Chapter III: Part 3

"A boat was lowered; I entered it, and was rowed across to the brig by three men. No attempt was made to throw us the end of a line, or in any way to help us. The bowman got hold of a chain plate, and I scrambled into the main-chains and so got over the rail, bidding the men shove off and lie clear of the brig, whose rolling was somewhat heavy, owing to her floating like an egg-shell upon the long Pacific heave.

"I glanced along the vessel's decks forward, and saw not a soul. I observed a little caboose, the chimney of which was smoking as though coal had within the past few minutes been thrown into the furnace. I saw but one boat; she stood chocked and lashed abaft the caboose--a clumsy, broad-beamed long-boat, capable of stowing perhaps fifteen or twenty men at a pinch. I also took notice of a pair of davits on the starboard side, past the main rigging; they were empty.

"I stepped up to the heavily-built man who had answered the captain's questions. He received me with a grotesque bow, pinching the brim of his wide straw hat as he bobbed his head. I did not like his looks. He had as hanging a face as ever a malefactor carried. His features were heavy and coarse, his brow low and protruding, his eyes small, black, and restless, and his mouth of the bulldog cast.

"'We're much obliged to you for this visit,' he said. 'Might I ask your name, sir?'

"'My name is Grainger--Mr. James Grainger,' I answered, scarcely wondering at the irregularity of such a question on such an occasion, perceiving clearly now that the fellow was no sailor.

"'What might be your position in that ship, Mr. Grainger?' said the man.

"'I'm mate of her,' said I.

"'Then I suppose you're capable of carrying a ship from place to place by the art of navigation?' he exclaimed.

"'Why, I hope so!' cried I. 'But what is it you want?' and here I looked at the man who was standing at the helm, grasping the spokes in a manner that assured me he was not used to that sort of work; and I was somewhat struck to observe that in some respects he was not unlike the fellow who was addressing me--that is to say, he had quite as hanging a face as his companion, though he wanted the other's breadth and squareness, and ruffian-like set of figure; but his forehead was low, and his eyes black and restless, and he was close-cropped, with some days' growth of beard, as was the case with the other. He was dressed in a bottle-green spencer and trousers of a military cut, and wore one of those caps which in the days I am writing of were the fashion amongst masters and mates.

"'If you don't mind stepping into the cabin,' said the man with whom I was conversing, 'I'll show you a chart, and ask you to pencil out a course for us; and with your leave, sir, I'll tell you over a glass of wine exactly how it's come about that we're too few to carry the brig to her destination unless your captain will kindly help us.'

"'Are you two the only people aboard?' said I.

"'The only people,' he answered.

"Anywhere else, under any other conditions, I might have suspected a treacherous intention in two men with such hanging countenances as this lonely brace owned; but what could I imagine to be afraid of aboard a brig holding two persons only, with the whaler's boat and three men within a few strokes of the oar, and the old barque, _Swan_, full of livelies, many of them deadly in the art of casting the harpoon, within easy hail?

"The man who invited me below stepped into the companion-way; I followed and descended the short flight of steps. The instant I had gained the bottom of the ladder I knew by the sudden shadow which came into the light that the companion hatch had been closed; this must have been done by the fellow who was standing at the wheel. It was wisely contrived. Assuredly had the way been open, I should have rushed upon deck and sprung overboard: because after descending the steps I beheld five or six men standing in a sort of waiting and listening posture under the skylight. Instantly my left arm was gripped by the man who had asked me to step below, while another fellow, equally powerful, and equally ruffianly in appearance, grasped me by the right arm.

"'Now,' said the first man, 'if you make the least bit of noise or give us any trouble, we'll cut your throat. We don't intend to do you any harm, but we want your services, and you'll have to do what we require without any fuss. If not, you're a dead man.'

"So saying, they threw open the door of a berth, ran me into it, shut the door, and shot the lock. I had been so completely taken by surprise that I was in a manner stunned. I stood in the middle of the cabin just where the fellows had let go of me, staring around, breathing short and fierce, my mind almost a blank. But I quickly rallied my wits. I understood I had been kidnapped; by what sort of people I could not imagine, but beyond question because I understood navigation, as I had told the man. I listened, but heard no noise of voices, nor movements of people in the cabin. Through the planks, overhead, however, came the sound of a rapid tread of feet, accompanied by the thud of coils of rope flung hastily down. The cabin porthole was a middling-sized, circular window. I saw the whaler in it as in a frame. I unscrewed the port, but with no intention to cry out, never doubting for a moment from the looks of the men that they would silence me in some bloody fashion as had been threatened.

"Just as I pulled the port open a voice overhead sang out: 'Get back to your ship, you three men; your mate has consented to stop with us as we're in want of a navigator.'

"'Let him tell us that himself,' said one of my men; 'let him show up. What ha' ye done with him?'

"'Be off,' roared one of the people, in a savage, hurricane note.

"There was a little pause as of astonishment on the part of the boat's crew--I could not see them, the boat lay too far astern,--but after a bit I heard the splash of oars, the boat swept into the sphere of the porthole, and I beheld her making for the barque.

"I was now sensible, however, not only by observing the whaler to recede, but by hearing the streaming and rippling of broken waters along the bends, that the people of the brig had in some fashion trimmed sail and filled upon the vessel. We were under way. The barque slided out of the compass of the porthole, but now I heard her captain's voice coming across the space of water, clear and strong:

"'Brig ahoy! What do you mean by keeping my mate?'

"To this no answer was returned. Again the captain hailed the brig; but owing to the shift in the postures of the two vessels, and to my having nothing but a circular hole to hear through, I could only dimly and imperfectly catch what was shouted. The cries from the whaler grew more and more threadlike. Indeed, I knew the brig must be a very poor sailer if she did not speedily leave the _Swan_ far astern.

"And now, as I conjectured from the noise of the tread of feet and the hum of voices, the brig on a sudden seemed full of men; not the eight or ten whom I had beheld with my own eyes, but a big ship's company. And the sight of the crowd, I reckoned, as I stood hearkening at the open porthole--amazed, confounded, in the utmost distress of mind--was probably the reason why the captain of the _Swan_ had not thought proper to send boats to rescue me. Be this as it will I was thunderstruck by the discovery--the discovery of my hearing, and of my capacity as a sailor of interpreting shipboard sounds--that this little brig, which I had supposed tenanted by two men only, had hidden a whole freight of human souls somewhere away in the execution of this diabolical stratagem. What was this vessel? Who were the people on board her? What use did they design to put me to? And when I had served them, what was to be my fate?

"Quite three hours passed, during which I was left unvisited. Sometimes I heard men talking in the cabin; over my head there went a regular swing of heavy feet, a pendulum tread, as of half-a-score of burly ruffians marching abreast, and keeping a look-out all together. The door of my berth was opened at last, and the villain who had seduced me into the brig stepped in.

"'I was sorry,' said he, 'to be obliged to use threats. Threats aren't in our way. We mean no mischief. Quite the contrary; we count upon you handsomely serving us. Come into the cabin, sir, that I may make you known to my mates.'

"His manner was as civil as a fellow with his looks could possibly contrive, and an ugly smile sat upon his face whilst he addressed me, and I observed that he held his great straw hat in his hand, as though to show respect.

"About twenty men were assembled in the cabin. I came to a dead stand on the threshold of the door of the berth, so astounded was I by the sight of all those fellows. I ran my eye swiftly over them; they were variously dressed--some in the attire of seamen, some in such clothes as gentlemen of that period wore, a few in a puzzling sort of military undress. They all had cropped heads, and many were grim with a few days' growth of beard and moustache. They had the felon's look, and there was somehow a suggestion of escaped prisoners in their general bearing. A dark suspicion rushed upon me with the velocity of thought, as I stood on the threshold of the door of the berth for the space of a few heart-beats, gazing at the mob.

"The cabin was a plain, old-fashioned interior. A stout, wide table secured to stanchions ran amidships. Overhead was a skylight. There were a few chairs on either hand the table, and down the cabin on both sides went a length of lockers. Some of the men were smoking. A few sat upon the table with their arms folded; others lounged upon the lockers, and in chairs. They stared like one man at me, whilst I stood looking at them.

"'Is he a navigator, Swallow?' said one of them--a wiry, dark-faced man, who held his head hung, and looked at you by lifting his eyes.

"'Ay, mate of the whaler--James Grainger by name,' answered the fellow who had opened the door of my berth. 'Salute him, bullies. He's the charley-pitcher for to handle this butter-box.'

"The voices of the men swelled into a roar of welcomes of as many sorts as there were speakers. One of them came round the table and shook me by the hand.

"'My name's Alexander Stevenson,' said he; 'come and sit you down here.'

"All very civilly he conducted me to a chair at the head of the table. And now, happening to glance upwards, I spied seven or eight faces peering down at me through the skylight.

"'Swallow, do the jawing, will 'ee?' said the man who called himself Stevenson.

"'Why, yes,' answered Swallow, posting himself at the top of the table, and addressing me through the double ranks of men on either side. 'This is how it stands with us, Mr. Grainger--clear as mud in a wineglass; and we're sorry it should have come to it, for your sake. But do your duty by us faithfully, and we'll take care you sha'n't suffer. We're thirty-one convicts in all. We were thirty-two, but Milkliver Poppy took a header, and went for the land and the lickspittle; if he lives he'll get his liberty for a reward. We were bound from Hobart to Norfolk Island. You'll have heard of that settlement?'

"I said 'Yes,' and an odd guttural laugh broke from some of the men.

"'Well, mister,' continued the man Swallow, 'Norfolk Island was a destination that didn't accord with our views. And what more d' ye want me to say? Here we are, and we want our liberty, and we mean to get it without any risk, and you're the man to help us.'

"'What do you want me to do?' said I, speaking boldly, and looking about me steadily, for now I perceived exactly how it was with the brig, and the worst had been explained and the whole mystery solved when Swallow told me they were convicts; and likewise I had plenty of time to screw my nerves up.

"Several men spoke at once on my asking the above question. Stevenson roared out: 'Let Swallow man the jaw tackle, boys. One at a time, or you'll addle the gent.'

"'This is what we want you to do,' said Swallow. 'There are scores of islands in these seas, and we want you to carry us to them; heaving-to off them one after another that we may pick and choose, some going ashore here, and some there, for our game is to scatter. That's clear, I hope.'

"'I understand you,' said I."

"Swallow seemed at a loss. Stevenson then said: 'But we shall want nothing that's got a white settlement on it; nothing that's likely to have a pennant flying near. We've got no fixed notions. We leave it to you to raise the islands, and it'll be for us to select and take our chance.'

"'There'll be charts aboard, I suppose?' said I.

"Instantly one of them stepped into a cabin and returned with a bag full of charts. I turned them out upon the table and promptly came across charts of the North and South Pacific oceans. These charts gave me from the Philippines to Cape St. Lucas, and from the Eastern Australian coast to away as far as 120 deg. W. longitude. The men did not utter a word whilst I looked; I could hear their deep breathing, mingled with the noise of a hard sucking of pipes. One of them who looked through the skylight called down. Swallow silenced him with a gesture of his fist.

"'Have you got what's wanted here, Mr. Grainger?' said Stevenson.

"'All that I shall want is here,' I answered.

"'A low growl of applause ran through the men.

"'Will you be able to light upon the islands that'll prove suitable for us men to live on without risk until the opportunity comes in the shape of vessels for us to get away?' said Swallow.

"'I'll do my best for you,' said I. 'I see your wants, and you may trust me, providing I may trust you. What's to become of me when you're out of the brig? That's it!'

"'You'll stay on board and do what you like with the vessel,' answered Swallow. 'She'll be yours to have and hold. Make what you call a salvage job of it, and your pickings, mister, 'ull be out and away beyond the value of what we've been obliged to make you leave behind you.'

"'Ain't that fair?' said a man.

"'Is my life safe?' said I.

"'Ay,' cried the Swallow, with a great oath, striking the table a heavy blow with his clenched fist. 'Understand this and comfort yourself. There's been no blood shed in this job, and there'll be none, so help me God--you permitting, mister.'

"When this was said, a fellow, whom I afterwards heard called by the name of Jim Davies, asked if I was willing to take an oath that I would be honest. I said, 'Yes.' He stood up and dictated an oath full of blasphemy, shocking with imprecations, and grossly illiterate. The eyes of the crowd fastened upon me, and some of the ruffians watched me in a scowling way with faces dark with suspicion, till I repeated the horrid language of the man Davies, and swore, after which the greater bulk of them went on deck.

"Swallow put some beef and biscuit on the table and a bottle of rum, and bade me fall to. He told me to understand that I was captain of the ship; that I was at liberty to appoint officers under me; and that, though none of the convicts had been seafaring men, they had learnt how the ropes led and how to furl canvas, and would obey any orders for the common good which I might deliver. I ate and drank, being determined to put the best face I could on this extraordinary business, and asked for the captain's cabin, that I might find out what nautical instruments the brig carried. Swallow, Stevenson, and a convict named William Watts conducted me to a berth right aft on the starboard side. They told me it had been occupied by the captain, and should be mine. Here I found all I needed in the shape of navigating instruments, and went on deck with Swallow and the others.

"I could see nothing of the _Swan_; she was out of sight from the elevation of the brig's bulwarks. All the convicts were on deck, and the brig looked full of men. Those who had been above whilst I was in the cabin with the others, approached and stared at me, but not insolently--merely with curiosity. They seemed a vile lot, one and all. With some of them every other word was an oath; their talk was almost gibberish to my ears with thieves' slang. I wondered to find not one of them dressed in felon's garb; but on reflection I concluded that they had plundered the crew and the people who had had charge of them and of the _Cyprus_, and had forced all those they drove out of the brig to change clothes before quitting the vessel.

"However, it was my immediate policy to prove my sincerity. I valued my life, and I had but to look at the men to reckon that it would not be worth a rushlight if they suspected I was not doing my best to find them a safe asylum among the islands in the Pacific. Accordingly, I fetched one of the charts, placed it upon the skylight, where those who gathered about me could see it, and laid off a course for the Tonga Islands; telling the men as I pointed to the group upon the chart that if no island thereabouts satisfied them, we could head for the Fijis or cruise about the Friendly or Navigator groups, working our way as far as the Low Archipelago, betwixt which and the first island we sighted we ought certainly to fall in with the sort of hiding-place they wanted. My words raised a grin of satisfaction in every face within reach of my voice.

"I stepped to the helm and headed the brig on a northerly course, and stood awhile looking at the compass to satisfy myself that the convict who grasped the spokes understood what to do with the wheel. He managed fairly well. I then asked Swallow to serve as my chief mate, and Stevenson to act as second, and calling the rest of the felons together, I divided them into two watches. My next step was to crowd the little brig with all the canvas she could spread, and set every stitch of it properly. Thus passed the first day.

"I have no time to enter minutely into what happened till we made a small point of land in the neighbourhood of the Friendly Islands. There was abundance of provisions on board, plenty of fresh water, and a stock of spirits intended for the commandant and soldiers at Macquarie Harbour and Norfolk Island; but though the convicts freely used whatever they found in the brig's hold, never once was there an instance of drunkenness amongst them. I guessed them all to be as desperate a set of miscreants as were ever transported for crime upon crime from a convict establishment; yet they used me very well. Saving their villainous speech, their behaviour was fairly decorous. They sprang to my bidding, sir'd me as though they had been seamen and I their captain, and, indeed, by their behaviour so reassured me that my dread of being butchered vanished, and I carried on the brig as assured of my personal safety--providing I dealt by them honestly--as though I had been on board the old _Swan_.

"We sighted several vessels, but, as you may suppose, we had nothing to say to them. Off the first island we came across I hove the brig to; the convicts got the long-boat out, and a dozen of them went ashore to examine and report. Five returned; the remainder had chosen to stay. We made three of the islands; the natives of two of them were threatening, and frightened the convicts back to the brig; the third proved uninhabited--a very gem of an island was this,--and here fifteen convicts went ashore, and thrice the boat went between the island and the brig with provisions and necessaries for their maintenance.

"But it gave me a fortnight of anxious hunting to discover such another island as the remaining convicts considered suitable. This at last we fell in with midway betwixt the Union group and the Marquesas; and here the rest of the felons went ashore, after almost emptying the brig's hold of provisions and the like. They kept the long-boat, and left me alone in the brig. Some of them shook hands with me as they went over the side, and thanked me for having served them so honestly.

"It was in the evening when I was left alone. The sun was setting behind the island, off which a gentle breeze was blowing. My first business was to run the ensign aloft, jack down. I then trimmed sail as best I could with my single pair of hands, and, putting the helm amidships, let the brig blow away south-west, designing to make for one of the Navigator Islands, where I might hope to fall in with assistance, either from the shore or from a vessel. But, shortly after midnight the brig, sailing quietly, grounded upon a coral shoal, fell over on to her bilge, and lay quiet. I was without a boat, and could do nothing but wait for daylight, and pray for a sight of some passing vessel. All next day passed, and nothing showed the wide horizon round; but about nine o'clock that night, the moon shining clearly, I spied a sail down in the south. She drew closer, and proved a little schooner. I hailed her with a desperate voice, and to my joy was answered, and in less than ten minutes she sent a boat and took me aboard."

The South Seaman's narrative ends abruptly here, but it is known that he was conveyed to Honolulu, at which place, strangely enough, the _Swan_ touched after he had been ashore about a week. He at once went on board, related his strange experiences to his captain, and proceeded on his whaling career with the easy indifference of a sailor accustomed to tragic surprises.

The brig _Cyprus_ went to pieces on the shoal on which she had grounded. It is on record that of the convicts retaken on their return to England, two were hanged--namely, Watts and Davies; two others, Beveridge and Stevenson, were transported for life to Norfolk Island; and Swallow was sent back to Macquarie Harbour.

_The Adventures of
Three Sailors._

TOLD BY DANIEL SMALL, ONLY MATE.

Our vessel was a little brig, named the _Hindoo Merchant_, and we sailed on a day in March in the year of our Lord 1857, from Trincomalee bound to Calcutta. The captain, myself, and three sailors were Europeans; the rest of the ship's company, natives. Though we were "flying light" as the term is--that is to say, though there was little more in the ship's hold than ballast, and though she had tolerably nimble heels, for what one might term a _country-wallah_--yet the little ship was so bothered with head winds and light airs, and long days of stagnation, that we had been several weeks afloat before we managed to crawl to the Norrad of the Andaman parallels, which yet left a long stretch of waters before us. If this remainder of the ocean was not to be traversed more fleetly than the space we had already measured, then it was certain we should be running short of water many a long while before the Sandheads came within the compass of our horizon, and to provide against the most horrible situation that the crew of a ship can find themselves placed in, we kept a bright look-out for vessels, and within four days managed to speak two; but they had no water to spare, and we pushed on.

But within three days of our speaking the second of the two vessels we sighted a third, a large barque, who at once backed her topsail to our signals, and hailed us to know what we wanted. My captain, Mr. Roger Blow, stood up in the mizzen-rigging and asked for water. They asked how much we needed; Captain Blow responded that whatever they could spare would be a god-send. On this they sung out: "Send a boat with a cask and you shall have what we can afford to part with." Captain Blow then told me to put an eighteen-gallon cask in the port-quarter boat, and go away to the barque with it. "They'll not fill it," said he, "but a half'll be better than a quarter, and a quarter'll be good enough; for we stand to pick up more as we go along."

I had called to two of the English sailors, named Mike Jackson and Thomas Fallows, to get into the boat, when the cask had been placed in her; and when I had entered her the darkeys lowered us; we unhooked and shoved off. There was a pleasant breeze of wind blowing; it blew hot, as though it came straight from the inside of an oven, the door of which had been suddenly opened; the sky had the sort of glazed dimness of the human eye in fever; but right overhead it was of a copperish dazzle where the roasting orb of the sun was. I could not see a speck of cloud anywhere, which rendered what followed the more amazing to my mind for the suddenness of it.

The two vessels at the first of their speaking had been tolerably close together, but some time had been spent in routing up the cask and getting it into the boat, and setting ourselves afloat, so that at the moment of our shoving off--spite of the topsail of each vessel being to the mast--the space had widened between them, till I daresay it covered pretty nearly a mile. The wind was at west-nor'-west, and the barque bore on the lee quarter of the _Hindoo Merchant_. The great heat put a languor into the arms of our two seamen, and the oars rose and fell slowly and weakly. Jackson said to me: "I hope," said he, "they 'll be able to spare us a bite of ship's bread. Our 'n is no better than sawdust, and if it wasn't for the worms in it," said he, "blast me if there 'd be any nutriment in it at all. Them Cingalese ought to ha' moored their island off the Chinese coast. They 'd have grown rich with teaching the Johnnies more tricks than they 're master of, at plundering sailors."

"The _Hindoo Merchant's_ bread isn't up to much, Fallows," said I, "but this is no atmosphere to talk of bread in. What 's aboard will carry us to the Hooghley. It is water we have to fix our minds on."

We drew alongside of the tall barque, and the master, after looking over the rail, asked me to step aboard and drink a glass with him in his cabin, "for," says he, "this is no part of the ocean to be thirsty in," and he then gave directions for the cask to be got out of the boat, and a drink of rum and water to be handed down to the two seamen.

I stepped into the cabin and the captain put a bottle of brandy and some cold water on the table. He asked me several questions about the brig, and how long we were out, and where we were from, and the like, and one thing leading to another, he happened to mention the town he was born in, which was my native place too--Ashford, in the county of Kent,--and here was now a topic to set us yarning, for I knew some of his friends and he knew some of mine; and the talk seemed to do him so much good, whilst it was so agreeable to me, that neither of us seemed in a hurry to end it. This is the only excuse I can offer for lingering on the barque longer than, as circumstances proved, I ought to have done.

At last I got up and said I must be off, and I thanked him most kindly for the obliging reception of me, and for his goodness in supplying the brig with water, and I gave him Captain Blow's compliments, and desired to know if we could accommodate him in any way in return. He answered "Nothing, nothing," stepping through the hatch as he said it, and an instant after he set up his throat in a cry.

"You 'll have to bear a hand aboard," says he, with a face of astonishment; "look yonder! 'T is rolling down upon your brig like smoke." He pointed to the vessel, and a little way past her I spied a long line of white vapour no higher than Dover cliff as it looked, but as dense as those rocks of chalk too. The sun made steam of it, but if already it was putting a likeness of its own blankness into the sky over it, which seemed to be dying out, as the vapour came along, as the light perishes in a looking-glass upon which you breathe. I ran to the side and saw my boat under the gang-way and the two men in her. The cask was in the stern of the boat. The master of the barque cried out to me: "Will you not stay till that smother clears? You may lose your brig in it." I replied: "No, sir, thank you. I will take my chance. It is more likely I should lose her by remaining here," and with a flourish of the hand I dropped over the side and entered the boat. "Now," cried I, "pull like the devil, men."

They threw their oars over and fell to rowing fiercely; but the barque was not five cables' length astern of us when the first of the white cliff of vapour smote the _Hindoo Merchant,_ and she vanished in it like a star in a cloud. There was a fresh breeze of wind behind that line of sweeping thickness, and in places, at the base of the mass of blankness, it would dart out in swift racings of shadow that made one think of the feelers of some gigantic marine spider, probing under its cobweb as though feeling its way along. In a few minutes the cloud drove down over us with a loud whistling of wind, and the water close to the boat's side ran in short, small seas, every head of it hissing; but to within the range of a biscuit toss all was flying, glistening obscurity, with occasional bursts of denser thicknesses which almost hid one end of the boat from the other. It was about six o'clock in the afternoon, and there might be yet another hour of sunshine.

"'Vast rowing!" says I presently, "you may keep the oars over, but there's no good in pulling, short of keeping her head to wind. This is too thick to last."

"Ain't so sure of that," says Fallows, taking a slow look round at the smother, "I 've been in these here seas for two days running in weather arter this pattern."

"Pity we didn't stay aboard the barque," says Jackson.

"A plague on your pities!" I cried. "I know my duty, I believe. Suppose we _had_ stayed aboard the barque, we stood to be separated from the brig in this breeze and muckiness, and was her skipper by-and-bye going to sail in search of the _Hindoo Merchant_?"

"A gun!" cries Fallows.

"That'll be the brig," says I, catching the dull thud of the explosion of a nine-pounder which the _Hindoo Merchant_ carried on her quarter-deck.

"Seems to me as though it sounded from yonder," says Jackson, looking away over the starboard beam of the boat.

"What have ye there, men?" says I, nodding at a bundle of canvas under the amidship thwart.

"Ship's bread," answered Jackson, with a note of sulkiness in his voice. "It was hove to us on my asking for a bite. She was a liberal barque. The cask's more 'n three-quarters full."

We hung upon our oars listening and waiting. There was a second gun ten minutes after the first had been fired, and that was the last we heard. The report was thin and distant, but whether ahead or astern I could not have guessed by harkening. I kept up my own and endeavoured to inspirit the hearts of the others by saying that this fog which had come down in a moment would end in a moment, that it was all clear sky above with plenty of moonlight for us in the night if it should happen that the sun went down upon us thus, that Captain Blow was not going to lose us and his boat and the cask of fresh water if it was in mortal seamanship to hold a vessel in one situation; but the fellows were not to be cheered, their spirits sank and their faces grew longer as the complexion of the fog told us that the sun was sinking fast, and I own that when it came at last to his setting, and no break in the flying vapour, and a blackness as of ink stealing into it out of the swift tropic dusk, I myself felt horribly dejected, greatly fearing that we had lost the brig for good.

Just before the last of the twilight faded out of the smoke that shrouded us, we lashed both oars together and, attaching them to the boat's painter, threw them overboard and rode to them. Our thirst was now extreme, and to appease it--being without a dipper to drop into the cask--we sank a handkerchief through the bung-hole and wrung it out in the half of a cocoa-nut shell that was in the boat as a baler, and by this means procured a drink, each man. Grateful to God indeed was I that we had fresh water with us. I beat the cask, and gathered by the sound that it was more than half full. Heaven was bountiful too in providing us with biscuit. It had been the luckiest of thoughts on Jackson's part, though he had desired nothing more than to obtain a relish for his own rations of buffalo hump aboard.

I never remember the like of the pitch darkness of that night. There was a moon, pretty nearly a full one if I recollect aright; but had she been shining over the other side of the world it would have been all the same. Her delicate silver beam could not pierce the vapour, and never once did I behold the least glistening of her radiance anywhere. There was a constant noise of wind in the dense thickness, and an incessant seething and crackling of waters running nimbly, so that though we would from time to time bend our ears in the hope of catching the rushing and pouring noise of the sea divided by a ship's stem, we never could hear more than the whistling of the breeze and the lapping of the hurrying little surges. There was a deal of fire in the water, and it came and went in sheets like the reflection of lightning, insomuch that we might have believed ourselves in the heart of an electric storm; but happily the wind never gathered so much weight as to raise a troublesome sea, and though the boat tumbled friskily she kept dry, and there was nothing in her movements to render me uneasy.

I told the two fellows to lie down in the bottom of the boat, and I kept watch till I reckoned it was drawing on to about one o'clock in the morning. Twice or thrice during that long and wretched vigil there seemed a promise of the weather clearing, and I gazed with the yearning of the shipwrecked; but regularly it thickened and blackened down upon us again in blasts like the belchings of a three-decker's broadside. It was a very watery vapour, and I was early wet to the skin.

At about one o'clock, as I calculated, I awoke Jackson, and bade him keep an eager look-out and not to spare his ear in putting it against the night, "for," says I, "there's nothing to be done with the eyes; it's all for the hearing at such a time as this, mate, and what you can't watch for you must listen for; and wake me up to any sound you may hear, that our three throats may hail together. O God," says I, "if it would but thin and show the brig within reach of our shouts!" With that I lay down and was soon fast asleep, being worn out with excitement and grief, and when I awoke it was daylight, for there's but little dawn off the Andamans; the sun in those seas leaps on to the horizon from the night as it were, and flashes it into day in a breath.

It was still thick and troubled weather, but clear to about two miles from the side of the boat. There was very little wind, and a long swell of the colour of lead was running from the southward. The vapour had broken up and lay in masses round about us--long, white twisted folds of it, like powder smoke after a great battle; and to the top of those heaps of thickness the sky sloped in a sort of grey shadow, with a little pencilling here and there of some small livid ring of mist, which looked stirless as though what air there was blew low. There was nothing in sight; we strained our gaze into every quarter but I saw there was nothing to be seen. This smote me to the heart. I had been in my time in several situations of peril at sea, but had never yet experienced the horrors of an open boat amidst a vast waste of waters, such as was this Bay of Bengal with the Andaman Islands some hundreds of miles distant, and a near menace of roasting heat when the wide grey stretch of cloud should have passed away and laid bare the sun's eye of fire. We gazed with melancholy faces one at another.

"What's to be done?" says Fallows, bringing his bloodshot eyes from the sea to my face; "if we had a sail to set we might have a chance."

"There are two oars," said I, "for a mast and a yard, and our shirts must furnish a sail."

"But how are we to head?" says Jackson.

"Right afore the wind, I suppose," says I; "there'll be no ratching with the rags we're going to hoist. Right afore the wind," I says; "and we must trust to God to keep us in view till something heaves in sight--which is pretty well bound to happen I suppose when there comes some wind along."

I opened the canvas parcel, and found a matter of thirty biscuits; all very sweet, good bread. We took each of us a piece, and followed on with a drink, and then went to work to get our oars in. We all three wore shirts, and we stripped them off our backs and cut them to lie open. I had a little circular cushion of stout pins in my pocket, such as a sailor might carry, and with them we brought the squares of the shirts together, and seized the corners to one of the oars by yarns out of an end of painter we cut off, then stepped the other oar, and secured it with another piece of the painter; and now we had a sort of sail, the mere sight of which, even, was a small satisfaction to us, since the shirts being white they must needs make a good mark upon the water, something not to be missed, unless wilfully, by a passing vessel.

The morning passed away, and a little after twelve o'clock the water in the south was darkened by the brushing of a wind, which drove the hovering masses of vapour before it; and presently they had totally disappeared, leaving a sky with rents and yawns of blue in places, and a clear glass-like circle of horizon, upon which, however, there was nothing to be seen. The boat moved slowly before the wind, which blew hot as a desert breeze; I steered, and Jackson and Fallows sat near me, one or the other from time to time getting on to a thwart to take a view of the ocean, under the sharp of his hand.

In this fashion passed the afternoon. The night came with a deal of fire in the water, and a very clear moon floating in lagoons of velvet softness betwixt the clouds. The weather continued quiet; the long swell made a pleasant cradle of the boat, and the night-wind being full of dew, breathed refreshingly upon our hot cheeks; whilst our ears were soothed by the rippling noise of the running waters which seemed to cool the senses, as the breeze did the body.

It was almost a dead calm, however, at daybreak next morning. The atmosphere was close and heavy, and there was a strange strong smell of seaweed, rising off the ocean, which caused me to look narrowly about, with some dim dream of perceiving land, though I should have known there was no land for leagues and leagues.

Whilst we were munching a biscuit, I observed an appearance of steam lifting off the water, at a distance of about half-a-mile on the starboard side of the boat. The vapour came out of the water in the shape of corkscrews, spirally working, and they melted at a height of perhaps ten or fifteen feet. I counted five of these singular emissions. Jackson said that they were fragments of mist, and we might look out for such another thickness as had lost us the brig. Fallows said: "No; that's no mist, mate; that is as good steam as ever blew out of a kettle. Are there places where the water boils in this here ocean?"

As he said these words, an extraordinary thrill passed through the boat, followed by a sound that seemed more like an intellectual sensation than a real noise. What to compare it to I don't know; it was as though it had thundered under the sea. An instant later, up from the part of the water where the corkscrew appearances were, rose a prodigious body of steam. It soared without a sound from the deep; it was balloon-shaped but of mountainous proportions.

"A sea-quake!" roared Jackson. "Stand by for the rollers!"

But no sea followed. I could witness no commotion whatever in the water; the light, long swell flowed placidly into the base of the mass of whiteness, and there was nothing besides visible on the breast of the sea, save the delicate wrinkling of the weak draught of air. Very quickly the vapour thinned as steam does, and as it melted off the surface, it disclosed to our astonished gaze what at first sight seemed to me the fabric of a great ship, but after viewing it for a moment or two, I distinctly made out the form of an old-fashioned hull with the half of much such another hull as she, alongside, both apparently locked together about the bows; and they seemed to be supported by some huge gleaming black platform; but what it was we could not tell.

The three of us drew a deep breath as we surveyed the floating objects. The steam was gone; there they lay plain and bare; it was as though the wand of a magician had touched the white mass and transformed it into the objects we gazed at.

"Down with the sail," says I, "there's something yonder worth looking at."

We got the oars over, and pulled in the direction of the fabrics. As we approached I could scarce credit the evidence of my own sight. The form of one of the vessels was perfect. She was of an antique build, and belonged to a period that I reckoned was full eighty years dead and gone. The other--the half of her I should say--showed a much bluffer bow, and had been a vessel of some burthen. But the wonder was the object on which they rested. This was no more nor less than the body of a great dead whale!

We first needed to lose something of our amazement ere we could reasonably speculate upon what we saw; then how this had happened grew plain to our minds. The two craft, God knows how many long years before, had been in action and foundered in conflict. The smaller vessel--I mean the one that lay whole before us--might have been a privateersman; she had something of a piratical sheer forward, there were no signs of a mast aboard either of them, one had grappled the other to board her I dare say, and they had both gone to the bottom linked. The vessel of which only half remained may have broken her back in settling, and, by-and-bye, the after part of her drifted away, leaving the dead bows still gripped by the dead enemy alongside. But how came the whale there? Well, we three men reasoned it thus, and I don't doubt we were right. At the moment of the sea-quake the whale was stemming steadily towards the two wrecks resting on the bottom. They were lifted by the explosion, which at the same time killed the whale; but the impetus of the vast form slided it to under the lifted keels, where it came to a stand. A dead whale floats, as we know. This whale being dead was bound to rise, and the buoyancy of the immense mass brought the two craft up with it, and there they were, poised by the gleaming surface of the whale, which was depressed by their weight, so that no portion of the head, tail, or fluke was visible.

"It's them vessels being connected," says Jackson, "as keeps them afloat. If what holds them together forrard was to part they'd slide off that there slipperiness and sink."

We rowed close, the three of us greatly marvelling, as you may suppose, for never had the like of such an incident as this happened at sea within the knowledge of ever a one of us, and Fallows alone was a man of five and forty, who had been using the ocean for thirty-three years. It was as scaring as the rising of a corpse out of the depths--as scaring as if that corpse turned to and spoke when his head showed,--to see those two vessels lying in the daylight after eighty, aye, and perhaps a hundred years of the green silence hundreds of fathoms deep, locked in the same posture in which they had gone down, making you almost fancy that you could hear the thunder of their guns, witness the flashing of cutlasses, and the rush of the boarders to the bulwarks amidst a hurricane note of huzzaing and shrieks of the wounded.

They were both of them handsomely crusted with shells, not of the barnacle sort, but such as you would pick up anywhere in Ceylon or the Andaman, some of them finely coloured, many of them white as milk, of a thousand different patterns; and there was not one of them but what was beautiful.

"Let's board her," says Jackson.

"Ah, but if that whale be alive!" says Fallows.

"No fear of that," said I; "if he was alive there'd be some stir in him. The whale's not the danger; it's the lashing, which may part at any moment. It should be in a fair way of rottenness after so many years of salt water, and if it goes the vessels go."

"I'm for boarding her all the same," says Jackson.

But first of all we pulled round to betwixt the bows of the craft to see what it was that connected them, and we found that they were held together by something stronger than an old grapnel. The bluff of the bows came together like walls cemented by sand and shell, and it was easy by a mere glance to perceive that they would hold together whilst the sea continued tranquil. Betwixt their heels was a hollow which the round of the whale nicely filled, and there they all three lay, very slowly and solemnly rolling upon the swell in as deep a silence as ever they had risen from.

We hung upon our oars speculating awhile, and then fell to talking ourselves into extravagant notions. Fallows said that if she had been a privateer she might have money in her, or some purchase anyway worth coming at. I was not for ridiculing the fancy, and Jackson gazed at the craft with a yearning eye.

"Let's get aboard," says he.

"Very well," says I, and we agreed that Fallows should keep in the boat ready to pick us up, if the hulk should go down suddenly under us. We easily got aboard. From the gunwale of our boat we could place our hands upon the level of the deck, where the bulwarks were gone, and the shells were like steps to our feet. There was nothing much to be seen, however; the decks were coated with shells as the sides were, and they went flush from the taffrail to the eyes with never a break, everything being clean gone, saving the line of the hatches which showed in slightly raised squares, under the crust of shells that lay everywhere like armour.

"Lord!" cried Jackson; "what would I give for a chopper or pick-axe to smash open that there hatch, so as to get inside of her."

"Inside of her?" says I; "why she'll be full of water!"

"That's to be proved, Mr. Small," says he.

We walked forward into the bows, and clearly made out the shape of a grapnel thick with shells, with its claws upon the bulwark rail of the half-ship alongside, and there was a line stretched between, belayed to what might have been a kevel on a stanchion of the craft we were in. This rope was as lovely as a piece of fancy work, with tiny shells; but on my touching it, to see if it was taut, it parted as if it had been formed of smoke, and each end fell with a little rattle against the side as though it had been a child's string of beads.

We were gaping about us, almost forgetting our distressed situation, in contemplation of these astonishing objects which had risen like ghosts from the mysterious heart of the deep, when we heard Fallows calling, and on our running to the side to learn what he wanted, we saw him standing up in the boat, pointing like a madman into the southward. It was the white canvas of a vessel, clearer to us than to him, who was lower by some feet. The air was still a weak draught, but the sail was rising with a nimbleness that made us know she was bringing a breeze of wind along with her, and in half-an-hour's time she had risen to the black line of her bulwarks rail, disclosing the fabric of what was apparently a brig or barque, heading almost dead on her end for us.

Jackson and I at once tumbled into the boat, but we were careful to keep her close to the two craft, and the amazing platform they floated on, for they furnished out a show that was not to be missed aboard the approaching vessel, whereas the boat must make little more than a speck though but half-a-mile distant.

The breeze the vessel was bringing along with her was all about us presently with a threat of weight in it. We stepped an oar, with the shirts atop, and they blew out bravely and made a good signal.

"Why, see, Mr. Small!" cries Jackson, on a sudden, "ain't she the _Hindoo Merchant_?"