Fair play

by Emma Dorothy Eliza Nevitte Southworth

With this resolution he went into the captain’s private cabin to look for a small telescope, which he felt sure was there, and which he wished to use in surveying the causeway and the shore. He found it and came out. The little dog jumped down from the doctor’s berth, where he had nestled himself in his accustomed place to sleep, and began barking and jumping up and wagging his tail by way of a morning greeting to his new master.

Justin patted his head, and then went out on deck, followed by his little four-footed companion.

The ship had struck at right angles with the chain of rocks, so that the starboard gangway was towards the shore. There Justin stood and, adjusted his glass to view the far-reaching causeway and the distant land.

But, even with the aid of his telescope, he could discover little more than he knew before. He could only more distinctly ascertain that the causeway was a chain of rocks leading to the shore—a road that would be covered with water at high tide, and be entirely bare at low tide; and that the distant land presented only a rock-bound and forbidding aspect.

While he was still gazing, he felt something claw at his boots, mewing pitifully; and the next instant he heard a shrill barking, and spitting, and clapper-clawing. And he looked down to see the cat and dog engaged in a fierce combat, in which the fur flew plenteously.

Justin separated them, lifting the cat up in his arms, and giving the dog an admonishing kick. Then he took them both down into the storeroom and fed them apart.

While he was busy in this humane duty, he was greeted by a dismal sound—a prolonged “Ooom-mow!” that he knew must come from the captain’s cow. He followed the sound until it led him to her pen, which was between decks in the stern, a position that had saved her from being drowned, as the stern was lifted at such a high angle upon the rocks. Justin had no sooner reached the cowpen, than he was greeted by a perfect babel of noises from the animals confined in that part of the ship. The hens clucked, the ducks quacked, the sheep baa’d, and, above all, the pigs squealed as if they would have squealed themselves to death, and their hearers to deafness.

All these animals had been saved by their position from drowning, but they were in great danger of starving.

Justin went back to the storeroom, and found an ax, and broke open several boxes of grain; and then went to the fresh water butts, and drew water, and mixed food, and carried it to the pens, and fed the famished creatures.

Then he set a pan of milk in the cabin for the cat. After which he filled a little basket with a day’s provisions for himself, and put a pair of revolvers in one pocket and a small telescope and a pocket compass in the other. Then he put on a broad-brimmed hat, and took in his hand a stout walking-stick, called the dog to follow him, and went carefully down the leaning deck to the bows of the ship, that were nearly on a level with the rocks. With one bound he sprang from the ship to the causeway. The little dog jumped after him.