TALES OF THE SEA: 12 Maritime Adventure Novels in One Volume (Illustrated)
of the nature of boat-duty, as she has lately had some experience in that way herself; but I can tell her this much: Had it not been for that boat in which the black and myself spent the better part of ten days, she would have fared but badly in her own navigation.”
“Explain your meaning.”
“My meaning is plain enough, your Honour, which is, that little else than the handy way of master Harry in a boat could have kept the Bristol trader’s launch above water, the day we fell in with it.”
“But in what manner was your own shipwreck connected with the safety of Mr Wilder?” demanded the governess, unable any longer to await the dilatory explanation of the prolix seaman.
“In a very plain and natural fashion, my Lady, as you will say yourself, when you come to hear the pitiful part of my tale. Well, there were I and Guinea, rowing about in the ocean, on short allowance of all things but work, for two nights and a day, heading-in for the islands; for, though no great navigators, we could smell the land, and so we pulled away lustily, when you consider it was a race in which life was the wager, until we made, in the pride of the morning, as it might be here, at east-and-by-south a ship under bare poles; if a vessel can be called bare that had nothing better than the stumps of her three masts standing, and they without rope or rag to tell one her rig or nation. Howsomever, as there were three naked sticks left, I have always put her down for a full-rigged ship; and, when we got nigh enough to take a look at her hull, I made bold to say she was of English build.”
“You boarded her,” observed the Rover.
“A small task that, your Honour, since a starved dog was the whole crew she could muster to keep us off. It was a solemn sight when we got on her decks, and one that bears hard on my manhood,” continued Fid, with an air that grew more serious as he proceeded, “whenever I have occasion to overhaul the log-book of memory.”
“You found her people suffering of want!”
“We found a noble ship, as helpless as a halibut in a tub. There she lay, a craft of some four hundred tons, water-logged, and motionless as a church. It always gives me great reflection, sir, when I see a noble vessel brought to such a strait; for one may liken her to a man who has been docked of his fins, and who is getting to be good for little else than to be set upon a cat-head to look out for squalls.”
“The ship was then deserted?”
“Ay, the people had left her, sir, or had been washed away in the gust that had laid her over. I never could come at the truth of them particulars. The dog had been mischievous, I conclude, about the decks; and so he had been lashed to a timber head, the which saved his life, since, happily for him he found himself on the weather-side when the hull righted a little, after her spars gave way. Well, sir there was the dog, and not much else, as we could see, though we spent half a day in rummaging round, in order to pick up any small matter that might be useful; but then, as the entrance to the hold and cabin was full of water, why, we made no great affair of the salvage, after all.”
“And then you left the wreck?”
“Not yet, your Honour. While knocking about among the bits of rigging and lumber above board, says Guinea, says he, ‘Mister Dick, I hear some one making their plaints below.’ Now, I had heard the same noises myself, sir; but had set them down as the spirits of the people moaning over their losses, and had said nothing of the same, for fear of stirring up the superstition of the black; for the best of them are no better than superstitious niggers, my Lady; so I said nothing of what I had heard, until he saw fit to broach the subject himself. Then we both turned-to to listening with a will; and sure enough the groans began to take a human sound. It was a good while, howsomever, before I could make up whether it was any thing more than the complaining of the hulk itself; for you know, my Lady, that a ship which is about to sink makes her lamentations just like any other living thing.”
“I do, I do,” returned the governess, shuddering. “I have heard them, and never will my memory lose the recollection of the sounds.”
“Ay, I thought you might know something of the same, and solemn groans they are: But, as the hulk kept rolling on the top of the sea, and no further signs of her going down, I began to think it best to cut into her abaft, in order to make sure that some miserable wretch had not been caught in his hammock at the time she went over. Well, good will, and an axe, soon let us into the secret of the moans.”
“You found a child?”
“And its mother, my Lady. As good luck would have it, they were in a birth on the weather-side and as yet the water had not reached them. But pent air and hunger had nearly proved as bad as the brine. The lady was in the agony when we got her out; and as to the boy, proud and strong as you now see him there on yonder gun, my Lady, he was just so miserable, that it was no small matter to make him swallow the drop of wine and water that the Lord had left us, in order, as I have often thought since, to bring him up to be, as he at this moment is, the pride of the ocean!”
“But, the mother?”
“The mother had given the only morsel of biscuit she had to the child, and was dying, in order that the urchin might live. I never could get rightly into the meaning of the thing, my Lady, why a woman, who is no better than a Lascar in matters of strength, nor any better than a booby in respect of courage, should be able to let go her hold of life in this quiet fashion, when many a stout mariner would be fighting for each mouthful of air the Lord might see fit to give. But there she was, white as the sail on which the storm has long beaten, and limber as a pennant in a calm, with her poor skinny arm around the lad, holding in her hand the very mouthful that might have kept her own soul in the body a little longer.”
“What did she, when you brought her to the light?”
“What did she!” repeated Fid, whose voice was getting thick and husky, “why, she did a d——d honest thing; she gave the boy the crumb, and motioned as well as a dying woman could, that we should have an eye over him, till the cruise of life was up.”
“And was that all?”
“I have always thought she prayed; for something passed between her and one who was not to be seen, if a man might judge by the fashion in which her eyes were turned aloft, and her lips moved. I hope, among others, she put in a good word for one Richard Fid; for certain she had as little need to be asking for herself as any body. But no man will ever know what she said, seeing that her mouth was shut from that time for ever after.”
“She died!”
“Sorry am I to say it. But the poor lady was past swallowing when she came into our hands, and then it was but little we had to offer her. A quart of water, with mayhap a gill of wine, a biscuit, and a handful of rice, was no great allowance for two hearty men to pull a boat some seventy leagues within the tropics. Howsomever, when we found no more was to be got from the wreck, and that, since the air had escaped by the hole we had cut, she was settling fast, we thought it best to get out of her: and sure enough we were none too soon, seeing that she went under just as we had twitched our jolly-boat clear of the suction.”
“And the boy—the poor deserted child!” exclaimed the governess, whose eyes had now filled to over-flowing.
“There you are all aback, my Lady. Instead of deserting him, we brought him away with us, as we did the only other living creature to be found about the wreck. But we had still a long journey before us, and, to make the matter worse, we were out of the track of the traders. So I put it down as a case for a council of all hands, which was no more than I and the black, since the lad was too weak to talk and little could he have said otherwise in our situation. So I begun myself, saying, says I, ‘Guinea, we must eat either this here dog, or this here boy. If we eat the boy, we shall be no better than the people in your own country, who, you know, my Lady, are cannibals; but if we eat the dog, poor as he is we may make out to keep soul and body together, and to give the child the other matters.’—So Guinea, he says, says he, ‘I’ve no occasion for food at all; give ‘em to the boy,’ says he, ‘seeing that he is little, and has need of strength.’ Howsomever, master Harry took no great fancy to the dog, which we soon finished between us; for the plain reason