“Ay; then you fell in with the African,” said the Rover.
“Then we made our acquaintance; and, although his colour is no whiter than the back of a whale, I care not who knows it, after master Harry, there is no man living who has an honester way with him, or in whose company I take greater satisfaction. To be sure, your Honour, the fellow is something contradictory and has a great opinion of his strength and thinks his equal is not to be found at a weather-earing or in the bunt of a topsail; but then he is no better than a black, and one is not to be too particular in looking into the faults of such as are not actually his fellow creatures.”
“No, no; that would be uncharitable in the extreme.”
“The very words the chaplain used to let fly aboard the ‘Brunswick!’ It is a great thing to have schooling, your Honour; since, if it does nothing else, it fits a man for a boatswain, and puts him in the track of steering the shortest course to heaven. But, as I was saying, there was I and Guinea shipmates and in a reasonable way friends, for five years more; and then the time arrived when we met with the mishap of the wreck in the West-Indies.”
“What wreck?” demanded his officer.
“I beg your Honour’s pardon; I never swing my head-yards till I’m sure the ship won’t luff back into the wind; and, before I tell the particulars of the wreck, I will overrun my ideas, to see that nothing is forgotten that should of right be first mentioned.”
The Rover, who saw, by the uneasy glances that she cast aside, and by the expression of her countenance how impatient his companion was becoming for a sequel that approached so tardily, and how much she dreaded an interruption, made a significant sign to her to permit the straight-going tar to take his own course, as the best means of coming at the facts they both longed so much to hear. Left to himself, Fid soon took the necessary review of the transactions, in his own quaint manner; and, having happily found that nothing which he considered as germain to the present relation was omitted, he proceeded at once to the more material, and what was to his auditors by far the most interesting, portion of his narrative.
“Well, as I was telling your Honour,” he continued, “Guinea was then a maintopman, and I was stationed in the same place aboard the ‘Proserpine,’ a quick-going two-and-thirty, when we fell in with a bit of a smuggler, between the islands and the Spanish Main; and so the Captain made a prize of her, and ordered her into port; for which I have always supposed, as he was a sensible man, he had his orders. But this is neither here nor there, seeing that the craft had got to the end of her rope, and foundered in a heavy hurricane that came over us, mayhap a couple of days’ run to leeward of our haven. Well, she was a small boat; and, as she took it into her mind to roll over on her side before she went to sleep, the master’s mate in charge, and three others, slid off her decks to the bottom of the sea, as I have always had reason to believe, never having heard any thing to the contrary. It was here that Guinea first served me the good turn; for, though we had often before shared hunger and thirst together, this was the first time he ever jumped overboard to keep me from taking in salt water like a fish.”
“He kept you from drowning with the rest?”
“I’ll not say just that much, your Honour; for there is no knowing what lucky accident might have done the same good turn for me. Howsomever, seeing that I can swim no better nor worse than a double-headed shot, I have always been willing to give the black credit for as much, though little has ever been said between us on the subject; for no other reason, as I can see, than that settling-day has not yet come. Well, we contrived to get the boat afloat, and enough into it to keep soul and body together, and made the best of our way for the land, seeing that the cruise was, to all useful purposes, over in that smuggler. I needn’t be particular in telling this lady 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