CHAPTER XXXIV.

RESCUED.

THE wind fortunately did not increase when the darkness fell, but the gloom of the night gave so stormy an aspect to the ocean that you would have thought it blew as hard again as it did. I cannot express how dismal was the appearance of the weltering liquid blackness in whose heart our tiny ark laboured, one moment flung to the sight of the stars, the next plunged into the momentary stagnation and midnight of the Atlantic trough, with long dashes of pale foam heaving like great winding-sheets all about us, and the slender moon leaping with a troubled silver face from the rims of the flying clouds, to render the picture ghastly with the cold, death-like complexion of her light. There was to be no couch for Miss Grant at the bottom of the boat. The fabric rode well, and took but very little water over the bows; but the wet came in fast through the showering of the spray off the seas curling into foam ahead of us, and obliged me again and again to bale, though it occupied but a very little while to free us.

My companion sat beside me in the stern sheets, to which place indeed I had transported most of our little cargo of fruit, water, and the like, that the combined weight aft might give the boat's nose a good cock-up for the run of the surge. Happily, though Nc. 360.-vOL. LX.

it all looked chill as a wintry Channel scene, the wind blew warm, wet as it was; and the water was warm, too, with the first touch of it, though, to be sure, if you let it lie long trickling upon your face the breeze made it frosty. Conversation was out of the question. The roaring of the near seas drowned our voices. To render ourselves audible we had to put our lips to each other's ear, sheltering our mouths even then with the hand against the blast, that would otherwise have clipped our words away as you'd snick the twig from a bough with a pair of shears. I saw that the night was to be a fearfully trying one for us both. My own attention was kept so much on the strain by observing the plunges of the boat, and watching the seas rolling at and past us, that I protest my very soul ached as if it were some physical faculty in me. Our misery, too, was increased by the obligation to keep seated. In calm water, as you have seen, we moved about and eased our cramped limbs by passing to the end of the little craft, or by standing; but now we durst not stir, not only for fear of throwing the boat out of trim, but lest we should be flung overboard by one of her many extravagant leaps.

Thus passed the time. I occupied my mind by considering what we should do on the morrow, if the dawn found us alive and the weather moderated. The one ship we had seen at

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sundown made me hope that others might show next day; but I could not forget that we made but a minute speck on this mighty surface, invisible at a very short distance away, and that our chance of being picked up must lie in a vessel passing close to us.

It was shortly before two in the morning, as I might guess by the passage of the stars, that the wind slackened, shifted into the south-west, and hung there a soft and pleasant breeze, with a thinning away of the clouds, a brighter glory of starlight, a more diamond-like edge to the curl of the moon now sailing low, and a spreading out of the sea into a large, round swell, the sleepy cradling of which was like a benediction to the senses after the sharp, snarling curses of the surges which had been racking our bones and bewildering our brains for hours. We sat talking awhile, but my companion's voice was broken by weariness, and presently she made no answer to some question I put, and on looking at her I saw that she had fallen asleep. I supported her as before, but it was not long ere I was nodding too. Her soft and regular respiration was an invitation to slumber; the rhythmic swing of the boat, too, was poppy-like in its influence. My eyelids turned into lead, my chin sunk upon my breast.

"Boat ahoy, I say!"

I turned, and then sprang to my feet with a shout of joy. Close astern of us, within toss of a biscuit, lay a little fore-and-aft schooner, with her canvas shaking to the light southwesterly wind into the very eye of which her jibboom pointed. She was a craft of some twenty-five tons, painted black, sitting low on the water, a beautiful model to the eye, schooner-rigged as I have said, her canvas old and grimy and liberally patched, her masts badly stayed, the standing rigging gray for want of tar. A fellow in a red shirt and a blue cap, like a French smacksman's, leaned with his bare arms upon the rail, staring at us with a face of a dark yellow. Over the forecastle bulwarks were the heads of four negroes attired in bright colours, and another negro stood at the long slender tiller that swayed in his hand, whilst he gazed at us with his mouth open behind the yellow-faced man. All these details were swept upon my mind with photographic swiftness and fidelity.

I cried out: "For God's sake, take us on board. You shall be handsomely repaid for any trouble we give you. We have out-lived a terrible night, and are in the greatest distress, and must perish if you do not receive us."

"Can yah manage to scull dah boat 'longside, d'yah tink?"

"Oh, yes!" I cried, "oh, yes!"

I whipped out my knife, sprang forward deliriously, dragged at the sea-anchor, hauled it streaming into the boat, severed the ligatures, and seizing a paddle floundered aft with it, and fell to sculling the boat towards the schooner. Once a horrible swooning feeling seized me, and I was forced to pause to rally my senses, on which the yellow man bawled out, "Look out for dis yeerie line," and hove a coil of rope into the boat, which Miss Grant caught, and we were dragged alongside. I thrust my companion's parcel of letters and jewellery into my pocket, and helped her up the side. But the moment we gained the deck the brave

and beautiful girl broke down. She hid her face and sobbed bitterly. Her emotion was tonical as an obligation upon me to bear up, otherwise I believe I should have given way as weakly as any woman, so true it is that sudden joys, like griefs, confound at first. I drew her gently to the side, longing to soothe her with a lover's caress, though I started to the mere fancy of such a thing and half turned from her, for now that we stood upon a vessel's deck again she seemed to slip magically back to the old bearings she had aboard the Iron Crown. It was the mere sensitiveness in my humour then, no doubt, but I felt it as a sudden chill at my heart, that my lovely associate on the island, my patient, tender, heroic companion of the boat, had changed into Miss Aurelia Grant merely, the young lady whom Lwas escorting to Rio to oblige my cousin, who would marry her on her arrival.

She looked at me through her tears, smiling.

"What would yah like done wid dis yeerie boat, sah? exclaimed the yellow-faced man.

"Get her aboard, if you please," said I, 66 or take her in tow, or cast her adrift. She's of no use to us now, thank God."

"Them rugs is yourn, I reckon?" said the man.

state of excitement, perhaps with a notion of putting life into his niggers. Indeed, he was the oddest figure that could be imagined. His nose was that of the negro, and his mouth so twisted, whether by disease or disaster, that the left-hand corner of it was on a line with his right nostril, whilst the rest of it went up into his cheek in the shape of the paring of a fingernail. One eye was larger than the other, the dusk of them indicating African blood. His beauty was further improved by a strange growth of short black hair upon his chin, every fibre as wide apart as the teeth of a comb, and as coarse as the bristles of a hog. There was the negro twang in his voice, and he seemed incapable of speaking without hallooing. He wore, in addition to the cap and shirt I have already named, a pair of dirty duck trousers which ran flowing to his naked yellow feet; but grotesquely ugly as he was-and the more so for the contrast of his twisted, guinea-coloured face betwixt his old blue cap and faded red shirt-he could not have been more beautiful in my sight than had he been one of those dewy, ambrosial, lovely spirits who, in "Paradise Lost," with flaming lances keep the devil at a respectful distance from the sleeping Adam and his wife.

All was now bustle; the negroes walloped about, tumbling into the boat, bawling out like school-boys at play, and making the craft we had vacated splash as though they would capsize her. Amidst the utmost confusion, the little craft's nose was got to the gangway, the block of the luff-tackle hooked on to the ringbolt in the stem, and then all hands came aboard to hoist her in. The fellow at the helm left it to help, and though my emotions just then leaned very little to the side of merriment, I laughed till I was breathless at the contortions of the blacks as they pulled in company with the yellow man, every dusky throat delivering a yell with each drag on its own account; till all at once, just as the bows of the boat

were showing over the side, crack! the fall of the tackle parted, down tumbled the negroes in a heap, with the yellow man on top of them, where they spurred and kicked at one another like a lump of spiders in the bottom of a glass, filling the air with execrations and shouts, whilst they rolled over and over in an inextricable muddle of black faces, cucumber shanks, red, yellow, and white headgear, and shirts that threatened to become rags in a very little while if the sport went on.

I looked for the boat and found her under water, floating with just the line of her gunwales above the surface, and the rugs, shawls, umbrellas, and the like quietly sinking past her in the blue heave of the swell. The yellow man scrambled out of the twisting group with his cap gone; and now he proved himself uglier than had been at all conjecturable whilst his head was covered, for he was as bald as a turnip down to the semi-circle where his wiry hair bushed out thick as the frill of a Persian cat and as coarse as cocoa-nut fibre. In fact his bald head showed now like the top of an ostrich's egg stuck in the hair of a mattress. He ran to look at the boat, and when he saw she was under water he yelled out, "Yah dingy villains! Look at yah work, yah black piggies!" and in a paroxysm of rage stooped his head and went butt in for the first negro at hand; but Ebenezer, as the black was called, was too sharp for him; he sprang aside, and the yellow man drove head foremost against the single old pump that stood before the mainmast. The blow that he fetched himself would have lasted a white man for a lifetime, but it appeared to cause the fellow no further inconvenience than was to be remedied by a brief spell of rubbing. I was getting tired of all this.

66 Better get the block unhooked and let the boat go," said I. "What I want has floated out of her, and there's nothing left in the locker that's worth the saving. Besides, I want to have

a talk with you. You'll lose nothing by shoving ahead."

"Right yah are," he answered. "Jump now, some black debbil, and free de block. Way 'loft, way 'loft, Toby, and bring dot tackle down."

He looked about him for his cap, found it, put it on his head, and came aft to where Miss Grant and I had seated ourselves on some small raised contrivance just abaft the rudderhead.

"What's the name of this schooner?" said I.

"Dah Orphan, sah," he answered. "Where are you bound to, may I ask?"

"We're out a-wrecking," he answered. Then seeing I did not understand, he added: "Dah Orphan's a wrecking craft dat wisits dah islands 'way from Providence down to Inaguey and dah Mona passage, to see what's to be got 'long shore."

I understood him now, for I had heard of such vessels. "You hail from Nassau, I suppose?"

66

Yaas," he said, "dat's my coun try," inspecting first Miss Grant and then myself with growing curiosity.

"I may take it you're captain here?"

"Dat's so, sah.”

"Your name, pray?" said I.

"Capt'n Emilius Jeremiah Ducrow," he answered, drawing himself up, and speaking slowly and emphatically.

"Well, Captain Ducrow," said I, preserving my gravity with an effort that was the harder for the demureness I noticed in Miss Grant's face," before I tell you our story, let me thank you from the very bottom of my heartand, of course, I speak for this lady as for myself-for your handsome and timely rescue of us. God knows how it must have been with us both had succour been delayed. I can afford to pay you for any services you may render us, and I simply tell you this, that you may know you and your little ship's company will not be losers by

your complying with any request I may make you."

He kicked out with his heel as he scraped a bow at me, and said: "I see yah a gent. I witness it troo dah accent of yah language. Dere's nebber no mistakin' a gent. I mix in fustclass company ashore myself, and could tell perlite breedin' blindfold by de mere smell of him. Now, den," he roared, suddenly turning and looking forward, "get dat gangway shipped. Tunder and slugs! 'tain't dinner-time yet, yah blooming shark-fishes, and so I tells yah. Lay aft to dis hellum, Moses. Beg a t'ousand pardons, sah," he continued, rounding upon me with another scrape and a kick-up behind, "but niggers is de most excrooshatin' people to manage. Dey works 'pon your temper more nor aching teef," saying which he extended his arms, drooping his yellow hands, whilst he turned his head from the direction in which he seemed to point, with his face puckered up into an expression of loathing which the twist of his mouth rendered monstrously ugly and comical.

"Well, now," said I, "I want to tell you our story, but before I begin, I should be glad to know if there's anything to eat aboard this little hooker.'

"Oh, yes, sah; dere's eating to be had-middling coarse, jest sailor's eating, sah; not fit for dis lubly lady," bowing low to Miss Grant, "but dah best Capt'n Ducrow can perwide." "We have not had bite nor sup since last night," said I. "What can you

give us?"

"Will yah hab it yeerie or in dah cabin ?" he inquired.

"Here," said I, making a shrewd guess at the temperature below.

He called to one of the negroes and told him to put a pot of chocolate upon the fire, then to lay aft with a bit of cold salt beef, ship's biscuits, plates, and the like; "And bear a hand, mah humming-bird," he said, "for 'tain't dinner-time yet, yah know. Now, sah," he continued, addressing

I at once went to work and related our adventures, and on coming to an end I asked him if he could give me news of the Iron Crown.

He answered no, he had not heard of the vessel, but that he had learnt about a fortnight ago, though he could not recollect the source whence he had received the intelligence, that a vessel bound to Porto Rico had been spoken, and reported that she had on board four men, whom she had found adrift in an open boat, and that the fellows said they had gone in search of a man and lost their ship in thick weather; "And I believe, sah," said Captain Ducrow, "dat dah name of dah wessel dey gave was dah Iron Crown; but I won't swear to it, for I ain't got no memory worf speaking of, 'cept for poetry."

Here he sent a languishing look at Miss Grant.

"For poetry!" I rapped out. "Do you know," I exclaimed, turning to my companion, "that this looks uncommonly like as though poor old Gordon and his men had been picked up."

"I hope so," she answered; "and it seems so indeed. It will diminish by so much the horror of our memories of the ship. And four men too, Mr. Musgrave! That must mean that the poor cabin-boy was recovered."

"Pray, captain," said I, "which is the nearest port hereabouts; some civilized place of houses and ships, I mean, where we may be able to put ourselves in the way of getting to Rio?"

He looked steadfastly around the horizon as though seeking for information on the gleaming sea-line, and then gazing at me with one eye shut full of thought, he exclaimed, "Dere'll be nuffen nearer than Nassoo."

"And how far off will that be?" said I-"in the shape of time, I mean."