"Not being asleep, however, a sudden stir on deck, an hour or two after that, brought me out of my cot, to look through the scuttle in the side. The brig had hauled her wind from aft on to her starboard quarter, making less way than before it, of course; I heard the captain's voice near the after-hatchway, too; so accordingly I slipped on my clothes, and went quietly up. The Podargus was running through the long broad swells usual thereabouts, with her head somewhere toward north-east; the officers all up, the whole of the crew in both watches clustered beyond the brig's fore-course, and the captain evidently roused, as well as impatient; though I couldn't at first make out the reason of her being off her course. As soon as she fell off a little, however, to my great horror I could see a light far ahead of us, right in the gloom of the clouds, which for a moment you'd have supposed was the moon rising red and bloody, till the heave of the sea betwixt us and it showed how both of us were dipping: and now and then it gave a flaring glimmer fair out from the breast of the fog-bank, while the breeze was sending a brown puff of smoke from it now and then to leeward against the clouds; through which you made a spar or two licking up the flame, and a rag of canvas fluttering across on the yard.
"Twas neither more nor less than a ship on fire—no doubt the vessel seen abeam of us that evening—a sight at which Captain Wallis seemingly forgot his hurry to make St Helena, in the eagerness shown by all aboard to save the poor fellows. Suddenly there was another wild gleam from the burning craft, and we thought it was over altogether, when up shot a wreath of fire and smoke again, then a fierce flash with a blue burst of flame, full of sparks, and all sorts of black spots and broken things, as if she had blown up while she heaved the last time on the swell. Everything was pitch dark next minute in her place, as if a big blot of ink had come instead; the brig-of-war herself rolling with a flap of her headsails up against the long heavy bank of cloud that blocked the horizon. 'Keep her away, sirrah!' shouted Captain Wallis, and the Podargus surged ahead as before, all of us standing too breathless to speak, but counting the heads of the waves as they flickered past her weather-beam. 'God's sake!' exclaimed the captain at last, 'this is terrible, Aldridge. If I had only overhauled her, as I meant at first, we might have helped them in time; for no doubt the fire must have been commenced when we noticed her yawing yonder a couple of hours ago, sir.' 'I think not, sir,' said his lieutenant; 'we were against the clear; and if they'd been in danger then, she'd have fired a distress-gun. There couldn't have been much powder aboard, sir—more likely rum, I think!'
'For Heaven's sake!' continued the captain, 'let's look about—she must surely have had boats out, or something, Mr Aldridge! The best thing we can do is to fire a few times as we bear down—see that bow-gun cleared away, Mr Moore, and do it!'
"We might have been about a mile, as was guessed, from where she was last seen, when the brig fired a gun to windward, still standing on under everything. At the second flash that lighted up the belly of the clouds, with the black glitter of the swells below them, I fancied I caught a moment's glimpse of something two or three miles away. It was too short to say, however; and soon after the twinkle of a light, seemingly hoisted on a spar, was seen little more than half-a-mile upon the brig's lee-bow, dipping and going out of sight at times, but plain enough when it rose. Down went the Podargus for the spot, sending the foam off her cutwater; and it was no long time before a wild hail from several voices could be made out almost close aboard. Ten minutes after she was brought to the wind, heaving a rope to the men on a loose raft of casks and spars, as it pitched alongside of her, with the sail hauled down on a spar they had stuck up, and a lantern at the head of it; after which the raft was cast off, and the poor fellows were safe on board.
"Two of them seemed to be half-drowned, the one wrapped up in a wet pilot-coat, his face looking white and frightened enough by the glimmer of the lanterns: the other darker a good deal, so far as I could make him out for the crowd about him, and he didn't seem able to speak; accordingly both of them were taken at once below to the surgeon. The rest were four half-naked blacks, and a little chap with earrings and a seaman's dress who was the spokesman on the quarter-deck to the captain's questions—plainly American by his snuffling sort of drawl.
"'Are there no more of you afloat?' was the first thing asked, to which the Yankee sailor shook his head. She was an American bark, he said, from a voyage of discovery round the two Capes; and he was mate himself, and the skipper, being addicted to his cups, had set a cask of rum on fire; so finding they couldn't get it under besides being wearied at the pumps, on account of an old leak, the men broke into the spirit-room, and got dead drunk. He and the blacks had patched up a raft in a hurry for bare life, barely saving the passenger and his servant who had jumped overboard; the passenger was a learned sort of a man, and his servant was a Mexican. Most of this I found next day, from the gun-room officers; however, I heard the mate of the burnt barque inquire of the captain whereabouts they were, as the skipper was the only man who could use a chronometer or quadrant, and the last gale had driven them out of their reckonings a long way. 'Somewhere south of the Line, I guess?' said he; but, on being told, the fellow gave a bewildered glance round him, seemingly, and a cunning kind of squint after it, as I fancied. 'Well,' said he, 'I guess we're considerable unlucky; but I consider to turn in, if agreeable!' The man had a way, in fact, half free-and-easy, half awkward that struck me; especially when he said, as he went below, he supposed 'this was a war-brig,' and hoped there 'wasn't war between the States and the old country?' 'No, my man,' said the captain, 'you may set your mind at ease on that point; but I'm afraid, nevertheless, we'll have to land you at St Helena!'
"'What, mister?' said the American, starting, 'that's where you've got Boneyparty locked up? Well now, if you give me a good berth for a few, mister, I guess I'll rayther ship aboard you, till I get a better! What's your wage just now, if I may ask, captain?' 'Well, well,' said the captain, laughing, 'we'll see to-morrow, my man!'—and the American went below. 'Set stu'nsails again, Mr Aldridge,' continued Captain Wallis, 'and square yards. Why, rather than have such a fellow in the ship's company, Aldridge, I'd land him without Sir Hudson's leave!'
"For my own part, next day, I should have given more notice to our new shipmates while the brig steered fair before the wind—the blacks and the mate leaning about her forecastle, and the other two being expected by the surgeon to come pretty well round before night, though the captain had gone to see them below; but a thing turned up all at once that threw me once more full into the thought of Violet Hyde, till I was perfectly beside myself with the helpless case I was in. The note Tom Westwood had shown me was still in the pocket of my griffin's coat, though I hadn't observed it till now; and what did I feel at finding out, that, instead of one from her to Westwood, it was a few words from my own sister, little Jane, saying in a pretty, bashful sort of way, that her brother Ned must come home before she could engage to anything! You may fancy how I cursed myself for being so blind; but a fellow never thinks his own sister charming at all—and what else could I have done at any rate? All I hoped for, was to get aboard of some Indiaman at St Helena, and there was nothing else I wearied to see the island again for. I may say I walked the brig's lee quarter-deck till daybreak; but anyhow the look-out from the foreyard had scarce sung out 'St Helena on the weather-bow!' when I was up, making out the round blue cloud in the midst of the horizon, with a white streak across it, like a bird afloat in the hazy blue, with the clear gleam from eastward off our starboard quarter running round to it.