“For nights I had hardly slept a wink, but now I felt as if slumber would soon visit my pillow if I but threw myself on the bed. The moon, a full round one, was already declining in the west when I went below and turned in all standing, and in three minutes’ time I had sunk into a deep and dreamless sleep.
“James told me afterwards that it had taken him one long minute of solid shaking and shouting to arouse me, but he succeeded at last.
“‘Anything wrong, James?’ I said anxiously, as I sat up in my cot.
“‘Can’t say as there’s anything radically wrong, sir,’ he replied slowly. ‘Leastways, our ship’s all right. Wind and sea have both gone down. We’ve doubled the berg at last, and a good forty mile she was, and now we’re nearing another. But the strange thing is this, sir. There is men on it, a-waving their coats and things, and makin’ signs. I can just raise ’em with our Mons Meg glass.’
“‘Some natives of Tierra del Fuego, perhaps,’ I said. ‘Anyhow, James,’ I added, ‘keep bearing up towards them.’
“‘Ay, ay, sir.’
“In ten minutes’ time I was on deck, glass in hand.
“It was a grey uncertain morning, the sun just rising astern of us, and tingeing the wave-tops with a yellow glare.
“I could see the people on the ice with the naked eye. But I steadied Mons Meg on the bulwark, and had a look through that.
“‘Mercy on us, James!’ I cried, ‘these are no savages, but our own countrymen or Americans. I can count five alive, and oh, James, three lie at some little distance stretched out dark and stiff. Shake another reef out—those people want us. A sad story will be theirs to tell.’