"No doubt, and he who wishes a thing so unreasonable must be a great hog! What a thing is sleep! Here are these fine fellows as much lost to their dangers and toils as if at home, and tucked in by their careful and pious mothers. Little did the good souls who nursed them, and sung pious songs over their cradles, fancy the hardships they were bringing them up to! But we never know our fates, or miserable dogs most of us would be. Is it not so, Sir George?"
The baronet started at this appeal, which crossed the quaint mind of the captain as a cloud darkens a sunny view, and he muttered a hasty expression of hope that there was now no particular reason to expect any more serious obstacles to their reaching the ship.
"It is not an easy thing to tow a heavy raft in light boats like these, exactly in the direction you wish it to go," returned the captain, gaping. "He who trusts to the winds and waves, trusts an uncertain friend, and one who may fail him at the very moment when there is most need of their services. Fair as things now seem, I would give a thousand dollars of a small stock, in which no single dollar has been lightly earned, to see these spars safely on board the Montauk, and snugly fitted to their proper places. Sticks, gentlemen, are to a ship what limbs are to a man. Without them she rolls and tumbles about as winds, currents, and seas will; while with them she walks, and dances, and jumps Jim Crow; ay, almost talks. The standing rigging are the bones and gristle; the running gear the veins in which her life circulates; and the blocks the joints."
"And which is the heart?" asked Sir George.
"Her heart is the master. With a sufficient commander no stout ship is ever lost, so long as she has a foot of water beneath her false keel, or a ropeyarn left to turn to account."
"And yet the Dane had all these."
"All but the water. The best craft that was ever launched, is of less use than a single camel, if laid high and dry on the sands of Africa. These poor wretches truly! And yet their fate might have been ours, though I thought little of the risk while we were in the midst of the Arabs. It is still a mystery to me why they let us escape, especially as they so soon deserted the wreck. They were strong-handed, too; counting all who came and went, I think not less than several hundreds."
The captain now became silent and thoughtful, and, as the wind continued to rise, he began to feel uneasiness about his ship. Once or twice he expressed a half-formed determination to pull to her in one of the light boats, in order to look after her safety in person, and then he abandoned it, as he witnessed the rising of the sea, and the manner in which the massive raft caused the cordage by which it was held to strain. At length he too fell asleep, and we shall leave him and his party for awhile, and return to the Montauk, to give an account of what occurred on board that ship.
Chapter XXI.
Nothing beside remains! Round the decay
Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare,
The lone and level sands stretch far away.