“Oh, that is all right,” said Dick, in response to their expressions of thanks; “I am, of course, very glad that it has fallen to my lot to render you such a service. And it was no doubt a lucky accident for you that I happened to be cruising outside the reef to-day. But for that circumstance I should certainly not have seen the raft, and in that case I am afraid there would have been no hope for you, for the raft would have passed some miles to the westward of the island, and your chance of being picked up would in that case have been remote in the extreme, for although I have now been here for some months I have not sighted a single sail since I arrived here. And now, if you have no objection, I should like to hear your yarn.”
“Well, sir,” answered Nicholls, “I don’t know that there’s very much to tell; but, such as it is, you’re welcome to it. We belonged to a very tidy little barque—the Wanderer, of Liverpool—and sailed from Otago—which, as I suppose you know, sir, is in New Zealand—for London on—what’s to-day?”
Leslie gave him the date.
“The dickens it is,” ejaculated Nicholls; “then I’ve lost a day of my reckoning! Must have been a day longer on that raft than I thought. Well, anyhow, if what you say, sir, be true—and I’m sure I don’t doubt your word—it’s just a month ago, this blessed day, that we sailed from Otago, bound, as I say, for London, with orders to call at Callao on our way home. We sailed with a regular westerly roarer astern of us, to which the ‘old man’—I mean the capt’n, sir,—showed every rag that would draw, up to to’gallant stunsails, and the skipper kept well to the south’ard, hoping to make all the easting that he wanted out of that westerly wind. And I reckon that he did, too, for we carried that same breeze with us to longitude 115 degrees, when we hauled up to the nor’ard and east’ard. Then about two days later—wasn’t it, Bob?”
“Ay,” answered the boatswain, who seemed to know exactly to what Nicholls was referring, “just two days a’terwards, Mr Nicholls.”
“Yes,” resumed Nicholls, “two days later we got a shift of wind, the breeze coming out at about east-north-east, and we broke off to about due north, which was disappointing, as we hoped to pick up the south-east trades just where we then were. But we held all on, hoping that the wind would gradually haul round. It didn’t, however; on the contrary, it came on to blow hard and heavy, until we were hove-to under close-reefed topsails, and the sea—well I never saw anything like it in all my born days; the Wanderer was mostly a very comfortable little hooker when she was hove-to, but this time she rolled so frightfully—being in light trim, you must understand, sir—that I, for one, expected any minute to see her roll her masts over the side. And after we had been hove-to for twenty-six hours she scared the skipper so badly that he decided to up-helm and try whether she wouldn’t do better at running before it. Well, we watched for a ‘smooth,’ but it didn’t seem to come; and then, while we were still waiting, a sea came bearing down upon us that looked as big as a mountain. The skipper sang out for all hands to hold on for their lives, and some of us managed to get a grip, but others didn’t. Down it came upon us, looking like a wall that was toppling over, and the next second it was aboard of us! I had took to the mizzen rigging, and was about ten feet above the level of the rail when that sea came aboard, and I tell you, sir—what I’m saying is the petrified truth—for half a minute that barque was so completely buried that there wasn’t an inch of her hull to be seen, from stem to starn; nothing but her three masts standing up out of a boiling smother of foam. I made up my mind that the poor old hooker was done for, that she’d never come up again. But she did, at last, with every inch of bulwarks gone, fore and aft, the cook’s galley swept away, every one of our boats smashed, and five of the hands missing—one of them being the chief mate.
“Well, as soon as she had cleared herself, the skipper sang out for the carpenter to sound the well; and when Chips drew up the rod he reported four feet of water in the hold! Of course all hands went at once to the pumps; but by the time that we’d been working at them for an hour we found it was no good, the water was gaining upon us hand over hand, and the craft was settling down under our feet. So we knocked off pumping and, our boats being all gone, went to work to put a raft together. But, our decks having been swept clean of everything, we hadn’t much stuff left to work up, and it took us a couple of hours to knock together the few odds and ends that you took us off of this morning. We hadn’t stuff to make anything bigger, and we hadn’t the time, even if we’d had the stuff, for by the time that we had finished our raft the poor old hooker had settled so low in the water that we expected her to sink under us any minute.
“Then we got to work to scrape together such provisions as we could lay our hands on; but by this time the lazarette was flooded and not to be got at, while everything in the steward’s pantry was spoiled, the pantry having been swamped by the sea that had broken aboard and done all the mischief. But it was the grub from the pantry, or nothing; so we took it—and there wasn’t very much of it either—and also a small breaker of fresh water that the steward managed to fill for us, and then it was high time for us to be off.
“It wasn’t a very difficult matter to launch the raft, for by this time every sea that came along swept over our decks, and the job for us was to avoid being washed overboard. Well, we got afloat; but, as luck would have it, a heavy sea swept over us just as we were launching and made a clean sweep of all the provisions that we’d got together, except one small parcel, and of course, once afloat, it was impossible for us to get back to the barque, even if there had been any use in our going back—which there wasn’t.
“We had managed to find one oar and the jolly-boat’s lug sail, and this we rigged up—as much by way of a signal as anything else, for of course we could do nothing but drive dead before the wind. And we hadn’t left the barque above ten minutes when down she went, stern foremost, and there we were left adrift and as helpless as a lot of babies in that raging sea. There were ten of us altogether, and a pretty tight fit we found it on that bit of a raft, all awash as she was. It was within half an hour of sunset when we left the barque, and as darkness settled down upon us it came on to blow harder than ever, while the seas washed us to that extent that we could do nothing but hold on like grim death.