"Yes, like one o'clock!" chimed in Captain Dinks, showing an equal enthusiasm. "The old girl is walking away with us at a fine rate, McCarthy. I wouldn't be surprised if we logged three hundred by noon."
"And fifty more tacked on it, sorr," said the mate. "Why, we've done twelve knots ivry hour of my watch; and Adams tould me she wor running the same at eight bells. By the piper that played before Moses, it's a beauty she is--she'd bate aisy the fastest tay clipper from Shanghai!"
"Aye, that she would!" chorused the captain. "What do you think of the ship now, Miss Kate?" he added to that young lady, who was leaning against the bulwarks to leeward, looking out over the sea. She was all alone with her thoughts, Frank Harness being away forwards attending to the cutting out of a new main-topgallant sail to replace the one they had lost in the storm, the one they were now using being old and unable to stand any further rough usage.--"You are not ashamed of the old _Nancy_, now, eh?"
"Oh no, Captain Dinks," answered Kate, "I never was, even in her worst moments when we were becalmed; and I'm sure I couldn't be now, when she is sailing along so beautifully; but, what is that speck out there, captain, away to the right--is it a bird, or what?"
"Eh, my dear?" said the skipper, looking in the direction the girl had pointed--"a bird? no, by Jove, it looks like a sail of a boat well down on the horizon. Here, McCarthy, hand me your glass."
Captain Dinks seemed even more excited than he had been a moment before when he spoke of the vessel's progress; for, taking the telescope that the mate handed him, he scrutinised eagerly the object Kate had noticed.
"Good heavens, it is a boat!" he exclaimed presently, "and I think I can see a man in the stern-sheets, though I'm not quite sure: at all events, I'll run down and overhaul it, for it would never do to abandon a poor fellow in distress; no English sailor would think of such a thing! This is all your doing, Miss Kate, you and your pretty eyes, which have the best sight of any on board. We'll have to put the ship about, McCarthy," he added to the mate; "we can't fetch that boat on this tack."
"Hands 'bout ship!" roared the mate, in response to the captain's implied wish; and, immediately, there was much running to and fro on the decks, and a yelling out of orders and hoarse "aye ayes" in reply--a striking difference to the quiet that had reigned a moment or two before, when the ship was slipping along through the water with the wind on her quarter, never a sail having to be shifted or a rope pulled, and only the man at the wheel for the time being having anything to do out of the thirty odd hands on board.
"Helm's a lee!" cried the captain, and the head-sheets were let go; "raise tacks and sheets!" and the fore-tacks and main sheets were cast off; while the weather crossjack braces and the lee main braces were belayed, ready to be let go at a moment's notice, and the opposite braces hauled taut. "Mainsail haul!" then sang out the captain when these preparations were completed; when the braces being let go, the yards swung round like a top. The after yards were subsequently braced up and belayed, the main sheet hauled aft, the spanker eased over to leeward, and the watch stood by the head braces.
"Let go and haul!" was the next word of command; upon which the weather fore-braces were let go and those to leeward hauled in by the men forward under the personal supervision of Mr McCarthy, after which the men boarded the fore-tack and hauled down the jib-sheet, clapping a tackle on it as it blew fresh; and the _Nancy Bell_, braced round on the starboard tack and with the wind a little more aft than when she was running eastwards just now, stood towards the boat that Kate had been the first to perceive, drifting a bout upon the wild ocean so far away from land.
At this juncture, Frank Harness sprang up into the fore cross-trees to con the ship, by Captain Dink's directions; and presently his orders to the steersman could be heard ringing out clear and distinct above the creaking of the cordage and the wash of the sea alongside--those on the poop, listening to all they could hear with intense eagerness, and waiting for the moment when they could see for themselves the object of the ship's quest.
"Keep her up a bit--steady!"
"Aye, aye, sir; steady it is!"
"Port!"
"Port it is!"
"Steady!"
"Steady it is!"
"Luff!"
"Aye, aye, sir!"
"Keep her so!"
"There is a man in her, sir!" Frank now called out in a different tone of voice; "I can see him distinctly! He is trying to wave a handkerchief or something. He looks almost dead, poor fellow!"
The excitement on board at hearing this piece of news became all the more intensified.
"Are we nearing him?" shouted out Captain Dinks.
"Oh yes, sir; the boat bears now broad on the weather beam. Keep her steady as she is, and we can round-to close alongside. Look out, we're getting pretty close now!"
"Look out forward there!" cried the captain: but several hands were there already with the first mate at their head, a coil of rope in his hand, on the watch to heave it over the boat as soon as she was approached near enough.
"Time to come about, sir," hailed Frank from the cross-trees; and, "Hands 'bout ship!" roared out Captain Dinks, almost in the same breath.
During the bustle that ensued, those on the poop could not see what was going on forward; but when the _Nancy Bell_ paid off again from the wind on the port tack--thus resuming again what had been her previous course before the boat had been sighted--it was found that the object for which they had gone out of their way was safely alongside.
It was a shocking sight!
Four dead bodies were stretched, in every conceivable attitude of agony, across the thwarts and in the bottom of the boat, which from its shape had evidently belonged to some whaling vessel; while, sitting up in the stern-sheets, close to the helm, which his feeble hands were powerless to grasp, was the living skeleton of another sailor, whose eyes seemed starting out from their deep sockets and whose lips appeared feebly endeavouring to shape the syllables of "wa-ter!"
In a second, Mr McCarthy had leaped down into the floating coffin as it towed alongside; and, lifting the body of the solitary survivor from amidst the corpses of his dead comrades, handed the light load--for the poor, starved creature did not weigh more than a child of ten, although a man of over six feet in height--up to hands that as carefully received him; and then, leaping back again on board himself, the whale-boat was scuttled by a plank being knocked out of her bottom and cut adrift, to sink with her mortal freight into the common grave of those who die on the deep, the stench from the remains being horrible and permeating the whole ship while the boat was in contact with her.
The rescued sailor was placed in a cot and given at first a small quantity of thin soup which Snowball was busily concocting for the cabin dinner, and after that, nourishment at intervals. By these restorative measures, in a day or two, he recovered sufficiently to be able to tell who he was and how he came to be in such a sad plight.
He was a Norwegian sailor, he said, and belonged to an American whaler which had been on her voyage home after a three years' whaling cruise in the South Pacific. On rounding Cape Horn, they had encountered a fearful storm which had nearly dismasted the ship and washed the master and five hands overboard. He and four others had launched the only boat they had left over the side, trying to pick up their shipmates; but, the sea was too heavy for them, and when they endeavoured to return, they found they could not fetch their vessel again, which perhaps was just as well, for soon afterwards they saw her go down stern foremost. After that, they ran before the wind for several days and nights--how long he could not tell--until his four comrades had died from exhaustion, and he himself, he believed, was just on the point of giving up his life when providence sent the _Nancy Bell_ to succour him.
"Ach der goot Gott!" said the man in his half German, half English way, speaking brokenly and with tears in his eyes. "Der lieber Gott! I shall nevare vergersen sie nevare!"
They had had, he said, a breaker of water in the boat when they quitted the whaler, but this was soon drunk out, and although they had occasionally something to eat, catching several fish, they suffered terribly from thirst. It was that which had killed his comrades mainly.
As for him, he bore it better than them, but it must have been eight days since a drop of liquid had passed his lips.
"Golly, dat am bad," said Snowball in the galley that evening, when some of the hands gathered round the caboose to have a comfortable pipe and talk over the events of the day. "Dat orful bad, eight day widout grub or liquor! dis niggah not able 'tomach dat for sure!"
"Lor', Snowball, that's nothing when you are used to it," said Ben Boltrope, the man-o'-war's-man, who was pretty well king of the forecastle by reason of his service in the navy and general smartness as a seaman. "What is eight days in a boat without grub, when you've got to go ten, as I've done, besides wandering about on a sandy shore after swimming for a day and night to save my life? Why, that's nothing!"
"Goramighty, Massa Boltrope, you no swim ten day widout habin' notin' to eat, nor no water, hey?" said Snowball in astonishment.
"No, you blessed donkey, I didn't say that," replied the worthy Jack tar. "I said as how I had gone without grub or water for ten days after swimming for more than twelve hours."
"Dat berry rum for sure," said the darkey--"don't know how to belieb dat, no how!"
CHAPTER NINE.
THE CAPE OF STORMS.
The steady nor'-east wind that was driving the good ship so gallantly on her way when Captain Dinks put her about in order to rescue the Norwegian sailor, continued for days, accompanied by such magnificent weather, that the _Nancy Bell_ was enabled to make very rapid progress down to those lower parallels it was necessary for her to reach before she could stretch forward, in a straight line eastward towards her port of destination.
"I guess, Cap," said Mr Zachariah Lathrope, noticing the quick change of temperature in the air, day by day, as they left the tropics behind-- the mornings and evenings becoming gradually colder--"she air making as straight tracks fur the south as them northern carpet-baggers did after our little onpleasantness, what you folks called the civil war in the States; when they used to rush down from Washington arter postmasterships and other sich like offices, which wer to be hed, they kinder thought, fur the asking! She air goin' slick, and that's a fact!"
"Yes," replied the worthy captain, whose face beamed with good humour and satisfaction at the splendid run the vessel was making; "we are going ahead, working down our southing, and will soon be able to steer for New Zealand. She does walk along, and no mistake!" And then he would look aloft, perhaps, and give an order for a brace to be tautened here, or a sheet slackened there--the hours thus flying by in halcyon moments, as far as the wind and sea, and the course of the ship, and all on board were concerned--collectively and individually.
The nights in these southern latitudes were simply beautiful beyond compare.
The moon had no sooner died out than she revived again, as if gifted with perpetual youth--not an evening passing without her presence, sooner or later, on the scene--and appeared, too, to have more dignity of position and greater size than in the frigid north, ascending right up to the very zenith, instead of merely skirting the heavens, as she sometimes does here, and shining down from thence like a midnight sun in radiant splendour. The Scorpion, also, amongst the various constellations, was similarly promoted, occupying a place nearer the centre of the firmament; while the Southern Cross, quite a new acquaintance, followed by Castor and Pollux, began to descend towards the sea, becoming more diagonal as the days drew on than when originally observed, and finally vanishing from view head foremost.
As for the North Star, it had long since entirely disappeared; and only the horses in Charles' Wain yet remained above the horizon towards that point of the compass.
To Kate Meldrum's eyes, the sunsets were especially grand; for, as soon as the time came for the glorious orb of day to sink to rest in the golden west, a series of light amber-tinted clouds would arrange themselves all round the horizon, as if with a studied pictorial effect, like the stage grouping in what theatrical people term "a set piece;"
and then, by degrees, these clouds would become tinged with the loveliest kaleidoscopic colours, all vividly bright--while the far-off heaven that lay between them was of the purest palest rose-hued gold, and the sky immediately above of a faint, ethereal, blueish, transparent green.