“Walford!” he exclaimed. Then, without another moment’s hesitation, he dashed up and, throwing himself upon his back, seized his rival by the hair and drew him into such a position as permitted of his taking Walford’s head upon his shoulder and supporting it high enough above the surface to prevent the sea washing over it and so suffocating him.
Walford offered no resistance, and gave not the faintest sign of being aware of George’s presence; and there the two lay, quietly floating on the bosom of the long heaving swell, until the boat came to their assistance and conveyed them both on board the Aurora.
On reaching the ship, George had his rival promptly stripped, rubbed vigorously down, and comfortably bestowed in his own berth, well and warmly wrapped up in blankets, with Tom Price—one of the forecastle hands, and a very smart, intelligent young fellow—to watch over him. After which, the skipper gave a little attention to his own comfort, and finally went on deck once more, it being by that time too late to think of turning in again.
By the time that George regained the deck, the Aurora had crept to a distance of about four miles from the Princess Royal. The unfortunate craft was by that time blazing fiercely fore and aft, the fire having at last reached her store-room, in which there was a considerable quantity of highly inflammable material; and half an hour afterwards her powder-magazine (almost every ship of any size in those days was provided with a magazine) exploded; and the charred fragments of half-consumed timber, which were widely scattered over the now sleepily heaving surface of the sea, alone remained as relics of the once noble and stately ship, the destruction of which had been the last link in a chain of disastrous occurrences resulting primarily from the overbearing, tyrannical, and imprudent behaviour of her officers.
With the appearance of the sun above the horizon the clouds gradually disappeared, the wind dropped, the surface of the ocean became like heaving oil; and the Aurora, losing steerage-way, rolled almost gunwale-to, with her canvas flapping loudly and monotonously against her masts.
About two bells (or nine o’clock) one of the hands, upon being sent aloft to “grease down,” reported a sail in the southern quarter, and on the usual inquiry being put to him, as to what he made her out to be, he replied that she was a small topsail-schooner.
“A small topsail-schooner!” muttered George. “I wonder what she can be; I cannot remember having seen any such craft in the fleet. Ritson,”—to the carpenter who had charge of the deck,—“do you remember having seen a topsail-schooner among the fleet?”
“No, sir; can’t say as I do,” answered Ritson. “Don’t believe there was any such craft, sir; the smallest, as I remembers was that purty little brig painted all white down to her water-line; perhaps you recollects her, sir?”
“Yes,” said Leicester, “I recollect the craft perfectly well; and, as far as my memory serves me, she was, as you say, the smallest craft in company.”
The conversation here dropped for a time, George resuming the somewhat dejected saunter fore and aft from the main-mast to the taffrail, and the half-unconscious whistling for a wind, in which he had before been indulging. His pursuit of this monotonous and uninteresting occupation was interrupted by the steward, who requested him to step down into the cabin, “to take a look at the man as was picked up this morning; as he seems to be took a bit worse, sir.”