eyes, and she stamped her foot impatiently on the deck as she exclaimed—

“Oh, mercy! shall we never,neverreach them?”

Miss Merrivale exhibited her sympathy in a totally different and far more practical way than her sister. Her cheeks glowed, and her eyes flashed with excitement as she laid her hand upon my arm, and said—

“Captain, be pleased to understand that you may count upon me to assist you in the treatment of those unfortunate people, as soon as you have got them safely on board here. I know exactly what to do, for, singularly enough, I was reading only this morning an account of a very similar rescue to this, effected by a British man-o’-war, some years ago. The narrative fully describes the measures adopted by the ship’s doctor in the treatment of his patients; I have, therefore, all the information at my fingers’ ends, and you may confidently trust me not to forget anything. I shall go below now, and make my preparations at once.”

“Thank you, most heartily,” said I. “Such assistance as you proffer will be of priceless value, and may indeed be the means of saving many lives. I accept it cordially, and with the deepest gratitude.”

“I will go with you, Agnes,” exclaimed Lady Emily; “I am sure I, too, can help, if you will only tell me what to do.”

And, to my unspeakable relief, the two charming women retired to the saloon, taking the nurses with them.

“I am heartily glad that the ladies have left the deck,” said I to Sir Edgar, as his eyes followed his wife’s form to the companion, “and I fervently hope that they will remain below until this business is over; for, to speak plainly, I am beginning to fear that when that boat is brought alongside she will present such a sight as no delicate, susceptible woman could endure to look upon without sustaining a terrible and long-enduring shock.”

“Say you so?” ejaculated Sir Edgar. “Then I will go at once and tell them that they are on no account to come on deck until they have your permission. I am greatly obliged to you for the hint, captain.”

Every eye in the ship was by this time riveted upon the boat ahead, which was now distinctly visible; but no further movement had been observed on board her, and I began to dread the possibility that, after all, our appearance upon the scene might prove to be too late. So anxious, indeed, did I now feel that, although Forbes several times looked aft at me, and then meaningly aloft at the studding-sails, I would not give the order to start tack or sheet, but held on with everything to the very last moment, feeling pretty confident that, in such light weather, we might safely round-to all standing.

At length, after what seemed an interminable interval, we arrived within half a mile of the boat; and now the barque was kept slightly away, in order that we might have room to round-to and shoot up alongside the small craft without giving her occupants the trouble to out oars and pull to us. This brought her out clear of our starboard bow, and afforded us on the poop a better opportunity than we had yet enjoyed of scrutinising her from that position; of which Sir Edgar, who had again joined me, took the fullest advantage, keeping his binoculars levelled upon her without a moment’s intermission. Yet all this time no further movement had been observed on board her, although she was now so close to us that, had such been made, it could not possibly have escaped our notice. She was a ship’s gig, about twenty-four feet long, painted green, and she floated too light in the water to have many people in her. She was rigged with a single short mast, stepped well forward, upon which an old and well-worn lugsail was set—or, rather,hoisted—for the tack had parted, the sheet was adrift, and the yard hung nearly up and down the mast, the foot of the sail hanging over the port side and trailing in the water. Her rudder was shipped, and swayed idly from side to side as the boat rocked gently upon the low swell and the small ripples that followed her in her slow drift before the dying breeze. Her paint looked faded and sea-washed in the ruddy glow of the setting sun; her bottom, along the water-line, showed a grey coating of incipient barnacles, and there were many other indications about her that to a sailor’s eye was proof conclusive of the fact that she had been in the water for several days.

As I noted these particulars through the telescope, while we were approaching her, my attention was arrested by a movement and occasional swirl in the water round about her; and, looking more intently, I presently descried the triangular dorsal fin of a shark in close proximity to the boat’s side. Looking more closely still, I saw another, and another, and yet another, and still others; so that, as I looked, the boat seemed to be surrounded by sharks, hemmed in and fairly beset by them. The water all about her was literally alive with them; its surface all a-swirl with their eager, restless movements as they swam to and fro and darted hither and thither, circling round the little craft and away from her, only to turn sharply, with a whisk of the tail that left a white foam-fleck and a miniature whirlpool on the gleaming surface of the water, and force their way back to her side through the jostling crowd of their companions.

“Do you see that swarm of sharks crowding round the boat, Sir Edgar?” said I. “Take my word for it, there is a corpse—perhaps several—in her, and I am glad that the ladies are not on deck. Lay aft here, lads, to the main-braces, and back the mainyard. Ease your helm down, and steer up alongside her,”—to the man at the wheel. “Stand by, one hand, to jump down into the boat with a rope’s-end and make fast.”

We were now so close to the little craft that, with the small air there was abroad, my voice, as I addressed the men, could have been distinctly heard at a considerable distance beyond her; and there is no doubt that it and the answering cries of the crew reached the ears of the castaway whom we had already seen; for as, in obedience to her helm, the bows of the barque swept slowly round towards the boat, a figure—a ghastly figure, with scarce a semblance of humanity remaining to it—rose up in the stern-sheets and looked at us. I shall never forget the sight, to my dying day. It was a man, clad in the remains of a shirt, and a pair of once blue cloth trousers that had become a dirty, colourless grey by long exposure to the sun and frequent saturation with salt-water. The head was bare, and thatched with a thick shock of grey, matted hair that still retained a streak of brown in it here and there to tell what its originalcolour had been; and the face was shrouded in a dense growth of matted grey beard and whisker; the skin, where exposed, was scorched to a deep purple red by the fierce rays of the sun. All this, however, was as nothing compared with the gauntness and emaciation of the man. The face, or at least that portion of it which was not hidden by the jungle of beard, was that of a death’s head, a fleshless skull with a skin of blistered parchment strained so tightly over it that the cheek-bones seemed to be on the point of breaking through; while the eyes, but for the sparkle of the fever in them, would have been invisible, so deeply were they sunk within their sockets. The rest of his frame was evidently in like condition; his bare arms and exposed shanks seeming literally to be nothing but skin and bone, without a particle of flesh upon them.

For a space of, perhaps, ten seconds, this grisly phantom stood motionless in the boat, staring blankly at us; then, when the ship was within some twenty fathoms of him, he threw his gaunt, bony arms above his head, and with a wild, eldritch yell, such as I had never heard before, and hope never to hear again, he half sprang, half tumbled over the side of the boat into the water, and, with a frenzied energy such as few sound, strong men could have exhibited, struck out for the ship.

A wild cry of dismay arose from our decks, fore and aft, at this unlooked-for act of madness; and then, with one accord, all hands, myself included, dashed to the starboard quarter-boat and, while the first comers flung the coiled-up falls off the pins and cut the gripes adrift, Forbes and four others scrambled into her and, with wild eagerness, thrust the rowlocks into their sockets, slashed the oars adrift, and made ready to unhook and give way on the instant that she should touch the water.

But of what avail was it all? Even while working with the others at the boat I never for an instant lost sight of the maniac swimmer. I noted the splash of his plunge into the water, and saw the white swirl raised by the startled sharks as he precipitated himself into their midst; I saw, too, the vigour with which he swam, and my ears tingled with the wild, horrible cry he uttered at every stroke. For a brief space, perhaps ten or fifteen seconds, not a solitary shark’s fin was to be seen; the surface of the water was unbroken, save by the madman’s long and eager strokes. Then, all round about him the golden sheen was darkened into blue and churned to hissing white by the simultaneous rush of that horde of sea-tigers, and, with a single faint, hoarse, bubbling cry, the swimmer was gone!

“Too late! too late! hold on with the boat,” I cried. “The poor wretch is gone; torn to pieces by the sharks! Now let us see if there is anybody else—faugh! What on earth is the meaning of this?”

The exclamation was forced from me by an overpowering effluvium that at the moment swept on board us from the drifting boat, which was now on our weather-bow, and close aboard of us. As she dropped alongside, in the wake of the fore chains, all hands crowded to the rail to look down into her; while one smart fellow, with a rope’s-end in his hand, was already over the side, clinging to a channel-iron, with one foot upon its bolt-head, ready to drop into her and make fast. But the odour that arose from the little craft and assailed our nostrils was so unendurable, and the sight that her interior revealed was so dreadful and revolting, that we recoiled as one man, and allowed the boat with her awful freight to scrape slowly along the ship’s side from the fore chains to the taffrail, without an effort to secure her. To do so would indeed have been utterly useless, for that first glance down into her amply sufficed to assure us all that the forms lying prone there were dead and rotting corpses. They were those of two men, a lad of sixteen or seventeen, a woman, and a child of some eight or ten years old; the clothing of the two last mentioned being of so fine a texture and make as to suggest that the wearers must have been people of some consequence.

A small breaker, with the bung out, and obviously empty, stood at the foot of the mast, with a tin dipper beside it; while the lower half of a sailor’s sea boot, with the sole only of its fellow, lying in the stern-sheets, in company with a sailor’s sheath-knife, told only too plainly of the terrible straits to which the poor creatures had been driven to quell the craving torments of hunger. The words “La Belle Amelie, Marseille,” deeply carved in the transom, gave us the name and nationality of the ship to which this dreadful waif had once belonged, and completed the details of the entry which I that same evening made in my official log-book.

The barque still having way upon her, the boat slowly scraped along our side until she reached our starboard quarter; and there—the halliard of the sail, which served also as a mast shroud, fouling our main-brace bumpkin—she hung, and refused to drag clear. Seeing this, and anxious to rid the ship of such hideous companionship, the mate whipped out his knife and, getting down upon the bumpkin, cut through the halliard, thus releasing the boat and, at the same time, letting the sail down by the run and sending the extremity of the yard crashing through her bottom. She now drifted clear; and, our mainyard being at the same time filled and the helm put hard up, we paid off and began to draw away from her, noting, meanwhile, that she was gradually filling with water. The sharks still stuck pertinaciously to her; and as she settled lower in the water it was horrible to see with what increasing eagerness and determination they crowded round and strove to overturn her. At length, when her gunwale was almost flush with the water’s edge, they apparently succeeded; for we saw her mast begin to rock and sway, and then, while the blue of the water all about her with the surge of their struggling bodies was frothed into creamy white and spurting spray by their fierce plunges, the spar heeled suddenly over and disappeared. Happily we were by this time too far away to note the details in this final scene of the ghastly drama; but, taking a last look through the telescope, a few minutes later, I was able to make out the hull of the boat floating bottom up. The swarm of sharks had vanished.

On the fifth day following, we arrived, without further incident, in the Canton river; and Sir Edgar and his party went ashore and took up their quarters in the best hotel in Hong Kong, while we went to work with all expedition to discharge our cargo.

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