The waves danced and glittered in the sunlight. Over the spot where the ship and her living freight had sunk the blue waves closed, and there was nothing to tell of their vanished prey.
A bottle bobbed about, carried now here now there by the playful waves. As the Bon Espoir sank, the clergyman’s hand had hurled it far out to sea. It contained a leaf torn from his pocket-book.
The ship Diana, bound for Baltimore, sailed late that afternoon over the spot where the Bon Espoir had sunk.
A sailor who was in the rigging cried out that he could see something that looked like a barrel floating in the sea some distance away.
A boat was manned and put off.
In half an hour it returned with a strange story.
To the barrel they had seen in the water clung a man in the last stage of exhaustion. They had released him, and brought him with them.
Tenderly the sailors lifted a half-drowned body from the stern of the boat, and it was hoisted on board.
The surgeon of the Diana took it in charge, and pronounced it to be still alive.
Presently the half-drowned man opened his eyes.