Chapter Fourteen.

Chapter Fourteen.In Dire Peril.Jake’s voice seemed ever so far away in the distance, and there was a confused sort of humming, buzzing noise in my ears; while some heavy weight on the top of my head appeared to be pressing me down, although I struggled frantically to free myself.It was all in vain, though.I was whirled round and round in an eddy of the sea; and soon my efforts ceased.Then, all at once, when almost the sense of suffocation had passed, I felt a hand grasp my collar at the back of my neck; and, oh, gracious heaven! I was dragged above the surface and drew once more a breath of air. I took in a gulp of water with this; but, in spite of the water, the air was the sweet essence of life and I breathed again!I had been in a dream before—a terrible dream; now I came to myself, and my recollection returned.The buzzing sounds that had previously echoed through my brain resolved themselves into the hoarse shouts of the crew of theJosephine; the exclamations of the sailors being mingled with the roaring, crashing break of the waves as they washed over the wreck, and the creaking and rending of the timbers of the poor ship, while, nearer yet to me, I could distinguish the cheering cry of faithful Jake:“Hole up, Mass’ Tom, um got um safe now. Hole up an’ take good breff; we’se all right, an’ ebberybody safe!”At the same moment that he spoke Jake lifted me up on something which I could feel with my feet, and I opened my eyes.At first, I was almost blinded by the sea-water which had got into them, and the salt spray which continually dashed over my head; but, in a minute or two, I was able to see where I was and grasp the situation.The ship was lying over on her starboard side, with her decks submerged up to the hatches, and her masts horizontal on the surface of the sea; but, the whole of her port side was clear out of the water, and, although the waves were breaking over this, still the major part of the quarter and a portion of the poop were almost high and dry in the intervals between the following rollers that ever and anon swept up to their level.On this after part of the ship, Jake had managed to clamber up, lugging me along with him; and, as I looked round, I could recognise Captain Miles and Mr Marline, as well as several others of the hands, who had sought such a vantage-ground of safety.Away forwards, theJosephinewas completely buried in the huge billows that were constantly surging over her; but here, too, clinging on to the main-chains was another group of sailors, amongst whom I could make out the tall figure of Jackson, with Cuffee and Davis close beside him.Captain Miles perceived me almost as soon as I saw him.“Ah, there you are, Tom!” he cried. “Thank God you are not lost! I made a hard grab at you when the ship heeled over, but missed you; and thought that the skylight hatch carried you away overboard when it lifted.”“Me watchee him sharp, sah,” explained Jake. “I’se see de squall comin’ an’ run aft for tell, an’ den I clutch hole Mass’ Tom, an’ here we is!”“You’ve saved your young master then,” exclaimed the captain; “so, Tom, you’ve got to thank the darkey instead of me! But, how many of us have escaped?”As he said this, Captain Miles glanced about and appeared to be reckoning up the list of the crew on his fingers, for I could see his lips move.“Marline, you’re all right, eh?” he went on presently, speaking out aloud.“Oh, yes, I’m here, thanks to Providence,” said the first mate with almost a sob in his voice. It told better than words his gratitude to the power on high that had preserved him.“And Jackson, I see, with Davis and Cuffee,” continued the captain, running through the names of the survivors as far as he could make them out.“There’s Adze, the carpenter, too, in the main-chains, with those two German sailors, Hermann and Gottlieb; while there are five more of the hands alongside me,” said Mr Marline looking round, too, and taking stock.“But, where’s Moggridge?” asked Captain Miles, missing the boatswain at that moment and not seeing him anywhere. I felt my heart sink at the thought that he was gone.“Here I am, your honour,” however, sang out the old fellow, climbing up over the stern gallery. “I almost lost the number of my mess; but I’ve managed to cheat Davy Jones this time.”“That makes, with Master Tom here, just sixteen souls, out of eighteen we had on board, all told,” said the captain. “Anybody seen the steward?”“No, he isn’t here, poor fellow,” replied Mr Marline. “He was below in his pantry at the time the squall struck us, and must have been drowned before he could scramble out.”“There’s only one other, then, missing,” said the captain. “Count the hands again, Marline.”The first mate did this; and, then, it was found, on hailing Jackson in the main-chains—the sea at present making a breach between us and dividing our forces—that the other sailor was a man named Briggs, who had been ailing for some days past. He had been in his bunk in the forecastle when the ship capsized, so his fate was almost as certain as that of Harry, the mulatto steward.All things considered, though, it was a great mercy, from the sudden nature of the calamity, that so many of us should have been saved. But for the fact of the accident having occurred in the afternoon, when the majority of the hands were fortunately on deck aft, many more lives would undoubtedly have been lost.However, albeit temporarily preserved from the peril of a watery grave, our outlook, clustered there together on the outside of the partly-submerged vessel, was a very sorry one; for, the sea was still running high, and the waves were breaking over us in sheets of foam, and, although the sun was shining down and the air was comparatively warm, this made us feel most uncomfortable. Besides, the continual onslaught of the rolling billows necessitated our holding on to everything we could get a grip of, to prevent ourselves from being washed away.We had to lie along the side of the ship, grasping the mizzen rigging, which attitude was a very wearying one; for, the sea would lift us up as the swell surged by, and then, we had to take a fresh grip, our feet sliding down the hull as the billow retired and the vessel sunk down in the hollow.“I say, Marline,” called out the captain presently, “as you are nearest the signal halliards, do you think you can manage to run them clear?”“I’ll try, sir,” answered the other; and Moggridge, who had now crept alongside the mate, helping him, the two contrived to haul out the rope in question.“Now, who’s got a knife handy?” next inquired Captain Miles.There was half a dozen replies to this question; but, ere the article wanted could be passed along, the old boatswain had drawn out his from his waistband by means of the lanyard slung round his neck, and was busily employed in cutting up the signal halliards into short lengths of about a fathom each.“Ah, I see you guessed what I was after,” said the captain noticing this. “If we lash ourselves to the rigging here, it will save us a world of exertion and trouble, besides leaving our hands free for other purposes.”“Aye, aye, sir, I know’d what you want,” responded Moggridge, and passing down the pieces of rope as he cut them off, all of us were pretty soon well secured from being washed away, each man helping to tie up his neighbour in turn.“Golly, massa, dis am a purdicafirment!” ejaculated Jake, grinning as usual, and with his ebony face shining with the spray; “I’se ’gin feel want grub—um precious hungry.”“I am afraid that’ll not be our only want, my poor fellow,” said Captain Miles in a melancholy voice; but rousing himself a minute afterwards he added more cheerfully, “Wait till the sea gets down, and then we’ll try to improve our condition. I wonder, though, how these other fellows are getting on in the chains amidships? Jackson, ahoy!”“Hullo, sir,” came a faint hail in answer, from amid the breaking seas further on ahead of us, where only a black spot of a head could be seen occasionally emerging from the mass of encircling foam.“Are you all right there?” sang out the captain.“We’re alive, sir; but nearly tired out,” replied Jackson in a low weak tone.“Can’t you try, man, to work your way aft and join us,” urged Captain Miles, comprehending how exhausted the young seaman and his companions there must be. “There’s plenty of room here for all of us, and you’ll not be so much worked about by the sea.”“The waves are too strong for us, sir,” cried out the other, but his voice now seeming to have a little more courage in it, for he added after a bit, “I think we can manage it, though, if you will make fast the bight of the topsail sheet and heave the end to us. It will serve us to hold on by as we pass along the bulwarks.”“All right, my hearty,” answered Captain Miles, he and a couple of the sailors beside him doing as Jackson had suggested.Then, the captain himself, undoing his lashings, seized one of the brief intervals in which the after part of the hull rose above the sea; when, standing on his feet, while his legs were held by the two sailors, he hove the end of the rope towards Jackson, who, clutching hold of it, secured it to the main-shrouds, whence it was stretched taut to the mizzen rigging, thus serving as a sort of life-line by which the men could pass aft.When this was done, the men with Jackson in the main-chains crept cautiously along the bulwarks, half in and half out of the water, clutching on to the topsail sheet hand over hand, soon joined us on the quarter galley—the young second mate being the last to leave, waiting until his comrades were in safety.The passage from the one place to the other was perilous in the extreme; for, the waves surged up sometimes completely over the poor fellows’ heads, when they had once abandoned their footing and had only the frail swaying rope to support them against the wash of the water. They were roughly oscillated to and fro, hove up out of the sea one minute and lowered down again into it the next.It was a wonder some of them did not fall off, getting sucked under the keel of the ship; but, gripping the life-line with a clutch of desperation, their passage across the perilous bridge was at last safely accomplished, when the entire sixteen of us, including my own humble self, were at length gathered together in one group on the counter-rail below the bend of the poop. The new-comers were then lashed to the mizzen rigging like the rest of us, and we all waited with what hope and patience we could for the sea to calm down.By this time, it was late in the afternoon; and, presently, the sun sank down away to the west in his ocean bed, surrounded by a radiant glow of crimson and gold that flashed upward from the horizon to the zenith.The wind had died away too, the last violent squall which had been so disastrous to theJosephine, having been the expiring blast of the hurricane; so, although, as I’ve said, the sea still continued to run high, the waves rolled by more regularly and with an equal pulsation, as if Father Neptune was rocking himself gradually to sleep. The old tyrant was evidently; exhausted with the mad rioting in which he had recently been indulging, and the thrashing which the gale had given him!There was no sleep for us, however, excepting such hasty little droppings off into brief forgetfulness that our worn-out bodies gave way to for an instant; for we were constantly being roused up, almost as soon as our wearied eyelids had closed, by the sudden rush of the spent wash of some broken wave wetting our already wet garments. This banished all thoughts of repose; and, when the darkness of night came on, it was cold and dreary in the extreme, the hours seeming to drag out to the length of a lifetime.Poor faithful Jake lay close to me so as to protect me as much as possible from the wash of the sea; and I found out, when morning light came once more to cheer us, that he had actually stripped off a guernsey vest, which Captain Miles had given him to save him from exposure on the night of the thunder-storm, and had fastened this round my shoulders in order to keep me warm!I shall never forget Jake’s thoughtful action, I believe, as long as I live, for it made a great impression on me when I discovered such a striking proof of his devotion; and, as I now retrace the incidents of the past, the incident stands out prominently in evidence of a negro’s brotherly love.Why, his black skin always seemed white to me ever after. Aye, although born an African, his heart was truer than that of many a European, whose complexion is only a trick of colour!During the night we were all silent; but, when the sun rose in the east, flooding the sea with the rosy tint of dawn, hope came back to us and our tongues were unloosed—the more especially as the force of the waves had considerably lessened, hardly a scrap of spray being now washed over us, while the blows of the billows against the side of the ship were no longer heard.The sea really was calming down at last.God was watching over us!“Say, captain,” said Mr Marline, who was the first to bestir himself, “do you think there’s any prospect of our righting the ship?”The captain was asleep, I believe, for the first mate had to repeat his question twice before he could get an answer.“I’m sure I hope so,” at last sleepily muttered Captain Miles, with a portentous yawn—“only wait till the swell calms down and we’ll see about it.”“But it is calm now,” rejoined the other.“Then wake me again when it is calmer,” replied Captain Miles; and then, he turned on his side and proceeded with his nap as coolly as if he were comfortably tucked up in his nice swinging cot in the cabin.“Well!” exclaimed Mr Marline, “of all the cool, self-possessed men I ever met in my life, you beat the lot!”He was talking to himself, but the hands heard him, and there was a general snigger all round, the captain’s very composure having given confidence to all. The men believed that he would not have taken things so quietly unless he had some sure hope of our speedy release from such a precarious position.“He is a rare brave un,” put in Moggridge. “I’ve sailed with him man and boy for many a v’y’ge afore this, and I allers found him the same, calm and plucky in danger, and keeping a stiff upper lip when in perils that frighten other folk. Captain Miles, sir, is a man as a sailor should be proud to sail under—that’s what I says!”“Eh, what, what?” murmured the captain, half waking up on hearing his name spoken, and lifting his head from between his clasped hands.“I was a-saying, sir, as how you knew what’s what,” replied the boatswain, “and I don’t know of any other man I’d say sich of.”“Belay that,” said Captain Miles, rousing up now and rubbing his eyes. “Ah, it’s morning, I see! Well, Mr Marline, and how goes it?”“As well as can be expected under the circumstances,” answered the other.“Bother circumstances,” rejoined the captain; “we must make the best of them we can. Now, let us see what’s to be done.”“Do you think we can right her, sir?” asked the mate repeating his old query.“Right her? yes, certainly, if we can cut away the masts. She’s not water-logged, and all sound below, I fancy, as far as I can see; for the hatches have been battened down since Monday.”“But she’s rather down by the head, sir,” said Mr Marline, as the two rose on their feet and proceeded to look round the vessel as well as they could from the top of the poop bulwarks, whence they surveyed her position and surroundings.“Ah!” exclaimed Captain Miles, “the fore-peak must have been left open when those spare sails were got out, so that she has taken in some water there. Never mind, though, there’s a stout bulkhead separating the compartment from the main hold, and, if there’s no leak below, we’ll be all right.”“But, the masts have been working the decks all this time,” suggested the mate, “and if the sea has got in through the straining of the timbers we must sink in time.”“Sink your grandmother, Marline!” retorted the captain, “you forget that our main cargo is rum, which is ever so much lighter than water, and more buoyant. As long as we have that below we’ll float, never you fear! But, the job is to cut away the masts if we can; she’ll never right, of course, till that is done. A pity your rigging was so well set up, Marline! If the sticks had only gone by the board when the squall struck us we’d be all right now.”“I don’t know that, captain,” replied the other. “If the masts had been badly stayed they would have gone in the height of the hurricane; and then, where would we be now?”“Not in the Sargasso Sea, I fancy,” said Captain Miles with a hearty laugh. “But we can’t do anything yet, though, till the sea has gone down more. Men,” he added, “keep your pecker up! Providence having watched over us thus far will now not desert us, I am confident, and we’ll yet weather on Mr Marline’s circumstances!”All hands gave a cheer at this hopeful speech, and the sun having by this time dried our soddened clothes besides warming us, we began to feel more comfortable and easy, the captain’s words giving us fresh courage.Towards noon, however, the heat brought on a most terrific thirst, which was all the more painful from our not seeing any chance of relieving it; for, although, like the “ancient mariner,” we saw “water, water everywhere,” there was not a drop of the wholesome fluid, as far as we knew, that we could drink.In this dire calamity, Jackson proved our guardian angel.“I say, captain,” he called out, after climbing along the bulwarks down into that part of the waist of the ship which was clear of the sea, letting himself swing down by the end of the topsail halliards which were belayed to the side, “there’s one of the water-casks lashed here that did not fetch away to leeward with the rest when she canted over; and it’s full too. If anyone has got a hat, or anything that I can draw off the water in, I will start the bung and we can all splice the main-brace.”“Hurrah!” shouted Captain Miles. “That’s the best news I have heard for many a day. Here, Marline, pass him down my wide-awake. Mind how you drive out the bung, Jackson, and have something ready to close up the hole again; or else, all the contents of the cask will be wasted ’fore the hands are served round.”“I’ll take care, sir,” replied the young seaman, who had now turned the end of the topsail halliards into a bight round his body, so that he could swing down in front of the water-cask and yet have his hands free.Then, taking out a marlinespike, which had caught in the rigging somehow or other, he managed, after several blows on either side of the cask, to start the bung. This, from the position in which the ship was lying, was now horizontal instead of perpendicular; so, as soon as it came out, the water flowed at once into the captain’s wide-awake hat, which Jackson had under the bung-hole, stopping up this again with the cork as soon as the hat was full.Mr Marline was bending down from the bulwarks above him to receive the strange jug when the other handed it up to him, and he passed it on to Captain Miles, who allowed me to have the first drink.It tasted like nectar—better than any draught I had ever had before or since!Captain Miles himself then took a gulp of the grateful contents of his old hat, passing it on to Moggridge; and, when emptied, as it very soon was, the wide-awake was filled and refilled by Jackson until every man had satisfied his thirst—the last to enjoy the water which he had been the means of procuring being the brave young seaman himself, just in the same way as he had been the last to quit the post of danger when helping his shipmates out of the main-chains.Quenching our thirst gave us all new life; so, later on in the afternoon, Captain Miles set the men to work casting off the ropes as best they could with the idea of freeing the masts. However, we could do nothing without an axe, for no man had anything handier than his clasp-knife, which naturally was of no use in helping to cut away the cordage and heavy spars that kept the ship down on her beam-ends.What was to be done?We were all in a dilemma, one man suggesting one thing, and another proposing a fresh plan for getting rid of the masts; when, Adze, the carpenter, who had said nothing as yet, spoke for the first time.“I left a large axe o’ mine,” he said quietly, as if saying nothing particularly worthy of notice—“I left a large axe o’ mine in my bunk in the fo’c’s’le; and if ary a one can git down theer, he’ll find it on the top side to his starboard hand as he goes in.”“But, the fo’c’s’le’s full of water,” said Mr Marline, “and a man must be a good diver to creep in there and get the axe under eight or twelve foot of sea! Besides, I daresay it will have been washed away from where Adze put it in his bunk, the lurch of the ship having shifted everything to leeward.”“It war to leeward already in the top bunk, I tell ’ee,” rejoined the carpenter; “an’, bein’ that heavy, I spec’s it’s theer right enough. Only I can’t dive, nor swim above water for that matter, so it’s no use my going after it.”“I’ll go, massa captain,” shouted out Jake, who had been listening eagerly to this conversation. “I’se dibe like porpuss an’ swim like fiss.”“I know that,” said Captain Miles laughing. “I recollect the way you came aboard my ship. But you can try if you like, darkey. If you find that axe, you’ll be the saving of all of us, and give a fair return for your passage, my hearty!”Jake did not need any further persuasion.Making his way along the bulwarks, he clambered on to the main rigging, now lying flat across the capsized vessel, until he came to a clear space between the mainmast and the forecastle, from whence the boats and cook’s galley had been washed away. Jumping into the water at this point, he swam towards the spot where he thought the entrance to the forecastle should lie, for the sea was washing about forward, and nothing to be seen above the surface but a small portion of the port bulwarks near the dead-eyes of the fore-shrouds and a bit of the port cat-head.Jake then dived below the water, disappearing from our view for a few seconds that seemed interminable as we waited.“I hope he hasn’t come to grief,” said Captain Miles anxiously. “So many things have been carried away and jumbled up in a mass there forwards, that the poor fellow might get fixed in and be drowned, without the chance of saving himself.”But his alarm was quite unnecessary, Jake rising above the water in another moment and scrambling up into the main rigging, in a very hurried manner, as if something was pursuing him.His face as he turned it towards us was almost green | with fright, and we could hear his teeth chattering | with fear and cold combined.“Well,” sang out Captain Miles, “I’m glad to see you out of that hole alive. But, what’s the matter, my man? have you got the axe?”“N–n–n–no, Mass’ Cap’en,” stuttered Jake, making his way aft again along the bulwarks, “got no axe nor nuffin’. Dere am duppy or de debbil in de fo’c’s’le. Bress de Lor’, dis pore niggah only sabe him life an’—dat all!”

Jake’s voice seemed ever so far away in the distance, and there was a confused sort of humming, buzzing noise in my ears; while some heavy weight on the top of my head appeared to be pressing me down, although I struggled frantically to free myself.

It was all in vain, though.

I was whirled round and round in an eddy of the sea; and soon my efforts ceased.

Then, all at once, when almost the sense of suffocation had passed, I felt a hand grasp my collar at the back of my neck; and, oh, gracious heaven! I was dragged above the surface and drew once more a breath of air. I took in a gulp of water with this; but, in spite of the water, the air was the sweet essence of life and I breathed again!

I had been in a dream before—a terrible dream; now I came to myself, and my recollection returned.

The buzzing sounds that had previously echoed through my brain resolved themselves into the hoarse shouts of the crew of theJosephine; the exclamations of the sailors being mingled with the roaring, crashing break of the waves as they washed over the wreck, and the creaking and rending of the timbers of the poor ship, while, nearer yet to me, I could distinguish the cheering cry of faithful Jake:

“Hole up, Mass’ Tom, um got um safe now. Hole up an’ take good breff; we’se all right, an’ ebberybody safe!”

At the same moment that he spoke Jake lifted me up on something which I could feel with my feet, and I opened my eyes.

At first, I was almost blinded by the sea-water which had got into them, and the salt spray which continually dashed over my head; but, in a minute or two, I was able to see where I was and grasp the situation.

The ship was lying over on her starboard side, with her decks submerged up to the hatches, and her masts horizontal on the surface of the sea; but, the whole of her port side was clear out of the water, and, although the waves were breaking over this, still the major part of the quarter and a portion of the poop were almost high and dry in the intervals between the following rollers that ever and anon swept up to their level.

On this after part of the ship, Jake had managed to clamber up, lugging me along with him; and, as I looked round, I could recognise Captain Miles and Mr Marline, as well as several others of the hands, who had sought such a vantage-ground of safety.

Away forwards, theJosephinewas completely buried in the huge billows that were constantly surging over her; but here, too, clinging on to the main-chains was another group of sailors, amongst whom I could make out the tall figure of Jackson, with Cuffee and Davis close beside him.

Captain Miles perceived me almost as soon as I saw him.

“Ah, there you are, Tom!” he cried. “Thank God you are not lost! I made a hard grab at you when the ship heeled over, but missed you; and thought that the skylight hatch carried you away overboard when it lifted.”

“Me watchee him sharp, sah,” explained Jake. “I’se see de squall comin’ an’ run aft for tell, an’ den I clutch hole Mass’ Tom, an’ here we is!”

“You’ve saved your young master then,” exclaimed the captain; “so, Tom, you’ve got to thank the darkey instead of me! But, how many of us have escaped?”

As he said this, Captain Miles glanced about and appeared to be reckoning up the list of the crew on his fingers, for I could see his lips move.

“Marline, you’re all right, eh?” he went on presently, speaking out aloud.

“Oh, yes, I’m here, thanks to Providence,” said the first mate with almost a sob in his voice. It told better than words his gratitude to the power on high that had preserved him.

“And Jackson, I see, with Davis and Cuffee,” continued the captain, running through the names of the survivors as far as he could make them out.

“There’s Adze, the carpenter, too, in the main-chains, with those two German sailors, Hermann and Gottlieb; while there are five more of the hands alongside me,” said Mr Marline looking round, too, and taking stock.

“But, where’s Moggridge?” asked Captain Miles, missing the boatswain at that moment and not seeing him anywhere. I felt my heart sink at the thought that he was gone.

“Here I am, your honour,” however, sang out the old fellow, climbing up over the stern gallery. “I almost lost the number of my mess; but I’ve managed to cheat Davy Jones this time.”

“That makes, with Master Tom here, just sixteen souls, out of eighteen we had on board, all told,” said the captain. “Anybody seen the steward?”

“No, he isn’t here, poor fellow,” replied Mr Marline. “He was below in his pantry at the time the squall struck us, and must have been drowned before he could scramble out.”

“There’s only one other, then, missing,” said the captain. “Count the hands again, Marline.”

The first mate did this; and, then, it was found, on hailing Jackson in the main-chains—the sea at present making a breach between us and dividing our forces—that the other sailor was a man named Briggs, who had been ailing for some days past. He had been in his bunk in the forecastle when the ship capsized, so his fate was almost as certain as that of Harry, the mulatto steward.

All things considered, though, it was a great mercy, from the sudden nature of the calamity, that so many of us should have been saved. But for the fact of the accident having occurred in the afternoon, when the majority of the hands were fortunately on deck aft, many more lives would undoubtedly have been lost.

However, albeit temporarily preserved from the peril of a watery grave, our outlook, clustered there together on the outside of the partly-submerged vessel, was a very sorry one; for, the sea was still running high, and the waves were breaking over us in sheets of foam, and, although the sun was shining down and the air was comparatively warm, this made us feel most uncomfortable. Besides, the continual onslaught of the rolling billows necessitated our holding on to everything we could get a grip of, to prevent ourselves from being washed away.

We had to lie along the side of the ship, grasping the mizzen rigging, which attitude was a very wearying one; for, the sea would lift us up as the swell surged by, and then, we had to take a fresh grip, our feet sliding down the hull as the billow retired and the vessel sunk down in the hollow.

“I say, Marline,” called out the captain presently, “as you are nearest the signal halliards, do you think you can manage to run them clear?”

“I’ll try, sir,” answered the other; and Moggridge, who had now crept alongside the mate, helping him, the two contrived to haul out the rope in question.

“Now, who’s got a knife handy?” next inquired Captain Miles.

There was half a dozen replies to this question; but, ere the article wanted could be passed along, the old boatswain had drawn out his from his waistband by means of the lanyard slung round his neck, and was busily employed in cutting up the signal halliards into short lengths of about a fathom each.

“Ah, I see you guessed what I was after,” said the captain noticing this. “If we lash ourselves to the rigging here, it will save us a world of exertion and trouble, besides leaving our hands free for other purposes.”

“Aye, aye, sir, I know’d what you want,” responded Moggridge, and passing down the pieces of rope as he cut them off, all of us were pretty soon well secured from being washed away, each man helping to tie up his neighbour in turn.

“Golly, massa, dis am a purdicafirment!” ejaculated Jake, grinning as usual, and with his ebony face shining with the spray; “I’se ’gin feel want grub—um precious hungry.”

“I am afraid that’ll not be our only want, my poor fellow,” said Captain Miles in a melancholy voice; but rousing himself a minute afterwards he added more cheerfully, “Wait till the sea gets down, and then we’ll try to improve our condition. I wonder, though, how these other fellows are getting on in the chains amidships? Jackson, ahoy!”

“Hullo, sir,” came a faint hail in answer, from amid the breaking seas further on ahead of us, where only a black spot of a head could be seen occasionally emerging from the mass of encircling foam.

“Are you all right there?” sang out the captain.

“We’re alive, sir; but nearly tired out,” replied Jackson in a low weak tone.

“Can’t you try, man, to work your way aft and join us,” urged Captain Miles, comprehending how exhausted the young seaman and his companions there must be. “There’s plenty of room here for all of us, and you’ll not be so much worked about by the sea.”

“The waves are too strong for us, sir,” cried out the other, but his voice now seeming to have a little more courage in it, for he added after a bit, “I think we can manage it, though, if you will make fast the bight of the topsail sheet and heave the end to us. It will serve us to hold on by as we pass along the bulwarks.”

“All right, my hearty,” answered Captain Miles, he and a couple of the sailors beside him doing as Jackson had suggested.

Then, the captain himself, undoing his lashings, seized one of the brief intervals in which the after part of the hull rose above the sea; when, standing on his feet, while his legs were held by the two sailors, he hove the end of the rope towards Jackson, who, clutching hold of it, secured it to the main-shrouds, whence it was stretched taut to the mizzen rigging, thus serving as a sort of life-line by which the men could pass aft.

When this was done, the men with Jackson in the main-chains crept cautiously along the bulwarks, half in and half out of the water, clutching on to the topsail sheet hand over hand, soon joined us on the quarter galley—the young second mate being the last to leave, waiting until his comrades were in safety.

The passage from the one place to the other was perilous in the extreme; for, the waves surged up sometimes completely over the poor fellows’ heads, when they had once abandoned their footing and had only the frail swaying rope to support them against the wash of the water. They were roughly oscillated to and fro, hove up out of the sea one minute and lowered down again into it the next.

It was a wonder some of them did not fall off, getting sucked under the keel of the ship; but, gripping the life-line with a clutch of desperation, their passage across the perilous bridge was at last safely accomplished, when the entire sixteen of us, including my own humble self, were at length gathered together in one group on the counter-rail below the bend of the poop. The new-comers were then lashed to the mizzen rigging like the rest of us, and we all waited with what hope and patience we could for the sea to calm down.

By this time, it was late in the afternoon; and, presently, the sun sank down away to the west in his ocean bed, surrounded by a radiant glow of crimson and gold that flashed upward from the horizon to the zenith.

The wind had died away too, the last violent squall which had been so disastrous to theJosephine, having been the expiring blast of the hurricane; so, although, as I’ve said, the sea still continued to run high, the waves rolled by more regularly and with an equal pulsation, as if Father Neptune was rocking himself gradually to sleep. The old tyrant was evidently; exhausted with the mad rioting in which he had recently been indulging, and the thrashing which the gale had given him!

There was no sleep for us, however, excepting such hasty little droppings off into brief forgetfulness that our worn-out bodies gave way to for an instant; for we were constantly being roused up, almost as soon as our wearied eyelids had closed, by the sudden rush of the spent wash of some broken wave wetting our already wet garments. This banished all thoughts of repose; and, when the darkness of night came on, it was cold and dreary in the extreme, the hours seeming to drag out to the length of a lifetime.

Poor faithful Jake lay close to me so as to protect me as much as possible from the wash of the sea; and I found out, when morning light came once more to cheer us, that he had actually stripped off a guernsey vest, which Captain Miles had given him to save him from exposure on the night of the thunder-storm, and had fastened this round my shoulders in order to keep me warm!

I shall never forget Jake’s thoughtful action, I believe, as long as I live, for it made a great impression on me when I discovered such a striking proof of his devotion; and, as I now retrace the incidents of the past, the incident stands out prominently in evidence of a negro’s brotherly love.

Why, his black skin always seemed white to me ever after. Aye, although born an African, his heart was truer than that of many a European, whose complexion is only a trick of colour!

During the night we were all silent; but, when the sun rose in the east, flooding the sea with the rosy tint of dawn, hope came back to us and our tongues were unloosed—the more especially as the force of the waves had considerably lessened, hardly a scrap of spray being now washed over us, while the blows of the billows against the side of the ship were no longer heard.

The sea really was calming down at last.

God was watching over us!

“Say, captain,” said Mr Marline, who was the first to bestir himself, “do you think there’s any prospect of our righting the ship?”

The captain was asleep, I believe, for the first mate had to repeat his question twice before he could get an answer.

“I’m sure I hope so,” at last sleepily muttered Captain Miles, with a portentous yawn—“only wait till the swell calms down and we’ll see about it.”

“But it is calm now,” rejoined the other.

“Then wake me again when it is calmer,” replied Captain Miles; and then, he turned on his side and proceeded with his nap as coolly as if he were comfortably tucked up in his nice swinging cot in the cabin.

“Well!” exclaimed Mr Marline, “of all the cool, self-possessed men I ever met in my life, you beat the lot!”

He was talking to himself, but the hands heard him, and there was a general snigger all round, the captain’s very composure having given confidence to all. The men believed that he would not have taken things so quietly unless he had some sure hope of our speedy release from such a precarious position.

“He is a rare brave un,” put in Moggridge. “I’ve sailed with him man and boy for many a v’y’ge afore this, and I allers found him the same, calm and plucky in danger, and keeping a stiff upper lip when in perils that frighten other folk. Captain Miles, sir, is a man as a sailor should be proud to sail under—that’s what I says!”

“Eh, what, what?” murmured the captain, half waking up on hearing his name spoken, and lifting his head from between his clasped hands.

“I was a-saying, sir, as how you knew what’s what,” replied the boatswain, “and I don’t know of any other man I’d say sich of.”

“Belay that,” said Captain Miles, rousing up now and rubbing his eyes. “Ah, it’s morning, I see! Well, Mr Marline, and how goes it?”

“As well as can be expected under the circumstances,” answered the other.

“Bother circumstances,” rejoined the captain; “we must make the best of them we can. Now, let us see what’s to be done.”

“Do you think we can right her, sir?” asked the mate repeating his old query.

“Right her? yes, certainly, if we can cut away the masts. She’s not water-logged, and all sound below, I fancy, as far as I can see; for the hatches have been battened down since Monday.”

“But she’s rather down by the head, sir,” said Mr Marline, as the two rose on their feet and proceeded to look round the vessel as well as they could from the top of the poop bulwarks, whence they surveyed her position and surroundings.

“Ah!” exclaimed Captain Miles, “the fore-peak must have been left open when those spare sails were got out, so that she has taken in some water there. Never mind, though, there’s a stout bulkhead separating the compartment from the main hold, and, if there’s no leak below, we’ll be all right.”

“But, the masts have been working the decks all this time,” suggested the mate, “and if the sea has got in through the straining of the timbers we must sink in time.”

“Sink your grandmother, Marline!” retorted the captain, “you forget that our main cargo is rum, which is ever so much lighter than water, and more buoyant. As long as we have that below we’ll float, never you fear! But, the job is to cut away the masts if we can; she’ll never right, of course, till that is done. A pity your rigging was so well set up, Marline! If the sticks had only gone by the board when the squall struck us we’d be all right now.”

“I don’t know that, captain,” replied the other. “If the masts had been badly stayed they would have gone in the height of the hurricane; and then, where would we be now?”

“Not in the Sargasso Sea, I fancy,” said Captain Miles with a hearty laugh. “But we can’t do anything yet, though, till the sea has gone down more. Men,” he added, “keep your pecker up! Providence having watched over us thus far will now not desert us, I am confident, and we’ll yet weather on Mr Marline’s circumstances!”

All hands gave a cheer at this hopeful speech, and the sun having by this time dried our soddened clothes besides warming us, we began to feel more comfortable and easy, the captain’s words giving us fresh courage.

Towards noon, however, the heat brought on a most terrific thirst, which was all the more painful from our not seeing any chance of relieving it; for, although, like the “ancient mariner,” we saw “water, water everywhere,” there was not a drop of the wholesome fluid, as far as we knew, that we could drink.

In this dire calamity, Jackson proved our guardian angel.

“I say, captain,” he called out, after climbing along the bulwarks down into that part of the waist of the ship which was clear of the sea, letting himself swing down by the end of the topsail halliards which were belayed to the side, “there’s one of the water-casks lashed here that did not fetch away to leeward with the rest when she canted over; and it’s full too. If anyone has got a hat, or anything that I can draw off the water in, I will start the bung and we can all splice the main-brace.”

“Hurrah!” shouted Captain Miles. “That’s the best news I have heard for many a day. Here, Marline, pass him down my wide-awake. Mind how you drive out the bung, Jackson, and have something ready to close up the hole again; or else, all the contents of the cask will be wasted ’fore the hands are served round.”

“I’ll take care, sir,” replied the young seaman, who had now turned the end of the topsail halliards into a bight round his body, so that he could swing down in front of the water-cask and yet have his hands free.

Then, taking out a marlinespike, which had caught in the rigging somehow or other, he managed, after several blows on either side of the cask, to start the bung. This, from the position in which the ship was lying, was now horizontal instead of perpendicular; so, as soon as it came out, the water flowed at once into the captain’s wide-awake hat, which Jackson had under the bung-hole, stopping up this again with the cork as soon as the hat was full.

Mr Marline was bending down from the bulwarks above him to receive the strange jug when the other handed it up to him, and he passed it on to Captain Miles, who allowed me to have the first drink.

It tasted like nectar—better than any draught I had ever had before or since!

Captain Miles himself then took a gulp of the grateful contents of his old hat, passing it on to Moggridge; and, when emptied, as it very soon was, the wide-awake was filled and refilled by Jackson until every man had satisfied his thirst—the last to enjoy the water which he had been the means of procuring being the brave young seaman himself, just in the same way as he had been the last to quit the post of danger when helping his shipmates out of the main-chains.

Quenching our thirst gave us all new life; so, later on in the afternoon, Captain Miles set the men to work casting off the ropes as best they could with the idea of freeing the masts. However, we could do nothing without an axe, for no man had anything handier than his clasp-knife, which naturally was of no use in helping to cut away the cordage and heavy spars that kept the ship down on her beam-ends.

What was to be done?

We were all in a dilemma, one man suggesting one thing, and another proposing a fresh plan for getting rid of the masts; when, Adze, the carpenter, who had said nothing as yet, spoke for the first time.

“I left a large axe o’ mine,” he said quietly, as if saying nothing particularly worthy of notice—“I left a large axe o’ mine in my bunk in the fo’c’s’le; and if ary a one can git down theer, he’ll find it on the top side to his starboard hand as he goes in.”

“But, the fo’c’s’le’s full of water,” said Mr Marline, “and a man must be a good diver to creep in there and get the axe under eight or twelve foot of sea! Besides, I daresay it will have been washed away from where Adze put it in his bunk, the lurch of the ship having shifted everything to leeward.”

“It war to leeward already in the top bunk, I tell ’ee,” rejoined the carpenter; “an’, bein’ that heavy, I spec’s it’s theer right enough. Only I can’t dive, nor swim above water for that matter, so it’s no use my going after it.”

“I’ll go, massa captain,” shouted out Jake, who had been listening eagerly to this conversation. “I’se dibe like porpuss an’ swim like fiss.”

“I know that,” said Captain Miles laughing. “I recollect the way you came aboard my ship. But you can try if you like, darkey. If you find that axe, you’ll be the saving of all of us, and give a fair return for your passage, my hearty!”

Jake did not need any further persuasion.

Making his way along the bulwarks, he clambered on to the main rigging, now lying flat across the capsized vessel, until he came to a clear space between the mainmast and the forecastle, from whence the boats and cook’s galley had been washed away. Jumping into the water at this point, he swam towards the spot where he thought the entrance to the forecastle should lie, for the sea was washing about forward, and nothing to be seen above the surface but a small portion of the port bulwarks near the dead-eyes of the fore-shrouds and a bit of the port cat-head.

Jake then dived below the water, disappearing from our view for a few seconds that seemed interminable as we waited.

“I hope he hasn’t come to grief,” said Captain Miles anxiously. “So many things have been carried away and jumbled up in a mass there forwards, that the poor fellow might get fixed in and be drowned, without the chance of saving himself.”

But his alarm was quite unnecessary, Jake rising above the water in another moment and scrambling up into the main rigging, in a very hurried manner, as if something was pursuing him.

His face as he turned it towards us was almost green | with fright, and we could hear his teeth chattering | with fear and cold combined.

“Well,” sang out Captain Miles, “I’m glad to see you out of that hole alive. But, what’s the matter, my man? have you got the axe?”

“N–n–n–no, Mass’ Cap’en,” stuttered Jake, making his way aft again along the bulwarks, “got no axe nor nuffin’. Dere am duppy or de debbil in de fo’c’s’le. Bress de Lor’, dis pore niggah only sabe him life an’—dat all!”

Chapter Fifteen.A Gleam of Hope.“You one big fool!” Cuffee, the cook, screamed out at hearing Jake’s startling announcement, which made us all laugh in spite of our anxiety. “How can duppy come in de daylight, hey? You only see yer own black face in water, an’ tink um debbil.”“Duppy,” I may explain, is the negro’s common name for what they call a ghost, or anything uncanny.However, paying no attention to his brother darkey’s reasoning as to the impossibility of such a nocturnal visitor appearing under the searching rays of the sun, Jake stoutly maintained his own opinion.“Dere was sumfin’ white dere, I swar,” he said, as soon as he had secured his footing on the bulwarks again, well out of the water. “I see sumfin’ white an’ cold, an’ he grab me by um leg.”“That must have been poor Briggs’s body floating about in the fo’c’s’le,” observed Captain Miles. “I forgot to tell him of it before he dived down. Hi, Jake,” he added speaking out louder, “you needn’t be afraid. I know what it was you saw.”“D’ye, massa?” said Jake somewhat distrustfully, as if only half believing this. “Golly, it um berry mysteferious. I’se tink—; but, Jerrybosalum, look dar, Mass’ Cap’en, look dar!” he suddenly exclaimed, his voice again changing to a tone of intense horror, while he looked the picture of abject terror, his eyeballs rolling and his teeth chattering as before. “Duppy come catchee me, for suah! Dere he am comin’ up wid him long claw—dere he am—dere he am!”We all rose up on the side of the bulwarks, as if with one accord, looking in the direction to which Jake’s trembling hand pointed, where, between the meshes of the rigging away forward in front of the mainmast we could dimly discern a long sinuous greenish-white body gradually rising to the surface of the water that covered the lower part of the deck.The mysterious thing seemed to make after the negro, although no apparent movement was perceptible, while its colour became more luminous as it got nearer.Jackson was closer than any of us to Jake; and, as he stood up in the main-chains to help the negro up, he perceived what the object was that had frightened him, for he could see down into the water clear of the rigging, which somewhat hampered our view.“Why, it’s a shark!” he called out. “It is a big fellow too—larger than the brute that nearly tackled me the other day.”“A shark, Massa Jackson, for true, hey?” said Jake, turning round to assure himself of the fact; and, then, seeing his pursuer to be of no supernatural origin, as he had supposed, but only one of the ordinary, if ugly, denizens of the deep, his alarm disappeared instanter and he burst into a fit of laughing—his African nature being as susceptible as that of a child, his moods varying in a moment.“Yah, yah,” he roared, “me no ’fraid ob shark; I’se tink him ider one duppy or de debbil, for suah, when um touch me on de shin-bone!”“I’se tole you so, Jake,” said Cuffee with great contempt. “You’se nebber see duppy in de daylight. You’se only big fool to tink so.”“Berry well,” rejoined the other, “you hab your ’pinion an’ I hab mine! If you was down dar in water jus’ now, an’ see dat long ting snouzle by um leg, lookin’ so white an’ drefful, I guess you’se frit too!”If Jake, however, was now pleased at seeing his fancied ghost turn out to be a shark, this was more than we were. Captain Miles could hardly conceal his chagrin.“Confound the hideous brute!” he exclaimed. “He’s the very last visitor I cared to see. He will prevent any further attempt being made to get that axe out of the fo’c’s’le—if it is there, as Adze says.”“It’s theer sure enough, cap’en,” put in the carpenter hearing this remark. “I wish I could only swim and I’d precious soon fetch it myself!”“All right, Adze, I don’t doubt your word,” said the captain apologetically; “but the shark has put an embargo on it now at any rate.”“I’m afraid it just has,” observed Mr Marline, to whom Captain Miles had really been speaking when the old carpenter overheard him. “You can’t expect any sensible man to dive into the water when such a nasty sort of neighbour is close at hand. I wouldn’t like to venture, for one, I confess; and I don’t think I’m a very great coward.”“No, Marline, no; I’ll answer for that,” replied the captain warmly. “Your worst enemy wouldn’t accuse you of any want of pluck, and really I should not’ care about undertaking the job either, for that matter.”Jake, though, wanted to make another effort to recover the axe, his courage rising with the emergency, especially as he could notice how disappointed we all were.“Me nebber mind shark,” he cried, drawing out a long clasp-knife which he carried in his belt, and opening the blade, which he now brandished about in a most ferocious way, showing how he would make mincemeat of the sea-pirate if it attacked him. “I’se not ’fraid ob him one lilly bit. I tell you wat, I’se gib him goss if um kick up any bobbery wid me!”So saying, he was preparing to plunge again into the water, when Captain Miles ordered him to refrain, having to repeat his command twice before the brave fellow would stop from making the venture.“No, Jake,” said the captain, “I can’t allow you to risk your life in such a foolhardy way for what may be only a wild-goose chase. Wait awhile and see if the brute is going to remain here. Perhaps, too, there may be some more of his comrades about; they generally hunt in couples in stormy weather.”“All right, massa, me wait an’ see,” responded Jake submissively, sitting down on the bulwarks again; and then, we all watched the shark to see what he would do, and whether, as the captain had suggested, there were any more of his species about, coming up to help him in keeping us prisoners.Unfortunately, Captain Miles’s fears proved but too well founded. Very shortly afterwards, no less than three other sharks appeared, hovering about the stern of the ship and swimming immediately under the counter, where we were clustered together, as if keeping guard over us. The one that had pursued Jake took up his station within the interior part of the submerged vessel, patrolling backwards and forwards in the water that covered the deck of the poop up to the mizzen-mast. This fellow, the first in the field, seemed to say to us grimly, “You sha’n’t escape me here, at all events!”“Oh, Captain Miles!” I cried. “The sharks are going to wait until we drop off into the sea one by one, and then they will eat us all!”“Not a bit of it, my boy,” said he hopefully, to cheer me up. “They’ll soon be tired out and will then swim away and leave us to see about righting the ship. Don’t think of them, Tom; they can’t touch any of us where we are.”“But how long can we stop like this?” I asked despairingly.“Long enough to bother the sharks,” he replied. “They haven’t pluck enough to wait when they see they’ve got no chance; for, they’re born cowards at heart, as all sneaking things are!”Jake also sidled up to me at the same time and somewhat restored my equanimity, saying in his light-hearted way, “Golly, Mass’ Tom, we kill um all first wid um knife ’fore dey touch you!”The afternoon waned on; so, as the sharks exhibited no signs of yet leaving us, and the evening was closing in, Captain Miles ordered the men to lash themselves again to the rigging for fear of their tumbling off in the night and so falling a prey to the brutes—otherwise, there was no great need of the precaution, for the sea was almost now calm, the waves having quite ceased to break. Only a heavy swell lifted the ship up at intervals, letting her roll down again, and swaying gently to and fro with a gentle rocking motion which would have sent us all to sleep but for the hunger which now kept us awake with a nasty, gnawing pain at the pit of our stomachs.Our thirst was appeased, Jackson having swung himself down to the water-cask and served out another drink all round shortly after the sharks had made their appearance, as they could not approach near enough to the waist of the ship to interfere with his movements, the deck there being clear of water. But, oh, we did feel hungry!“I believe I could a’most eat anything now,” said Moggridge plaintively, chewing away at a piece of leather which he had torn off one of his boots.“Only hold out and we’ll get something soon,” replied the captain, who tried nobly to keep up the spirits of the men. “We’ve got water, and that is more than many a poor fellow has had when in as bad a plight as ours. Let us be thankful for what we have got and for having our lives spared so far! To-morrow, if the sea be calm, as there is every reason to hope it will be, we’ll probably be able to fetch something out of the cabin; while, if the worst comes to the worst, I’ve no doubt we’ll be able to pick up some crabs and shell-fish from the Gulf-weed floating around.”“Right you are, sir,” said Moggridge, ashamed of having spoken. “I see lots of the stuff about us now.”“Is that the Gulf-weed you told me about, captain?” I asked, pointing to some long strings of what looked like the broken-off branches of trees, with berries on them, that were washing past the hull of theJosephineon the top of the rolling swell.“Yes, Tom, we’re now in the Sargasso Sea, its own especial home. Indeed, this region is especially so called on account of the ‘Sargassum,’ or weed, in the Portuguese tongue. You ask Mr Marline and he’ll tell you all about it, being learned in such matters.”The first mate, however, did not wait for me to question him.Taking the captain’s observation as a hint to say something to occupy the attention of the men and myself, and so keep us from thinking of the sharks and our painful position, he proceeded to narrate all he knew about this curious marine fungus. He had a good deal to say, too, for Mr Marline was a well-read man and took a great interest in all matters of science.It was certainly a very novel situation in which to give a lecture, but the sailors were glad enough to listen to anything to make the time pass. They were very attentive auditors, even Jake appearing interested, although he could not have understood much of what he heard.“The Sargasso, or weedy, Sea,” said Mr Marline, “so called from the berries, like grapes, ‘sarga’ in Portuguese, extends from about the eleventh parallel of latitude to 45 degrees north, and from 30 degrees west longitude to the Bermudas, and even further west, so that we are about in the middle of it now. Almost the entire portion of this space of the ocean is covered by a peculiar species of sea-weed, termed by botanists the ‘fucus natans,’ which is found nowhere else in any great abundance except in the Gulf Stream, which, skirting along the edge of the Sargasso Sea, bears away portions of the floating substance in its progress from the Gulf of Florida eastwards. The western current to the south of this region also sometimes detaches masses of the weed; but its main habitat is the Sargasso Sea, where, there being no eddies or streams either way and little or no wind generally, the sargassum accumulates in great masses, presenting frequently the aspect of an immense marine meadow.”“I think, sir,” I interposed at this point, “I read once in the Life of Columbus, that, when on his first voyage beyond seas from Spain, his sailors almost mutinied and wanted him to put back on account of their fancying they could never pass through the weed?”“They did,” replied Mr Marline. “The men thought Columbus had sold his soul to the spirits of evil, and that they were in an enchanted sea, but the brave old Genoese navigator surmounted their fears in the end! I can better, perhaps, explain, Tom, the reason for the weed accumulating so hereabouts, by likening, as Maury did, the Atlantic Ocean to a basin. Now, if you put a few small pieces of cork or any other light substance into a basin, and move your hand round it so as to give the water it contains a circular motion, the bits of cork will be found to float to the centre and remain there. Well, here, the Gulf Stream is the circular motion of our great basin, while the Sargasso Sea is the centre, and it is in consequence of the continual current circling round it that the weed stops there in such quantities—as you will see most likely in a day or two, when the ocean gets rested after the great storm we have had, which has somewhat put things out of their proper trim.”“And does the weed grow to the bottom?” I asked.“Bottom? Why, there are no soundings here under four miles, and it would take a pretty long root to stretch to such a depth! No, the sargasso weed floats and lives on the surface. When examined closely, it is found to have an oblong narrow serrated leaf of a pale yellow colour, resembling somewhat in form a cauliflower stripped of its leaves, the nodules being composed of a vast number of small branches, about half an inch long, which shoot out from each other at a sharp angle, and hence multiply continually towards the outer circumference of the plant, each extreme point producing a round seed-vessel like a berry. A great number of little crabs, barnacles, and small shell-fish are generally found attached to the weed, as Captain Miles mentioned just now when he said we might find something to eat amidst the branches of it in an emergency. It is wonderful sometimes to see with what regularity the weed is arranged across the ocean when the wind blows. It looks then exactly like a meadow does after it has been fresh mown and the grass is left upon it in long swathes by the scythe at equal distances apart.”“There, Master Tom,” put in Captain Miles here, “I think you know now all that Mr Marline can tell you about the Sargasso Sea and the weed to be found there. It’s about time we all turned in now for the night, for the sun has set and it will soon be dark. Have all you men,” he called out aloud, “lashed yourselves securely?”“Aye, aye, sir,” they answered one by one, Moggridge coming last.“Then good night, and good cheer, my lads!” he cried. “Keep your peckers up, and to-morrow morning. I daresay, we’ll see our way out of this predicament. I don’t think it is going to blow any more, so you may compose yourselves to rest as cosily, my lads, as if you were in your bunks here, without fear of anything much troubling you, for the sharks can’t harm you!”The sun had set by this time and the evening grew gradually dark, for there was no moon, as the heavens were overcast; but still, the wind did not get up again, and the motion of the ship being easy enough we lay along the side of the ship very comfortably, most of the men soon falling asleep, and I soon following their example.It must have been towards morning, for a dim sort of light was beginning to be perceptible in the east, we were wakened up by a terrible yell.A moment afterwards a heavy splash sounded in the water alongside.“Good heavens! what is that?” cried Captain Miles, starting up and trying to peer through the darkness, so as to see who was missing. “Anyone gone overboard?”“Yes, sir,” answered Jackson’s voice presently, as if he had waited to reconnoitre, “it is one of the German sailors, poor Hermann. He has probably slipped his lashings and slid down the side. I’m afraid the sharks have taken him, for he has never called out once!”“Poor fellow!” exclaimed the captain, raising a hail.“Hi, hullo!”But, there came no response; and so, Jackson’s surmise must have been correct. The man had evidently fallen in his sleep, through the slipping of the rope which had secured him to the rigging; and he must either have been drowned at once or fallen a victim to the maw of one of the sharks, whose movements we could hear in the water still below us.The accident, however, wakened us all up thoroughly, and we waited anxiously for daylight.When this came, however, a terrible scene was enacted before our eyes.No sooner had the rising sun lit up the ocean and enabled us all to see each other distinctly, than I noticed Davis, who was close to Jackson, staring at him in a most peculiar manner.I never saw in anyone before such a fixed steady glare!The man seemed out of his senses or bewildered by something, for his eyes moved about strangely, although with a savage gleam in them, while his hair appeared to bristle up.“Well, what is the matter?” said Jackson at length, after enduring his gaze for a moment or two, waiting for the other to speak. “Do you want water? Shall I get you some?”This apparently broke the spell which was upon the wretched man, whose constitution had been much enfeebled by his drinking habits—making him thus less able to contend against the exposure and privations | we had been subjected to than the rest of us.The minute Jackson spoke, he uttered a queer sort of half-groan, half-shriek; and having previously, I suppose, untied the rope with which he had been lashed to the rigging, he made a dash at the second mate with both his hands, trying to grip his throat and strangle him.“You devil!” he cried, foaming at the mouth with passion, “you’ve taken my place and brought me to this.”Jackson easily repulsed his struggles to do him any injury; but, before he and the other sailors could secure the madman, he sprang to his feet and, shouting out something which we could not distinguish, jumped right down among the group of sharks that were still swimming about under the stern.There was a heavy plunge, followed by a wild scurrying to and fro in the water of the moving fins; and, a moment after, when the sea had got still again, a circle of blood on the surface alone told of the unhappy man’s fate.The incident saddened us all very much, taking away our hopeful thoughts and courage alike; so we waited on listlessly for what we now believed must shortly be our own doom, not a soul speaking a word or even looking at his neighbour for some time afterwards.Jackson was the first to recover himself.The sight of the cruel sharks under the ship’s counter and the memory of our two shipmates, whom they had already devoured, appeared to prey on his mind and make him furious.“I can’t stand this any longer,” he cried. “I must try and kill one of these brutes, captain, or die in the attempt!”Captain Miles thought he had gone out of his senses too and spoke soothingly to him; but Jackson soon showed that if he had become insane there was a method in his madness.Rising on his feet, he walked on the top of the bulwarks to the main-shrouds, and clambering out on his hands and knees along these, made his way to where a long wooden handspike, that had been used for heaving round the windlass, was floating under the rigging.Picking up this and cutting off a good length of the topsail halliards, he came back to where we all were, and proceeded to make a running noose at the end of the rope.“What are you going to do?” asked Captain Miles, not quite certain yet of Jackson’s sanity.“I’m going to try to get one of the sharks to come close enough to give him a taste of this handspike,” said the stalwart young fellow, drawing himself up to his full height, and looking round with a determined expression on his face that I had never seen there before. “If I can only get them all to come to the inside of the ship, I shall do for one or two, I know.”“Golly, Massa Jackson, me help you wid um knife,” exclaimed Jake, entering with much animation in the other’s project. “S’pose we fiss for um wid sumfin’, so as make um swim roun’ t’oder side ob ship, hey?”“That’s a good idea,” said Captain Miles, and he offered Jake his hat to use as a bait, but the darkey shook his head at this.“No, tankee, Mass’ Cap’en, I’se got sumfin’ better nor dat,” he exclaimed, pulling off the guernsey with which he had sheltered me the first night we were exposed on the wreck. “Dis do ebber so much betterer. Shark smell um, an’ tink he hab dis niggah, yah, yah!”As he laughed, he tied one end of a bit of the signal halliards, which he had used to lash himself to the rigging, to the guernsey, lowering it down to a short distance above the surface of the water, where he kept it dangling.One of the sharks rose towards it, another coming up soon after in its train; and then Jake kept continually shifting the rope round that portion of the taffrail of the poop which was above the sea, the sharks following in chase of the deceptive bait until he had lured them round to the inside part of the ship to join the one who was still on sentry there.This was just what Jackson wanted; so he now proceeded to climb out along the mizzen rigging until he reached the point where the sea lapped it, when he arranged his running noose underneath, tying the loose end of the rope to the shrouds in a double hitch.Jake then manoeuvred the baited line nearer to where the second mate had stationed himself, climbing out into the mizzen rigging too; when, as the leading shark turned over on its back and bit at the guernsey, Jackson slipped the running knot over its tail, pulling the noose in so that it held tightly. Then, seizing the handspike, he began belabouring the monster in a way that must pretty well have astonished its weak nerves, Jake the while stabbing it in the tail-end of the body with his long-bladed knife.There was a terrific scuffle in which the water was tossed high in the air; but, after a minute or two, the shark broke the rope and managed to get away, although it was so seriously injured that it still remained on its back, and a quantity of blood poured out from the wounds it had received.This made the crippled animal’s comrades set upon it, tearing it to pieces between them; and, while they were gorging themselves with the dissevered carcass, Jake dived into the sea under the fierce creatures, stabbing them wherever he could with such effect that his onslaught frightened the whole lot away—not a shark being visible in the vicinity within a few minutes after the commencement of the fray!“Jerryboosalum!” exclaimed Jake, when, presently, he emerged all dripping and triumphant from the blood-stained waters. “We pay out dem debbels for ebberybody now. You nebber see dem come back hyar agin, I’se bet.”Nor did we.There was no doubt of the rapacious brutes having been finally scared away.“You’re a couple of brave fellows,” cried Captain Miles when the two avengers climbed back in again on to the poop bulwarks, after thus carrying the war into Egypt, routing the foes that had kept us so long prisoners, and prevented us from doing anything towards righting the ship. “Now, I think, we can make another attempt to find that axe of the carpenter’s in the fo’c’s’le, if you are not too tired, Jake, to go in after it again?”“Bress you, no, Mass’ Captain, me no tire’ at all! Me get axe in brace ob shakes, if um dar,” answered the willing fellow, laughing and showing his shining ivory teeth as he opened his mouth from ear to ear; and, almost as soon as he had uttered the words, he ran along the bulwarks towards the fore part of the ship, scrambled out into the main rigging, and dived into the sea immediately over the opening into the forecastle, at the same spot where he had previously gone down.Once, twice, he came up to the surface again to take breath after a lengthened stay under the water; but, each time he rose with empty hands.A third time he reappeared, still unsuccessful; and then we began to give up hope, although watching him all the while with the most intense anxiety.None spoke a word, hardly daring to move.Our interest in his actions was keen to intensity!Our fate seemed trembling in the balance.Once more he dived.This was the fourth time he had ventured beneath the sea in his search for the coveted weapon, which was to free the ship from the cumbersome masts and top-hamper that kept her down on her beam-ends.Unless we got the axe we would never be able to right her again; and we all regarded this dive of Jake’s as the last chance, although we did not exchange a syllable—our looks expressed our thoughts.Jake now remained longer below than he had yet done, so we feared some mishap had befallen him; but, just as Jackson was preparing to dive down into the water that covered the forecastle, to see what had become of him, the plucky darkey popped up above the surface, holding something in one hand as he swam with the other towards the main rigging.Our hearts beat high with expectation.In another minute, Jake had mounted into the shrouds, when our suspense was quickly relieved; for, no sooner had he clambered near enough to the ship’s side to get a support for his feet, than he raised himself erect.“Golly, Mass’ Cap’en,” he sang out in feeble accents, being now pretty well exhausted with his repeated efforts, “I’se got him at last! I’se got him at last!”At the same time, he lifted up whatever it was he held in his hand, and tried to wave it round his head in token of his victory.It was Adze’s axe.“Hooray!” shouted Captain Miles at the extreme pitch of his voice, and the responsive cheer we raised in chorus might have been heard more than a mile away.

“You one big fool!” Cuffee, the cook, screamed out at hearing Jake’s startling announcement, which made us all laugh in spite of our anxiety. “How can duppy come in de daylight, hey? You only see yer own black face in water, an’ tink um debbil.”

“Duppy,” I may explain, is the negro’s common name for what they call a ghost, or anything uncanny.

However, paying no attention to his brother darkey’s reasoning as to the impossibility of such a nocturnal visitor appearing under the searching rays of the sun, Jake stoutly maintained his own opinion.

“Dere was sumfin’ white dere, I swar,” he said, as soon as he had secured his footing on the bulwarks again, well out of the water. “I see sumfin’ white an’ cold, an’ he grab me by um leg.”

“That must have been poor Briggs’s body floating about in the fo’c’s’le,” observed Captain Miles. “I forgot to tell him of it before he dived down. Hi, Jake,” he added speaking out louder, “you needn’t be afraid. I know what it was you saw.”

“D’ye, massa?” said Jake somewhat distrustfully, as if only half believing this. “Golly, it um berry mysteferious. I’se tink—; but, Jerrybosalum, look dar, Mass’ Cap’en, look dar!” he suddenly exclaimed, his voice again changing to a tone of intense horror, while he looked the picture of abject terror, his eyeballs rolling and his teeth chattering as before. “Duppy come catchee me, for suah! Dere he am comin’ up wid him long claw—dere he am—dere he am!”

We all rose up on the side of the bulwarks, as if with one accord, looking in the direction to which Jake’s trembling hand pointed, where, between the meshes of the rigging away forward in front of the mainmast we could dimly discern a long sinuous greenish-white body gradually rising to the surface of the water that covered the lower part of the deck.

The mysterious thing seemed to make after the negro, although no apparent movement was perceptible, while its colour became more luminous as it got nearer.

Jackson was closer than any of us to Jake; and, as he stood up in the main-chains to help the negro up, he perceived what the object was that had frightened him, for he could see down into the water clear of the rigging, which somewhat hampered our view.

“Why, it’s a shark!” he called out. “It is a big fellow too—larger than the brute that nearly tackled me the other day.”

“A shark, Massa Jackson, for true, hey?” said Jake, turning round to assure himself of the fact; and, then, seeing his pursuer to be of no supernatural origin, as he had supposed, but only one of the ordinary, if ugly, denizens of the deep, his alarm disappeared instanter and he burst into a fit of laughing—his African nature being as susceptible as that of a child, his moods varying in a moment.

“Yah, yah,” he roared, “me no ’fraid ob shark; I’se tink him ider one duppy or de debbil, for suah, when um touch me on de shin-bone!”

“I’se tole you so, Jake,” said Cuffee with great contempt. “You’se nebber see duppy in de daylight. You’se only big fool to tink so.”

“Berry well,” rejoined the other, “you hab your ’pinion an’ I hab mine! If you was down dar in water jus’ now, an’ see dat long ting snouzle by um leg, lookin’ so white an’ drefful, I guess you’se frit too!”

If Jake, however, was now pleased at seeing his fancied ghost turn out to be a shark, this was more than we were. Captain Miles could hardly conceal his chagrin.

“Confound the hideous brute!” he exclaimed. “He’s the very last visitor I cared to see. He will prevent any further attempt being made to get that axe out of the fo’c’s’le—if it is there, as Adze says.”

“It’s theer sure enough, cap’en,” put in the carpenter hearing this remark. “I wish I could only swim and I’d precious soon fetch it myself!”

“All right, Adze, I don’t doubt your word,” said the captain apologetically; “but the shark has put an embargo on it now at any rate.”

“I’m afraid it just has,” observed Mr Marline, to whom Captain Miles had really been speaking when the old carpenter overheard him. “You can’t expect any sensible man to dive into the water when such a nasty sort of neighbour is close at hand. I wouldn’t like to venture, for one, I confess; and I don’t think I’m a very great coward.”

“No, Marline, no; I’ll answer for that,” replied the captain warmly. “Your worst enemy wouldn’t accuse you of any want of pluck, and really I should not’ care about undertaking the job either, for that matter.”

Jake, though, wanted to make another effort to recover the axe, his courage rising with the emergency, especially as he could notice how disappointed we all were.

“Me nebber mind shark,” he cried, drawing out a long clasp-knife which he carried in his belt, and opening the blade, which he now brandished about in a most ferocious way, showing how he would make mincemeat of the sea-pirate if it attacked him. “I’se not ’fraid ob him one lilly bit. I tell you wat, I’se gib him goss if um kick up any bobbery wid me!”

So saying, he was preparing to plunge again into the water, when Captain Miles ordered him to refrain, having to repeat his command twice before the brave fellow would stop from making the venture.

“No, Jake,” said the captain, “I can’t allow you to risk your life in such a foolhardy way for what may be only a wild-goose chase. Wait awhile and see if the brute is going to remain here. Perhaps, too, there may be some more of his comrades about; they generally hunt in couples in stormy weather.”

“All right, massa, me wait an’ see,” responded Jake submissively, sitting down on the bulwarks again; and then, we all watched the shark to see what he would do, and whether, as the captain had suggested, there were any more of his species about, coming up to help him in keeping us prisoners.

Unfortunately, Captain Miles’s fears proved but too well founded. Very shortly afterwards, no less than three other sharks appeared, hovering about the stern of the ship and swimming immediately under the counter, where we were clustered together, as if keeping guard over us. The one that had pursued Jake took up his station within the interior part of the submerged vessel, patrolling backwards and forwards in the water that covered the deck of the poop up to the mizzen-mast. This fellow, the first in the field, seemed to say to us grimly, “You sha’n’t escape me here, at all events!”

“Oh, Captain Miles!” I cried. “The sharks are going to wait until we drop off into the sea one by one, and then they will eat us all!”

“Not a bit of it, my boy,” said he hopefully, to cheer me up. “They’ll soon be tired out and will then swim away and leave us to see about righting the ship. Don’t think of them, Tom; they can’t touch any of us where we are.”

“But how long can we stop like this?” I asked despairingly.

“Long enough to bother the sharks,” he replied. “They haven’t pluck enough to wait when they see they’ve got no chance; for, they’re born cowards at heart, as all sneaking things are!”

Jake also sidled up to me at the same time and somewhat restored my equanimity, saying in his light-hearted way, “Golly, Mass’ Tom, we kill um all first wid um knife ’fore dey touch you!”

The afternoon waned on; so, as the sharks exhibited no signs of yet leaving us, and the evening was closing in, Captain Miles ordered the men to lash themselves again to the rigging for fear of their tumbling off in the night and so falling a prey to the brutes—otherwise, there was no great need of the precaution, for the sea was almost now calm, the waves having quite ceased to break. Only a heavy swell lifted the ship up at intervals, letting her roll down again, and swaying gently to and fro with a gentle rocking motion which would have sent us all to sleep but for the hunger which now kept us awake with a nasty, gnawing pain at the pit of our stomachs.

Our thirst was appeased, Jackson having swung himself down to the water-cask and served out another drink all round shortly after the sharks had made their appearance, as they could not approach near enough to the waist of the ship to interfere with his movements, the deck there being clear of water. But, oh, we did feel hungry!

“I believe I could a’most eat anything now,” said Moggridge plaintively, chewing away at a piece of leather which he had torn off one of his boots.

“Only hold out and we’ll get something soon,” replied the captain, who tried nobly to keep up the spirits of the men. “We’ve got water, and that is more than many a poor fellow has had when in as bad a plight as ours. Let us be thankful for what we have got and for having our lives spared so far! To-morrow, if the sea be calm, as there is every reason to hope it will be, we’ll probably be able to fetch something out of the cabin; while, if the worst comes to the worst, I’ve no doubt we’ll be able to pick up some crabs and shell-fish from the Gulf-weed floating around.”

“Right you are, sir,” said Moggridge, ashamed of having spoken. “I see lots of the stuff about us now.”

“Is that the Gulf-weed you told me about, captain?” I asked, pointing to some long strings of what looked like the broken-off branches of trees, with berries on them, that were washing past the hull of theJosephineon the top of the rolling swell.

“Yes, Tom, we’re now in the Sargasso Sea, its own especial home. Indeed, this region is especially so called on account of the ‘Sargassum,’ or weed, in the Portuguese tongue. You ask Mr Marline and he’ll tell you all about it, being learned in such matters.”

The first mate, however, did not wait for me to question him.

Taking the captain’s observation as a hint to say something to occupy the attention of the men and myself, and so keep us from thinking of the sharks and our painful position, he proceeded to narrate all he knew about this curious marine fungus. He had a good deal to say, too, for Mr Marline was a well-read man and took a great interest in all matters of science.

It was certainly a very novel situation in which to give a lecture, but the sailors were glad enough to listen to anything to make the time pass. They were very attentive auditors, even Jake appearing interested, although he could not have understood much of what he heard.

“The Sargasso, or weedy, Sea,” said Mr Marline, “so called from the berries, like grapes, ‘sarga’ in Portuguese, extends from about the eleventh parallel of latitude to 45 degrees north, and from 30 degrees west longitude to the Bermudas, and even further west, so that we are about in the middle of it now. Almost the entire portion of this space of the ocean is covered by a peculiar species of sea-weed, termed by botanists the ‘fucus natans,’ which is found nowhere else in any great abundance except in the Gulf Stream, which, skirting along the edge of the Sargasso Sea, bears away portions of the floating substance in its progress from the Gulf of Florida eastwards. The western current to the south of this region also sometimes detaches masses of the weed; but its main habitat is the Sargasso Sea, where, there being no eddies or streams either way and little or no wind generally, the sargassum accumulates in great masses, presenting frequently the aspect of an immense marine meadow.”

“I think, sir,” I interposed at this point, “I read once in the Life of Columbus, that, when on his first voyage beyond seas from Spain, his sailors almost mutinied and wanted him to put back on account of their fancying they could never pass through the weed?”

“They did,” replied Mr Marline. “The men thought Columbus had sold his soul to the spirits of evil, and that they were in an enchanted sea, but the brave old Genoese navigator surmounted their fears in the end! I can better, perhaps, explain, Tom, the reason for the weed accumulating so hereabouts, by likening, as Maury did, the Atlantic Ocean to a basin. Now, if you put a few small pieces of cork or any other light substance into a basin, and move your hand round it so as to give the water it contains a circular motion, the bits of cork will be found to float to the centre and remain there. Well, here, the Gulf Stream is the circular motion of our great basin, while the Sargasso Sea is the centre, and it is in consequence of the continual current circling round it that the weed stops there in such quantities—as you will see most likely in a day or two, when the ocean gets rested after the great storm we have had, which has somewhat put things out of their proper trim.”

“And does the weed grow to the bottom?” I asked.

“Bottom? Why, there are no soundings here under four miles, and it would take a pretty long root to stretch to such a depth! No, the sargasso weed floats and lives on the surface. When examined closely, it is found to have an oblong narrow serrated leaf of a pale yellow colour, resembling somewhat in form a cauliflower stripped of its leaves, the nodules being composed of a vast number of small branches, about half an inch long, which shoot out from each other at a sharp angle, and hence multiply continually towards the outer circumference of the plant, each extreme point producing a round seed-vessel like a berry. A great number of little crabs, barnacles, and small shell-fish are generally found attached to the weed, as Captain Miles mentioned just now when he said we might find something to eat amidst the branches of it in an emergency. It is wonderful sometimes to see with what regularity the weed is arranged across the ocean when the wind blows. It looks then exactly like a meadow does after it has been fresh mown and the grass is left upon it in long swathes by the scythe at equal distances apart.”

“There, Master Tom,” put in Captain Miles here, “I think you know now all that Mr Marline can tell you about the Sargasso Sea and the weed to be found there. It’s about time we all turned in now for the night, for the sun has set and it will soon be dark. Have all you men,” he called out aloud, “lashed yourselves securely?”

“Aye, aye, sir,” they answered one by one, Moggridge coming last.

“Then good night, and good cheer, my lads!” he cried. “Keep your peckers up, and to-morrow morning. I daresay, we’ll see our way out of this predicament. I don’t think it is going to blow any more, so you may compose yourselves to rest as cosily, my lads, as if you were in your bunks here, without fear of anything much troubling you, for the sharks can’t harm you!”

The sun had set by this time and the evening grew gradually dark, for there was no moon, as the heavens were overcast; but still, the wind did not get up again, and the motion of the ship being easy enough we lay along the side of the ship very comfortably, most of the men soon falling asleep, and I soon following their example.

It must have been towards morning, for a dim sort of light was beginning to be perceptible in the east, we were wakened up by a terrible yell.

A moment afterwards a heavy splash sounded in the water alongside.

“Good heavens! what is that?” cried Captain Miles, starting up and trying to peer through the darkness, so as to see who was missing. “Anyone gone overboard?”

“Yes, sir,” answered Jackson’s voice presently, as if he had waited to reconnoitre, “it is one of the German sailors, poor Hermann. He has probably slipped his lashings and slid down the side. I’m afraid the sharks have taken him, for he has never called out once!”

“Poor fellow!” exclaimed the captain, raising a hail.

“Hi, hullo!”

But, there came no response; and so, Jackson’s surmise must have been correct. The man had evidently fallen in his sleep, through the slipping of the rope which had secured him to the rigging; and he must either have been drowned at once or fallen a victim to the maw of one of the sharks, whose movements we could hear in the water still below us.

The accident, however, wakened us all up thoroughly, and we waited anxiously for daylight.

When this came, however, a terrible scene was enacted before our eyes.

No sooner had the rising sun lit up the ocean and enabled us all to see each other distinctly, than I noticed Davis, who was close to Jackson, staring at him in a most peculiar manner.

I never saw in anyone before such a fixed steady glare!

The man seemed out of his senses or bewildered by something, for his eyes moved about strangely, although with a savage gleam in them, while his hair appeared to bristle up.

“Well, what is the matter?” said Jackson at length, after enduring his gaze for a moment or two, waiting for the other to speak. “Do you want water? Shall I get you some?”

This apparently broke the spell which was upon the wretched man, whose constitution had been much enfeebled by his drinking habits—making him thus less able to contend against the exposure and privations | we had been subjected to than the rest of us.

The minute Jackson spoke, he uttered a queer sort of half-groan, half-shriek; and having previously, I suppose, untied the rope with which he had been lashed to the rigging, he made a dash at the second mate with both his hands, trying to grip his throat and strangle him.

“You devil!” he cried, foaming at the mouth with passion, “you’ve taken my place and brought me to this.”

Jackson easily repulsed his struggles to do him any injury; but, before he and the other sailors could secure the madman, he sprang to his feet and, shouting out something which we could not distinguish, jumped right down among the group of sharks that were still swimming about under the stern.

There was a heavy plunge, followed by a wild scurrying to and fro in the water of the moving fins; and, a moment after, when the sea had got still again, a circle of blood on the surface alone told of the unhappy man’s fate.

The incident saddened us all very much, taking away our hopeful thoughts and courage alike; so we waited on listlessly for what we now believed must shortly be our own doom, not a soul speaking a word or even looking at his neighbour for some time afterwards.

Jackson was the first to recover himself.

The sight of the cruel sharks under the ship’s counter and the memory of our two shipmates, whom they had already devoured, appeared to prey on his mind and make him furious.

“I can’t stand this any longer,” he cried. “I must try and kill one of these brutes, captain, or die in the attempt!”

Captain Miles thought he had gone out of his senses too and spoke soothingly to him; but Jackson soon showed that if he had become insane there was a method in his madness.

Rising on his feet, he walked on the top of the bulwarks to the main-shrouds, and clambering out on his hands and knees along these, made his way to where a long wooden handspike, that had been used for heaving round the windlass, was floating under the rigging.

Picking up this and cutting off a good length of the topsail halliards, he came back to where we all were, and proceeded to make a running noose at the end of the rope.

“What are you going to do?” asked Captain Miles, not quite certain yet of Jackson’s sanity.

“I’m going to try to get one of the sharks to come close enough to give him a taste of this handspike,” said the stalwart young fellow, drawing himself up to his full height, and looking round with a determined expression on his face that I had never seen there before. “If I can only get them all to come to the inside of the ship, I shall do for one or two, I know.”

“Golly, Massa Jackson, me help you wid um knife,” exclaimed Jake, entering with much animation in the other’s project. “S’pose we fiss for um wid sumfin’, so as make um swim roun’ t’oder side ob ship, hey?”

“That’s a good idea,” said Captain Miles, and he offered Jake his hat to use as a bait, but the darkey shook his head at this.

“No, tankee, Mass’ Cap’en, I’se got sumfin’ better nor dat,” he exclaimed, pulling off the guernsey with which he had sheltered me the first night we were exposed on the wreck. “Dis do ebber so much betterer. Shark smell um, an’ tink he hab dis niggah, yah, yah!”

As he laughed, he tied one end of a bit of the signal halliards, which he had used to lash himself to the rigging, to the guernsey, lowering it down to a short distance above the surface of the water, where he kept it dangling.

One of the sharks rose towards it, another coming up soon after in its train; and then Jake kept continually shifting the rope round that portion of the taffrail of the poop which was above the sea, the sharks following in chase of the deceptive bait until he had lured them round to the inside part of the ship to join the one who was still on sentry there.

This was just what Jackson wanted; so he now proceeded to climb out along the mizzen rigging until he reached the point where the sea lapped it, when he arranged his running noose underneath, tying the loose end of the rope to the shrouds in a double hitch.

Jake then manoeuvred the baited line nearer to where the second mate had stationed himself, climbing out into the mizzen rigging too; when, as the leading shark turned over on its back and bit at the guernsey, Jackson slipped the running knot over its tail, pulling the noose in so that it held tightly. Then, seizing the handspike, he began belabouring the monster in a way that must pretty well have astonished its weak nerves, Jake the while stabbing it in the tail-end of the body with his long-bladed knife.

There was a terrific scuffle in which the water was tossed high in the air; but, after a minute or two, the shark broke the rope and managed to get away, although it was so seriously injured that it still remained on its back, and a quantity of blood poured out from the wounds it had received.

This made the crippled animal’s comrades set upon it, tearing it to pieces between them; and, while they were gorging themselves with the dissevered carcass, Jake dived into the sea under the fierce creatures, stabbing them wherever he could with such effect that his onslaught frightened the whole lot away—not a shark being visible in the vicinity within a few minutes after the commencement of the fray!

“Jerryboosalum!” exclaimed Jake, when, presently, he emerged all dripping and triumphant from the blood-stained waters. “We pay out dem debbels for ebberybody now. You nebber see dem come back hyar agin, I’se bet.”

Nor did we.

There was no doubt of the rapacious brutes having been finally scared away.

“You’re a couple of brave fellows,” cried Captain Miles when the two avengers climbed back in again on to the poop bulwarks, after thus carrying the war into Egypt, routing the foes that had kept us so long prisoners, and prevented us from doing anything towards righting the ship. “Now, I think, we can make another attempt to find that axe of the carpenter’s in the fo’c’s’le, if you are not too tired, Jake, to go in after it again?”

“Bress you, no, Mass’ Captain, me no tire’ at all! Me get axe in brace ob shakes, if um dar,” answered the willing fellow, laughing and showing his shining ivory teeth as he opened his mouth from ear to ear; and, almost as soon as he had uttered the words, he ran along the bulwarks towards the fore part of the ship, scrambled out into the main rigging, and dived into the sea immediately over the opening into the forecastle, at the same spot where he had previously gone down.

Once, twice, he came up to the surface again to take breath after a lengthened stay under the water; but, each time he rose with empty hands.

A third time he reappeared, still unsuccessful; and then we began to give up hope, although watching him all the while with the most intense anxiety.

None spoke a word, hardly daring to move.

Our interest in his actions was keen to intensity!

Our fate seemed trembling in the balance.

Once more he dived.

This was the fourth time he had ventured beneath the sea in his search for the coveted weapon, which was to free the ship from the cumbersome masts and top-hamper that kept her down on her beam-ends.

Unless we got the axe we would never be able to right her again; and we all regarded this dive of Jake’s as the last chance, although we did not exchange a syllable—our looks expressed our thoughts.

Jake now remained longer below than he had yet done, so we feared some mishap had befallen him; but, just as Jackson was preparing to dive down into the water that covered the forecastle, to see what had become of him, the plucky darkey popped up above the surface, holding something in one hand as he swam with the other towards the main rigging.

Our hearts beat high with expectation.

In another minute, Jake had mounted into the shrouds, when our suspense was quickly relieved; for, no sooner had he clambered near enough to the ship’s side to get a support for his feet, than he raised himself erect.

“Golly, Mass’ Cap’en,” he sang out in feeble accents, being now pretty well exhausted with his repeated efforts, “I’se got him at last! I’se got him at last!”

At the same time, he lifted up whatever it was he held in his hand, and tried to wave it round his head in token of his victory.

It was Adze’s axe.

“Hooray!” shouted Captain Miles at the extreme pitch of his voice, and the responsive cheer we raised in chorus might have been heard more than a mile away.

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