Yet, although I had surrendered myself to sleep with the settled conviction of my absolute safety, and the feeling that my repose would continue until broken by the first rays of the morrow’s sun, I awakened suddenly while it was yet quite dark and when, as it seemed to me, I had only been asleep a very few minutes. And my awakening was not that of a person who gradually passes from sleep to wakefulness because he has enjoyed a sufficiency of rest; it was an abrupt, instant transition from complete oblivion to a state of wide-awake, startled consciousness that caused me to leap to my feet and gaze wildly about me as my eyes snapped open to the star-lit heavens. And as I did so I became aware of a rapidly growing sound of leaping, splashing, gurgling water, and a humming as of wind sweeping through tightly strained cordage, close to leeward. There was no need for me to pause and consider what was the origin of these sounds; I recognised them instantly as those given forth by a sailing ship sweeping at a high speed through the water, and I sprang forward clear of the mainmast to where the stowed foresail permitted me a clear and uninterrupted view to leeward. The next instant three dreadful cries in quick succession—exactly reproducing, tone for tone, those terrifying sounds that had so startled and unnerved me only a few hours earlier—burst from my lips; for there, almost within reach of my hand, was the black, towering mass of the hull and canvas of a large ship bearing straight down upon the longboat, and aiming accurately to strike her fair amidships. So close was she that her long slender jib-boom, with the swelling jibs soaring high among the stars, was already over my head, the phosphorescent boil and smother from the plunge of her keen bows already foamed to the gunwale of the longboat. A startled shout rang out upon the heavy night air from somebody upon her forecastle in response to those weird cries of mine, and above the hissing wash and gurgle of the water under her bows I caught the sound of naked feet padding upon her deck-planking, as the rudely awakened look-out sprang to peer over the topgallant rail. But before the man could reach the spot for which he sprang the ship was upon me, and as her cutwater crashed into the frail hull of the boat, rending it asunder and flinging the two halves violently apart to roll bottom upward on either side of the swelling bows, I leapt desperately upward at the chain bobstay, caught it, shinned nimbly up it to the bowsprit, and made my breathless way inboard, to the terror and astonishment of some twenty forecastle hands who had evidently been startled out of a sound sleep by the sudden outcries and commotion under the bows, and into the midst of whom I unceremoniously tumbled.
The excited jabber which instantly arose among my new shipmates at once apprised me that I was aboard a vessel manned by Frenchmen. A single quick glance aloft sufficed to inform me that she was barque-rigged, and probably of about three hundred and fifty tons measurement. The excited and astonished watch crowded round me, regarding me curiously—and, methought, with looks not wholly devoid of suspicion. They were, one and all, beginning to deluge me with questions, when an authoritative voice from the poop broke in with a demand to be informed what all the disturbance on the forecastle was about. Whereupon an individual among the crowd who surrounded me, and who might have been, and indeed proved to be, the boatswain, took me by the arm, and bluntly suggested that I had better accompany him aft to Monsieur Leroy, the chief mate, and explain my uninvited presence aboard the barque.
It was, of course, the only thing to be done, and I accordingly turned and walked aft, with my arm still firmly grasped by the individual who had made the suggestion, and who seemed to regard me as his prisoner, until we reached the poop ladder, up which I was somewhat unceremoniously hustled, to find myself in the presence of a broad, sturdily built man of about middle height, who stood at the head of the ladder, with his feet wide apart, lightly balancing himself to the roll and plunge of the ship. There was a lighted lamp hanging in the skylight some two or three fathoms away, and as this man stood between me and the light, which somewhat feebly gleamed out through the skylight on to the deck, I was unable to see his features or the details of his dress; but as he stepped back and somewhat to one side to make way for me the light fell full upon me, and, feeble as it was, it sufficed to show him my uniform.
“Ah!” he exclaimed sharply, “a British naval officer, if I am not very greatly mistaken. Pray, monsieur, where did you come from; and are there any more of you?”
“I came in over the bows, a minute ago, out of a boat that—thanks to the blind look-out that your people seem to keep—you ran down and cut in two. And there are no more of us; I was the only occupant of the boat,” I answered.
“The only occupant of the boat!” he exclaimed in astonishment. “You amaze me, monsieur. Is it permissible to inquire how you, a British officer, come to be adrift, quite alone, in a boat, in the middle of the Atlantic?”
Whereupon I told him briefly the story of the loss of the Dolphin, very imprudently adding the information that she was a unit of the Slave Squadron, and that I was her commander.
“Ah!” he commented, incisively, when I had finished. “An exceedingly interesting story. Captain Tourville will be pleased that we have picked you up when he hears the news to-morrow. Meanwhile, by lucky chance we happen to have an unoccupied state-room into which I will put you for the remainder of the night. Thoreau,”—to the man who had conducted me aft—“take this gentleman below to the cabin; then turn out the steward and tell him to put some bedding into the spare state-room, but to be silent about it lest he disturb the captain. And now, monsieur, permit me to bid you good-night. I trust you will rest well.”
The man Thoreau, who seemed to be an individual of exceedingly glum and taciturn disposition, thereupon signed to me to follow him, and led the way down the poop ladder and through an open door in the front of the poop which gave access to a narrow passage, some eight feet long, at the end of which was another open door giving access to the ship’s main cabin. This was a fairly roomy and comfortable apartment, plainly but tastefully fitted up, with a mahogany table running lengthwise down the middle, through the centre of which the mizenmast passed down to the depths below. A row of seats upholstered in red Utrecht velvet, and with swinging backs, was secured, on each side of the table, to the deck, between which and the sides of the cabin ran narrow strips of carpet. The sides and ends of the cabin were formed of bulkheads, the fore bulkhead being occupied by a sort of sideboard on each side of the entrance door, while against the after bulkhead stood a very handsome pianoforte, open, with a quantity of music in a stand beside it. There was a door to the right of the piano, which, I conjectured, led to the captain’s state-room, right abaft; and the side bulkheads, which like the rest of the woodwork of the cabin were painted in white enamel, were each pierced by two doors, close together, which, I had no doubt, gave access to state-rooms. My surmise as to this arrangement was proved true, a few minutes later, by the steward, an ugly, shock-headed, taciturn individual, who, still more than half asleep, presently came stumbling into the cabin with a bundle of bedding, which, having with silent care opened the aftermost door on the port side, he flung into the dark state-room and then motioned me to enter; it appeared that he intended me to make up my own bed. Well, that was no very great hardship; but I should have liked a light to enable me to see what I was about, and I turned to ask my surly friend for one, but he had already turned his back upon me and was in full retreat to the forecastle to finish his interrupted night’s rest. I therefore opened out the bundle and found that it consisted of a straw mattress, a flock pillow, and a pair of blankets, all of which I at once proceeded to arrange in the bunk, as best I could, by the dim light which entered the open door from the main cabin. Then I most thankfully removed my clothes—for the first time since the springing up of the gale—tumbled into the bunk, and at once fell fast asleep.