CHAPTER VI.
Calamity and danger are among the many circumstances which help to break down the distinctions of life into reasonable and helpful differences, and serve to bring out the cementing power of sympathy, which is the surest bond of social union. A common trouble does much to awaken a common interest; and so it proved with the saved remnant who pulled for their lives from the Sarah Ann. The captain, the cook, the mate, and the cabin-boy forgot for the time those ruling ideas of superior and inferior, which so frequently make great men tyrants and poor men obsequious, and as companions in tribulation endeavoured without distinction to manage the boat and effect a landing. But the task was no easy one, and had they been strangers to the island, in all probability they would have perished on the rocky shore; for Lundy tolerates but one small beach, defying intrusion elsewhere by its rough, inaccessible cliffs, towering hundreds of feet above the sea. For that beach the seamen longed and strove, and their efforts were so far successful that they ran in amongst the breakers, where, despite their utmost efforts, the boat was capsized, and they had to struggle as best they could for a footing on the gritty strand.
'Just!' exclaimed the 'prentice in a moody tone, as they stood on the shore wringing out their drenched clothes,—'just!'
'Just what?' said Stauncy, in a kinder tone than Jim was accustomed to.
'Just saved,' he replied; 'but I s'pose you reckoned on that when the brig was once off here.'
'Why, to be sure,' rejoined the mate; 'if there was any chance for us, it was the lee of Lundy, where nobody is more at home than ourselves.'
'Certainly,' responded the captain; 'I made sure of a chance if we only rounded Lametry; and here we are.'
'We've only got what we stand up in,' the 'prentice answered in a querulous and somewhat independent tone; 'I wonder who'll pay me for all I've lost.'
'You'll get as good a share as the rest,' said Pickard; 'and I wonder, Mister Jim, what makes you so forward.'
'I've got as much right to speak as you,' he replied. 'I don't think we ought to be turned adrift this way, and lose everything; we ain't ought.'