The Ocean Waifs. Mayne Reid

unless you on de big raff?”

      “I’m on a raft of my own. Have you one, Snowball?”

      “Ya, massa Ben, ya! I make um out o’ de wreck an de water-cask.”

      “Are ye all alone?”

      “Not ’zackly dat. The pickaninny be long wi’ me—de cabing gal. You know de lilly Lalee?”

      “Oh! she it be!” muttered Ben, now remembering the little cabin passenger of the Pandora. “You bean’t movin’, be you?”

      “No,” responded Snowball, “lying on de water like a log o’ ’hogany wood. Han’t move a mile ebba since de bustin’ ob de powder ball.”

      “Keep your place then. We’ve got oars. We’ll row down to you.”

      “We—you say we? You got some’dy sides yaself on dat raff?”

      “Little Will’m.”

      “Lilly Willum—ah? dat ere brave lilly lad. See ’im jess as I go down in de cabin fo’ get de pickaninny. See ’im forrard with axe—he knock off de gratin’ ob de fore-hatch—he set all dem ’ere niggas free. It warn’t no use—not bit good o’ dem. Dey all got eat up by de shark, or dey go down straight to de bottom. Gorramity! how dey s’riek an’ ’cream, an’ jump overboard into de water!”

      Neither the sailor nor Little William paid any heed to the negro’s half-soliloquised narrative, further than to make use of his voice to guide them through the darkness towards the spot whence it proceeded. On discovering that it was Snowball who was near, both had turned upon their own craft, and were now rowing it in the opposite direction to that in which, but the moment before, they had been so eagerly propelling it.

      As they now pulled to leeward, they had the wind in their favour; and by the time the negro arrived at the end of his disjointed narrative, they were within half a cable’s length of him, and, through the darkness, were beginning to distinguish the outlines of the odd embarkation that carried Snowball and his protégé.

      Just then the lightning blazed across the canopy of heaven, discovering the two rafts—each to the other. In ten seconds more they were en rapport, and their respective crews congratulating each other, with as much joyfulness as if the unexpected encounter had completely delivered them from death and its dangers!