Safe at last.
“Looks like a ship’s longboat, sir; but she’s right under the sun, and I can’t make her out.”
“Any one in her?”
“No, sir; not a soul.”
The conversation was between the captain and one of the foremast men of the good ship Sultan, bound from a western city with passengers and sugar to the port of Bristol. The wind was very light, and men were up aloft, setting the main top-gallant sail, when the boat was sighted only a little way out of the vessel’s course.
Then the captain argued, as he took a look at her from the main-top, that a boat like that might be battered, and not worth the trouble of picking up; but, on the other hand, she might; and finally, after taking the first-mate into debate, it was decided to steer a point or two to the west and pick her up.
“For who knows what she may have aboard, or what good ship may have been wrecked?” the skipper said to one of the passengers brought on deck by the news of a boat in sight, for such an event broke the monotony of the tedious voyage.
As the news spread through the ship the rest of the passengers came on deck, and when the boat was neared, the captain, as he stood inspecting the object through his glass, began to be satisfied that the find was in good condition, and then the announcement came from aloft that there were two bodies lying in the bottom.
The excitement now became fierce; one of the ship’s boats was swung out on the davits ready for lowering, manned, and dropped, and finally the prize was brought alongside, with its freight still alive, but apparently at their last gasp.
Fortunately the captain was a man of old experience in the tropics, and noting that there was neither food nor water on board, he put the right construction upon the poor fellows’ condition—that they were dying of hunger and thirst, after escaping from some wrecked or sinking vessel.