“Patience, patience, dearest Rose—patience for ten minutes, and you shall all drink,” answered the mate, filling the sail and keeping the boat away while speaking. “There is water, God be praised, on the rock to which I first swam, and we will secure it before another day's sun help to make it evaporate.”
This announcement quieted the longings of those who endured a thirst which disappointment rendered doubly hard to bear; and away the boat glided toward the rock. As he now flew over the distance, lessened more than one-half by the drift of the wreck, Mulford recalled the scene through which he had so painfully passed the previous night. As often happens, he shuddered at the recollection of things which, at the moment, a desperate resolution had enabled him to encounter with firmness. Still, he thought nothing less than the ardent desire to save Rose could have carried him through the trial with the success which attended his struggles. The dear being at his side asked a few explanations of what had passed; and she bowed her head and wept, equally with pain and delight, as imagination pictured to her the situation of her betrothed, amid that waste of water, with his fearful companions, and all in the hours of deep night.
But that was over now. There was the rock—the blessed rock on which Mulford had so accidentally struck, close before them—and presently they were all on it. The mate took the pot and ran to the little reservoir, returning with a sweet draught for each of the party.
“A blessed, blessed thing, is wather!” exclaimed Biddy, this time finding the relief she sought, “and a thousand blessings on you, Mr. Mulford, who have niver done us anything but good.”
Rose looked a still higher eulogy on the young man, and even Mrs. Budd had something commendatory and grateful to say. Jack Tier was silent, but he had all his eyes about him, as he now proved.
“We've all on us been so much taken up with our own affairs,” remarked the steward's assistant, “that we've taken but little notice of the neighbourhood. If that is n't the brig, Mr. Mulford, running through this very passage, with stun'sails set alow and aloft, I do n't know the Molly Swash when I see her!”
“The brig!” exclaimed the mate, recollecting the vessels he had seen at the break-of-day, for the first time in hours. “Can it be possible that the craft I made out to the southward, is the brig?”
“Look, and judge for yourself, sir. There she comes, like a race-horse, and if she holds her present course, she must pass somewhere within a mile or so of us, if we stay where we are.”
Mulford did look, as did all with him. There was the Swash, sure enough, coming down before the wind, and under a cloud of canvas. She might be still a league, or a league and a half distant, but, at the rate at which she was travelling, that distance would soon be past. She was running through the passage, no doubt with a view to proceed to the Dry Tortugas, to look after the schooner, Spike having the hope that he had dodged his pursuers on the coast of Cuba. The mate now looked for the ship, in the north-western board, believing, as he did, that she was the sloop-of-war. That vessel had gone about, and was standing to the southward, on a taut bowline. She was still a long way off, three or four leagues at least, but the change she had made in her position, since last seen, proved that she was a great sailer. Then she was more than hull down, whereas, now, she was near enough to let the outline of a long, straight fabric be discovered beneath her canvas.
“It is hardly possible that Spike should not see the vessel here in the northern board,” Mulford observed to Tier, who had been examining the ship with him. “The lookout is usually good on board the Swash, and, just now, should certainly be as good as common. Spike is no dawdler with serious business before him.”