“Ah, why indeed,” repeated the captain. “I can’t blame you for entertaining that notion, my lad; for I, old hand as I am, did not suspect their infernal treachery and cunning. You see, when the pirate ship came up, we were just preparing to blow up the hatches and rush on deck. No doubt they would have got the better of us, and killed us to a man; but before they had managed that they would have suffered considerably themselves. That wily villain, Andy Duncan—I have been told since it was he, and I have no doubt it was—devised a scheme by which they would be enabled to get rid of us quite as easily as if they had blown out all our brains, but without incurring any risks themselves. We discovered, when we had been an hour or two on board the boats, that some trick had been played with them, and they were very slowly but surely filling.”
“The merciless wretches!” exclaimed Ernest; “and you were some hundreds of miles from shore?”
“Yes, quite five hundred from Ascension, which was the nearest land.”
“How did you escape, sir?” exclaimed De Walden.
“Only by God’s mercy. The discovery was first made in the launch which Grey commanded. The night, you will remember, was very dark, or it probably would have been made before; but they did not find it out till it was too late to keep it afloat even for a time. They shouted to us for help, but she had sunk before we could reach them, and there was a strong current just where she went down, which swept them all away—except one of the mates, who managed to keep afloat until we picked him up. On hearing his story, we contrived to strike a light, and examined our own boat. There was a leak in her too, but providentially only just below the waterline. I suppose whoever did the job, thought the boat floated deeper than she did; but by lightening her as much as possible, and throwing all the weight that remained on the other side, we raised the damaged part out of water, and then baled her out. When day broke we were enabled to examine her more carefully. The injury was beyond our power to repair effectually. All we could do was just to keep her afloat, and if the sea had not been exceptionally calm we could not have done even that. Moreover, we had been obliged to throw overboard nearly all our provisions and water. In short, we should not only have never reached Ascension, but must have perished of hunger and thirst very speedily, if on the morning of the third day, shortly after dawn, a vessel had not appeared on our lee beam, apparently running before the light breeze which rippled the sea.
“We tried to attract her attention, but without effect. She was so near to us that we thought she must have seen us; but she did not alter her course, or in any way acknowledge our signals. Finding that she took no heed, we resolved, as a last chance, to reach her by rowing, though this obliged us to right our boat, and the water poured in so fast that incessant baling would not keep it down. At last, when we had got quite close to the ship, the boat was so water-logged that she could not have been kept afloat ten minutes more. We hailed again and again, but there was no answer, nor was any one to be seen on deck. We came to the conclusion that she had been deserted by her crew for some reason, or that they had all died on board, and that she was drifting aimlessly over the deep. Fortunately there was a rope hanging over her bows, up which one of the sailors climbed, and was followed by the others in succession. The last of us was hardly out of the cutter when she went down.”
“Had she been deserted?” inquired Ernest. “Well, yes, by the survivors of her crew, that is. She was evidently a Portuguese trader running, I apprehend, between the West India Islands and Lisbon, and had probably twenty or twenty-five men on board. She must have been attacked by one of the terrible fevers prevalent in the hot climates, the action of which is sometimes so rapid that all attempts to stay it are useless. Several, I suppose, must have died, and the rest were so terrified by the fear of infection, that they had left her. Any way, there were no human remains on board, and all the ship’s boats were gone.”
“I should think the danger into which you ran was worse than the one from which you had escaped,” observed Queen Laura.
“We were of the same opinion, madam,” observed Captain Wilmore. “If we could have repaired our own boat, or if a single one of the ship’s boats had been left, we should have preferred continuing our own voyage in it. But as that was impossible, we were obliged to remain in the vessel. But after consulting with Captain Renton, I resolved to run, not for Ascension, but for the Cape de Verdes, though they were considerably further off. I don’t know whether any of you have ever been at Ascension?”
“We sighted it once, sir,” said Lavie; “but I never went ashore there.”