“Thank you, Walter; a thousand thanks!” she said, laying her hand upon my arm. “It is generous of you to feel about it as you do, and it increases the load of my obligation to you. But I see that you perfectly understand, so I will say no more about it. As soon as Dr Harper says you can see Julius, I will send for you.”
The interview with Julius took place shortly after six bells in the forenoon watch, the boy’s mother and the doctor being present; and after what the former had said to me by way of preparation, I was not at all surprised to find that Master Julius’s thanks were expressed in a very perfunctory, offhand manner, with not much of the ring of sincerity about them. But I made allowances for him, for I saw that the lad was still only in the early stage of convalescence; also, it was perfectly clear that he did not in the least realise the fact that he had all but lost his life.
The cabin in which he lay was very large, light, airy, and most beautifully furnished, with every convenience and luxury that the most fastidious person could possibly desire; and it was quite painful to see its occupant, on his handsome and capacious brass bedstead, under a most beautiful embroidered silk coverlet, and surrounded by everything that heart could wish for, lying there wan, peevish, irritable, dissatisfied with everybody and everything, seemingly because his doting parents had gratified his every whim and humoured his every caprice. It was quite evident that he regarded me with almost if not quite as great distaste as ever; he even seemed to consider it a grievance that he owed his life to a despised Britisher; and seeing how acutely his mother was distressed at his ungracious manner toward me, I contented myself by saying a few words of sympathy with him on his illness, and brought my visit to a speedy close.
Five bells in the afternoon watch had just been struck, and I was once more on duty, when a man who had been sent aloft to attend to some small matter hailed the deck from the main topsail yard to report that, some ten miles distant, and broad on our weather beam, there was something that had the appearance of a dismasted wreck. In reply to this the skipper, who was on deck, requested Kennedy to take the ship’s telescope up into the main topmast crosstrees and ascertain what the object really was. This was done; and in due time the mate came down and reported that the object, as seen through the glass, proved to be a biggish lump of a craft, either a ship or a barque, totally dismasted, with the wreckage of her spars still floating alongside, and to all appearance derelict. We at once hauled our wind, and shortly afterward tacked; and by eight bells we were up with the wreck and hove to within biscuit-toss to leeward of the craft. Then Briscoe, the second mate, in charge of one of the whalers, was sent away to give the derelict—for such she seemed to be—an overhaul.
The craft was a wooden vessel, of about our own tonnage, painted black with a broad white ribbon chequered with false ports; she had a Dutch look about her; and, from her model, was evidently somewhat elderly. She had been ship-rigged, and from the appearance of the wreckage alongside had been caught unawares, very probably by the recent hurricane, and dismasted. She had a short, full poop, and as she rolled heavily toward us we caught sight of what looked like the shattered framework of a deckhouse close abaft the stump of her foremast; also, there were the remains of two boats dangling from davits on her quarters; from all of which appearances we concluded that she had passed through a pretty desperate experience.
But what had become of her crew? There had been no sign of them when we closed with and hailed her, nor had any of them appeared since; yet the wreckage of the boats hanging from her davits made it difficult for us to believe that they had abandoned the ship. True, there was no sign of a longboat such as is usually stowed on the main-hatch of a merchantman, but we could hardly believe that the crew had taken to her in preference to the two quarter boats; for after the fall of the spars it would have been difficult to launch so heavy a boat, unless indeed they had run her overboard, fisherman fashion, through the wide gap in her bulwarks amidships on both sides, where not only the planking but also the stanchions had been swept away.
Shortly after the departure of Briscoe we drifted into a position which enabled us to get a view of the stranger’s stern. This confirmed our first surmise respecting her origin, for beneath a row of smashed cabin windows we read the words: “Anna Waarden. Amsterdam.”
Briscoe remained aboard the wreck about three-quarters of an hour; and, upon his return, reported that the craft was derelict, and that there was nothing to show how the crew had left her, except that it appeared to have been with the utmost suddenness, for there was no sign of their having taken anything with them. Even the ship’s papers—which he found in the captain’s stateroom and brought away with him—had been left behind; and that the disaster could only have occurred very recently was proved by the logbook, which had been entered up to within a few hours of the moment when the hurricane struck us, while Briscoe had found the chronometer still going.
He added that he had sounded the well and found barely a foot of water in it; and that, after careful examination, he had come to the conclusion that the hull was sound. If Mrs Vansittart would supply him with a crew, he believed he could fit the craft with a jury rig and take her into port. The logbook showed that she had sailed from Batavia, homeward bound for Amsterdam, sixteen days before the date upon which we fell in with her; while her papers made it clear that she was laden with a cargo quite rich enough to justify the attempt at salvage. The result of this report was that Mrs Vansittart summoned the crew aft, explained to them, through Kennedy, the nature of the second mate’s report and his request to be allowed to salve the hull and cargo, and then called for volunteers for the job.
The prospect of salvage money proved tempting enough to induce some twenty men to come forward, of whom Kennedy chose fifteen, including the boatswain’s and carpenter’s mates; whereupon the purser was instructed to make up the men’s accounts to date and pay them off. While the first part of this business—namely, the making up of the accounts—was being attended to, those who had volunteered went below and packed their kits, then brought them on deck and threw them into the first cutter, which Mrs Vansittart gave them, after which they went aboard the Hollander and got to work.