“I started to swim in the direction of the sound, and after perhaps about five minutes I makes out something away on my port bow. I gives a shout as loud as I could, and that sends me under again; so I soon found that game wouldn’t answer.
“However I stretched out as hard as I could, and got alongside; but there warn’t nothing to take hold of, and she slips past me. I was too done up to sing out again; but I starts to swim after her, when I strikes my head against something, and it turns out to be a boat towing astern. I got hold of the gunnel, and managed somehow to get aboard, and then down I goes into the bottom of her, too exhausted to do anything.
“I dropped off to sleep pretty soon, and was only woke up when the chaps came to hoist their boat in.
“The craft turned out to be a coasting junk, bound to Shanghai, as I managed to make out, but not another syllable could I understand of their lingo or they of mine ’twould seem.
“Blest if the very next night we wasn’t run down by something or other—I never knowed what ’twas, for they hadn’t the good manners to stop and pick us up.
“The mainmast of the junk was knocked out of her in the smash, and I managed to get hold of it and lash myself to it, just in the eyes of the rigging. The yard happened to be undermost, and so I had a pretty good berth.
“I floated about on that — spar for four days and nights without a bit or drop of anything, and then my senses broke adrift, and I knew nothing more of what happened to me for some time.
“When I came to myself I found I was on board a Dutch ship, homeward-bound. It turned out that they passed close to my spar, and seein’ me lashed to it they picked me up.
“At least so I made it out; but I knew no Dutch, and there was only one chap aboard that thought he knowed English; but Lord bless ye, gentlemen, I couldn’t make top nor tail of what he said. I managed to make out hows’ever that I’d had a narrow squeak of it, and that’s about all.
“By the time I was able to get about on deck again, we was well out in the Indian Ocean, and everything seemed going on all right; but, as it turned out, it was all wrong, for early one morning we makes land ahead, the wind bein’ light and dead on shore.