"Try up the main-to'gallants! All hands aloft! Steady, there, at the helm! Port! hard a-port!" bawled our captain through his trumpet, and his orders were just obeyed in time to allow us to breast the enormous billows occasioned by the falling water-spouts, while we were all drenched to the skin by the spray of their splash, although the one which had stood nearest to us was fully half a mile away.
As for the stranger—the brigantine—she was never seen again. We never saw a floating splinter of that ill-fated ship, whereby to tell the port whence she came or whither she was bound.
I come now to the most painful episode that was connected with the cruise of our almost uniformly merry privateer, the Queer Fish. I have had little of the painful—much of the glad and rollicking—to treat of thus far, and would gladly spin my yarn to its termination as merrily as I began. But truth directs me to a different course.
Besides, as this event which I am about to describe is about the only one of a sorrowful character directly connected with the Queer Fish, it may serve to throw the other features of my yarn into a more distinctly cheerful light. Nevertheless, be that as it may, the truth must, like murder, out at last, and here it is.
Little Willie Warner, our pet, the cabin-boy, had never totally recovered from the effects of the accident we have narrated as having befallen him. The climate was exceedingly bad as we approached the latitude of the Sandwich Islands—much rain, followed by days of the most intense tropic heat—and little Willie, probably from the cerebral contusion he had formerly received, contracted a brain fever, which soon brought him very low.
Roddy Prinn, as in the former instance, was permitted to devote all his time to the duties of a nurse, and all of us did what we could. But, on the morning of the fourth day of the fever, good Doctor Benedict sorrowfully informed the captain that the days and hours of little Willie Warner were numbered, and that the number was brief indeed.
We had noticed, from the commencement of this illness, that same appearance of mysterious information, between the captain and the doctor, which had before been indicated to us. And now, at this solemn moment of the announcement of the approaching end of the sufferer, this mystery was still more apparent.
The prognostication of the doctor proved only too true. Willie Warner breathed his last before the set of sun.
Deeply grieved as was every one on the ship at this deplorable event, there was one whose grief dwarfed all others in the magnitude of its agony. This was Roddy Prinn. The poor fellow went almost insane. Above all, he besought the captain to preserve the body of his little chum, until our approach to the islands would enable us to accord a Christian burial on land to the remains. But, as we were yet within a hundred and fifty miles of our destination, compliance with this request was rendered impossible.